As I walk into the room, my eyes are immediately drawn upward. There is a faucet installed in the middle of the ceiling and it is pouring water. The students that I am here to deliver a lecture to have moved their chairs out from under the faucet to avoid getting wet, but they are still sitting with their feet in water. They look at me strangely as I stand in front of them. I look back at them strangely as they cower in a circle around the classroom trying to avoid the cascading liquid.

            “Who are you?” someone asks.

            “I am your guest lecturer. . . .”

            “Where’s our regular teacher?”

            “That’s something I would like to know myself. I hope that I’m in the right place,” I say, repeating the date, time, room number and name of the class.

            The students nod and mumble in agreement, hesitatingly, as if they are not quite sure that they are in the right place themselves.

            I had waited for my faculty sponsor downstairs in the lobby for ten minutes, five minutes before the class time, as instructed, and then an additional five minutes. After no one arrived, I thought perhaps I had misunderstood my instructions, so came upstairs.

            “Does that faucet always run like this?” I ask trying to hide the incredulity in my voice.

            “No, most of the time it just drips. . . .”

            I want to inquire why the classroom has a faucet installed in the middle of the ceiling, but think the better of it; besides conversation is a bit difficult over the sound of the cascading water. The puddle on the floor is beginning to reach the soles of my shoes. “So why doesn’t someone turn the faucet off?”

            “We haven’t gotten to that in the syllabus yet. Professor (the student mentions the name of his teacher, which I cannot repeat here) always goes by the syllabus. We don’t know how.”

            “But it’s just like any other water faucet, isn’t it” I reply picking up an empty chair and moving it below the faucet, but staying out of its stream. The ceiling is low enough that, even though I am short, I believe I can just reach the handle by standing on tip-toe.

            “But there must be some reason why the faucet is running,” a tall boy who probably could easily reach the faucet standing on the chair interjects.  

            I guess that the lad’s major must be logic, or more likely, in today’s career oriented universities, Policy Planning or maybe even Sports Management. My lecture was going to be on semantics. I had been encouraged to stress its practical side as used in advertising or marketing: how to use words to trick the consumer, and so forth. Oh, where is their professor?  “Can someone hold this chair steady?” I beg, hoping that they had already gotten to that in their course syllabus. Just as I turn off the water, a gaggle of fluid running down my sleeve, the door bursts open; however, it is apparently not the tardy professor we are expecting.

            “Hey! What’s going on in here? Why are you standing on that there chair?”

            “This water faucet was running, I needed the chair to reach up and turn it off. . . .”

            “So who told you that you could turn it off? Who are you anyway?”

            “I’m a visiting professor, here to give a lecture on semantics. . . .”

            “So that makes you qualified to turn off the water?” the intruder asks rather gruffly.

            “What do you mean by qualified?”

            “This here university is run by a strict set of rules. We all have our specific jobs, if you know what I mean. Now I am from University Maintenance, and we got an emergency call that a water faucet was running that needed to be turned off. So I was pulled from what I was doing and sent over here in a hurry, because I am qualified for the job, ya know.  So I ask you again; were you qualified to turn off that water faucet”

            “No. But it’s just an ordinary water faucet; and why was it installed in the middle of the ceiling in the first place?”

            “So, now you have a problem with the architect?” the man from Maintenance growls at me. “When the university built this here building thirty-three years ago, the architect, a big, famous guy from New York City, ya know, specified a water faucet in each classroom. The plans showed the faucet in the middle of the ceiling of every room. Now nobody knew why, but they weren’t going to question a famous architect, ya know what I mean. So the builder just put in the faucets where the plans indicated they were supposed to go.”  

            As I am pondering the notion that something had gone wrong with the plans, like the Moorish post office I had seen in Bologna, which was built from plans that were supposed to have been sent to Istanbul, the classroom door is pushed open again. This time with the caution of an assistant professor who will be shortly coming up for a tenure review.

            “What’s going on in here? Who are you people?” the newcomer asks.

            “I was sent ta shut off a water faucet, Professor,” the maintenance man reveals, “but this here guy has already done that . . . although he’s not qualified, ya know. Says he’s here to give a lecture on seaman’s tricks.”

            “Oh, you must be John,” the man newly arrived says, addressing me by my first name, although we have never met. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I had a problem with my car. I’m your sponsor, Professor (he says his name, which I cannot repeat here).”

            “Glad to meet you,” I reply, shaking the man’s hand, and using his full name but purposely ignoring his honorific.

            The students have gotten up from their chairs and, unsure of what to make of the goings on, have moved to the periphery of the room, where there is less water. One of them is casually wringing his wet socks out the open window.

            “I’ll go get a mop and a bucket and clean up this here water,” the maintenance man announces. And then turning to me; “So when are ya gonna give yer talk about seaman’s tricks . . . I’d sure like to hear that.”

            “The lecture is on semantics. . . .” I reply.

            “Yeah, I’m no seaman but I know a few tricks myself, ya know . . . I got a boat out on the lake. It’s a 15 foot Whaler; I use it to go fishing.”          

            “But you’re not qualified to attend my lecture,” I spout, hinting at our previous conversation. “This is credit course; you have to be a registered student.”

            “I know how to tie all them there fancy knots, ya know,” he says, ignoring my comment.

            “I’d let you sit in, but the lecture’s not about tying knots,” the real professor explains, unaware of what had prompted my gibe. Then he turns to the students, “Look guys, let’s all take a break while this mess gets cleaned up. Go out and have a smoke, or something. Come back in about ten minutes.”

            “Guys? . . .” the three women in the class remark, with a smirk and a roll of their eyes, as they walk past the professor, “And the downstairs is a smoke free area remember.”

            “Jeez, I forgot that I had girls in the class.” The professor, whose name I cannot reveal here, confides after the young ladies have left.  “I hope that they don’t file a complaint against me because I referred to the class as ‘guys.’ I come up for tenure in the spring.”

            “This school seems like a rather uptight place. . . .”

            “That’s the way things are in academia these days. Be glad that you’re out of it. ”

            I don’t say anything. I assume that he is referring to his notion that all I do is write books and travel around giving lectures and doing book signings. I don’t tell him that in between gigs I am also a substitute high school teacher and a part-time cashier at my local Walmart.

            The door is opened and the man from Maintenance returns with another man. The new man has on blue coveralls, while the maintenance man wears a similar outfit but in dark green.

            “This here’s the building supervisor,” the maintenance man explains. “He says I’m not qualified to clean up the water, only turn off the faucet, ya know, which is already turned off. So he’s sending some of his qualified men up. They’ll be here shortly. So he says.”

            “My men are on the way. They just had to go down to storage to get the right buckets and mops. Ya see we don’t normally use mops when we clean up,” the building supervisor explains, adding, “so who’s the one who turned off the faucet?  I need to put that in my report.”

            The students were beginning to file back in, trying to avoid the puddle of water, which by now must be dripping down into the classroom below.

            “I turned off the water,” I reply.

            “And who are you?

            I give the man my name, and the fact that I am a visiting lecturer.

            “So who told you that you could turn off the water?”

            “Nobody. It was an emergency. I just did what I thought should have been done.”

            “. . . .an emergency,” the building supervisor mumbles, tapping away at his I-pad with an alacrity unusual for someone of his older age. He must have a grandson somewhere that taught him how to use it.

            The students were getting restless. One of them asks, “Are we going to have a lecture today, Professor, or what? Like the class period is half over. . . .”

            The man from Maintenance asks again about the “seaman’s tricks.”

            The door opens and two men, carrying buckets and mops, and wearing coveralls similar to the other two men, only in a gray color, burst into the room. “Holy shit, look at all the water!”

            “Okay boys, clean the place up,” the building supervisor says, and then, turning to us, “You all have got to leave the room. I’ll tell you when you can come back in. But I am sure that it won’t be for a while.”

            “All right class, I’m sorry about this, but today’s lecture is cancelled,” the real professor announces, careful not to use the word “guys” again. “I’ll see you next time. Check your syllabus to see what we will be covering and what you should read.”

            The students begin to file out, only too eagerly; “This class is a fuckin’ waste of time,” someone is heard to mutter.

            My sponsor and I stand out in the hall. “So what shall I do now?” I ask, wondering if I am going to get paid for the lecture that I didn’t give. I have a book signing at the campus store, and a meet-and-greet at the library, and dinner with the department chairperson, and then I am out of here tomorrow morning. There is no time for a reschedule. Why the hell did they have a water faucet in the middle of the ceiling anyway?  I wonder. “Can I go back to my room?” I ask, “I’d like to change my socks; they’ve gotten soaked through.”

            “Sure. I’m going that way myself . . .  I’ll walk with you,” the real professor announces.

            The college grounds are spacious and well groomed, but the sidewalks twist and turn in a rather arbitrary manner. “Who designed this campus?” I ask. “It certainly wasn’t Beatrix Farrand,” I add jokingly referring to the pioneer woman landscape architect.

            “Nobody did,” my sponsor replies. “When the original structures were built the first college president spoke his famous line: ‘the students will find the quickest way to get from building to building’ and just had the paths they made paved over.”

            Yes, I think, the students will always find the easiest way. Another question comes into my head, I ask: “Why was I given that class to lecture to anyway?  I mean I usually give my lectures to a group in an auditorium or some public space.”

            “We used to do that, but so few people came it was embarrassing. So we decided to have visiting lecturers come to scheduled classes instead—kind of a captive audience.”

            We arrive at the college infirmary. “Well, this is where I’m staying. Is there some reason why I’ve been put in here?’

            “No, this is where all our visitors stay. We used to put people up in Homer House, but that is being renovated at the moment.”

            “Are they installing faucets in the ceilings there too?” I ask jokingly.

            “See you at the library,” the professor says turning to go. I can tell by the befuddled look on his face that he has not appreciated my meant-to-be-witty remark about the water faucets.

            I walk down the hall, passing the two open wards, to the private rooms. The third door is mine. I can tell by the IV stand parked in the corner that the room is used for patients when not housing visiting lecturers.

            Sitting down on the bed, I remove my shoes and change my socks. It’s a good thing I have brought along an extra pair, which I didn’t usually do. Then I stretch out on the bed. I am tired, the way you get from doing nothing. I have time for a nap. No need to hurry to the book signing, probably no one will be there.

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Stephen Poleskie’s writing has appeared in journals in Australia, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Philippines, and the UK, as well as in the USA, and in five anthologies, including The Book of Love, (W.W. Norton) and been three times nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Poleskie writes a regular column for Ragazine and is an associate editor at Onager Editions. He has published five novels and two story collections. Poleskie has taught at The School of Visual Arts, NYC, the University of California/Berkeley, and Cornell University, and been a resident at the American Academy in Rome. He currently lives in Ithaca, NY.  Website: www.StephenPoleskie.com