My intrepid roommate Deadeye DeeDee is a crack shot and on the rifle team. It so fell out that the rifle team from her old high school was attending a competition in our town. Since she was still on good terms with them, she invited them to stay with us, to save the cost of a hotel.
I didn’t mind; we had to clean up anyway, and it was time our room got put to more use than just the storage of us, our books, and our assorted junks. We cleaned up, vacuumed, and all that good stuff.
Her team arrived later than they'd planned, around five in the afernoon. There was one van, consisting of the coach and sole babysitter, three male high school freshman and/or sophomores, and one female high school student.
“Ack!” we cried, and tried to figure out how to best stow the team without compromising anyone’s honor and conforming to dormitory rules, which required that a guest who lived off-campus must be accompanied by the host at all times.
We finally decided, screw the rules, and dispatched the sole girl over to her best friend’s room in the adjacent dormitory building and let the guys spend the night in our room while we hiked down to the second floor and spent the night with Jennie.
The coach declared it bedtime after the third Adam Sandler movie. Deadeye and I waved goodnight, admonished the boys to be good, and ran down the stairs to Jennie’s room.
This is where we encountered problem number one. Jennie sat against the wall by the bathroom, glowering across the hall at the closed and locked door of her room.
“What’s the matter?” Deadeye asked. “Are you locked out? They keep spare keys in the office, and I bet we could wake up a Resident Advisor. Or I could just pick the lock....?”
“I wish it were that simple,” Jennie scowled. She dangled her complete set of keys in her hand. “Vanilla’s in there.” Vanilla was Jennie’s roommate.
“So?”
“Her boyfriend’s in there too.”
I began to get the picture. Vanilla has a boyfriend. He’s not just any boyfriend. He’s a fantastically cute, wonderfully cool, completely loyal boyfriend...who happens to be married to another woman. (Ooops.) He can only visit Vanilla on certain nights, and when he visits, Jennie makes sure to be out of the room. Vanilla returns the favor when Jennie’s off-and-on flake of a boyfriend Dmitri is on and visiting.
“Can’t you kick him out?”
“No. One, it would be rude--”
“That never stopped you.”
“--Two, he told his wife some bullshit story and he can’t go home. Three, Vanilla hasn’t seen him in a week and a half.”
“We’re screwed,” Deadeye said.
“You got it, Sherlock.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“I dunno,” Jennie said.
“I dunno,” Deadeye said.
“I dunno either,” I said. “Sleep in the hall or something?”
Jennie thought that was a really good idea. She sent us into the bathroom to read the articles pasted on the walls while she knocked, went in, interrupted, and emerged with blankets and pillows and all sorts of other bedtime-type things. “Right here will be just fine,” she decided.
So we stretched out in the middle of the hallway to have a slumber party. I was almost asleep when right down the middle of the hallway came the floor RA, not watching where she was going. She stepped on my foot and we both yelled. That woke up Jennie and Deadeye.
“ What are you three doing in the middle of the hall at nearly in the morning?” Belinda wanted to know.
"Sleeping," Jennie replied.
"You can sleep in your room, can't you?" Belinda asked.
Jennie got to her feet, walked over to her door, and put her ear to the door. She held up a hand for silence.
"Nope," she said.
Belinda walked over and tried the door. It opened. She shut it again. "No, you can't," she said. "How 'bout you guys stay in the lounge. Nice and quiet, and you won't be a fire hazard lying there on the floor."
"Right," Deadeye said, and we picked up our stuff and moved in.
I woke up halfway. There was a damned fly on my nose! I swatted at it, and came fully awake when I realized that I'd just given myself a faceful of shaving cream. From the howls of outrage around me, Deadeye and Jennie had just done the same thing. The giggles indicated that Deadeye's rifle team was responsible.
"Where'd you get the shaving cream?" Deadeye demanded querelously. "None of you shaves!"
"Snitched it from the coach," the little skinny blond kid smirked. His name may have been Ron; I wasn't sure.
"Augh," I said, rubbing at my face. "Would you guys excuse me? I gotta go to the bathroom." I walked out of the lounge, into the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and walked out the other bathroom door and made my way quietly up the stairs.
"Excuse me," I said as I barged into my room to the surprise of the very sleepy coach, "I forgot to get something. I'll be just a minute." I grabbed a pillowcase and piled all three of my SuperSoakers, a few trigger-pump low-powered squirtguns, and a few high-volume soda bottles inside. "Goodnight, sweet dreams, sleep well." I closed and locked the door behind me and went into the seventh floor girls' bathroom to load up.
Ron, Scott, and Harry pursued me down to the first floor, back through the billiards lounge, past the dorm administrator's office, through the TV lounge, back out past the elevators in the dorm lobby, out the door past the Desk Attendant, down the dorm complex lobby, outside with the smokers, around the building, and back inside. I flashed my ID at the desk attendant, then realized that the kids were still signed in under my name, and would not be able to get back in without my chaparoneage. This wouldn't be so bad in itself, but I was pulled up short by the fact that a) I had been supposed to sign them out when we left, and, b) any trouble they got into while still in the dorm complex was going to be my responsibility.
I waited for them and got things cleared with the desk attendant. It was one of my friends on that night, anyway.
The next few hours were like something out of a dream, an action movie, or your standard cream-pie chorale. We skulked around corners. Jennie retrieved her shaving cream (peach-scented) from her room. Deadeye was the perfect sniper. Ron, Harry, and Scott were issued a few squirtguns, just for fairness' sake. We tiptoed up stairs. We dashed down hallways. Scott ambushed me from out of the elevator nook on the eighth floor, a mens' floor, and dashed away; he darted into the bathroom. I slammed through in hot pursuit. He did a double-take, darted out, and went down through the east stairwell, the one in the central core of the building that emptied out by the dorm director's residence on the first floor. I dashed out and took the west stairwell, which was the fire escape that took a direct line out of the building on the first floor and didn't connect to anything inside lower than the second floor.
I ran into Jennie on the second floor. "I saw one of them heading back up to seventh," she gasped. "I'm gonna go cover the lobby." We parted ways, her down the east stairs for the lobby, I with two handsful of peach shaving cream for the elevators up to seventh.
I poked the call button, up, with my cleanest knuckle and lurked at the side of the elevator nook, out of sight and line of fire (I hoped) of anyone within. It was night; the elevators should be running faster than usual. I hoped.
In a surprisingly short amount of time, the bell dinged, and the doors slid open. I oozed around the corner, and peered inside. No one. Good. I walked in, only to discover an equally startled campus police officer. He took in my flushed face, my armload of lethal-volume water weapons, my double handsful of shaving cream, and my commando-camo facepaint in cream, brown, and blue (Deadeye's art, Jennie's makeup) in one sweeping glance. I poked 7 with my knuckle and we ascended in silence.
As I got off on the seventh floor, the cop spoke. "I saw the guys on the fourth floor," he told me.
The seventh floor was clean. So was the fourth floor. I checked every bathroom stall, and the showers. I wandered down to the first floor to see how Jennie was doing with her elevator-guard detail. As I popped out of the east stairway, I beheld Deadeye, running full blast toward me from the direction of the billiard room, and Jennie, running away from Deadeye, holding one of the student cops, the Community Service Officer, as a human shield against Deadeye's aqueous assault.
Being what one might call a concerned citizen, I wasn't about to stand for this assault on the law. I reached into my shirt and pulled out one, two, and three water balloons that had been filling out my chest.
Splash, sploosh, splat, they struck home. All of them. Deadeye was drenched there in the hallway in front of the Resident Director's residence, and so was the Resident Director, standing there in her open doorway, come to see what all the giggling was about. Behind me, in the stairwell, I heard the ringing of running footsteps on the stairs. The stairwell door burst open half a flight above me and I was hit by concentrated crossfire from behind. Larry, Curly, and M--- Ron, Harry, and Scott had arrived.
I threw the rest of the flat shaving cream at the CSO. It couldn't hurt.
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