Page 17 of Prosecco with My Professor
I come up with some bland response, and after a few more minutes of small talk, Director Greco leaves me alone to get back to my work, but the conversation about my father lingers. I’ve been a professor here for long enough that most people don’t bring it up, despite the business being a household name—as much as an importation company can be, anyway. The only people who really know about my father’s more sordid behavior are my ex-wives and Vincente.
And my father’s mistress and her daughter.
When I was five, I came home to my mother drunk and crying in my father’s home office. My father had had an affair with his very young secretary, who approached my mother when she got pregnant.
Years later, I was able to piece together more and more of that time in my life. My father gave his mistress money to disappear. He never spoke one word about my half-sister or the affair, and my mother’s mental health deteriorated. By the time I found out about my sister, my father and I were fighting more and more, and I didn’t have the resources to do anything about it.
It was only after my father died and inexplicably left me all his money—but not the business—that I had the means to find her. I hired a private investigator. We stayed in touch long enough for me to give her half the inheritance, and then she said she wanted nothing to do with me. She was happily married with several children and wasn’t thrilled to have a reminder of her absent father.
She wasn’t thrilled to inherit either, but all that money doesn’t make up for a family and a stable childhood.
These thoughts linger until, finally, it’s the end of the day, and I can lock up my office and head home. First days of the program are hard. In a work environment, like in the last startup that hired me as CFO, everyone else knows everyone else, and it’s you who’s new. There’s a relative sense of order, of everyday activities that, if you are lucky, you don’t disrupt too much.
Not so here. There’s a different excitement. Students who don’t know each other creating energy in a new way.
It’s exhausting.
I exit the building and turn toward home. It’s mid-afternoon, as most days end around four o’clock for us, and while the students finished about half an hour ago some of them still linger in a nearby caffè, chattering in a mix of English and Asian languages.
An espresso is tempting, but before I can stop for one, I catch a flash of gray and soft blue across the street.
There, on the opposite sidewalk, is Emma.
Or at least, someone who I’m pretty confident is Emma.
Before I even know what I’m doing, I shout her name. “Emma!”
She turns, but a bus passes, one of the bright red city buses that slams on its brakes and honks at another car, completely blocking my view of her. I walk left, trying to see around it, but by the time I make it, she’s made a turn and is walking away from me.
I impatiently wait at the intersection, throwing up my hand and an expletive when I almost get run over by a Fiat. She’s too far to shout again, and I don’t even know what I’m going to say when I catch up to her, but it feels imperative that I do. She’s walking toward my apartment anyway, I reason.
When I get close enough to shout again, I do, but this time, she doesn’t turn around. We’re two blocks from my apartment now, and I’m out of breath. Sure, I get plenty of exercise playing football, but usually, I’m not laden down with a bag and a sports coat.
God, I hope I don’t have a heart attack chasing after a woman. How ironic.
“Professor!” someone else calls.
It’s Eva walking her dog, the brown, chubby French bulldog, toward me. Her smile is wide, and she catches my arm. “How is the new term? Did you have a good start?”
Emma turns the corner up ahead. Assuming she’s going home, she’ll walk right past my apartment to get to and from university every day.
“Excuse me,” I say to Eva, and dart around her.
I ignore the call of my name behind me, and as I turn the corner, I see Emma darting into my apartment building. What?
I run and catch the first vestibule door right before it closes and scramble with my card to catch the second one. “Emma!”
She spins around with a flash of bright red and terror on her face. In the time it takes to process the can of spray—bright red with a black silhouette of a large angry dog barking on it—Emma’s no longer scared but surprised.
“Santo? I mean—Professor.”
I hold my hands up, palms facing her.
“Oh, my god. I thought you were someone else.”
“Who did you think it would be?” She was scared…of who?
“There was this guy this morning. I thought…” She blinks and shakes her head, her hand trembling.
