College = Sentimenteaux

I walked to the Macalester library tonight to check out a Frederick Busch book. I always like going there, it makes me wish I was in college again. Here is an excerpt from my in-progress thesis novel, THE COBALT LEGACY.

"But we all knew I was wrong. The rats had gotten Mauler, and if we didn’t do something soon they would come for us next. Every rat in Minneapolis was showing up in our shitty apartment, the cold winter driving them to our pathetic nest of heat as surely as the Pied Piper’s summons. It wasn’t enough that the three of us were all still working crap jobs at twenty-seven, drinking away what little money we made after rent and showering only on occasion. We had to wage war on the rats, too. We had to assert ourselves, to prove that yes, once we had all attended an expensive liberal arts college where we had lived charmed, rat-free lives among old stone buildings and professors that looked like wizards if you squinted hard. Sunlight had once draped our spring evenings in a way that squeezed our hearts, making each of us feel that life was okay somehow, that everything would be all right no matter what. It was the memory of that glimpsed sunlight that kept us going as we spent our days making copies, entering data, and mopping up spilled beer. It was that sunlight that showed us how bad things had become. How poor our lives were now."

Copyright 2005