Since then Spike had been neither mild nor tranquil, but that at least provided Casimir with some of the unpredictability that Plex life so badly lacked. He almost didn't mind having a kitten run around the obstacle course of his room at high speed for hours at a time in the middle of the night, because it gave his senses something not utterly flat to perceive. Even though Spike tried to sleep on his face, and hid all small important articles in odd places, Casimir was charmed.
He pulled on his glacier glasses in a practiced motion and stepped out into the hail. Casimir's wing was only two floors away from allies of the Wild and Crazy Guys, best partiers in the Plex, and two Saturdays ago they had come down with their spray paint and painted giant red, white and blue twelve-spoked wheels between each pair of doors. These were crude representations of the Big Wheel, a huge neon sign outside the Plex, which the Wild and Crazy Guys pretended to worship as a joke and initiation ritual. This year they had become aggressive graffitists, painting Big Wheels almost every in the Plex. Casimir, used to it, walked down this gallery of giant wheels to the bathroom, Spike's dishes in hand.
The bathrooms in the wings looked on the inside like microwave ovens or autoclaves, with glossy green tile on the walls, brilliant lighting, overwaxed floors and so much steam that entering one was like entering a hallucination. At one end of the bathroom, three men and their girlfriends were taking showers, drinking, shouting a lot and generally being Wild and Crazy. They were less than coherent, but most of what Casimir could make out dealt with Anglo-Saxon anatomical terms and variations on "what do you think of this" followed by prolonged yelling from the partner. Casimir was tempted to stay and listen, but reasoned that since he was still a virgin anyway there was no point in trying to learn anything advanced, especially by eavesdropping. He went down the line of closely spaced sinks until he found one that had not been stuffed with toilet paper or backed up with drain crud.
As he was washing Spike's dishes, a guy came in the door with a towel around his waist. He looked conventional, though somewhat blocky, athletic and hairless. He came up and stood very close to Casimir, staring at him wordlessly for a long time as though nearsighted; Casimir ignored him, but glanced at him from time to time in the mirror, looking between two spokes of a Big Wheel that had been drawn on it with shaving cream.
After a while, he tugged on Casimir's sleeve. "Hey," he mumbled, "can I borrow your"
Casimir said nothing.
"Huh?" said the strange guy.
"I don't know," said Casimir. "Depends on what you want. Probably not."
A grin gradually sprouted on the man's face and he turned around as though smirking with imaginary friends behind him. "Oh, Jeez," he said, and turned away. "I hate fuckers like you!" he yelled, and ran to the lockers across from the sinks, running a few steps up the wall before sprawling back down on the floor again. Casimir watched him in the mirror as he went from locker to locker, finally finding an unlocked one. The strange guy pawed through it and selected a can of shaving cream. "Hey," he said, and looked at the back of Casimir's head. "Hey, Wall."
Casimir looked at him in the mirror. "What is it?"
The strange guy did not understand that Casimir was looking right at him. "Hey fucker! Cocksucker! Mr. Drug! You!" Rhythmic female shrieking began to emanate from a shower stall. "What is it," Casimir yelled back, refusing to turn. The strange guy approached him and Casimir turned half around defensively. He stood very close to Casimir. "Your hearing isn't very good," he shouted, "you should take off your glasses." "Do you want something? If so, you should just tell me." "Do you think he'd mind if I used this?"
"Who?"
The strange guy smirked arid shook his head. "Do you know anything about terriers?"
"No."
"Ah, well." The strange guy put the shaving cream on the shelf in front of Casimir, muttered something incomprehensible, laughed, and walked out of the bathroom.
Casimir dried the food bowl under an automatic hand dryer by the door. As he was on his third push of the button, a couple from one of the showers walked nude into the room, getting ten feet from cover before they saw Casimir.
The woman screamed, clapping her hands over her face. "Oh Jeez, Kevin, there's a guy in here!" Kevin was too mellowed by sex and beer to do anything but smile wanly. Casimir walked out without saying anything, breathed deeply of the cool, dry air of the hallway, and returned to his room, where he filled Spike's water bowl with spring water from a bottle.
As soon as Casimir had heard about Neutrino, the official organization of physics majors, he had crashed a meeting and got himself elected President and Treasurer. Casimir was like that, meek most of the time with occasional bursts of effectiveness. He walked into the meeting, which so far consisted of six people, and said, "Who's the president?"
The others, being physics majors and therefore accustomed to odd behavior of all sorts, had answered. "He graduated," said one. "No, when he graduated, he stopped being our president. When the guy who was our president graduated, we instantaneously ceased to have one," another countered.
"I agree," a third added, "but the proper term is 'was graduated.'"
"That's pedantic."