Roman à clef
“Brewsky!” Rey Avicenna’s booming voice resounded throughout the small apartment room that afternoon when he briskly kicked the dilapidated door open. His sharp, menacing teeth peeked out behind his lips as he grinned like a shark from the doorway. Taking a beer can from the six-pack that he held in his other hand, he pitched it to his roommate, the placid young man lying on the receiving room’s couch. The can of beer sailed across the air, and would have landed straight on the seemingly sleeping man’s face, were it not for the speed of the young man’s arm, as he quickly brought it up and caught the projectile in one swift movement.
“Shut up, brainless; I’m trying to sleep.” The young man’s eyes remained closed when he hurled the beer can back at its owner. Rey promptly caught the can and then headed for the dining table, where he set down his bag and beer. “Come on, Trevor, get up and help me celebrate. Miss Dragon Lady gave us a good grade! I’ll show you the proof when I get my class card tomorrow,” Rey called out to his roommate. In response, the young man groggily drew himself up to a sitting position on the couch.
After casually tossing his bag unto his bunk, Rey made his way back to the sitting room with two cans of beer and a bowl of leftover luncheon meat from breakfast. His roommate, Robert Alunan, known as Trevor to his friends, started chugging away on the beer after resting his feet on the low wooden table. “How many times do I have to tell you not to slam the door, Rey? Next time you do that, I really, really hope those hinges finally come out of the woodwork, and let the whole damn thing land on you.” Rey chuckled in response, taking his seat on a cushioned chair. The door could’ve fallen on him for all he cared, so intoxicated was he over his triumph that morning.
The world came to an unexpected halt earlier that day, just as he and his classmates were about to leave the last meeting of their Critical Writing class, English 103. His draconian teacher had taken him aside after the departure of his classmates, and told him that she had given him a good grade, despite his utter disregard for punctuality and his annoying habit of snoring during class. The announcement threw him into a dizzy, and only when Miss Bea reminded him to pick up his class card tomorrow did he snap out his numbing trance. He responded with a casual smirk after turning away, utterly pleased with himself for having obtained the good graces of the notoriously exacting professor.
“Bah, tastes like dog piss,” Trevor complained. “You decide to treat your friends out, and then you poison them with disgusting beer.” With bleary eyes, he started looking for the television’s remote control under the sofa cushions. “Is there anything else on TV now? I can’t wait for the primetime news. They say that the rogue senator behind the Makati mutiny is already in America, planning again for next year’s coup.”
Rey continued munching on the slices of luncheon meat, unmoved by both Trevor’s criticism of the beer, and consternation over the missing remote. He had felt the hard casing of the remote control against his back, safely concealed from Trevor’s view. Go ahead and mock my beer, you bastard, Rey thought. He would have taken Trevor’s can and soaked him with its contents, in both jest and irritation, but his debt of loyalty checked his otherwise quick temper. Without Trevor, he could’ve ended up with a failing grade like his other unfortunate classmates. Besides, he thought, it was a celebration after all; what better way to celebrate than to watch a nerdy writer fuss over a hidden remote?
“How was your project, by the way? Did your teacher like the wireless client?” Rey asked his roommate, who was now on his knees and searching for the gadget under the sofa.
“Yeah, it was great. It was sort of scary at first because he brought this checklist with him. The other guys got a lot of bad marks on that checklist.” Trevor kneeled up and turned to Rey. “We had the fewest deductions, I think.”
Two victories in a day, Rey thought sweetly, his irritation passing. Trevor’s news gave Rey even more delight than his success in Critical Writing class. After all, even the instructors at the Computer Science Institute had appreciated the depth of his skill, whereas his clever ruse only gained him worth in the eyes of a ruthless literature teacher. Trevor had resumed his sluggish search, so Rey decided to end his roommate’s misery in exchange for the good news. He took the remote from behind his back, and tossed it at Trevor’s upturned ass.
“Here’s the remote, Trevor. Good doggie,” Rey chuckled again. After picking up the remote from the floor, Trevor resumed his position on the couch. His droopy eyes disclosed no anger over yet another one of Rey’s numerous pranks; a stranger, upon seeing Trevor then, would have assumed Trevor to be on a regular prescription of valium. Instead, Trevor’s feet casually took their place on the sofa’s armrest as he flipped through the channels, searching for his favorite news program.
“Ah, what I would’ve given to hear those words for myself,” Rey sighed.
“Same with me. I can’t believe that the dragon lady actually liked that two-year-old crap. They’d been rotting in my files for years.” Trevor’s eyes remained glued to the screen even as he sighed in agreement. “Maybe I still have time to shift my course. Maybe you can shift too. We can swap places during the summer break.”
Rey looked at his wistful friend in mock exasperation while he set down his beer can. “Hey, maybe if I throw this can hard enough, it’ll knock some sense into your empty head. Do you know how to kiss ass just to get a good grade? Just look at the grading system, for example. You have a checklist, lucky you. Look at me! Fifty percent of my grades are so subjective; it’s like the teacher just throws these pointy things at a board marked with grades.”
“You mean darts,” corrected Trevor. As the newscaster gave a brief rundown of the latest news stories, the mention of the missing senator’s name got his attention.
“Whatever, dude! Look, I bet no less than half the students in my course would fail their subjects if they didn’t kiss ass, right? Most of the teachers there love it when the students suck up to them! I really hate it there.” Rey, addressing the light bulb in the ceiling, assumed the inimitable pose of a campus activist, with fists in the air, and his voice boomed in righteous indignation over what he considered to be rampant injustice. “Damn all of you, you priggish bastard teachers! I’m not going to kiss ass and whimper like a dog just to get what I want from you! You can give me a grade of five for all I care!”
Trevor stopped his viewing for the moment to address his friend’s sudden bout of madness. “Lower your voice, dum-dum. I’m trying to watch the news here. Rant to your schizophrenic self somewhere else. Now go away before you drive me nuts.” After noting the return of Rey’s sanity, Trevor turned back to watching TV. If it weren’t for the duration of their friendship, he would’ve prescribed medication for Rey’s impulses a long time ago. “The teachers there can’t be as bad as you say, Rey. For one thing, there’s Miss Bea, and probably there are others like her.”
“Yeah, I agree, the dragon lady’s not a hypocrite like the others. Shift at your own risk then. If I were you, I’d stay in Computer Science. It’s the best course on earth, believe you me.” Upon reaching that tentative compromise, Rey whipped out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. The flame of the lighter had barely touched the open end of the stick when the sharp ringing of his cellphone suddenly drowned out the newscaster’s opening remarks.
Trevor’s angry glare prompted Rey to step outside and answer the phone; Trevor loathed any disturbance while listening to the latest news concerning the Makati mutiny. For Trevor’s entire sobriety against his inanity, Rey knew that the only levity that Trevor had from his valium-ridden life was the latest news about the government. Freud would have suggested sublimation of political activism, Rey thought. He walked out the front door, switching from the heavy atmosphere of the smelly apartment to the gentle twilight breeze outside, and brought his cellphone to his ear.
The newscaster’s report continued unbroken for a full fifteen minutes, and would have remained that way until the end of the advertisements, had not the sudden slam of the wooden door marked Rey’s second entrance that afternoon, with him standing at the doorway, his cigarette gone, and his right sneaker propped up ahead of him. Trevor groaned in helplessness over his roommate’s insensitivity. Despite his earlier curse, the hinges did not give way, leaving Rey free to stomp noisily towards his room without getting crushed.
“I’m off, Trevs!” The giddy tone in Rey’s voice was apparent. He reappeared from his room a few minutes later, his hair swept back and held there by a few uncombed wads of shimmering hair gel. “As Sherlock Holmes would say: The game’s afoot!” The evening news had resumed; Trevor turned away and tried to focus on the latest reports, blocking out from his ears the clatter of Rey’s search among the jumble of personal articles. From behind the couch, he heard Rey call out, “Hey, I’ll just use a little bit of this eww de toilet thing, okay?”
“Eau de toilette,” replied Trevor, in perfect French pronunciation. Realizing too late that the racket did not come from Rey’s quarters, Trevor gave a hurried protest as he struggled out from the couch. “You absolutely will not touch my Hugo Boss. If you so much as unscrew the cap of that thing, I’m going to make your life…” Trevor stood up and turned around, only to stare in horror at the sight of Rey liberally spraying the expensive cologne all over his chest, as though its owner wasn’t standing only a few feet away. The quiet Computer Science undergrad simply stood in shock, as Rey abandoned the bottle on the dining room table and headed for the front door.
Rey had already reached the couch when Trevor found his voice again. “Hey, wh-what are you doing? Where are you going, you brainless…” Trevor’s eyes narrowed in silent resentment. “… you brainless bastard?”
“Lyn Pascual called me up just now,” Rey explained, confidently brandishing his menacing, shark-like smile like a weapon to fend off the impending explosion of Trevor’s rage. “She’s this really hot classmate from English 103, and she was crying her eyes off on the phone. The poor baby said that she needed my help because of some removal exam that Miss Bea gave her, and, of course, I have to smell good when I meet her.”
“Not with my cologne,” Trevor growled in frustration. The strong odor of the cologne had begun to permeate throughout the apartment. “Maybe if you took baths regularly, you’d start smelling better.”
Rey’s sharky smile widened upon hearing Trevor’s assent. “Ha ha, very funny, man. Look, she needs a friend right now, and you know what that means.” He pointed at Trevor. “Trevor, tell me, who’s the man? Who’s the man? I’m the man!” With those parting words, Rey stepped out of the apartment and shut the door behind him by slamming it loudly.
Trevor cringed upon hearing the door’s impact. His head hung dejectedly as he listened to Rey’s hurrying footsteps on the concrete stairway. “You’re the man, alright,” he sighed in despair over the roommate from hell.
To Trevor’s dismay, another noise joined the murmur of the newscaster on the television, and the complaining knocks of the irate neighbors against the partition wall, when the front door, with its hinges giving way at last from the aged wooden frame, finally decided to detach itself from the doorway and crash on the sitting room floor.
"Roman à clef", part two
Back to Top 
© Copyright Info 
Contact Info 
About