One Evening in the Lab, by karynkonynenbelt.
"You should just print it."
"Yeah, but, um..."
He sighed.
His eyes sunk into his cheek bones and his breath smelt of slumber.
Between the turning of textbook pages, the clattering of keys on the keyboards, and the hum of the computers, which by the way, established quite a placid “silence”, were the hurling of random statements and remarks.
"Shonge-jonge-jonge."
"Maybe we should start with 'this is a special project'"
"This part." He pointed somewhere in the text. "Introduction to..." the voice trailed off.
That is the problem with accents. They are not always easy to follow.
"...I thought it... it’s pretty funny..." he remarked minutes after typing several sentences on the screen.
He stared intensely at the pages of adobe reader. Perhaps they were working together, discretely, since collaborative work was seen as a form of plagiarism by some of the instructors on campus.
"Is this correct?" a voice somewhere down the row of computers broke out.
"En la cuarenta y cinco." Spanish—quite the popular language track amongst the Dutch students of the university.
The cellular phone of the young woman with dark hair and delicate hands broke the mumble of diligently working students. Speaking quite loudly, rudely,
"You haven't started yet?"
"Yes, I've got the assignments written down somewhere. One sec."
"Okay… …you're going to regret not starting. There’s quite a lot due tomorrow."
"Mmmm... you have to write about a childhood memory. One page. And come with significant drafts."
"It's on workspaces."
"Wait, there’s more. You also need to do fieldwork."
"Yeah, well, you should have started at the beginning of the weekend. He also mentioned printing off the short story that we need to read for Friday, so..."
"Well, I will let you go."
"See ya t’morrow."
She tossed her phone into her handmade school bag and went back to work on her computer. She sat alone.
My attention was adverted back to the drowsed male students. I heard them say,
"There's a difference in men and women and their reactions as well."
A trilling on the desk nearly went unheard.
"Ja?”
"Nou, ik zit nu in Eleanor."
"Ik ben een PowerPoint aan het maken."
"Oke."
"Oke. Is goed."
"Tot dan."
A code-switch. The call was the means by which the students continued their dialogue in Dutch, their mother tongue. The rest of their conversation rushed by like the wind. It would be impossible for a foreigner like myself to keep up with their 'snel praten'. I could only hear that the student with thin hair came from the South.
A female’s voice murmured in the back row. She seemed to be talking to herself, for when I looked; there was no one around her, 'side for the humming computer boxes and the blank monitor screens.
A couple of the workers removed their sweat shirts from their backs.
There were extensive lulls in the conversations. Most of them worked independently, including our Dutch conversationalists, who seemed to have fallen slave to their work; their eyes illuminated by their monitors light. The chair grunted and whined.
How unfortunate the life of a chair, I thought to myself. All too often do men foul themselves on the laps of their recliners. No wonder they whine. Their groans sound of stomach grumbles. Speaking of stomach grumbles…
"Hey."
On the phone again.
"Ja is goed. Of zit je... ik kom er ah... langs."
Someone in the other room was talking on their cellular phone. A tall, dark, and handsome walked into the lab. The conversations kept mumbling on. The jangle of metal wrist bands added a sweet sound to the ornery chairs and tiresome computers. A loud ktankt from the vending machine outside the lab signified someone's shared craving for a snack.
The night was minutes to close.
The young woman with dark hair and delicate hands typed her last word. The following day, he did not see her. He would not see her. She logged out.
