The Destroyed Room - Second Draft

The woman on the metro wore a scarf that reminded Mervin of the scarf on his bed at home. Samantha’s scarf. Before leaving for school this morning, she had thrown open the window, cried out, “I won’t need this,” and immediately flung it aside. After three consecutive nights together, there were a lot of her clothes scattered about. Some had even made it into Mervin’s dresser. He was amazed at how quickly she made her claim on his room. He wondered if this girl, this girl with the metro tunnel lights whizzing by behind her, was as proprietorial.

The train decelerated quickly and Mervin stood up and the doors opened; the platform rolled to a stop. A flight of stairs, an escalator, turnstiles, another escalator, and at last, sunlight. He looked behind him. No, the woman with the scarf was not among his fellow passengers.

To his surprise, when he arrived at his apartment building, the landlord was on the front step and stood up immediately, as if he had been waiting.

“Your room,” he said. “Somebody break in. I just come ‘ome myself… If I had catch him… Come look. It’s bad.”

They took the stairs up the grey-white stairwell. There was a stain on the wall, an indeterminate colour between grey and red. Had anyone ever attempted to wash it? Maybe it would not come out.

They arrived at the first floor and at Mervin’s door – or rather, what had previously been a door. Not even the landlord’s warning had prepared him for this. His mattress, for no apparent reason, had been wrenched off the floor, thrown against the wall, and slashed from corner to corner. Every drawer of the dresser was gaping open and the contents splayed out, as if the furniture itself had thrown up from the violence of the attack. The Limoges porcelain vase, the only nice purchase he had allowed himself since arriving in Montreal a month ago, was scattered in every shard size and shape across the wooden floor. Samantha’s scarf was nowhere to be seen. The rest of her stuff – a yellow t-shirt, a red bra, red stockings – decorated the mess of his own clothes, which were all brown, grey or faded.

“Holy,” was all he could say, not delivering the final expletive because the landlord was standing directly behind him.

“Never ‘ave this ‘appen in the building,” said the landlord, who had a beard that had turned yellow from the cigarette smoke.

“First time for everything,” said Mervin, trying to be stoic.

“They just smash the door off,” observed the landlord, eyeing with disgust the door hanging uselessly from its hinges.

Mervin said nothing.

“Did you ‘av insurance?”

“No,” said Mervin.

“They were shit-disturbers,” said the landlord. “Jus’ shit-disturbers. They will not come back. They go elsewhere to make trouble.”

“Maybe,” said Mervin.

“I will ‘elp with the mess,” said the landlord.

“Don’t worry,” said Mervin. “I’ll be OK.” He nodded his head.

“I will call a carpenter,” said the landlord. “The door frame is too damaged. I know someone. He can be ‘ere this afternoon.”

“OK,” said Mervin, nodding more insistently this time.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want help. It was that he wanted to be alone. He summoned up a brave smile. The landlord shrugged. He turned around slowly and shuffled to the stairs, descending to his own room – which was almost as squalid – in the basement.

Mervin wanted a place to sit and bury his head in his hands. The best he could do was sink to the floor and slump against the radiator. He was only nineteen and Montreal had turned on him. What most affected him was the injustice of it. He had been attending every class, doing all his readings, completing all his assignments, studying assiduously for every test. Where exactly had he gone wrong?

But no amount of self-pity was going to change anything. He stood up and took stock of the destroyed room – the broken continuity of the previously familiar – if Spartan – surroundings. He owned a large number of books and records. These had been strewn about, pages ripped, and the album sleeves emptied of their contents. The record player lid had been kicked clean off. Even his little metal box, meant for file cards but serving instead for handyman bits and bobs – screws and nails and a small screwdriver – had been opened and the insides sown here and there like seeds.
He went to the tiny bathroom to see what kind of damage had happened there. He attempted to whistle en route.

On the mirror over the sink, somebody had scrawled the word “slut” in a fat black marker. The violence of the word outdid everything he’d witnessed so far.

He couldn’t stay in here with the ugliness of the word demanding his attention. He returned to the main havoc. Slut… There must be something Samantha was not telling him.

It was she who had found him, not the other way around. One day, he was walking to class with a coffee in his hand. She came careening around the corner and sent his drink flying – mostly all over him. It was a spectacular accident. He was soaked. She couldn’t help but laugh. Then she apologized. Then she laughed again. She offered to buy him a new coffee. He declined, went home and changed, missing class. The following day, he saw her again. They realized that she was in lecture hall A at exactly the same time as he was in lecture hall B. They talked. She was from Toronto. She had been in Montreal exactly two months. She had never heard of his hometown.

Since the first night, when they had drunk a few on Crescent Street – who didn’t drink a few on Crescent Street? – they had stuck exclusively to studying then going to his home and sleeping together. It was a nearly businesslike arrangement. She was a liberated woman and took responsibility for her own pleasure. It had to be his home, not hers, because she had inquisitive roommates.

“They need to get a life,” she had said yesterday, in bed, while chewing gum mere inches from his face. “I don’t intend to be their entertainment.”

He would ask Samantha what the hell was going on later. He shook himself out of his reflections. For now, he needed to clean up the place.

He walked to the dresser for his gloves. He would need them to protect his fingers. It was then that he noticed a photo on top of the cheap plywood piece of furniture. He picked it up. The photo was of a little girl, dressed elegantly in a white dress, looking up at somebody. The somebody could not be fully seen. You could glimpse only the bottom of what looked like a long cloak or gown. The somebody was a priest. No one else dressed like that.

He was struck by the girl’s expression. Her upwards gaze was expectant – insistent, even. There was a smile on her face. As if she were saying, “You aren’t going to refuse someone so pretty, are you?” And she was remarkably pretty.

He put down the photo, feeling like an intruder in his own home. He retreated to the window where there was ample room on the sill to sit down. The thin November sun warmed him gently through the glass.

Call home? He knew his father would insist on driving down immediately, even though it was a full day’s journey in the car. But what was there to be done? Clean up, buy another cheap mattress, wait for the carpenter to reattach his door. By the time his father arrived, everything that needed to be done would be done.

And yet. And yet. His father was an enormous man with hands like baseball gloves. If the madman who had done this came back for more trouble, boy would he ever get a shock to find a retired amateur wrestler in his way. But the landlord said the culprit would not be back. But how could the landlord be sure about that? He just wanted to keep his tenants.

Mervin forced himself to make a decision. The decision was to stick it out alone. He would report the news at Christmas, watch his mother’s face flush with dismay, and shrug when his parents asked, “Why didn’t you call us?” He would say, “Oh, it was nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Just then, there was a bang on the door. His body convulsed with shock. The door came toppling right down as a large man seemingly walked right through it.
“Where is she?” he asked.

The man had a small mustache over thin lips, and greasy-looking hair – or maybe just wet from having been combed to the sides – and rather pasty skin. He had on a golf shirt that was tight at the shoulders and at the swell of his tummy.

“Samantha?” said Mervin.

The man did not respond to this, as if he had not even understood. He took another step forwards. He was trembling.

“Where is she?” he demanded again.

“Who?”

“You know who,” the man insisted. “Anna.”

“Anna? I don’t know Anna.”

The man clenched his right hand into a fist.

“Hey man, don’t mess around with me,” he said. His accent was very strong. It was Eastern European or Russian or something. “I will break your neck.”

“I don’t know Anna,” said Mervin.

“Don’t lie to me,” said the man. “I will smash your mouth. This is Anna room. Where is my daughter?”

“This isn’t Anna’s room,” said Mervin. “This is my room.”

He realized then who Anna must be. She was the pretty girl at the end of the hallway by the fire exit. Once, she had buzzed his room because she had been locked out. He had walked down to the entrance to let her in. She had been carrying bags of groceries. He had offered to take a few.

“Thank you, thank you,” she had said, her eyes looking over him – seemingly appraising him – as he took one, two, three, four bags, leaving her only with one bag left and her purse. He had wished he were more articulate as they walked up the long hallway, past his own open door and to her door – number 110. It was a long silence. Eventually she had said, “You are kind.”

Outside her door, he set down the bags.

“I’ll go see if the landlord is in,” she said.

It had crossed Mervin’s mind, if the landlord wasn’t in, she could come wait at his place, no? This had all happened a month ago, on a cold day. She would be warmer in his room. He could boil the kettle for tea.

Again, they made the long walk up the hallway, and again, he couldn’t find the right words in his head. Or maybe the right words were there, but stuck.

At his room, they parted ways.

“Thank you, again,” she said.

That look in her eyes, it was just like in the photo that now lay on his dresser. And then she was gone.

“Anna’s room is 110,” he said to the man in front of him. “My room is 101.”

It took a moment for this news to sink in. When it did, the man became visibly agitated. His hands fidgeted about, from the breast pocket of his golf shirt then down to the pockets of his jeans. Finally, his hands settled on something to do. He pulled out a wallet.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said. “I am a good man. I am so sorry.”

He held out a small stack of bills for Mervin.

“Take, please – for everything.”

Mervin felt that to refuse the money would simply reignite the man’s anger. He took it. He could see that there were fifties in the stack.

“Is enough?” said the man.

“Yes, thank you,” said Mervin. “Anna is up the hallway.”

The man turned decisively. He trod heavily out of the room, the wooden boards creaking. When the man was at a safe distance, Mervin ventured to the threshold of his now completely destroyed doorway. He peeked out. He saw the man knocking on the door of 110. A long wait. Then the man knocked again, even louder this time. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, as if from sweat. But in just that golf shirt, he could hardly be sweating. Then the man glanced backwards, shot a look at Mervin, who was not fast enough in ducking back into his room. The man must have finally departed using the fire exit, because the next time Mervin peeked out, the hallway was empty.

It took hours to set the room straight and even after that, he could not find the scarf. He met Samantha downtown, as they had agreed. They ate cheaply at Altaib. He told her about everything – about everything except the word inked onto the bathroom mirror.

“Everything is OK now,” he concluded. “Only thing missing is the scarf.”

“My scarf?” she said.

Mervin nodded. He wanted to say something reassuring, but he could find no explanation for the missing scarf, so what could he say?

“This is scary, Mervin. The guy totally destroyed your place? You don’t live in a good neighbourhood.”

“It’s OK,” he said.

They went to the study hall, as usual. He assumed that after studying, she would come home with him. But at eleven, she announced that she would be going home.
“I’ve got to do some stuff around the house.”

After that, they stopped sleeping together. He made a cursory attempt to find out why, and it was something to do with a boy she had known who was coming into town. She wanted to see if things would work out. That was enough of an explanation for him. She did not even come to his room to collect her stuff. In the halls, they merely nodded to acknowledge each other, and when the semester ended, they did not even do that.