17
It’s Friday morning, and my heart feels light as I arrive at the university. My mind is buzzing, and my legs would probably dance if I wasn’t forcing them to walk normally. I have a crazy urge to yell how happy I am to the world.
A crowd has gathered in front of one of the buildings where classes are held.
In the mass of people, I spot Clémentine, her hand over her mouth, looking as if she has seen a ghost—or is about to lose her breakfast. Timothy is there too, surrounded by his basketball buddies.
They’re all laughing and punching each other in the shoulders as if they can barely contain their excitement.
I try to push my way through the tightly packed mob of students to find out what’s going on.
Huge, dripping black graffiti covers the gray wall.
“Mr. No-Family Arcadi” is the first phrase I manage to decipher.
It hits me like a punch to the stomach. The second one: “Russian bastard seeks parents.” I ask a student standing next to me to move aside so I can read the rest. Each cruel word, each insult intensifies the pain.
“Loser,” “Orphan,” “No one’s son,” “Go back to Russia.”
Vadim doesn’t deserve this.
Nobody deserves this.
My eyes blur. Stunned by what I’m reading, I don’t see him pushing his way through, crashing into everyone in his path.
He smashes his fist into the concrete wall, but doesn’t seem to feel the slightest bit of pain.
He runs his bloodied hand through his wild hair over and over, yelling, “Is this what you wanted?!” He doesn’t seem to be able to stop.
When his wild eyes finally meet mine, he charges straight toward me, pointing a bloodied finger in my face. “Was it you?” he demands, looking shaken. “Are you the one who told them, Alma? I trusted you! How could I have been so stupid?”
Vadim doesn’t give me time to answer. He’s already gone.
I run after him for a few steps, doing my best to catch up. He yanks his arm away when I manage to touch him and stops me in my tracks with a single look from his gray eyes, now dark as night. I stand there, rooted to the spot, paralyzed.
Everyone saw what just happened. Clémentine comes over to me and wraps her arms around me, as if she’s trying to shield me from their judgment. Tim approaches too, still followed by his puppets in their basketball jerseys.
“Ouch… I did warn you, Alma. That’s what happens when you hang out with bad boys.” He pretends to sympathize, but in reality, he is gloating.
“Shut up, Wallace. Go walk your mutts somewhere else,” Clem retorts, more fired up than ever.
My best friend pulls me away from the basketball players, who can’t stop smirking. We head to the restrooms. I shed a few tears, and my most precious ally quickly wipes them away.
What would I do without her?
Vadim isn’t answering any of my calls, and I wonder if I should skip class to go find him. Clem convinces me to attend Abrams’s class so that I stay out of trouble.
“Sit down! We’re wasting time! What’s wrong with you this morning?
Surely it’s not some lousy graffiti that has you all carrying on like this?
If the smart alecks who did this are among you, or if you know who they are, I suggest they open a dictionary before trying their hand at being urban poets. ”
“It wasn’t us, Professor,” Nicki Scott pipes up, clearly trying to score some points with him.
“‘It wasn’t us, Professor,’” Abrams mimics, pitching his voice high to mock her. “I thought we were in college, not kindergarten. Scott, grab some crayons and go draw me a pretty picture at the back of the class while I teach the others.”
My blonde classmate scowls, and the rest of the students either snicker or grimace. Mr. Abrams has managed to shut down any further discussion of what happened, and I’m grateful to him.
“Listen up. I have an announcement. I’ve hired Alma Lancaster to be my personal assistant for the first semester. However, applications are already open to take her place in January.”
Clémentine turns around, shocked. Other students turn to look at me too, some simply surprised, some clearly jealous.
I’ve got no idea how I’m going to survive this day.
“I’m giving you the morning off,” Abrams continues.
“I want you to go to the movies. All of you, no exceptions. Go see anything, I don’t care, even the worst movie that’s showing at the moment.
For Monday morning, I want a detailed report, including a new title for the film, a replacement actor for each of the main roles, an overall critique of the sets, costumes, and editing, and an alternate suggestion for the opening credits music.
Imagine you’re a disgruntled producer. You invested a million dollars, and nothing is working.
Be harsh, be unfair, be ruthless! I want you to make the movie’s director cry.
Is that clear? Perfect. Now get out of here! ”
Everyone is jolted back to reality by his words, rising compliantly and filing out of the room. I gather up my things and start to follow the others, relieved to be able to leave campus right away and to see my classmates worked up about something other than the offensive graffiti on the wall.
“Not you, Lancaster! You stay here. Keeping your commitments is the first duty of any good assistant.”
“I didn’t know I was starting today. What do you want me to do?”
“For starters, I’d like you to lose that hangdog expression; it doesn’t suit you at all. Is working for me really such a nightmare?”
I force myself to smile.
“There, that’s better. Now, you are going to contact Arcadi and tell him what you have to say to him. I don’t want you to spend the whole day brooding, whining, and overthinking. I want your mind to be one hundred percent with me. Go ahead, I’m not listening.”
“You know, these days we send messages. We don’t call each other when we want to talk.”
“Perfect. Call me an old fool if you want, but do what you have to do, and do it quickly.”
I grab my cell phone and start typing a text. I write, delete it, and start over; I don’t know how to word my thoughts, and Abrams hovering nearby isn’t exactly helping me concentrate.
[I didn’t say anything, I swear.]
I reread the message I just sent, thinking about everything I could have added, but my professor is already sighing impatiently. I slip my cell phone back into my pocket and force my mouth into a smile again.
“Ready. One hundred percent.”
“Fantastic! We’re going to my place; I have an entire office to tidy up. About fifteen years’ worth of stuff to sort, file, throw away, organize… I’ve always dreamed of doing this. Well, of having someone do it for me.”
Kill me now.
***
Trapped between these four walls, sitting on the dark wood floor in front of dozens of rows of files, I’m close to tears.
The smell of stale tobacco is making me nauseous.
Everything is brown here: the floor, the wood of the bookcase, the spines of the dusty, old books, the worn leather armchairs—even the yellowed walls, once white, are now bordering on a dark shade of beige.
Even this dog sprawled beside me.
Why is he staring at me? And why isn’t he moving? Is he even alive?
It’s hard to tell whether anything is still happening behind those drooping eyes.
“Alma, don’t pay any attention to Hitchcock,” comes Mr. Abrams’s distant voice. “He likes to stare at people when he’s half asleep, but he won’t bother you. Just pretend he isn’t there.”
The heavy silence settles back in. The only thing I hear is my professor’s footsteps making the floorboards creak here and there. I feel like I’m in a haunted house. And my only companion is a Basset Hound so still he looks stuffed.
I twist around to fish my phone out of my pocket and confirm what I already know: Vadim hasn’t answered me.
I try one more time.
[I haven’t told anyone your
secret. I’ve got no idea who could
have done that or how that graffiti got there.
You have to believe me , Vadim]
Hitchcock heaves himself up laboriously, takes a few steps, and comes to press himself against me, slumping back down again with a thud, this time resting his big head on my thigh.
“No, sausage, no! Go sleep over there. Ugh, you’re drooling! Go see Daddy. Il est où papa?”
“Alma, are you talking to yourself or are you trying to teach Hitch French?” Abrams asks, popping his head around the door. “He’s extremely smart, but he only understands English.”
I reluctantly pet the dog’s long ear, which has flopped across my jeans. It’s surprisingly soft and silky.
“Well, he seems to like you in any case!”
“Is that true, sausage?”
Four hours of labeling, six trash bags, five hundred dust-induced sneezes, and seven new unanswered texts to Vadim later, Hitchcock has almost become my best friend. My only friend, actually. He has kept me warm and seems to have approved of my dual chronological and alphabetical filing system.
During a “little break” that stretched on for a long time, Mr. Abrams treated me to a sandwich and two coffees, while he told me about his career path.
He talked about cinema with passion, anger, and self-deprecation.
For an hour, he almost made me forget the graffiti.
He spoke with regret about his broken marriage and his son Caleb, who is about the age of his students and whom he mostly only sees every other weekend, sometimes not for three or four weeks at a time.
And I remembered that there are other boys on this earth besides Vadim Arcadi.
Using the excuse of a pressing need to pee, I lock myself in the bathroom to write one final message. The one I should have sent from the beginning, if I’d had the courage.
[If you make fun of me,
if you repeat it to the whole school, and if
tomorrow there is graffiti about me,
then too bad, but… I love you, Vadim.
I love you, and I never would
have done this to you.]
As I lean against the bathroom wall with its ugly, brown wallpaper, my heart pounds. Blood pulses in my chest, in my temples, all the way to my fingertips. I can’t believe it. Someone else must have written this text for me. There’s no other explanation.
I’ve never said that to anyone.
Never written these words before.
Let alone felt this roller coaster of emotions, this infinite fullness, followed by this immense emptiness in my chest.
It’s too soon, too fast, maybe too impulsive, but he is there, everywhere, all the time. He has woven himself into my thoughts, under my skin, into my heart. Vadim came in uninvited… and ever since, he has taken up all the space.
If he doesn’t answer me, my life is over.
My cell phone vibrates in my hand, the buzzing traveling up my arm. My whole body tenses. I open his message and close my eyes for a moment before looking at his response:
[Prove it.]