The Parallel Apartments by Bill Cotter

asparagus spears.
    â€œBut it was sufficient. A brief tussle and the cleaver was out of her reach, and I plucked you from her vagina and made for the hills. Betsey was soon after installed in the state hospital, and Denise agreed to quarter you and me for the time being.”
    The security guard who had poked his head in earlier repoked.
    â€œY’all settled down in here?” he said.
    â€œWe are settled, my tutelary friend,” said the professor.
    The security guard retracted his head, and let the door fall shut again.
    â€œJustine, dear,” said the professor, “are you all right?”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œWell. You were not injured. Soon after the incident, you ceased crying. You slept hard, snored delicately. I slept on a Murphy bed in your room, as this brief period, in addition to being a formative time for you, was also the start of Denise’s and my denouement, a steep and rapid plunge that met its end with a great splatter of mutual repulsion.”
    The professor thrust his limp hand into a coat pocket and came up with a pale blue handkerchief pinched gently between his thumb and uninjured forefinger. He transferred it to his other hand and began to wipe at his spectacles while they were still on.
    â€œTo be specific: you’d been with us for some weeks when one late afternoon Denise raised from nothing a moderate-to-strong temper tantrum regarding the recent overcrowding in her small rented house, and you and I were bounced. Not knowing what else to do, having never confronted a related scenario in life or literature, I fetched from the carport a child’s wagon, and we proceeded on a nice walk. We went to the park, to the cemetery, to Dirty’s for a hamburger—I fed you bits of melted cheese from my cheeseburger; you were particularly fond of cheese. I wonder, are you still?”
    Justine said nothing.
    â€œI suppose cheese isn’t good for a baby,” said the professor. “Nothing is, it seems.”
    â€œI love cheese,” said Justine.
    The professor put his handkerchief in his pocket.
    â€œWe made a daily habit of our strolls. Every day a different route and pace and pause. Saturdays, Sundays, too.
    â€œOne day we became lost, deep in the absurd intrication of cow paths just north of our university. But happily lost: I saw no reason to be on any schedule at that time. And you seemed content, humming and waving and grasping at weeds and uttering a pleasantly squeaky babel. Then, as we were about to cross a street, a van, of the sort a wealthier hippie might own, stopped near us. Your grandmother Charlotte—hardly a fringe citizen, you’ll agree—emerged. Livia was in the passenger seat. She remained in the van.”
    The doors to the lecture hall opened. Three or four students with ceramic-gray laptops and book-strained backpacks began descending the stairs.
    â€œI don’t know how it happened, but…”
    A girl wearing a dirty red-and-blue rugby shirt that was surely recently worn in an actual rugby game threw open the lecture-hall door and strode directly up to Quentinforce Johnsonson, PhD.
    â€œProfessor,” she said, “this syllabus is bullshit.”
    â€œThat syllabus, Miss Jenkins,” said the professor, looking up at the girl, who was at least six-one, “is in fact compressed wood pulp, size, and kaolin, bedaubed with ink in patterns that form sentences in the American variant of the English language, and excludes bullshit altogether, which I leave to my students to manufacture.”
    Justine imagined the professor looking up at Betsey like he was looking up at Miss Jenkins.
    â€œNo,” said Miss Jenkins, “I mean, I said, What the fuck? when you handed this out and I asked somebody old and they said this is a mimeograph. It smells and it’s kind of damp when you get it. It’s faint. It’s bullshit.”
    Justine noticed that the girl smelled of moist soil, dark and just