Finding God

It's noisy today. Two of my roommates are back. One of them brought three other friends. One of them is named Chris. They went to Tuscon to go rock-climbing. No, not like little pansy cliffs. One-thousand-foot-high faces of vertical cliffs. For serious. They all got sick while they were out. Like vomiting and diarrhea. Chris got sick while he was about six hundred feet up -- on the side of the cliff. He crapped his pants in mid-air and puked all over the cliff side. No, really. They're driving to Indianapolis today. I biked to Norlin, like I always do. I know it snowed yesterday, and I know that the temp is at zero or below, but I don't like riding the bus. Especially the 204. I can hear the frozen snow crunch -- brittle and dry. It's not as icy as yesterday. Just snow-packed. And cold too. It's the kind of cold you can feel in your toes and the tips of your fingers, even when you're wearing wool socks and gloves. But I enjoy it. I like the

I heard it was supposed to snow today. It's earlier than normal. I hit the snooze button on my alarm for ten more minutes of rest. I hardly slept at all the night before. Six o'clock. Not as early as when I used to work freight at five in the morning in a cold back room, a fifty-foot semi trailer backed up to the loading dock door, but I felt the heaviness of exhaustion weighing on me. I get to Norlin and come in through the coffee shop entrance and punch in the code for the safe to get a ring of keys for my shift. A minute later, another member of security walks up to me as I'm closing up the safe. Sorry for my tardiness, she says. I say that's okay. How long have you been working here? Since 2008, she says. A while. Nice, I say. What's your name? Alisha? No, Alicia. She pronounces it more distinctly. Alicia. Oh, I say. She asks me if I'm coming back next semester, I say yes. She says this building has an addictive quality to it

Today is Tuesday. Boring-average-predictable Tuesday. It's slow as usual at Norlin, the campus library where I work as a security guard. Yes, I know. Working security must involve manhandling violators and wielding a sidearm. I wish. It would certainly make things more interesting in this hundred-year-old relic. No, I wear a worn-out black polo with an embroidered eight-star "badge" over the chest and screen-printed gray lettering that stretches across the back between my shoulder blades. I wield a black Kenwood five-channel radio -- clipped to my belt when I'm doing rounds or rotating gates. No, it's never exciting. It's usually abnormally dull. You'll go insane if you don't have a book or laptop available to pass the time. Ten hours on a Saturday will be the longest day of your life if you didn't bring an essay to write or a novel to read cover to cover. It's Christmas break still, so there aren't many visitors to the library