The Handbook

The notice was on every door by seven.

It was a sheet of yellow paper, printed, and taped at the corners with four pieces of tape, one of them twice, and it was under the paper sun on the door of 312, below ALEX and the space where FRED had been until some time in the night.

THIRD FLOOR MEETING. TONIGHT. 9 P.M. CORRIDOR (OUTSIDE 312). MANDATORY.

And then, underneath, in biro, in a smaller hand:

(I think.)

“Callum,” said Frederick.

“Callum,” said Alexander, who had read it twice, and was standing in the doorway in his shirt with the cuffs buttoned and the bag on his shoulder and the coffee for Frederick in his hand, because it was Thursday. “He has taped it at the corners. He has used one more piece of tape than was necessary.”

“He’s frightened.”

“Yes.” Alexander gave him the coffee. “I think he has been frightened since August. I think since yesterday he has been frightened of something particular.”

Callum was at the end of the corridor by the fire door, with the roll of tape still round his wrist like a bracelet, taping a yellow notice to the door of 302, and he saw them, and stood up very straight, and then did not know what to do with being straight, and waved.

---

Callum Reyes was a junior in public health, with a lanyard and a maroon polo shirt that said RESIDENCE LIFE on the chest and a face that went, under any pressure at all, the colour of the polo shirt. He had put up the paper suns in August with his tongue between his teeth. He had read the fire procedure aloud to the floor on the first night, all four pages. He had asked Frederick on the second day, very quietly, in the kitchen, by the one working ring, whether there was a form, and Frederick had said, there’s a form for everything, and Callum had looked at him with enormous relief, and Frederick had felt bad about it ever since.

He came down the corridor now with the tape.

“Hey. Hi. Fred. Alex. Hi.” He looked at the notice on their door. “That’s for you too. I mean, it’s for everybody. It’s not about you. It’s a floor meeting. We have them.” He swallowed. “We’ve had one.”

“The fire procedure,” said Alexander.

“Yeah. Yes.” Callum looked at him with the face of a man who has just been reminded that he has an audience. “So this is just, like, a normal one. A check-in. Because of the… because a lot of people had questions. Yesterday. In my office. Which is my room.” He swallowed again. “I’ve talked to Doug.”

“How many times?” said Frederick.

“Four,” said Callum. “He said read them the handbook.” He held up the binder under his arm, the fat blue binder with forty or fifty coloured tabs along its edge, red and blue and green and yellow. “So I’m going to read them the handbook. Is that okay?”

“It’s your floor,” said Frederick.

Callum looked at him as though this were the most alarming thing anybody had ever said to him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

---

At breakfast Alexander had a coffee.

He sat at the table by the window with the butte a mile off and the coffee in front of him, black, and the Devil’s Advocate folded to a quarter beside it, which somebody had left on the table, and he read the column with no name on it again, for the errors, while Rhys ate eggs and Sam ate oatmeal with a ruler-straight line of brown sugar across it and Frederick ate a waffle.

“Not hungry?” said Frederick.

“I had something,” said Alexander.

Frederick looked at the waffle iron by the wall, where a queue of freshmen was waiting with their paper plates, and at the cereal, and at the fruit, and back at the coffee. He had been awake since a quarter to six. He had been in the shower queue at twenty past, and in 316 with the box from a quarter to seven to half past, and at the table since a quarter to eight. He did not know when Alexander would have had something.

He did not say so. He ate his waffle.

“There’s a van,” said Rhys, with his mouth full, pointing his fork at the window.

There was a van. It was white, with the name of a Phoenix television station along the side in red and a mast folded down on the roof, and it was parked on the far side of Apache Boulevard, which was the city’s, with a man standing beside it in a cap with a camera on his shoulder, filming, across six lanes of traffic, the arcade of the dining hall, which was the university’s.

“He can’t come over,” said Sam. “It’s campus.”

“He’s filming the arcade.”

“He can film the arcade,” said Sam. “It’s an arcade.”

The man with the camera filmed the arcade for the whole of breakfast. Nobody came out of it who interested him. At a quarter to eight a woman from the grounds crew came out of it with a leaf blower and blew some leaves along it for about ten minutes, and the man filmed that, with great patience, because it was all there was.

“It’s restful,” said Alexander, watching him, and finished the coffee.

---

The corridor at nine was full.

They sat on the carpet, all down the length of it from the stairs to the fire door, with their backs against the walls and the doors of their rooms open behind them: the boy from 305 with the sharpener in his lap, which he had brought, Frederick supposed, in case it came up; the girl from 304 in pyjamas; the girl with the lacrosse stick; Makayla, cross-legged, with her telephone; Lena beside her with a mug of tea, and Felix beside Lena with a screwdriver, which he was not using; the second-years from 316, Rhys with his five highlighters in his shirt pocket in order and Sam with the notebook; thirty-one freshmen, in hoods, in the cool, because it was sixty-eight in the corridor and the building did not yet know it was October; and in the doorway of 314, standing, with his back against the frame and his arms at his sides, Kessler, who was not there.

Frederick sat on the carpet outside 312 with his back against the door. Alexander sat beside him, upright, with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap, as he would have sat on a floor anywhere in the world if the floor had been put on the programme; and he had put it on the programme. Frederick had seen it on the desk. 21.00. Floor meeting (corridor). With nothing after it until 22.30.

Callum stood at the head of the stairs with the binder open on his forearm.

“Okay,” he said. “Hi. Thanks for coming. This is mandatory. I think.” He looked at the binder. “I checked. It’s mandatory if I say it is. So it is.” He went red. “So. Some of you came to my room yesterday with questions. About the… about the floor. About our floor. And I talked to Residence Life, and I talked to Doug.” He looked up. “Four times. And Doug said the best thing to do is go through the handbook. Together. So everybody knows where we stand.”

“Where do we stand?” said the girl from 304.

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” said Callum, and turned to the first tab.

---

He read it aloud.

He read it as he had read the fire procedure, all of it, in order, from the tab marked 1. WELCOME to the tab marked 41. APPENDICES, with his finger moving under the lines, in a voice that got steadier as it went, because the handbook was a thing that could be read and he was a person who could read it.

He read them Section Three, QUIET HOURS, which were from ten until eight on weeknights and from midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, and during finals all day, and the corridor listened to it with deep attention, as though it had never been told.

He read them Section Four, GUESTS. An overnight guest required a form, signed by the host and the guest and the roommate; no guest could be registered in any one room for more than three nights in a period of fourteen days; a guest must be escorted in the building at all times.

“Does that apply to, like, ambassadors?” said the boy from 305.

“It doesn’t say,” said Callum. “It says guest.”

“So yes.”

“I think so. I’ll check.” Callum wrote something on a sticky note and stuck it to the tab.

He read them Section Six, HEALTH AND SAFETY, which began with the March. The university’s residence halls were dwellings under the law of the March, he read, and the lawful maximum indoor temperature applied to them, and the hall’s temperature was recorded every hour, day and night, at the front desk, by law; and the corridor looked at one another, and at Frederick, who had sat at the night desk for a year and watched Mr Luna write it, and nodded.

“Nobody reads it,” said the girl with the lacrosse stick.

“Somebody’s got to write it down,” said Frederick, before he could stop himself, and Alexander beside him turned his head very slightly and looked at him, and turned it back.

He read them Section Seven, PETS.

“Residents may keep fish in a tank of not more than ten gallons, properly maintained,” read Callum. “No other animals are permitted in the residence halls, including but not limited to cats, dogs, rabbits, rodents, reptiles, birds and insects kept as pets, with the exception of service and assistance animals registered with the Office of Accessibility.”

“What about scorpions?” said somebody from the far end.

“Scorpions aren’t pets,” said Callum.

“There’s one on the poster in the lounge.”

“That’s a poster,” said Callum, with dignity. “The poster’s allowed.”

He read them Section Nine, CANDLES, INCENSE AND OPEN FLAME. There were to be none. Not for birthdays, not for religious observance without the written consent of Residence Life, not for any reason whatever, and a resident found with a lit candle would be fined fifty dollars and referred.

“Even, like, a birthday candle?” said Makayla.

“Even a birthday candle.”

“That’s fucked.”

“That’s the handbook,” said Callum, unhappily, and turned to the next tab.

---

At twenty to ten he reached the end of the appendices, and closed the binder, and stood with it shut against his chest.

“So,” he said. “That’s the handbook.”

The corridor waited.

“There’s nothing in it,” said Callum, “about heads of state.”

He said it to the floor generally, and then, because he was honest, to the two people sitting on the carpet outside 312.

“I looked. I looked last night. I looked under H. I looked under S, for sovereign, and V, for visitors, distinguished, and D, for dignitaries. I looked under R.” He opened the binder again, as though it might have changed, and shut it. “There’s nothing under R. There’s Recycling.” He went the colour of the shirt. “There’s a paragraph about fish, and there’s a paragraph about candles, and there’s nothing about… there’s nothing about you. Either of you. I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” said Frederick.

“I just think there should be a form.”

“There isn’t one for the fish either,” said Sam, from the door of 316, kindly. “It just says ten gallons.”

Callum looked at him for a moment, and then, for the first time all evening, laughed, a short frightened laugh that sounded as though it had been waiting since August to get out.

“Okay,” he said. “So. Questions.”

---

There were a great many questions, and Alexander answered all of them.

He answered them in order, as they came, in the voice he used for everything, level and exact, and before each one there was a pause, very short, so short that nobody in the corridor would have noticed it, in which Frederick, sitting beside him with his shoulder against the door, could feel him take the question and turn it over and divide it, and put the parts in order, and only then begin.

“Can we still borrow his sharpener?” said the boy from 305, holding it up.

“Yes,” said Alexander. “Please return it in the morning.”

“Do we have to bow?” said the girl from 304.

“No.” The pause. “To me, no. I am not your sovereign, and you owe me nothing that you do not owe anybody else in this corridor, which is ordinary courtesy, and I should be grateful for that, as anybody would.” He did not look at Frederick. “To him, you may if you are a citizen of this Realm and you wish to. He would rather you did not. I think he would rather you lent him things.”

The corridor laughed. Frederick felt the shoulder beside his not move.

“Are there snipers on the roof?” said somebody from the far end.

“No.” The pause. “There are four chillers on the roof, and Mr Luna has the key to it, and nobody else does. If there were snipers on the roof, Mr Luna would have had to let them up, and I do not think he would.”

The corridor laughed again, louder, and somebody said that’s true, and the girl with the lacrosse stick said he wouldn’t, he’s a stone-cold legend.

“Is it, like, safer?” said Makayla. “Or more dangerous? Having both of you?”

“Safer.” The pause. “There are more officers on this floor than there were in August. Some of them are students.” Alexander did not look at the doorway of 314, or at Lena, or at Felix with his screwdriver. “They are very good at both.”

Makayla looked at Lena. Lena drank her tea.

“Do we have to sign something?” said a boy Frederick did not know, from 301. “Like an NDA?”

Callum flipped desperately through the binder. “There’s nothing…”

“No,” said Alexander. The pause. “You may say whatever you like about me, to anybody, and you may write it down. I would ask you to say only what is true. That is all.” He considered. “If you are not sure whether it is true, you may ask me. I will tell you.”

“What do we call you?”

“Alex. It is on the door.”

“What do we call him?”

“Fred,” said Frederick. “It’s on the door sometimes.”

That got the biggest laugh of the night, and Callum laughed too, and went red, and the boy from 305 held up the sharpener as though it were a trophy.

“Will there be paparazzi?” said the girl from 304.

“On the city’s land, perhaps.” The pause. “On the campus, no. There is an agreement between the newspapers and the officers about the campus, and it holds. The butte is the city’s.” He considered. “I do not intend to paint it twice.”

“Is it weird?” said Makayla. “Living with your cousin?”

“Yes,” said Frederick.

“No,” said Alexander, at the same moment.

The corridor fell about. Rhys put his face in his hands. Even Kessler, in the doorway, seemed to stand very slightly further back into the frame, which was, Frederick had come to think, what Kessler did instead of laughing.

---

The last question came at five past ten, after quiet hours had begun, which Callum noticed and decided, visibly, not to enforce.

It came from a girl near the stairs who had not said anything all evening, a small girl in a large maroon sweatshirt with the sleeves pulled over her hands, from one of the rooms at the far end, whose name Frederick did not know and whom he had seen only on the stairs, going up them very fast.

“Are you okay?” she said. “Like. With everybody knowing.”

The corridor went quiet. It was not a question anybody else had thought of, and the corridor seemed to feel, all at once, that it should have.

“Yes,” said Alexander. “Thank you for asking.”

There was no pause before it.

That was the thing. Frederick sat on the carpet with his back against the door of 312 and heard it: every answer all evening had had the pause in front of it, the small turning-over, the dividing into parts, and this one had not. This one had been ready. It had been ready, Frederick thought, for a long time; it had been waiting at the front, where you keep the thing you will need to say without thinking, and it had come out correct and complete and warm, in exact English, and the small girl in the sweatshirt smiled and pulled her sleeves further over her hands and said “Okay. Cool. Good,” and the corridor breathed out.

Frederick looked down.

Alexander’s hands were folded in his lap. They had been folded in his lap since nine. They were folded as they were always folded, the right over the left, the thumbs side by side; and the knuckles of the right hand were white, all four of them, in a row, as though it were holding something down.

---

“That was good,” said Callum, afterwards, in the corridor, when the floor had gone back into its rooms and he was taking the yellow notices off the doors, one by one, and rolling the tape into a ball. “Wasn’t it? Was that right? Was that okay?”

“It was exactly right,” said Frederick.

“There’s still no form.”

“No.”

“I’m going to write one,” said Callum. He looked at the ball of tape. “For next year. In case. For whoever.” He looked at the door of 312, and at the paper sun that said ALEX, and the space beside it. “I’m going to put it under R.”

---

In the room Alexander sat down on the edge of the bed by the door.

He took off his shoes. He took them off one at a time, unlacing them fully, the left and then the right, and he put them side by side under the end of the bed, with the toes exactly level, and the laces tucked inside, as he did every night; and then he sat on the edge of the bed with his hands on his knees, in his shirt with the cuffs buttoned, and did not move.

Frederick sat on the window bed with the History reader open on his knees and did not read it.

He did not look at the clock on his telephone. He did not need to; there was a clock on the wall over the door, the university’s, white, with a red second hand, and he could see it without lifting his head. He watched the red hand go round. He watched it go round twenty-two times.

Alexander did not move. He sat with his hands on his knees and his eyes on the wall opposite, where there was nothing, the painted breeze-block the colour of a hospital that had given up, and his face was perfectly calm, and his back was perfectly straight, and he breathed, Frederick could see it in the shirt, slowly and evenly and exactly, as a man breathes who has been taught to do it in a cold yard with a sergeant counting.

At twenty-two minutes past ten he stood up.

“That went well,” he said.

“It went very well.”

“Callum was very good. He has read the handbook more carefully than anybody who wrote it.” Alexander went to the desk and took the programme from beside the pencil and ticked 21.00. Floor meeting (corridor)., and laid the pencil down, parallel. “I liked the question about the roof.”

“What about the last one?”

Alexander did not turn round.

“I liked that one too,” he said. “It was kind.” He laid the programme square to the edge of the desk. “It was the only one I had prepared for.”

At half past ten exactly his light went off.

---

Frederick lay on his back on the window bed in the dark with the blind down and the inch of orange night at the edge of it, and the corridor quiet, and the sound from the bed by the door of somebody breathing slowly and evenly and exactly, and he thought about breakfast.

He thought about the coffee. I had something. He thought about the waffle iron and the queue of freshmen with their paper plates, and the twenty minutes between the shower and the box, and the time between the box and the table, and he could not find anywhere in the morning where a person would have had something.

And then he thought about Wednesday.

He had not noticed it on Wednesday. He saw it now, lying in the dark, as clearly as the photograph: the table by the window, and Rhys reading aloud, and Alexander eating a waffle the way he had eaten every waffle since August, cut into the squares the iron made, one square at a time from the top left. He saw the plate. He saw the four squares gone from the top row, in order, and the rest of it, twelve squares, untouched, and Alexander’s knife and fork laid side by side across the plate at the exact angle of a man who has finished.

It was a small thing. He knew it was a small thing.

He lay and counted the squares again, and they came to twelve again, and across the room the breathing went on, slow and even and exact, and did not once, in all the time he listened, sound like sleep.