Page 9 of This Vicious Hunger
“I thought so. Now, if you’d kindly move out of my way? I have only a half hour for lunch, and I don’t intend to waste it talking to you.”
I push out into the heat of the sun, blinded momentarily by its fierceness. My heart pounds but the blood rushing in my ears feels like triumph. Perhaps making enemies isn’t something I should be doing this early in my career—here’s hoping it’s even a career—but it felt like the right thing to do. I need to channel Petaccia’s energy; I’m not some sideshow to be laughed at.
I wander to the edge of the lecture hall and find a spot in the shade to rest my back against. My heart beats so fast I might be sick, but I breathe slow and steady, deep in my belly, until I’m calm again.
“That was something back there.”
I spin, ready to scramble for a witty comeback, but it’s only the floppy-haired scholar with glasses. I relax, feeling the roughness of the stone through my dress.
“They needed to be put in their place,” I say fiercely.
“Clearly.” The scholar’s lips quirk in a small smile and pride rushes through me. I roll my shoulders back and ready a shrug, but he’s already looking away, patting through his pockets and coming out with a cigarillo and a book of matches. He hesitates before lighting the match. “Do you mind…?”
I laugh. “No. I’m fine, my husband used to smoke. Besides, these breaks are short enough, you might as well enjoy them.”
“Oh, you too?” He raises an eyebrow but I don’t miss the wayhis eyes dart to my wedding ring and I wonder if he’s not just talking about the length of the break. I can’t see his left hand. “Some schools really do overfill the schedules. What department are you in? You mentioned Petaccia. I was very impressed.”
“I wasn’t lying.” I bristle, holding my books tight to my chest. I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me. “I really do have a tutorial with the doctor, it’s just in a couple of weeks.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.” He takes a hurried drag on his cigarillo and then heaves a sigh. “Sorry. I’m not very good at any of this. Can we start over? Let me introduce myself.” He wipes his hand on the cream slacks under his robes and then extends it to me with a smile. “I’m Leonardo Vanksy. Billionth-generation scholar at St. Ellie, though a huge disappointment to my father for deciding to become a phytologist.”
“Ah,” I say, understanding. Now that I think about it, he looks exactly like the kind of man who might make a career studying plants. “Are you one of Petaccia’s as well?”
“No,” Leonardo says regretfully. “I’m with Almerto. You should ignore what those imbeciles said about him; he’s really very clever. His undergraduate lectures are dull because he’s preaching to the unconverted, but he’s done a lot of work to open up the field. There’s a lot of snobbery that goes on. Petaccia is very, very highly regarded by most—not that I need to tell you that—but she never takes on students, especially not undergraduates.” His eyes follow the bob of my throat as I shift uncomfortably.
“Am I the only one who didn’t know the doctor was…” I struggle to find a word that doesn’t feel as though I’m reducing her achievements to biology.
Leonardo has no such qualms. “A woman?” he asks, then laughs kindly. “No, I think it’s just not widely discussed. The‘serious scholars’”—he intones this in an imitation baritone—“are probably embarrassed, and I’m sure it suits her just fine. She’s done more for the university’s status than anybody, woman or not.”
“That’s probably why she took me on.” I’m not sure why I say it—it’s not the first time I’ve thought it, but it feels like a betrayal of myself to even utter it aloud. There’s just something very gentle about Leonardo. He doesn’t seem like the other scholars I’ve met. Perhaps, I think wryly, because he’s a botanist.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Leonardo takes another long drag on his cigarillo but doesn’t follow that up with anything.
The area we’re standing in is shaded by tall cypress trees and the air is cool beneath them—but it isn’t private. All of a sudden I’m intensely aware of how close we’re standing. Leonardo is leaning casually against the building as he smokes, dangling his cigarillo lazily between puffs. There’s nothing to it, but I can feel the eyes of other scholars on us as another lecture hall lets out and a swarm of them passes. My wedding ring only affords me a certain kind of invisibility, and not from this distance.
“I have to go,” I say abruptly, pushing away from the wall. “I have another lecture.”
Leonardo’s eyes widen, but I’m not sure whether it’s surprise or disappointment there. He doesn’t follow me, though, and for that I’m grateful. My next lecture is in the building next to the library, and I’m not ready for more stares if he wants to walk with me.
He waits until I’ve reached the dusty path, a slight breeze stirring my cropped hair, before calling, “You didn’t tell me your name. I can’t call you Botany Lady, that sounds crass.”
“It’s Thora,” I say, rewarding him with a small smile. “Thora Grieve. See you around, Phytology Man.”
Chapter Seven
Despite the exhaustion, I soon fall into a rhythm of learning not too dissimilar from that of my mid-childhood, only here my father isn’t around to corral me as he did back then, and the learning is in lecture halls instead of the dark beneath his desk or curled in the corner of the embalming room with my fingers and toes freezing solid even in the summer.
I think of my father often. Whenever I drink a strong cup of coffee dosed with fragrant cardamom, I’m haunted by the ghost of the same scent caught in his beard during the rites; during my lonely walks about campus, I can’t shake the sensation that he’s right beside me, studying the stone buildings. I often catch myself spinning my wedding ring, as if this might keep his spirit at bay. My grief is stronger here than it was even in the city, and I find it hard to shake.
It should be Aurelio I think of—and perhaps those who see me twirling my ring in lectures might think that it is, more fool them—but the more time that passes, the more those thirteen weeks of my married life seem like a bad dream, nothing more than an untenable enclosure.
Most days I wake before dawn, still clinging to the tendrils of nightmares I don’t remember, to read over the notes from my lectures, readying myself for the upcoming tutorial with Petaccia in every way I can since I have no idea what it might involve. Then it’s breakfast, classes—some more interactive than others—and a quiet dinner in my same spot by the window in the dining hall with barely a minute to think about anything else—although I have taken to counting the number of my classes where Leonardo Vanksy also occupies a desk in the outer row.
He catches my eye outside after class one day as I’m taking a breath of the warm summer air, making the most of a rare fifteen minutes before the next, and stands waiting in the shadow of the building until I wave him over.
“You can stop skulking and come say hello,” I say, giving him a small flustered smile as he lights his cigarillo. I don’t know exactly what possessed me to give him my maiden name last time we met, though Idoknow that the reason has less to do with Leonardo than it does with the way Aurelio’s name never felt like mine. Still, I think of Petaccia’s warning. Leonardo seems like a nice man, but is his friendliness genuine philanthropy? It pains me to admit, but I am likely the naive one here.
“Sorry.” He laughs through a puff of smoke and comes to stand with me under the trees instead. “I thought maybe you were avoiding me, hiding over here amongst the foliage. I thought, ‘If ever there was a woman trying to turn invisible, it’s that one.’”
