by Crowe, Stan
He looked away for another moment, then, without fully meeting my gaze, said, “Effective Five September, at twelve a.m., your subsidies from this department will come to an end.”
No. No, no, no, no! “The Fifth? That’s this Friday. Doctor Jordan—”
“No arguments, Mister Cairn. Unless you’re willing to give your dissertation some semblance of professionalism, the Board will simply not continue to indulge an embarrassment to the Department. We’ve been more than generous with our monies, all the time hoping you’d produce something worthy of publishing. It’s time that the flow of money ends, if you are unwilling to give something back to the Department.”
“More than generous?” I asked incredulously. “More than generous? I’ve exhausted my personal funds—all eight-thousand-nine-hundred and fifteen dollars of it. I’ve independently secured another four thousand dollars in grants, without Department staff even lifting a finger to help with that process. At the end of the day, the Department has given me approximately two-point-eight percent of all money spent during the course of this project, which wasn’t enough to pay for a single month of tuition. If you call that ‘more than generous’ then I’d say that you’ve got the wrong man pegged for not being objective.”
“Now wait just a minute. That is a gross understatement of—”
“I’ve got the paper trail. Prove me wrong.”
His thin mouth snapped shut.
“Put simply,” I said, “I’m flat broke. But I’m this close to finishing off over two thousand hours of research and course work. If the Department isn’t willing to fund the last few weeks of this project, then we’re looking at case closed.”
I swear he almost smiled. After a moment’s lingering silence he adjusted his glasses and said, “Then I suppose it will be case closed.”
I bit back a scowl. I’d have to see about getting another grant and fast. A lightning bolt of insight struck me. “There’s more to it, isn’t there?”
“More to what, Mister Cairn?”
“More to this story. It’s not just about the money, is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You said the Department isn’t going to subsidize me after the fifth. But what happens if I get another grant? Even that won’t be enough, will it?”
“You worry about getting your own money, Mister Cairn.”
“Talk straight with me. It’s not just the money, is it? You don’t even want this project to complete, do you? You’re going to stop this under any circumstance if I don’t do it your way, aren’t you?”
He looked over at the far wall for a long while. At last, he waved a hand dismissively. “You may go, Mister Cairn.”
There was no reason to feed any ideas that I might be “unprofessional,” so I thanked him stiffly and left.
This was not the greatest way to start a Monday.
A serious pick-me-up was in order. More so, a serious patch-up was required; I wasn’t sure how Ella would react to essentially being abandoned for a weekend, but it was better to start damage control sooner than later. I had driven halfway to Ella’s townhome before I remembered she had moved, so it was nearly 9:30 by the time I knocked on her new front door. A small Filipino girl (who may have been ten or may have been twenty-five) appeared at the side window and disappeared just as quickly.
Nothing else happened.
After several minutes of silence, I dialed Ella’s number, but hung up when the familiar voicemail message started. I knocked again and I waited again. Just as I was turning away, the door creaked mournfully behind me and I spun to see Ella. She was dressed to make a statement: I’d never seen her hair frazzled like that; I’d never seen her in that grungy bathrobe; I’d never seen her without makeup, for that matter and I was astonished at the difference it made in her appearance. There were small smears of what looked like chocolate on the corners of her mouth and her complexion seemed similarly smeared. I could see every capillary in her eyes. Though I didn’t want to lean in to confirm it, she seemed very much to have Morning Breath with definite capital letters. For a long, long time we just stood there, neither one of us looking at each other.
Ella broke the silence. “So,” she said, in half a whisper, “are you happy?”
Such simple words; such a nailing accusation.
“Ella,” I started, but stopped when she looked up at me.
The nearness of her body called out to be held. A waking vision of holding her and dancing our troubles away burst upon my. We could erase the tension, the rising bitterness and distance that had crept into our engagement. I wanted to tell her how much I truly loved her and that I wanted to care for her until the end of time, the way Dad had talked about. But even if I couldn’t get back the girl I’d fallen in love with, I’d give my very heart and soul to defend the promises I had made when I had given her my ring. Getting those feelings from mind to mouth proved impossible for me that morning; I was still reeling from Dr. Jordan’s kick to the metaphorical groin. Like an idiot, I blurted the first thing that came to mind.
“My funding is being cut.”
Ella made to speak, but froze before launching into what must have been a practiced response. It was my day for those, apparently.
“Your… what?”
“My funding. The money from the Department. The cash that was supposed to get me through to graduation. I’m going to try to find some more money, but they’re pulling the plug next week. I may not get to graduate any time soon.”
“You mean… wait… I’m supposed to be mad at you. Not playing ‘shoulder to cry on.’”
“I know and I came over here to talk about things. We need to talk about it. I just… I’m not thinking this morning. Too little sleep and a rude awakening to a fiasco perpetrated by a self-important… never mind. Anyway, I guess my brains are a bit scrambled.”
“I’d say so,” she muttered. I let it slide.
“Don’t worry, though, I’ll find some money.”
Ella posted her hands on her hips and glared. “What do you mean ‘find some money,’ Nicholas? You’re supposed to be a doctor for Pete’s sake. Rich. My father might be paying for the wedding, but do you have any idea how much life after marriage costs? Have you seen the price of a decent home, lately? And what if I decide I don’t want a career, Nick? What then? I can’t ask my father to pay for me forever. Do you have the slightest clue how much a good mani costs? And what about that trip to Cabo you promised? How are you going to pull that off if you don’t even have a job? If you haven’t figured out how to make money already, how am I supposed to trust that you’ll figure it out later?”
What was this? Where’d this “Nick’s a deadbeat” vibe come from?
“Els, I’ll get through and graduate. Most people tend to make the big bucks after graduating.”
“But you’re not going to graduate, are you, Nicholas? Who’s going to hire you with just a bachelor’s degree? What are you going to do to support us, Nick? Be a high school guidance counselor? Pshaw. We might as well sign up for government welfare at that point.”
Not fair. High school guidance counselors were good, honest people trying to help kids who often wanted anything but help, even if school wages weren’t the greatest.
“Can we lay off the money thing for a minute?” I asked. “You’re really taking this way beyond the bounds of normalcy.” Then, still not thinking, I muttered, “I wonder what Moiré is going to think.”
“What did you say?”
“Just mumbling to myself.”
Ella was ramrod straight, her eyes fiery. “No, you said a name. You said, ‘I wonder what someone will think.’ Whose name did you say?”
I sighed. “Moiré De Lanthe. My lab assistant—the one I told you about back in July. Like I told you back then, she’s just hired to help with my research.”
“I see.” Her lips curled. “And what kind of ‘research’ have you been doing with her?”
I dropped my head into my hands. “Not now, please, E
ls. I came by to try to make things right and to let you know I’d hit a bit of a snag in school. It’s not like I sought her out. She just walked into my lab, one day and said she wanted a job. That’s it, I promise. I’ve had her reading my notes and the other research literature and running tests and doing field work; stuff like that. It’s not like you’ve ever actually been interested in my research before.”
“You like working with her, don’t you?” The Spanish Inquisition could have taken lessons from her in how to make a person look guilty.
I held my hands up in defeat. “You know what, Ella, if I can’t say anything right this morning, I’m going home again. I’ve been away from you for a whole weekend and I’ve missed you. We parted on a bad note and I regret that more than I can say. I didn’t come here to fight. I’ve just had the plug pulled on the last three years of my life and I don’t need my fiancée making things worse right now.”
She stared at me, an unreadable expression on her face. Without warning, she marched back into her apartment, calling back to me something about “thinking the phone rang.”
Once again, I waited on the porch. Only this time I sat on the ground. My feet thanked me. From inside her apartment, I thought I could hear the sounds of weeping and some kind of wailing that may have been intonations of a language that involved shrieking. Great—what had I done now?
When she finally came back out, her eyes were even redder, if that were possible and she looked even more disheveled. I decided not to ask.
“Nicholas,” she said, “I think… I think I agree with you. We both need more space. So I’m going to give it to you. You can have all the space you want. I think it’s time we just admit this isn’t going to work and stop pretending otherwise. If you don’t need a fiancée, then you no longer have one. We’re finished. And I’ll thank you to just stay away from me for the remainder of your life, however long or short that may be.” Without another word she turned around and slammed the door in my face.
I felt like I’d been hit by a live power line. For who knows how long, I could neither move nor think. I just sat there, breathing and looking pathetic. Somehow, my mind eventually got my rear end off the stoop, and into my car. I must have driven home on auto-pilot, because I don’t recall the trip. I flopped onto my bed face first and let myself drift into whatever kind of sleep I could.
I have no idea how long I slept. All I knew is that I awoke when I heard the phone ringing like it had purpose. I glanced hastily at my clock. 4:43! Not good! I grabbed the receiver quickly.
“This is Nick.”
“Hey, um…” It was Moiré. My heart did a million weird, unexplainable things at the sound of her voice. For a few seconds, I really worried that it might explode. “Were you planning on, you know, coming down to the lab at all? I mean… today?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry—late night. A few problems. I’ll be there in ten.”
I made it there in six. My mind was reeling and I ended up walking into three different rooms before finally stumbling into my lab. Moiré was alone, perched lightly at my computer, her back to me. She was browsing through my dissertation. Every now and again, she’d scribble something on it in red pen. Looking at her, an explosion of liberating joy rocked me. I wanted to run to her, to just take her in my arms and do… I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Whatever it was, it just needed to involve Moiré De Lanthe.
“I’m here,” I said, winded.
She stood and turned with breathtaking grace. A silent prayer kept my heart mostly beating.
“I was starting to wonder what had happened to you.” Her voice and eyes spoke concern. But then, the perky spirit I knew was back. “I’ve got some good news and some great news.”
“I’ve only got bad news,” I muttered. My nova of joy was gone as quickly as it had come, collapsing into a black hole of a depressing reality.
“Mine first. You need a great big dose of ‘Happy,’ I can tell.”
“Fine,” I said, flopping onto The Chair. It didn’t buck me.
“So, good news or great news? Which one do you want first?”
“Does it matter?” I asked wearily.
“Not really, but I thought you might like to choose. Okay, the first bit of happiness is that we’ve reached experiment nine-hundred and ninety-nine. The final couple is due here later this afternoon. We’ll hit your thousand! It’s a good thing, too—you’ve only got one of those gift cards left.”
I nodded numbly, my mind aching at the thought that I was about to kill her exuberance.
“Okay, mister grumbles, part two. I… got a scholarship!” She did the little “happy-clappy-squealy” thing women did. I almost smiled.
“I didn’t think I’d get it, either,” she gushed. “I guess I made a good enough impression on Doctor Jordan at the department dinner. And we only even talked for a few minutes. Anyway, the scholarship is perpetual as long as my grades support it. The first installment is twenty-six-hundred bucks and I’ll get it today! Are you excited for me?”
I pretended to smile for her sake. At least she’d get to continue her schooling.
“Oh, come on, Nick. You can do better than that!”
Feeling I had nothing to lose, I jumped up on a table, gave the largest open-mouthed smirk I could muster and yelled, “Yeehaw!” Then I sat down, spent, but feeling a teeny bit better for my troubles.
“So, does that help clear up your Monday-itis, Doctor?”
She had to remind me. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Not really. Don’t you have some bad news to share? There’s always bad news to go with the good news.”
“Nothing recent,” she said. “I mean, my stepfather lost his real estate company a month ago and wasn’t able to help me with school any more. Between that and my not being able to find a job, well… I had to be picky about where I spent my pennies. But the Department managed to find some funds, somewhere. They said they’d been watching me and that they were impressed with my initiative in taking on graduate-level studies so early. Sure, I’d applied for a scholarship, and I was trying to meet their criteria, for being awarded the money and I’d been following up with it weekly… but in the end, it was almost magical, the way it happened.”
“Can you just make up some really bad news? I could use the commiseration.”
Moiré’s face grew serious and she scooted a chair up close to mine. “This is really bad, isn’t it, Nick?”
“I’ve been better, yeah,” I said, fighting to keep a straight face.
“Well, I was planning on spinning a yarn about my roommate putting Kool-Aid in the shower head, but this is serious.”
I hardened my eyes against the start of tears. I nodded a little, grateful that we were alone in the lab.
“Oh, Nick.” Her arms cradled me and I nestled my head against her chest, returning the embrace. It was as if that wonderful night in the park had never ended.
Three years of hard work casually murdered. Two months of devotion most serious—not to mention lifelong dreams—sacrificed on an altar of horrible miscommunication. Words spilled from my mouth without direction, as I told Moiré everything. I probably said the same things a hundred times as I turned the situation over and over for her, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong. It was so hard to fight the feeling that I had driven Ella away.
This is why I swore I’d never let myself be anything more than friends with Moiré. I’d been warned about things like that—it was like a slow cancer to relationships. But even as the shame washed over me, I couldn’t let go of her. Holding her, feeling her there against me—unfettered by commitments to another woman—was like walking through the front door of Mom and Dad’s cabin.
My grieving was put on hold when the final couple arrived some time later. Moiré intercepted them, thanked them for their time and sent them off with the last gift card. I was grateful I could depend on her to handle the situation with grace. I’d excused myself to an obscure corner.
When we were alone again, Moiré closed the door. S
he came to me, stopping a breath away. Even through my grief, I could still taste the electric closeness. I savored her soft breath on my mouth and nose. She looked intensely at me, surprising me with the cocktail of emotions swirling in her eyes and playing over her face. My hand came up of its own accord to caress her face. She shivered and pressed her hand against mine, pinning it gently on her cheek.
“So, Doctor Cairn,” she said with a hint of wistful playfulness, “what are you going to do to move on?”
My hand dropped. The moment shattered. “Move on?”
She blinked and looked at me as if I’d sprouted wings from my head. “Of course, move on. Ella’s broken her half of the commitment. She ended it. Since she isn’t willing to see what a great thing she has lost, some other lucky girl will get to have you, right?”
I was too muddled in my thoughts to even begin to think about what that statement might imply. A tidal wave of guilt slammed into me and I stumbled hard into the table.
“No!” My harshness startled me. “I’m not backing out on this! I committed to it and I’ll see it through. No matter what.”
Moiré opened her mouth, but I interrupted. “I’ll find a way to get her back. Ella… has been under a lot of stress, lately. She just wasn’t thinking right this morning. She didn’t mean it when she broke it off. I’m sure of it.”
“She did mean it, Nick.”
It was my turn to stare. “How can you possibly know that? You weren’t even there.”
Moiré put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “I’ve been listening to you talk about it for the last two-and-a-half hours. You’ve told me every last detail about your engagement and the running theme is that she never really loved you. I don’t believe you would have been truly happy with her, Nick.
“It’s time to let it go and move on. It wasn’t meant to be.”
I jolted upright, unable to believe what I was hearing. I didn’t mean to get in her face but my vision was suddenly a strange shade of red. “I was engaged to be married! If a guy can’t have some kind of guarantee when he’s three weeks away from his wedding day, then what good is it to even try?”