Sitting on the stoop next door to my building is a man I’ve never seen before, on his phone, and I only barely take note of him until I see him standing out of the corner of my eye. For some reason, his movements, which are obviously intentional, make me hesitate.
“Hey, you’re Andries, right?”
Slowly, I turn to face him. I’ve never seen him before, with his average brown hair and thick glasses, but he’s looking at me with clear familiarity. And he knows my name.
“Who’s asking?”
He sticks his hand out for me to shake, but instead of taking it, I raise an eyebrow and wait for him to identify himself. Hisdopey grin falls at the same time as his hand goes back to his side, and I get the instant impression that he’s wearing some sort of mask, trying to catch me off guard. Maybe it’s the glasses, or the clothing that make him look like any other student, but it rings false.
“My name’s Kenneth. I was just wondering if I could have a word—”
Alarm bells start ringing in my head, the name and the odd behavior coalescing into an identity of a man I never would have thought I would find on my door.
“Kenneth, who works for RTL? The journalist?”
I see surprise flutter across his face, but it’s gone in an instant. “Yes. Wow, you’re a pretty informed guy, huh?”
“Well, considering you did a hit piece on my mother that included an interview with her professional enemy, Tess Hagen, your name is sort of well-known in my home,” I tell him, my voice icy and hard. “Get the fuck away from my apartment before I call the police.”
Kenneth fully drops the act, tilting his chin up stubbornly, his smile cruel. “I see you’re a fan of my work. Well, you’re going to love what I’m working on right now. I’m blowing the lid off a local escort agency that has a number of high-profile clients, some of whom are married. The owner of this certain house of ill repute is Roxanne Feng. Does that name sound familiar to you?”
Two minutes ago, I’d have said there was not enough energy in my entire body to dredge up any anger, but this bastard, standing nearly on my doorstep and threatening me after already damaging my mother’s reputation years ago, manages to find some untapped well of rage deep within my soul.
I don’t touch him, but I shoot my hand out to grab the collar of his sweatshirt, pulling him forward until he stumbles. Kenneth nearly loses his balance, yelping in surprise, and I release him, so his own momentum carries him forward. Itallows me to push past him, and yank open the door of my building, turning back to Kenneth long enough for a few last words.
“Next time I see you out here, you’re going to prison.”
Finally, fuckingfinallyI’m able to unlock my door and enter my own apartment. I throw my bag on the floor, jerking my shirt over my head and throwing it somewhere to the side, and moving directly to the liquor cabinet.
I’ve depleted nearly all of my alcohol, and the harsh, cheap whiskey I find in the back burns my throat like acid, but I suck it down, anyway. I feel it in my nasal passages and lungs, it’s so terribly potent, but I couldn’t care less if I tried.
Head spinning, my hangover blossoms back into true drunkenness. I discard the nearly empty bottle on the counter and stumble to my room. With the curtains yanked shut, it’s blessedly dark, and my sheets are perfectly cold against my burning face.
Still, no matter how comfortable the room is, and how tired my entire being is, I cannot find rest. I know it’s still the middle of the day, and many of the people who I love are worried about me, but the thing keeping me up the most is the empty spot on the bed beside me.
I reach over and lay my hand down where Roxanne should be, but the hollow space is no comfort to me. So, I imagine that she is there, and close my eyes. In my imagination, she smells like night blooming jasmine, and in the darkness, we talk about going to Paris in the spring.
9
Amsterdam, January 14, 2022
Andries
Days are passing,but they are like mirror images of one another. I wake up, head pounding, and fumble for the bottle of aspirin on the bedside table, swallowing the pills before my eyes are even open. If I’m lucky, I will have remembered to leave myself a glass of water the night before, but if not, I choke them down with nothing but my own saliva before I let my head fall back to the pillow, watching the ceiling spin around me as I wait for the pain to abate.
Next is a cup of scalding black coffee, burning even worse than it normally would on my ravaged throat and mouth, damaged from the amount of straight liquor I’ve been pouring down my gullet this past week. The pain from it all is sharp in contrast to the dull pounding in my skull, and it actually helps to clear some of the fog away from my thoughts.
Then it’s a shower; again, scalding. Class comes after that. I’m infinitely grateful that I didn’t end up pursuing some sort of science or medical degree where I would have to attendlabs, because staying upright and paying attention during the lectures is almost too much for me to bear. Thankfully, I have a few sympathetic classmates that have seen through the facade I try to keep up, and I will often have a ping indicating a new message in my university inbox, only to find copies of notes that one of them has taken. Hopefully, I won’t tank finals later this semester, and I’ll be able to return the favor in the future. For right now, though, I’m upright in my seat in the lecture hall, and my eyes are open. I was even a few minutes early. All in all, it’s a success, as far as I’m concerned.
This English linguistics class is a required credit, so I do try and give it my all, but the ghost of Roxanne is weighing so heavily on me that, despite my best efforts, I can’t give it one hundred percent. The professor for this class, Professor Josianne, is younger than a lot of the other teachers at the university, and while it makes her lesson plans more approachable and easier to digest for me, it also means she isn’t as jaded as some of the older professors, who don’t even bother to learn their students’ names. Her genuine interest in her class means that she notices me, slumped over in my seat, apparently looking like death warmed over.
I catch her glancing my direction a few times during class, a small frown flitting across her face when she does so. I know that she’s going to confront me, probably today, and I just hope that it happens sooner rather than later so it can be done and over with. She walks between the rows of desks, up the stone stairs that give away the age of the lecture halls, her hands clasped behind her back as she speaks. As I suspected would happen, she pauses near me, and looks down until I reluctantly meet her eyes.
“Andries, I’d like to see you in my office after class.”
It isn’t a request, but a quiet command. I give her a single nod and she moves on, continuing her lesson without breakingher stride even a little bit. If I had any thoughts about going into academics, I’d want to be a professor like her; fully engaged and aware, still full of passion for the subject and her job. Not like some of the dusty dinosaurs that seem to teach while half asleep.
That doesn’t mean I want to have a one on one with her, though, and the rest of the lecture drags on forever as I await my fate.