116. Interview with Martin Schumacher

Martin Schumacher is a student at Florida State University with one year left in his “seven-year plan,” which he explains as taking seven years to complete a bachelor’s degree (typically completed in four) for various, occasionally nefarious reasons. Mr. Schumacher was a neighbor of Anthony Stephens during his time in medical school, and conducts his interview outside of the same apartment, next door to where this tale began. Mr. Schumacher wears a tank top and FSU basketball shorts and smokes a cigarette, looking as if he just got out of bed.

7 July 2011

– Yeah, I remember Tony. He stayed right over there my sophomore year, in the one-ones [Mr. Schumacher points at Anthony’s former apartment].

– Pretty cool dude, I guess. Me and Steve—my old roommate, he graduated already—we used to sit and chill sometimes outside and smoke a little, drink a little. Tony’d join us a few times or whatever. Really chill dude. Med student, right?

– Yeah, he was cool. Whatever happened to him?

– Really? Dude. That sucks.

– Damn, that sucks for real, bro. He seemed like a righteous dude. Me and Steve thought he was pretty cool actually. Used to hang out on the weekends until he met that chick. [Mr. Schumacher smiles and winks] You know how that goes.

– Only time I saw him after that was when she was over and he’d come outside to let her in.

– Anything weird? [Mr. Schumacher thinks for a moment] Actually, yeah, bro.

– I mean, it wasn’t like totally fishy or anything. But there was this dude hanging out over there at one point. Never seen him before, figured it was one of Tony’s boys. He would, like, hover around the place outside sometimes, see him walking in and out of the apartment.

– This one night, a couple weeks after I first saw him chilling there, I came outside to smoke a cig and that same dude’s sitting outside Tony’s apartment. So I get a good look at him. Looked a lot like Tony actually. Little darker. He was sitting on a chair right outside the door reading this big black book. And crying.

– I swear it. Dude was just sitting there reading and crying. Not like, flat-out bawling or nothing, but crying. You could see it in the streetlight shining down on the dude’s head, he had tears like, all over his cheeks.

– Say something to him? Bro. Come on.

– You don’t mess with a dude when he’s crying. Embarrass him and shit? That’s like, man code, bro, you know?

– Dude’s liable to punch you in the face you come up to him when he’s crying.

– I just went inside. Never saw him again after that though. [Mr. Schumacher gets thoughtful] Come to think of it, never saw Tony again either.

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