6 A Meeting in the Halls
Cameron was finally making his way through everyone that he hadn’t seen over the summer. He had to get to the high school for his student teaching, nothing he was particularly excited for, some of the kids he taught at that school were pretty brutal to each other and their teacher, Ben Rogers. Rogers seemed all right, but pretty burnt out. Cameron thought that Rogers was probably a good teacher at one point, but he acted as if he had no backbone and the kids ran all over him. There was one in particular, that Jenkins kid that was really an insufferable jerk. Cameron wanted to belt the creep for mocking him every time he spoke in class. It wasn’t so much that he is obnoxious, most ninth graders are, it was the sense of entitlement that grated on Cameron so much. Rich parents, good looks, decent brains, a few cronies to laugh at him, he had been born on third base thinking he hit a triple.
Cameron was heading down the long hallway outside the station past the smaller production rooms when he had been flagged down, “Hey Cam! Wait up!”
Cameron was happy to see Christine, but he didn’t have much time to get to the high school. “Oh hey Christine, uhmm I’m not sure where Craig is. He left a little early from the meeting, he might be at class now.” While technically not a lie, Craig felt a ping of guilt for that omission. He was also uneasy that Christine would believe that Craig was actually at class.
“Oh, that’s fine, I really wanted to talk to you anyway.” Just then a loud thump came from the closet sized production studio they were standing outside of. “What’s going on in there?” Cameron had a real good idea now exactly were Craig was and with who.
“Uh, probably just some production.” The thumping lowered into a shorter rhythmic beating on the wall.
“Sounds more like some reproduction.” Christine put her ear to the door. “God, she’s really getting it. Who is in there?” Cameron could hear the sex sounds coming from the production studio without putting his ear to the wall like Christine, which is pretty impressive considering that the studios were supposed to be soundproof.
“I don’t know but we should get out of here.”
“Why? I wanna know who it is.” Christine giggled.
“Well if I see it as the station manager and don’t report it, they could expel me, but if I do report it, they’ll get expelled. So let’s bounce out of here. Walk me to my car and we’ll talk.” Cameron hoped this seemed logical enough for Christine; he didn’t have time for drama. He thought about it for a second. He was lying for Craig now. This would have to end soon. Cameron didn’t think he would stand under questioning too well, and besides, by lying about it he was involving himself in Craig’s nonsense. That wouldn’t end well for anyone.
“You’re no fun.”
“Yeah, that’s part of the gypsy curse, that and these dashing good looks.” Cameron and Christine finally made it outside away from the production room where Craig and April were thumping away. “So what’s up? Did you finish the book?”
Christine reached into her bag and handed Sabbath’s Theater back to Cameron. “Yeah, you were right it was great.”
Cameron put the book with his things. “I’ve got another one for you at the house next time we are both there. Okay, see you.”
“No wait, that isn’t what I needed to talk to you about. It’s about Craig.”
“Aww shit, I don’t want to get in the middle of you two.” Anymore, he thought.
“No it’s not like that, I was just wondering if you could talk to him for me, see we’ve been engaged for six weeks, and he won’t set a date for the wedding with me.”
That seemed pretty ‘in the middle’ to Cameron. “So you want me to talk to him for you and see why he won’t set a date?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know, seems to me that if you can’t get him to talk maybe you should rethink marrying him. Why are you guys in such a rush to get married anyway? Are you afraid he is going to go off the deep end like the last one?”
“C’mon Cam, I love him and he loves me. The last guy was a good guy, but I wish you wouldn’t bring him up. It got kind of embarrassing for me at the end.” Christine had told Cameron about her last boyfriend, from her sophomore year, after a drunken party over the summer. They had been the only two left up from the beer pong and the last appearance of the Freshman Funnel Team. Craig had passed out on the front porch and Jimmy was a puddle of vomit and rotten ham body odor on the bathroom floor. This was usually when Christine and Cameron would have their tipsy talks. Neither one of them got obliterated at parties usually, and she would help him clean up once they had played “Moonlight Mile” by the Stones or “Closing Time” by Tom Waits to let everyone know the party was pretty much done. Cameron wasn’t sure why she hung around. Maybe she just needed a friend.
Apparently, Christine’s ex-boyfriend, Jake, had been perfect too for her at one time. Jake loved tattoos, cocaine, rock music, and Christine, pretty much in that order.
Two full sleeves of tattoos perfectly complimented by his rockabilly haircut and Ponyboy Curtis clothing choices, he had also been a drummer; Christine swore that she does not have a thing for drummers. It was just a coincidence. Everything was going great; she got to sneak into bars to see his band, The Smoking Jackets, play little dives to little crowds. He paid attention to her. He was a great artist. He had awesome hair. Everything had been great, until Van Halen had come along to ruin her sophomore life.
Van Halen had rolled into town that hot summer night. Not many big acts came to their small college town, so when a major one came, everyone went. Jake was no exception. He sat in the general seating on a picnic blanket, making sure to keep his sleeves rolled up to show off his tattoos and steely eyes. Jake’s heart was thumping wildly. The coke had been coursing through him the entire show. He stared blankly, gritting his teeth, thinking about where he could get more coke. The lines that he had chopped with the rest of the Smoking Jackets weren’t going to be enough. It was never enough. When he wasn’t busy glinting his eyes like Luke Perry on Beverly Hills 90210 and jonesing, Jake actually listened to the music. Sammy Hagar, the band’s lead singer, began singing “Running with the Devil” and Jake had an empty feeling in him, a deep drawing to a redirection of himself, a calling. Jake didn’t think it was the coke; it was something else.
Jake’s whirlwind conversion to Christianity had caused a total upheaval in his life. He quit his band, quit his drugs, and Christine eventually would quit him. He just wasn’t fun anymore. No more sex, drugs, or rock and roll. Now it was youth group meetings, Sunday school, and uggghh.. Christian rock. Jake still played drums, but he played for his new age church’s ska band. They only had one horn player in the band, but that still counted as ska to most. Christine came once to see if she could make her and Jake work out, but she felt idiotic with one hand in the air and her eyes closed singing the same lyrics over and over and pretending to have a deeper connection to the music and therefore, Christ, than everyone around her.
Jake’s new found religion had also caused conflict with his business. He had decided that his calling meant that he could only do religious themed tattoos. Problem is, most religious people in a small college town didn’t need that many tattoos. Jake suffered for his faith a while until his church hired him to paint a mural in the church gymnasium. It was believed that stylistic Christian art on the wall would entice kids not to have sex with each other and attend social functions in the gym. Jake spent two months creating a mural of God, Moses, and Jesus playing and defeating the Devil and two demons in a three-on-three basketball game. Heaven beat Hell 777 to 6, signifying the complete lack of defense in the Devil’s game. To be fair, it was a home game for Heaven. The mural also featured notables in the audience watching the trouncing of Hell. These notables included: Pat Robertson, Matthew Broderick, George Bush, and Connie Chung rooting for Heaven. In the upper left hand corner Christine saw a small version of herself standing next to a painted version of Jake. Hell also had a few fans rooting for them in the mural as well. Most notably Bill Clinton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Penn Jillette and of course, Sammy Hagar.
Jake’s mural was an instant success; the church was so thrilled with the mural that they paid Jake an extra two thousand dollars. Being a tax free corporation meant that the church had piles of money laying around, so this was not a big deal to them. News of Jake’s mural spread to different churches and he was hired throughout the south to paint gym walls and rec rooms. Jake always included small representations of him and Christine in the audience of each mural and would send her pictures. Jake was especially proud of his creativity in painting a mural of Moses defeating Lucifer in a one-sided ping pong match at a Korean Baptist Church in Maumelle, Arkansas. It was during this time that Christine had to break it off with Jake, he had just changed too much. Christine was soon moved to the Hell section of the bleachers in Jake’s paintings.
“Okay, you love him, but I don’t see why you need me.”
“C’mon Cam, just talk to him.”
“All right I’ll pass a note to him in the hall like a middle school kid, can I go teach now? You needy broad.”
“Yes, but take care of it okay, and who says broad anymore?”
“I do, now go away and I’ll help fulfill your dream of becoming a fat Alabama housewife.”
“My hero.” Christine smiled.