Fall Semester by Stephanie Fournet

ordered three pitchers of beer to be sent to the table. He hastily knocked back a shot of Patron and focused on the heat in his throat instead of the surprised looks of those around the table as he took a seat.
    The barmaid came in carrying two of his three pitchers. Malcolm hated to address them all, but anything was better than the stunned silence.
    “You can thank Jess Dalton for this round. It seems he forced my hand.”
    Dale and Rebecca Greene, two married Ph. D.s, were sitting closest to him, and Dale gratefully reached for the first pitcher.
    “Excellent! Maybe Dr. Vashal will start a trend: At Bisbano’s, professors buy!” He filled his mug to laughter, topped of his wife’s, and passed it down.
    The waitress reappeared with the third pitcher and a mug for Malcolm. He filled it, relieved that the conversation at the table had revived. The grad students debated the topic of pizza, pesto and olive oil versus marinara sauce. This discussion seemed obtuse to Malcolm since Bisbano’s didn’t offer a choice. One could have called their pizza sauce “marinara,” but Bisbano’s called it “tomato.” Their pizza was edible, but it was not the reason the place had survived 30 years in Lafayette’s tumultuous economy. It was the closest place to campus that served both alcohol and food.
    Malcolm looked around. The restaurant had not changed or been updated in the five years he’d lived here. The faux wood paneling and black and red vinyl upholstery were circa 1980. The one redeeming feature of the restaurant/bar’s atmosphere was the cellar, which opened to a quaint courtyard under the canopy of overhanging oaks. Tonight the courtyard sat empty. A September evening in Lafayette rarely called anyone out of air conditioning.
    Across from him, Avery, Helene, Maren, and Sasha Allen were trying to agree on toppings for one pizza. Malcolm distinctly remembered his own days in graduate school when he had spent Friday nights both famished and low on funds.
    Without warning, a memory of J.J. sideswiped him. The two of them, lying in his bed in his one-room cereal box of an apartment in Miami, eating Vietnamese noodles. He tried to shove the image from his mind, but the memory had bitten him, and its venom worked his blood.
    They met the week he had found the collection that would become his Stray Dogs. He was walking past the Catholic Student Center on Miller thinking about Miguellez’s story, “Sanctuary.” Two immigrant brothers sneak across the border in Salinas. The elder, 16, finds work in the lettuce fields. The younger, 14, walks until he finds a Catholic church in the kind of American neighborhood where he dreams of living. The priest there gives him a job as a yard boy. The priest feeds him lunches and offers him second-hand clothes. When the older brother loses two fingers to the machete during the harvest, the younger goes to the priest for help. The priest kisses the boy on the lips and tells him that he knows of a way.
    It had been the black Toyota Tercel with the orange boot that caught his eye. The Tercel that was illegally, deliciously parked in front of St. Augustine’s Catholic Church.
    “Holy crap!” She’d cursed behind him, and Malcolm turned, already smiling, to see long legs in black tights and tartan skirt and, God pardon her, true red hair down to her ass.
    He remembered that there was never time to eat, even if they’d had any money. He wrote every minute that his tongue and cock and fingers weren’t inside of her. She told him he burned like the sun.
    He had been a fool to think he could keep her happy.
    Malcolm drained his beer and moved to reach for the pitcher, but Maren Gardner grabbed it first. She then took his glass, filled it, and handed it back to him before filling her own.
    “Thank you,” he muttered. The girl smiled at him.
    “It’s the least I could do. Thanks for the round.” She let her full glass clink against his as in a toast.
    Malcolm nodded, embarrassed, and