The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma Read Free Book Online

really, writing was the only thing worth doing at all. But instead he lifted up the copy of his story that he’d taken from me and tore it in two.
    “There are enough books in the world,” he concluded mournfully. Then he sat down again, placed his head on the edge of the table, and began to weep. For a few long moments, we all just listened to this gigantic man, sobbing over the chaotic clanking of the radiators.
    “Class dismissed,” Professor Morrissey said finally, when it became clear these were not tactical tears. “Boys, would you help me get him to my office?”
    The girls erupted into frantic whispers as they grabbed their notebooks and fled, nervously looking over their shoulders to confirm that the man was still there, crying. Only Shelly lingered for a few moments, watching Sokol’s tears soak into a pile of our papers before she skittered away.
    Morrissey got the door, while Julian and I got underneath each of the man’s arms, yokelike and heavy, and eased him out of the room and into the hallway.
    “Is he going to be all right?” I asked.
    “Random House turned down his novel this morning,” Morrissey explained. “He’s been writing it since we met eighteen years ago. I told him to just come in some other time, but he was insistent.”
    Eighteen years was longer than I’d been alive. For the first time I began to wonder if this writing thing wasn’t maybe a bad idea. True, Betsy had told me to write her something. The nights I’d spent writing that story, getting lost in my imaginary Durham, were the closest I’d come to reliving that night. Pretending in her presence. Making myself up. But now that the story was finished, it didn’t seem like hardly enough. I felt sure that I could do better, that I could say more. As I helped to carry the weeping Sokol through the hallowed halls of Berkshire College, I could not help but wonder if this was where it all led.
    Julian and I got Sokol at last into Morrissey’s tiny office, where he knocked into piles of dusty books and student papers before finally collapsing into an armchair.
    “Thank you, Pinkerton,” Sokol sighed, shutting his eyes like an enormous baby getting ready for a nap.
    “Thank you both,” Morrissey said with a soft expression that pleaded for us to keep this among ourselves. Julian and I nodded then left, shutting the door behind us.
    We made it about ten yards before Julian turned to me and said, “Flip you for it.”
    “Flip you for what?”
    “The story. Flip you for the story. One of us has to write it. Nobody else in that class is going to, I can tell you that.”
    I thought he was kidding, but his hand was rooting through his pockets looking for a coin.
    “Heads,” I called.
    Julian found a quarter and flipped it off his thumb. He snatched it expertly out of the air and checked it against the back of his hand. Tails.
    “Cheers!” he shouted. “Now promise you won’t write about it.”
    “I promise,” I said.
    At the time I didn’t even know that I was lying.
    Following this incident, Julian and I stopped for a coffee, and I soon discovered, to my delight, that Julian was not the monastic daydreamer he seemed to be in class. He explained that he simply preferred to write late at night, and on good nights he would get so lost in his writing that he’d suddenly find the sun rising and realize his classes were imminent. After a nap, or some high-test espresso, Julian became a boundless mass of chatty energy.
    “That Shelly girl weirds me out ,” he told me as we walked out of class one afternoon. Another girl had written a story about watching her mother give birth, called “The Miracle of Life.” Admittedly it had been atrocious, but Shelly had run out of the room, shaking.
    “You ought to keep her away from open windows,” Julian advised.
    “And babies. Apparently.”
    Julian sighed. “The crazy ones are always better in bed, though.”
    I reddened at this. “You have no idea,” I lied. Truth be told,