Hex - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Page 0,27

eyes, impossibly equal to each other, and then my castor plant will bloom.

I’m writing this behind the bar. I ended the last notebook with Cheese and that’s where you praised me so I’m sticking to only edible titles in this book. I don’t know what to call this one, so far we’ve only got Yoo-hoo. A woman’s sitting at the bar with good posture. She keeps looking to see if I have become the person she’s hoping will arrive. I’m still anonymous. Sometimes I make a little noise with my shaker to remind her that she nevertheless isn’t entirely alone. She ordered one chardonnay half an hour ago and hasn’t drunk any of it. I’d like to refill it for her but she’ll have to make a little progress first. Mishti isn’t here to keep the pours flowing, she’s out on a date with your husband. She looks really, really great. She’s wearing the top of a purple sari and pink jeans and some extraordinarily fancy earrings that hang down to her beefy shoulders.

What you underestimated about Mishti is her thoroughness: when you said Thursday night she went exponential to every Thursday night. What have you been doing on your Thursday nights, Professor Kallas? I haven’t come near you since you praised me because I want to ride it a little longer. The next thing you say to me will be so rude, wisely, in the name of balance, that I won’t be able to trust or enjoy the memory of your praise anymore. Right now I can be Jasmine (talk about pants) on this soft carpet you wove me and fly above the city alone because I am also Aladdin, the thief. I get both seats on your carpet.

Chardonnay just looked up from her totally full glass and told me I ought to be a psychologist. I asked her why. She said because I’m willing to wait. Everybody’s always rushing her, she said, I don’t make her feel rushed. She said I have a patient face.

I told her that I’ve never expected very much to happen. Easy to wait when there’s nothing to wait for. She said, Oh, you’d be shocked by the things that happen. To ordinary people. They’ll tell you stories to melt your head. I said, Melt your head? When you’re their shrink, she said.

Chardonnay then abruptly settled her tab and left, so I’m drinking her glass, Merry Christmas. Joan the Christmas rose has another name, it’s hellebore. Nobody has ever been stupid enough to say “hella” in your presence not even in 2001 and I don’t think roses are boring so we can call it Christmas rose to be festive. It’s blooming now. I bloomed one on my kitchen windowsill. What a menace! The sap is a skin irritant and one medicinal dose of it killed Alexander the Great. The leaves, though, are deep and lustrous and the blossoms are unfathomably maroon. I’ve grown it for your office so that you have a little seasonal weapon on hand next time Barry and Carlo come to play. Barry is a balding Alexander and Carlo’s skin has never, not once, been irritated. You being you, what you’ll love most is the foliage green so dark it approaches black.

There was a Wednesday five years ago when I’d nowhere to go for Christmas, the Wednesday was Christmas Eve. It was my first year in the graduate program. I went to the student center to collect my mail but I hadn’t gotten any mail, so I was just standing in the student center. You rushed in to leave a couple graded papers in mailboxes. You saw me standing there, Mabberley’s Plant-Book about to fall from my elbow. What I remember best—I don’t even remember what we ate for dinner that night, aside from the sweet potatoes—is how long it took you to speak, and how oddly and patiently you waited for yourself to decide what to do about me. We are neither of us inherently social. We stood parallel to each other, both facing the mailboxes, but I could feel you reading me in your periphery, and I stood very still because I wanted to be read. Then you said, “Where are you from?”

I knew who you were, I’d applied to Columbia to study with you. Like a brat I said, “Kansas, Professor Kallas.”

You said, “Assistant Professor.”

I said your breakdown of leaf trait evolution was the single most inspired and inspiring work of contemporary botany I’d ever read. You explained