* * *
On Deer Street, the day greeted Pete more favorably. At 6:11, he swung his legs out of bed, grabbed his glasses off the night stand, and walked the short distance to his desk. Even at this early hour, with strong morning light pouring through the dormer window, the day felt halfway spent. Oh, the things he would have done for a westward-facing room. Or some window shades.
Sitting down, he reached above his desk and plucked a book from the middle shelf. He opened its leather-bound cover, scratched his bare chest, then leaned back and angled the book toward the window. Orange and blue planets—some with rings, some without—stared at him from the tome. There was rust-colored Mars with its white snow cap and Neptune hugged in its rheumy blue atmosphere. Flipping through the book, his eyes fell upon bulbous nebulae tinged mauve and ochre, artistic renditions of the Van Allen Belt, and pictures of distant galaxies taken with the Hubble telescope. These indelible images had already been inscribed in Pete’s memory, but he still liked to open the book and peek in on them from time to time. Besides, he wasn’t ready to go downstairs yet.
Like Russell’s room, Pete’s room was on the third floor, a loft under the eaves, where half of the stippled white ceiling slanted downward, following the angle of the roof. He also had the same huge dormer window jutting out from the cramped ceiling, except Pete’s looked out over his backyard, while Russell’s offered a view of the street. Both floors were of hardwood that creaked in certain places when stood upon, and both rooms smelled of dust no matter how painstakingly cleaned and ventilated.
Other than a similarity of floor plans, Russell’s and Pete’s rooms were polar opposites. For starters, Pete’s room was all science. It didn’t quite possess the cold sterility of a laboratory, but it was obvious that was the theme he was shooting for. And to that end, he failed miserably. True, there was the obligatory periodic table of the elements on the wall, the requisite microscope, and even an expensive telescope by the window, but a quiet warmth and beauty permeated the space despite his best efforts. The collections, for example. A display case along one wall housed a menagerie of colorful butterflies. Another glass cabinet along a different wall contained hundreds of beetles of various shapes and sizes. The insects in both cases had been neatly laid out in rows, like dead soldiers, each one painstakingly categorized by order, genus, and species. Pete’s posters were of the moon, galaxies, and constellations, while Russell’s were of hard rock bands and musicians Pete had never heard of.
The desk at which Pete sat was a beat up old thing. It had originally been his father’s, but Pete had acquired it on his thirteenth birthday—the day Joel began his series of lectures on the importance of "hitting the books and hitting them hard," which was just a roundabout way of saying, "College is right around the corner, kid. If you want Stanford, you better make friends with this desk." In Pete’s opinion, Joel could have spared himself the energy of these speeches, because what he was selling was something Pete was already buying.
On the wall above the desk, three tiers of custom-built bookshelves bore the scientific volumes Pete had collected over his sixteen years on planet Earth. Most were Time Life books like the Astronomy one he stared at now, but they ranged all of the sciences, from Biology, Chemistry, and Quantum Mechanics, to pseudo-science stuff like UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle. On the shelf closest to the desk ran a line of paperback novels. There were plenty of Jules Vernes and Ray Bradburys, as one would expect from Pete, but some unexpected authors peeked through the mix: Stephen King, John Steinbeck, and Ken Kesey, to name a few. The majority of these were on loan from Russell with the tacit understanding that Pete would return them when he finished reading them. More than a couple of these borrowed books had a fine coating of dust on the tops of their pages.
One morning, about a month ago, Russell had swung by the house on his way to work. When Pete answered the pounding door, Russell had just beamed a bright, toothy smile and thrust a thick paperback book through the threshold. Russell’s hair was disheveled and knotted, and he’d needed a shave. To Pete, who’d stood silent in his bathrobe and wouldn’t need a shave of his own for another two years, Russell looked like shit. But his friend’s eyes were alive and gleaming, and there was that all-knowing grin plastered over his stubbly face.
"What the hell—" Pete said, taking the book from Russell’s hands.
"Man, you gotta read this." Russell answered, fidgeting. "I was up all night finishing it. Best…fucking…ending. I gotta go, dude. I’m late."
Russell had then turned and ran down the walkway to his truck, combing his unruly hair back with his long, musician fingers as he went.
In a daze, Pete had loitered in the open doorway, watching Russell speed down the shady street to a job he hated. With the brown embankment of tree trunks quickly obscuring the fleeing vehicle, Pete turned his gaze to the blue and white object in his hands. It was then that he read the words printed on it: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.
So far, he was halfway through the book. It was pretty damn good—different, yet brilliant. Having to cope with the illogical, contradictory ways of rural Southerners on a daily basis, Pete could relate to Captain Yossarian’s frustration with the Army. He knew Russell felt the same. Why else would he have rushed over to hand it to him? Also—he had to admit it— Russell never disappointed with his reading recommendations. The guy always came through for him.
Pete glanced at the blue and white rectangle near the corner of his desk, then brought his eyes back to the Time Life volume in his lap. The beam of light flowing through the window made the book not only painfully bright to look at but also made the air in the room oppressively hot to be in. Yielding to the swelter, he got out of the chair and cranked the floor fan from medium to high. He aimed the whirring square at the window and climbed into the boxy dormer. He sat Indian style with the Astronomy book resting atop his naked knees. He liked to read there sometimes. The spot was comfortable—more comfortable in the winter, though.
That was the worst part about having a room up in the eaves. It was always too damn hot in the summer.