Roomies Read Free Page A

retro glasses and holding up a test tube…
    A roach falls to the ground from somewhere within the thick banana box I’m attempting to crush. I jump back the same moment Keyon comes out of the service door with a bag of trash in each hand.
    “Am I that scary?” he asks, tossing the bags into the Dumpster.
    “No. Visitor from the Roach Motel.”
    This lab in which I’ll conduct my future work? Roach free.
    Keyon takes a pack of gum from his pocket and offers me a piece.
    “Thanks.”
    “Maybe that roach traveled here all the way from Brazil. On a banana boat. Honor the journey, baby.” Another roach crawls out from under the box. Keyon steps on it calmly. “And here the journey ends.”
    We chew. The late-afternoon sun is warm, which feels great. But then, closing time always feels great. The deli is only open eleven to three to serve lunch to the office workers downtown. During that time it’s basically nonstop. At closing it always feels like we’ve survived some kind of stampede. Instead of wild animals it’s anxious humans decked out in business casual.
    “Hey,” I say, “will you finish closing for me if I leave a little bit early?”
    “Depends.” Keyon stretches his arms overhead. His T-shirt comes up a little. I look away, because we’re sort of friends and it seems unfriendly to ogle his abs, regardless of their excellent condition.
    “I want to hit the Goodwill on my way home.”
    “You can look, Lo,” he says, patting his stomach and grinning.
    I play dumb. “Look at what?”
    Keyon shakes his head and laughs. “Okay. So what are you out for? At Goodwill?”
    “Microwave.”
    He thinks for a second. “Which store you going to?”
    “Irving is closest to my house,” I say, taking an X-ACTO knife to the last of the banana boxes. “But I usually go to Clement.”
    “No, no. Don’t bother with that mess. You need to hit Fillmore.”
    “It’s kind of out of the way. I’m on the bus.”
    He looks at his watch. “If you close up with me, I’ll drive you. I got a cousin that works there. Maybe he can hook you up.”
    I calculate the time involved, the crowded rush-hour buses from the Fillmore to the Outer Sunset, me carrying a microwave. A ride would be sweet. Still, I hesitate. The reason I say Keyon and I are “sort of” friends is that I don’t really know him that well.
    I didn’t know him at all, basically, through all four years of school. Science nerds (me) and athletes (him) didn’t cross paths often, despite the fact that at Galileo even science nerds have some social power. And the subgroup of athletes who were also at the top of the class academically (him) seemed to have their own thing going on most of the time. It’s hard for people with five younger siblings (me) to keep up.
    Then, on the last day of school—just a few weeks ago now, though it seems like ages—we found ourselves in the same cluster of people signing each other’s yearbooks, and I was feeling all sentimental about leaving high school and asked him to sign mine.
    He stood there with the pen poised over the class page, then looked at me. “Um, what’s your name again?”
    “Lauren.”
    He nodded, then wrote something and handed it back to me. We were both waiting for other people, so we made small talk and he asked me what I was doing this summer.
    “Working, mostly.” I told him I was looking for a second job, because the insurance company wouldn’t give me more hours for the summer and warned me they’d be cutting back my existing hours after they computerized the filing system.
    “My dad needs someone. He’s got a sandwich shop downtown. On Montgomery?”
    That would be easy to get to on the streetcar , I thought. “I don’t have much of that kind of experience. I mean, I cook for my little brothers and sisters, but…”
    Keyon laughed. “It’s sandwiches, not biotech. Show up tomorrow at ten and you get the job. It’ll save my dad the hassle of interviewing.”
    I showed up.
    And for