Once a person becomes a pariah, they can’t live it down.  Either can the Wracks.  His father flew back with him to Mexico in case a legal imbroglio existed to get him back in school.  They play rough down here says Father Wracks.   A fellow student pokes his head in the room and says to the Wracks,

Es muy fuerte el, no le preocupes.

Licensario Aces is the superintendent of students and legal officer for the University.  The Wracks has an appointment with him today.  He waits outside the office in the stone room with the stone chairs and small windows and the electric bug zapper that is never turned off.   A pretty, tall woman who is probably part of the landed aristocracy ushers him into the lawyer’s office.   The lawyer beckons the Wracks to sit down.   He is a man of average height with white skin, and thick Indian hair cut short with a slight red tint to it.  His eyes are grey.

Hello, wracks.   I hear you had a problem with the police.  They wonder if I should let you back in the university and not expel you.   You might get into trouble again.   All the students at the university come from professional or upper-class families and they do not tolerate an outsider causing a commotion.   If you get into one more fistfight, you will expelled and escorted to the consulate.  Do you understand Mr. Wracker?  The only reason I let you back is because you have a near straight A average. 

Yes, I do licensure

I will admit you back to the university and you will start clinical respiratory medicine in one week.  Situate yourself appropriately and keep a low profile.   Do you understand Mr. Wracker?

Yes licensario, I will be on my best behavior.

The lawyer for the university and unquestionably one of Mexico’s elites stands up and offers his hand.  The Wracks shakes it.

Good luck and you will need it says the licensario.  Goodbye.

The Wracks are having a hard time finding accommodations.  No one will rent to him.  They run away saying, El es loco, sale.!  Finally, in the daily newspaper, they find an ad asking for a student to rent a room in the neighborhood next to the plaza.   His father says, take it, if no one will rent to you, your career here is over.  Father and son in a rented Volkswagen go to the house on the cobblestone street next to the Patria. The house is made of stone and has an eight-foot-high stone fence, and a steel garage door designed to stop high-power rifle bullets.  Father and son ring the bell and a small elderly lady with whitish hair that used to be blond, and grey eyes opens the door.

I hear you have a room for rent Madam.  Do you speak English?

My name is Ophelia and I am originally from Chicago. Would you like to see the room?

Yes, we would say the Wracks, can we come in? 

Yes, you can she says.

Ophelia has a small white poodle, daintily groomed by the local animal handler.  She sits on a cushion and wags her tail.   It is an adobe hut she says.   It is in the back of the property.  It has a bathroom adjoined to a single room.  It is five hundred pesos a month.  Do you want it?

Yes, I do says the Wracks.   When can I move in?

Anytime says Ophelia

Wracks and his father go back to the motel and get the luggage then go back to the house and move the Wracks in.  The unit has a single glass sliding door.  A small bed sits in a corner next to a small desk and chair.  There is electricity.   The bathroom is small and tiled and the water runs. The Wracks has a small tensor light he brought from the States, sits down and plugs it in and the semester begins.

At first, the Wracks couldn’t figure out why he would wake up in the morning with bite marks all over his body and a swollen face.  He finally realizes he is being bitten by reduviid beetles that are indigenous to southern Mexico.   These kissing beetles are known affectionately to the Mexicans as Cinche.  They hide in cracks and sit suspended upside down underneath the mattress of the bed.  The Wracks try mosquito netting but the maneuver is of no avail.   The black cockroach-like animals with a proboscis are smarter than he is.  He buys spray insecticide from the store and sprays his bed and floor before he goes to school but it is of no avail.   Either the bugs are immune to the poison or they keep coming.  The latch on the window sliding glass has a key but the mechanism is easy to pick and he can not believe his landlady is letting people in his room when he is at the university.  The best solution is to shower as soon as a person arises in the morning to wash the bug feces off your body.  The dreaded American trypanosomiasis or Mal de Chaga as it is called in Latin America transmits when the bug feces are rubbed into the bug bite by itching or scratching.  The infestation continues for a year until the Wracks secured habitation elsewhere with an American expatriate living in Mexico.

Ophelia periodically requests the Wracks to have coffee with her and talk.  She slides a coffee cup from the cupboard and shares a decanter with the Wracks.  She offers pasteurized crème in a ceramic pourer.  The Wracks notices she slides the same cup from the same place level to the table each time they meet.  The Wracks thinks she puts something in the coffee cup before, setting the cup in front of her and pouring coffee into it so the Wracks thinks the cup is clean and empty.  After all, she is the Landlord and the Wracks complies.  He pours some crème into the cup and only drinks half of it.  And so, it goes.   She speaks of all her luxurious Mexican friends, the help they have, and the marvelous life they live.  She says her friends have live-in maids who constantly wash vegetables and prepare food for them all day long.   In Mexico, the farmers use sewage to fertilize and the crops grow huge and fast but they are covered in Salmonella Bacteria.   It is wise never to eat a salad in Mexico unless the cook prepares it himself or herself.  She also talks about Juan Bond who sells chiclets on the street in a stand in front of the barrio.  The children scurry about and play with their toys and Juan Bond sells chiclets and Mexican cigarettes to the Wracks.  Juan Bond is the richest man in the city and he is small, Indian, with greying black hair, wearing thick cotton peasant clothes, and sporting a black mustache like Salvador Dali.  He smiles at the Wracks.   Ophelia also states that the city is getting too expensive to live and because she is a widow, she would like to move to Cuernavaca, would the Wracks like to come with her and share a mansion in this city?  When the Wracks tells her he is moving out, she swings a fist in an overhand right and tries to the Wracks in the head and he is finally gone to an apartment a mile away situated next to a tennis court.  The court is in Mexican clay, the finest surface in the world.

It is just hearsay, and conjecture at this point but the Mexican students tell the Wracks never to go to Cuernavaca because it is the city of the Vampires and the inhabitants bleed livestock and live on their blood.  Of course, the Wracks have never seen a vampire but from experience know they exist and now Ophelia is moving to Cuernavaca so she can be one of them.   The Wracks went to the house of justice in the city and told them about Ophelia but they told him politely to leave.  She has influential friends and the Wracks has left less than a year to go with life so strange, destination unknown. 

The rainy season begins in Mexico.  The vegetation is everywhere, greens and grows.  The Wracks stands in front of the foreign students’ office of the University.   He has acquired a house to rent and needs to find 2 or three roommates.   He waits outside the office on the stone abutment that even in the tropics, is cool to the touch.   In the tropics, they are built from stone because it lasts, doesn’t burn, and insulates well.

The first person he encounters has sandy blond hair, is about five feet nine inches in height, and dresses in wranglers’ cargo pants with a clean linen shirt and Sperry topsider shoes.   He must be of the upper class so the Wracks approach him.  

Are you a student here asks the Wracks.   Would you like to rent a room in a house close to campus?

Yes, I would say the blond.   My name is Mr. Madera and do I get my choice of rooms?  

Yes you do says the Wracks, here is the address.   See you there

Mr. Madera smiles, turns like an automaton, and enters the foreign student’s office.  I have business he says

Next up is a tall man with black hair and a big nose.   He dresses in casual clothes unlike a local in the tropics and wears black socks.   He must be from the east coast of the U.S.    Would you like to rent a room in a new house close to campus, asks the Wracks.

Yes, I would say the tall student with bushy black hair.   My name is Mr. White.  

Here is the address says the Wracks.  See you soon.

They are the roommates for the first year.   And so, it goes.   The year begins

Mr. White is a jet setter.   He likes to go out twice a week to Mexican discothèques.   He dresses up, and in a shirt open to reveal his chest, he takes a taxi and leaves till late at night.   The wracks can not understand how he passes his classes.   Learning science is hard.  Learning science in a foreign language is harder.  His room is meticulously kept clean and ordered and he hires a housemaid to clean his room and the shared bathroom once a week. 

Mr. Madera is an athlete.   He has been chosen for the varsity water polo team at the university and goes to the campus pool three times a week from four to seven o’clock.  He studies until two o’clock at night and even later and lines up his coffee cups on the stairway rail for everyone to see.   They must be a badge of courage.   He has little need of sleep, and his schedule keeps the Wracks in awe.   Girlfriends from the United States fly in to see him and he has a Mexican girlfriend too who obtains the exams for him to study that he does not share.   He seems like an all-American, upper-class, success story in the making and the Wracks envy him until…

The Wracks sleeps a lot and sleeps hard but he dreams in the middle of the night that Mr. Madera is standing over him in a gold priest robe with a chalice and beginning a mass and the Wracks wakes up.  No one is there and it is two o’clock at night the wracks look outside of his room and Mr. Madera’s door is closed but a light shine outward from the space between the door and the floor.  The Wracks makes certain that the door in his room is functional and he checks it, locks it, and goes back to bed.  

The Wracks gets up early and goes to class.  He has a Mr. Coffee coffee maker in his room that is promptly broken so he goes to instant Mexican coffee.   Mr. Madera is up making his ethereal meal of fried egg on bimbo bread three or more times a day.  Mr. White goes out to eat breakfast every day.   The year goes on and time flies and the night becomes dark and finals in the first block occur.  The Wracks are up late making instant coffee with a traveling water boiler and smoking Mexican cigarettes.

Going up the stairs he spies Mr. Madera’s room light on.  A girlfriend from the United States is visiting him.  She is of average height, wears tight jeans, and has a good figure.  Her brown hair is cut short.  She darts out of Mr. Madera’s room in a towel and runs in the bathroom and turns on the shower.   The Wracks retreats to his room.  He is studying Gross Anatomy.  His wristwatch shows past eleven and he locks his door and goes to bed alone in the large bed that comes with the house.  Dreams begin.  In the Wracks’ dream, Mr. Madera’s girlfriend is in bed with him, like any young red-blooded American would and then he wakes up with a start because a woman is sitting on his face.  It is her, and she looks at him, and he looks at her, and Mr. Madera’s head looms over the bed and smiles and then he is asleep again.  He wakes up frightened and no one is in his room, just a vacant bed and a desk, and he peers outside and Mr. Madera’s room shows the light out the crack of the door.   Mr. White is gone for the night.  He double-checks the lock on his door, closes it, and goes to sleep. 

Mr. Madera says nothing about the incident and the Wracks wonders.   He comes home one day and Mr. Madera is buck naked on the floor, spreading his buttocks and saying, sodomy is an oath of fealty.  Mr. White is drinking a glass of baby formula and laughing and the Wracks until he gives up his house in June of next year and barricades his bedroom door every night with his desk and chair.  Sometimes late at night, Mr. Madera heads out the front door and visits the neighbors at two o’clock at night promptly returns in about an hour, and heads to his room.  Occasionally a pack of wild animals concentrate and growl and howl outside his room at night but he is dreaming.  One night before the barricade, the Wracks dream that a vampire is biting his neck and drinking his blood, and Mr. Madera is in his gold robe.  He wakes up in the morning and sees two fang marks on his neck.   The Wracks becomes a religious man and he lives in harmony with the others to survive

Mr. Faulkner was correct when he wrote the Great Gatsby novel.  The Great Gatsby says that the rich are different from you or me.   The Wracks secures his desk against the door, says a prayer and goes to bed.   I hope I transfer he thinks and he doesn’t know why.

A

Wracks, we are having a party this weekend at Eli’s.   Would you like to come

I don’t have a date says the Wracks.

Just show up anyway, it will be mostly graduate students and the staff of the School of Microbiology.  They will be giving oral final examinations and they want you to attend.

Where is it asks the Wracks.   I can use my father’s car.

At the very top of the canyon, there is an access road leading to Eli’s estate.  You can’t miss it; it is the only one up there.  There is a sign, here is his address.

Okay says the Wracks, I will see you there.

It is five o’clock in the afternoon and the Wracks takes the zigzag road up to the summit of Pang-oh.  He brings a bottle of wine and soon reaches the plateau at the top of the mountain where all the shops and restaurants are situated.  An ephemeral river lies below this mountain and meanders to the coast where it forms a surfing point that is good in the winter on a westerly swell.  I don’t see the number he thinks and travels a little farther up and looks at each driveway and can’t find the numbers or the entrance and when he is about ready to give up, he sees a dirt driveway the width of one car with a mailbox and the number posted in small letters on the top of the box.   Putting the car in low gear he moves up the driveway about fifty feet and it culminates in a flat area with ample parking and at least ten cars filling the lot.  The Wracks find a parking place, park, get out, and sight a large one-story Mediterranean ranch-style house that surrounds a small garden. 

Glad you made it says one of the grad students.   We were hungry and didn’t wait for you.  All the pasta with clam crème sauce is gone but we saved you some briquets of French bread.

That is fine says the Wracks.   I live on bread anyway.   Bread is the staff of life

He goes inside and the male grad students are hanging out talking, eating chips, and swilling beer and brown whisky.  Professor Nabut from Israel is there and waves to the Wracks.  Oral exams will soon commence.   Have some whiskey and wash it down with some beer fresh out of a chilled keg.   Take another shot.  All Immunologists must be prepared to work under pressure.  We are all going to swig whiskey and then take the oral exams.

As usual, the Wracks are the last ones to be quizzed, and all the graduate students have moved out to the spacious garden in the middle of the estate.

Have another shot, says Dr. Nabut.  How long does it take for the immune response to mature

IgM begins to appear on day three post-challenge and is established within a week.  Then IgG appears in the serum and the immune response begins at fourteen days.

Good says Dr. Nabut.   Have another shot.  What is the function of T suppressor cells in the afferent wing of the immune response?

T suppressor cells function to stimulate memory factor Ia to limit the immune response.  T suppressor cells work to limit the immune response so auto-immunity does not happen and the immune system does not react against itself.

Wash it down with some beer says Dr. Nabut.  For the final question, how much Ig does it take to activate the complement system which is the effector link of the immune response?

One IgM molecule can activate complement.  It takes two IgG molecules to activate complement.

We are done says Dr. Nabut, you pass.   You must learn to function while obtunded.  All the students are in the garden with Eli.

Two naked women flash out of the bedroom space and smile at the Wracks. Then they are gone

Did you see that asks the Wracks?

They are Eli’s daughters.   Don’t mind them. 

The grad students sit in the garden around a pond.  The Wracks join them.  Mr. Simms is there.  He is part of the group studying bone marrow transplantation in mice.   He shows a foot-long joint of grass to the Wracks and smiles.  He lights the huge cigar, takes a couple of puffs, and hands it off to the graduate students.  All ten of the graduate students take a puff of the huge joint and then hand it to the Wracks.

What is it says the Wracks.  Is it OK? 

Take a huge drag and hold it in says Mr. Simms.  Then tell me what it is.

The Wracks takes a large puff and he is a cigarette smoker like his dad.  Eli sits on a large wicker throne at the head of the pond and is not smoking.   He looks at the Wracks.  Wracks is in heaven and a student plays guitar; the gang swills beer and time moves on.  As night begins the gang moves inside and the wracks sit on the sofa completely anesthetized and fall asleep.

The big greyish-blue eyes of the chief of Microbiology are peering at the Wracks.  The Wracks wakes up.

What hit me says the Wracks.  Where are the girls

It is past their bedtime and they have gone to bed.   The party is over and you can go. 

Thanks for the party, Eli.  I had a good time.  Eli waves from the front door and the Wracks finds his white Pinto runabout with the green coupe roof.  He slowly backs down the earthen entrance road.  Jan is down the way with a hunting rifle and a 3–9-inch scope that he carries recon style.   The Wracks waves and he waves back.   I guess he is guarding his field thinks the Wracks.

Down the mountain, he cruises slowly with high beams on.  There are no street lamps up here and the guard rails on the road are only three feet high and the river runs down below the serpentine highway.

He makes it down to Highway One and the moon is full, with a slight offshore wind blowing out of the canyon and small three-foot waves break down the point.  He pulls into the lot, gets out, and looks at the point, the moon, and the stars, and he gasps.   This beautiful.   I must check it out tomorrow morning.  Night is here in Tranquil Hills and unlike everyone else, the Wracks use the darkness to sleep.

Dr. Gull appears as a man of medium height and build with thick wavy black hair.  He dresses in a white physician’s smock, a white shirt and tie, black loafer shoes, and a Rolex watch.  He smokes Marlboro cigarettes incessantly.  His bright eyes search the surroundings through a thick grey wisp of tobacco smoke that slowly floats upwards and seems to linger everywhere; Dr. Gull holds the title of Chief of Oncology Services at the big U.  He likes to teach anyone who will listen, the Science of Tumor Immunology.  He will instruct a student if he or she has the IQ and prerequisites to enter the halls of the Health Sciences. In a small classroom in the School of Microbiology, Dr. Gull instructs medical residents, Graduate Students, visiting professors from other countries, and even Wracks.  

Good afternoon, Dr. Gull, says Wracks, I am enrolled in your course in Tumor Immunology.  I look forward to an exciting and enlightening quarter here while I work on an independent research project down the hall.   May I smoke also during the lecture?   I like Marlboro Red cigarettes also.

Sure, says Dr. Gull.   Most of my staff here and at Woodland Bethlehem Hospital are also smokers.  We need the lift to get us through the day.  Go right ahead and light up but bring your ashtray.  Get seated, I have to start the lecture.

Mr. Simms also completed upper-division Immunology with Wracks and now sits next to Wracks in the lecture hall.  Dr. Gull starts writing on the chalkboard the first topic of the course.  Sir Burnet’s theory of Immune surveillance.  All the medical residents pull a cigarette out of their coat pockets and light up.  The room slowly fills up with smoke and Dr. Gull lectures through a thick haze of photochemical smog.

Does everyone have to smoke, says Mr. Simms.  Mr. Simms stands as a tall-boned Nordic-derived student at the Big U.  All the smoke makes me sick.  Will everyone put out their cigarettes? Wracks extinguishes his cigarette immediately.    Two of the medical Residents blow heavy smoke clouds at Mr. Simms.  

Mr. Simms exclaims, if you do not stop smoking, I will drop the course and file a complaint against everyone.  

The residents continue to blow smoke toward Mr. Simms until he closes his notebook with a bang and storms out of the hall.   Dr. Gull tries to ignore the situation.  After time assures that Mr. Simms has left for good, everyone puts out their cigarettes as if inspired by unseen forces.   Dr. Gull turns to his audience and smiles.

Does everyone understand Sir Howard Burnett’s theory now that it is on the board?  

Everyone nods their heads in agreement and the instructor smoking cigarette in hand continues.

Forty-five minutes later the instructor concludes and assigns case studies and term papers to the students of his class.  Everyone leaves in a hurry because they all have work to do, families to go to, or a sweetheart somewhere.   Wracks has his dinner at the student union waiting for him and then a long bus ride home ending in a walk up a hill at night.   A wrack has no experiment scheduled now because his tissue-transplanted mice have to grow up.  Then their spleens and blood will be harvested and the statistical construct begin.  A wrack takes the elevator down to the first floor and emerges at the entrance to the school of medicine.  A huge black onyx building is in construction and the cranes hoist enormous steel girders into place as the sun sets in a reddish flame framed by grey petrochemical smog. Today wracks will enter the student cafeteria by an alternate route.  Walking underneath the suspended hallway connecting the health sciences with the biological sciences, Wracks takes the connecting road down to the front of campus past the big buildings that house the professional schools and clinics of the Big U.  Up the main promenade to the student store, in the front door and then take the elevator to the second floor.  Wracks exits the elevator, then walks left to the queue lines in front of the cafeteria.  The budget student menu does not draw the crowd expected for such a bargain and charity offering.  No other place on the west side delivers a full meal with all-you-can-drink coffee for one dollar and a quarter. Most of the student body eats instead at the fabulous exotic bars and discotheques located ten miles away.  For the more affluent students, the best restaurants in the state are less than five miles away on the miracle mile.    At five o’clock on a weekday, only twenty people utilize the vast resources of the student cafeteria.  Adjoining the student cafeteria situates the varsity athletes’ dining room.  The privileged few awesome athletes that join the fabulous and famous football and basketball teams, eat steak and hamburgers to infinity, cooked in front of them on a huge gas-fired charcoal grill.  Wracks sit in front of Kirk’s Hall and smell the delicious odors emanating from the athletes’ dining room every day while enjoying a cigarette and a cup of coffee.   Then an occasional nap in the huge leather armchairs decorating the picture windows in the student hall happens.  Curled up in bliss, in uteri in a friendly place, with warm feet and toes, Wracks knaps in the world of opulence.    The moment occurs now and tonight at five, Wracks chooses the chicken pot pie on the student menu with all-you-can-eat crackers.   Wracks grabs one of the large porcelain cups provided for the coffee-drinking student body.   In his usual spot, facing the entrance line, with his back to the wall sits Dahlman.  Both of Dahlmans’ Parents have accolades as tenured faculty members in the health sciences at the Big U.   Tonight, Dahlman dines on a sumptuous roast beef sandwich with de jour dressing, a bag of potato chips, and a tall glass of brown tea.  Wracks slams his stew out of a large beige bowl into his mouth and sends the food to his stomach with shooters of hot coffee with excesses of half and half creamer.   When the bowl licks clean, Wracks eats the first of his three packages of Nabisco saltine crackers.  

How did the war go on the southern flank, asks Dahlman.

More of the same says Wracks.   I go to class, then study for an hour in between, then go to the lab, check on my animals, go back to afternoon class, and then show up here.  We go to the Research library after dinner, put in two to three hours of exam preparation, and then take the bus home.  What happens on the North campus?

The same, says Dahlman, I research law books and take notes then transcribe the data to three by five cards.   Only three by five cards can be admitted to a courtroom if he or she is not the defending or prosecuting attorney.  Then I come here.   In the morning, I sit for exams until lunch. 

Why are we doing this asks Wracks.

There is no other way, says Dahlman.  Academic achievement occurs as the only game in town.   Everything else gets old.   Let’s get going.   See you at the end. 

Spring starts to break at the big U.  The large trees bear buds and the winter ebbs and the entire leaves have blown away three months ago.  The quad sits deserted in the dark twilight and the Romanesque forums stand adamant in utter solitude.  Up the steps to the marbled halls of myriad classrooms, and through the café connecting the old building with the new to the lighted entrance promenade signaling the Buckminster fuller rendition of glass that houses the research library.  Up the central elevator to the fifth-floor rocket the two students. On the fifth floor, they separate because the line of sight of movement distracts attention while reading.  A huge physics graduate student sits at a little desk next to the elevator and looks up to see if Wracks smokes.   Satisfied, he continues reading.  Sitting at his window to the opulent world Wracks surveys the beauty, organization, and technological majesty that money creates.   In this world of non-olfactory money, where source seems unimportant and effect paramount Wracks digs in at the end of the short winter and promises himself, that he will not fall asleep tonight. 

Let’s hit it!  Yells Dahlman at Wracks, we have only 12 minutes to catch the 8:55 bus. 

 Wracks throws his huge heavy books into his briefcase and jumps off to the run.  Trotting down the staircase, they bound through the glass frontal portal and lope across the North Campus Avenue.  Trotting down the hill they cross the entrance road and stand at the pole on the island where the RTD stops on Hill Street.  Just as they arrive a huge yellow bus without any passengers careens into view and stops suddenly without screeching its tires.  The door opens and both Wracks and Dahlman flash their monthly student passes at the bus driver.  The door closes and the huge yellow rectangle accelerates at magnum speed down the hill. 

One minute later we would have missed the bus, smiles Dahlman. At a jog, it takes eleven minutes to get to Hill Street and the bus was one minute early.    Ten seconds later we would have missed it.  It seems prudent to allocate at least fifteen minutes to transit to the Hill stop.  

I am tired says Wracks. I am glad today ends and tomorrow becomes Friday. 

On the undulating bus, Wracks falls asleep as usual clasping his heavy briefcase to his chest.  

Dahlman shouts this is my stop, see you tomorrow morning on the steps.

Wracks waves goodbye and Dahlman exits.   Two miles later on the hill of Moonrise Avenue, Wracks becomes the last passenger to leave the bus.   From here the bus travels to the ocean, turns around, and then goes back up moonrise to nightclub land.  He crosses the street in the darkness and walks across the gas station turf.   Up past the drug store, liquor store, and convenience market, Wracks heads up the long Quiz way and then up the hill to Bacon Way.   The nights are still chill and the wind blows offshore so the waves cannot be heard echoing up the canyon and the stars twinkle because the smog blows out to sea on nights like this.  The beautiful night lives and wracks cannot be enjoyed because the day as it lives tires the disciplined who must sleep to replenish the mind that drives them mercilessly.  Punkin wags his tail while sleeping on his cushion in the family room. He is the only one welcoming Wracks and wracks strips off his shoe’s pants and shirt, dives into bed, and falls asleep immediately after pounding the alarm clock that rests next to his bed.  Tomorrow is a new day. The Fonz is long gone.