Fahrenheit 1600 (Victor Kozol) Read Free Page A

party, nor would his dorky
roommate likely know where any of the good parties would be held. He himself
didn’t know anyone, but that was no barrier. Weren’t parties all about getting
to know people?
    “Why don’t we throw a party?”
    “What? When?” Andy stammered.
    “Tomorrow. I’ll make some fliers. We can charge ten
bucks a head or do you think that’s too much.”
    “I don’t know…”
    “Okay, then five. You’re 21, right?”
    “Well, yeah, but.”
    “Perfect. I’ve got a bit of cash to stock the place
in the beginning. Once we get a crowd, you can always go for a beer run. It we
get cheap stuff like Stegmaier or Old Milwaukee, we should even be able to turn
a profit on this.”
    “I guess…”
    “Great! Well, I guess we should start making the
flyers.”
    In a flight of creativity, Victor created Wilkes
University’s first ever’ Freshman Fete’, although the crowd was not limited to
freshman nor even to college students. Anyone with a fiver got in and Victor
became a minor celebrity on campus.
    As Andy had feared, however, this course of events
was neither unnoticed nor approved of by Sophie who lived on the first floor.
The pair were awakened most Sunday mornings by an ill-tempered yet vigorous old
woman decked out in her Church-going clothes complete with hat and handbag. The
visit was meant to be both a punishment for the severely hungover young men and
a shaming rebuke for their behavior, although the latter aim was lost on Andy
and Victor. For them, Sunday morning was little more than a void they filled with
dreamless sleep.
    Sophie would have loved nothing better to throw them
both out, but things weren’t what they used to be in Wilke-Barre. Between the
junkie on the 2 nd floor and the lady who kept strange hours across
the hall from her, the other clientele in her building were nothing to be proud
of.
    College students were at least somewhat respectable.
It was also usually possible to get their parents to pay for larger repairs
from the damage they caused, and no matter how bad they were they always left
after a few years. By the look of this new kid, Sophie was guessing he wouldn’t
be around for very long. And, as in most things, her utterly unsentimental
nature was spot on. Victor’s social life was on a collision course with his, or
rather his father’s, dream of him becoming doctor.

Chapter 2
    College Life

    By January, the verdant green hills surrounding
Wilkes-Barre turned brown as the temperatures hovered in the twenties. Brisk
biting wind swept down along the Susquehanna River penetrating even the
heaviest coats. Life had moved inside, but this was a boon for Victor: His
shindigs had become so well-known around campus that they are by invitation
only, a triumph for Victor’s social life and finances. Each party usually
cleared about $100, after beverages were factored in. During this time,
Victor’s chief source of anxiety had been keeping Sophie at bay and not getting
evicted. And yet Victor’s party enterprise ironically brought him closer to
Sophie’s own anxieties as he had to contend with his own irresponsible
“temporary tenants.” A recent party guest managed to smash the toilet so badly,
Victor had to fork over $300.00 for a replacement.
    Then there was the little matter of the summons from
the Wilkes-Barre police for excessive noise and disturbing the peace; and if
Sophie thought Victor was hard to pin-down for his many transgressions, the
pseudo-anonymous party set that flowed in and out of Vic’s apartment was
impossible to bring to account. Yet the party money continued and outweighed
any other concerns for the present time. The spring semester looked even more
promising than the one just ended, at least socially.
    “Do you really want to go into medicine Victor?”
asked a stern Dr. Grant, Victor’s academic advisor for his pre-med program.
    “Well, I was always pretty good at biology and it
seems interesting …”
    Dr. Grant quickly followed this