Run
When he woke, Victor was pleased to find there was cold hare for breakfast, left from dinner last night.
Victor’s landlady was a marvelous cook—for all that she had no husband or children.
His landlady cooked for pleasure and insisted upon Victor dining with her nightly.
Did not even charge him extra for the food.
Though he was young and she was over middle age, he loved sitting across from her by candlelight, eating spiced sausage or herbed breads.
All the better that their loneliness was remedied by it.
She had given him free reign of her three-story house and the workspace in the basement. The rent for his room was half that of similar spaces nearby, and she didn’t mind if he took the rest of his meals elsewhere at his leisure.
And he was thankful.
Not that Victor took advantage of that very much.
He would go to the tavern occasionally for lunch, if his schedule allowed, but he always sat alone at the end of the bar. Beside him on every angle, men full-grown, drinking and laughing with their companions. He watched them closely.
Even when things got rough and they spilled their ale or got bloodied in fights, he longed to be among them.
Ears ringing, cheek on the sticky floor, shaking off the pain of bruises and running out the doors into the evening.
Allies at his back. But he had no companions his age, and it was no fault but his own.
Company, for Victor, remained a university library of silent guests.
The pretense of office hours with a professor.
Letters ardently written to his family and dearest Elizabeth, but cold and dry, and their shared dinner by candlelight.
He thought of his early days in this city, far from home, and had to smother the ache in his chest with his palm.
He should have been more thankful for Henry’s friendship when he had it.
Victor swallowed hard and clenched his fists until they were steady, then he pushed away from the table, and fled the building.
He marched down the street until the foul atmosphere choked him less and the bright sunshine and bracing wind made him feel himself again.