Apples and Oranges

As I had expected, Sarah's roommate was not one to be trifled with. When I knocked on the door she asked who was there in a voice that would have sent a lowerclassman scurrying for his life. I, only slightly intimidated, told her my name.

"Never heard of you. If you're soliciting, you ought to know that it isn't allowed on campus, and I swear I'll sue if you don't leave. Is that clear?"

I wondered if they got many solicitors up here. I had never seen any. "Sarah sent me to pick up the rest of her posters."

The door opened to reveal Sarah's roommate. She was thoroughly unlike Sarah - short, a bit squat, and eternally cross. Her expression was much like the one I wore during boring compiles. "Sorry if I'm snappy," she said, "but I'm waiting for the new version of Darwin to compile, and I'm out of chocolate. You wouldn't happen to have any, would you?"

So Sarah was right about her being a techie. I gave her a long stare. "Why in the world are you compiling Darwin? If you have to run a long compile at least do it on something useful, and something that you can't get pre-compiled."

Her glare darkened. "I applied a few patches to it."

"Why? Who writes patches for Darwin anyway?"

The glare increased in magnitude. I'm no stranger to glares, but this was a pretty good one. "I write patches for Darwin, along with at least three other people on campus."

"Right. And considering the Darwin user base you must be the biggest development group around, right?"

Her scorn was almost tangible. "I'll bet we're bigger than the local Windows development group."

"I wouldn't know. I'm a Linux user."

"Ah. A technological masochist. How wonderful. Now would you mind taking the posters and getting your holier-than-thou attitude out of my dorm room?"

She stepped aside to let me in, and I found the posters - in the organized half of the room, as Sarah had told me.

"Hey," I said, turning back to Sarah's roommate, "Sarah said something about you helping with the posters. Why aren't you down there?"

"Sarah also hinted that you and I would make a good couple. She may be smart, but she doesn't always think straight. Then again, you're probably blinded by a crush on her, aren't you?" I didn't say anything. "But you know what? I think I might go down and help you guys. Even arguing with a masochist and a philosopher beats watching an operating system compile."

"Fancy that, we agree on something." I didn't like the offhand way she insulted Sarah. This girl was starting to get on my nerves.

I glanced around the room before we left. It was clearly divided between Sarah's half and her roommate's half. One side was neat and tidy, with a small bookshelf, a laptop-sized space on the clean desk, and a vase of flowers in the window. Roses and sunflowers, I noted for future reference.

On the other side lurked the atmosphere of a server room, complete with empty pizza box and a pile of hard drives in the corner of the desk. Leaning against an old CRT monitor was what appeared to be a synthesizer keyboard. Clip leads sprung from dismantled speakers. Papers were strewn across the floor in a complex fractal pattern.

There was a grayish divide between the two halves, like an ever-disputed no-man's-land. It reminded me of my relationship with Mike, or the policy contested in Plessy v. Ferguson: Separate but equal.

We maintained an awkward, disgruntled silence all the way down to the quad. By that time I thought it might be safe to ask her name.

"Emily Fisher," she replied. "What did you say yours was?"

"Brian Fennel."

It sounded like the conversation wanted to stop there, so I kept silent and thought about posters. I seldom bothered to look at them. They were usually little slices of color flapping for acknowledgment in the corner of my eye. Now that I gave them my attention they jumped off of every wall, screaming the news: CONCERT IN THE STUDENT UNION (Yesterday at 7:00). RUGBY GAME (Next Wednesday). WINDOWS FOR DUMMIES LECTURES (Weekly in the library's computer lab). BILINGUAL TUTORING (Come to Carson 117!). BRASS ENSEMBLE - TROMBONES WANTED. The last one looked familiar - it was the same brilliant hue as Sarah's posters. I gave it a closer look, and noticed the font was similar too.

Emily saw what I was looking at and stopped walking. "It starts tomorrow morning at eight. You play a brass instrument?"

"Yeah," I said, "I played trombone in high school. Haven't played since, though. You?"

"Trombone. You should come. Sarah's probably going to be principle horn. She's one of the best horn players around, you know."

I took a mental note of it and turned away. "I might." My mind was made up, but I didn't want to tell Emily that.

---

Hm. Briefly edited. Only an hour late. Not too bad, considering the busy week I've had and the fact that most of my weekend so far has been spent working on a pretty new web site for AGF. (Of course I had a nice break from web design this afternoon, sitting in the rain for half a football game with the pep band.) The new site will come into effect in a few weeks. It will include such accessories as a cast list, a Q&A section in which I can spew my ideas about AGF, and a better layout and design. Blogger is nice, but it's limited. I'll talk more about the new site later.

Have a wonderful week! (Or else!)