The Roommates by Stephanie Wu

Author:Stephanie Wu
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781250051462
Publisher: Picador

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THE FOUR-MONTH HANGOVER

AFTER COLLEGE GRADUATION, my best friend from high school and I decided to move in together in New York. We knew it would be cheaper if we found a three-bedroom, so Dave suggested we bring along his college friend Jimmy. I’d met Jimmy at parties over the last few years, and I always thought he was a fun guy. Everything was fine for about six weeks, and then Jimmy started to become very withdrawn and paranoid and solemn.

We had a great first-floor apartment with a backyard and a nice big living area. Jimmy’s bedroom was the one that faced the backyard. He would get upset if people were smoking out there or making noise after ten P.M. And he tied this all to his ongoing health problems. He’s a good-looking guy but very frail. Apparently, he was a football player in high school, but developed a muscular dystrophy disease, which left him weak. He claimed to have incredibly fragile health, and that any cigarette smoke coming in through the window would send him into a death spiral. He was very, very dramatic about it and spent most of his time in his bedroom. The only time I ever saw him was when he was on a cocaine binge—which probably contributed to his bad health.

It was a hot summer, and his window had flat bars on it so he couldn’t put an air conditioner in the window. He bought a ridiculous stand-up air conditioner that didn’t work at all, was sweating all the time and miserable from the heat, and got sicker and angrier. It got to the point where he started to look like a vicious vampire or alien—whenever he emerged from the bedroom, he’d slink around the corner and hug the wall, trying not to make eye contact when he went to the bathroom and back. It became increasingly terrifying, and you could never tell if he was home or asleep, because the door was always shut. We never knew how to behave in our own space. Whether we could relax or not depended on if he was there.

One day he came home and called an apartment meeting, and told Dave and me that he’d been getting tests done to figure out why he was feeling so bad. The doctor had told him that he had some sort of extremely rare degenerative muscle disease—and that he’d be dead within the year. Needless to say, we were shocked and said we’d do anything we could to help out. He told us he was still going for more tests, and he started making pot brownies all the time, because marijuana was the one thing that made him feel better. And when he made the brownies, he baked like he was mad at the stove. He was a terrible baker who angrily stirred saucepans full of butter and never cleaned it up afterward. It was like he was disgusted by the whole operation but was doing it anyway because he’d convinced himself it was for its medical properties.

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