The following snippets were cut from The Peculiar Case of the Petersburg Professor. Much like film left on the cutting room floor, discards have their own appeal, especially when they shed light on the backstories.
1. How Michelle and T.J. found the Commuter Lounge:
When T.J. and I started at the University of Petersburg last year, we had some trouble finding the Commuter Lounge. During our freshman orientation, a graduate student who was filling in at the last minute mentioned the existence of a Commuter Lounge but wasn’t sure if it was located in Overman Hall or Whitley.
During our first week on campus, T.J. and I met at the Student Union. It proved less than ideal for studying or having quiet conversations; it was always crowded and noisy.
After gaining confidence in navigating the campus, we searched for the elusive Commuter Lounge. We searched all three floors of Overman Hall but couldn’t find any trace of the lounge. So we went down the only staircase that led to the basement. As we descended, the cool and humid basement air hit our faces and grew colder as we got closer to the bottom. At that moment, I wished I had worn a sweater despite the temperature being 75 degrees outside.
We explored every hallway in the basement and peered through each open door. To our surprise, we discovered some unexpected things. We stumbled upon a room with hanging skeletons and another where a student was feeding rats in cages. When we found a locked door, we looked through the window—walls lined with refrigerators and freezers. I shuddered at the thought of what they might contain, knowing this was the science building and used for pre-med classes.
I was relieved when we reached the end of the hallway, and there was no sign of the Commuter Lounge.
“Well,” exclaimed T.J., sounding almost as relieved as I was that Overman was not the correct building. “That leaves Whitley.” Without wasting a moment, we hurriedly ran up the stairs and exited the building by way of the hallway connecting Overman Hall to Spencer Hall and finally to Whitley Hall
“Let’s go to the basement first,” T.J. announced, heading for a flight of stairs. After our last experience, I figured he wanted to get the basement out of the way, and I was all for that.
The air from the basement was warmer than at Overman Hall, and the sounds of human activity floated up the stairs. It was a good sign— there was life down there. My spirits dampened, though, when I saw the grey concrete walls.
Although there had been a feeble attempt to decorate the room, the two posters of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones did little to brighten it up. I looked down at my feet and couldn’t tell if the vinyl floor had once been black and white or had always been a muddy grey and off-white combination. It didn’t matter; most of the flooring was covered with rows of banquet tables, the kind you see at a church dinner. I had wrongly imagined the Commuter Lounge as a kind of Heaven on earth, the perfect getaway.
Little did I know how special the dingy room in the basement would become to T.J. and me during our time at U.P.
