Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think not. Now I do. I suppose at one time in my life I might have said mine was a certain cowardice, a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. But lately I’ve come to think that it might be something else entirely.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about the weather, about how the sky looked the day I first came to Hampden, gunmetal and low, like it had secrets to keep. That was the morning I first saw them—all of them—gathered in the courtyard behind the Lyceum building like a strange and elegant painting. Henry in his dark wool coat, silent and still as an obelisk; Bunny, booming laughter cutting through the cold like brass. Camilla and Charles who are constantly golden and vaguely mythological. And Francis, with his odd glasses and his fraying scarf, cigarette always halfway to his lips.
But the one who drew my eye, though I could not yet place the why of it, was someone I’d never seen in any of my catalogs, or even mentioned by Miss McClure in the registrar’s office.
Claire.
She stood a little apart from the others, half in shadow beneath the skeletal branches of a maple tree. Her hair was dark, wind-tousled, a contrast to the pale knit collar of her sweater. There was a worn leather satchel at her hip and a book—Pindar, maybe? Or Sappho?—open and forgotten in her hands. She didn’t speak, but the others orbited her like planets around a discreet sun.
I remember this distinctly: she looked up from her book just as I passed, met my eyes for a moment, and smiled—not the polite, shuttered smile of someone being kind to a stranger, but something infinitely more curious. It was the sort of smile you might give someone you recognize from a dream.
⏤⏤⏤
I came to Hampden by way of desperate reinvention. California boy, hospital son, gas station scion. I'd arrived in Vermont on scholarship, lured by an admissions pamphlet promising Georgian architecture and amber leaves. But Hampden, in real life, smelled like woodsmoke and intellectual vanity. I had no plan, save to run from my life in Plano. That was enough, at the time.
My first few days I spent lost in the purgatory of introductory courses—Psychology 101, Comparative Lit with a dozen moaning undergrads, and something called "The Human Condition: Then and Now" that involved a lot of Sartre and very little joy.
But Latin. Latin was my lifeline.
Julian Morrow didn’t advertise his courses. They were hidden in the catalog like secrets, unlisted, and only available by invitation. He had only six students—five, officially—and one more, if you counted Claire. She was the kind of person whose presence was so self-evident, you didn’t need permission to accept her. She simply was, like a law of nature.
It took me three tries and two accidental eavesdroppings outside the Lyceum to catch them leaving his office. The door opened, a cloud of cigar smoke drifted out, and there they were. I hovered, stuttering out something about being interested in Greek. It was Claire who spoke first.
"Are you any good?" she asked me, dark eyes sharp behind the curtain of her hair.
I stumbled. "Uh... I can read Euripides."
Bunny let out a cackling laugh. "That makes one of us."
"Ignore him," Claire said, and turned toward the office, holding the door open for me with a small, almost imperceptible nod.
That was how I first met Julian.
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His office was dim and wood-paneled, the air thick with the sweet decay of leather-bound books. Julian sat like a portrait in an armchair, fingers steepled, expression neutral but intrigued. Francis poured tea. Charles lit a cigarette without asking. Camilla smiled at me like I’d just stepped into her memory.
Julian’s voice was slow and silken, full of strange cadences. "Tell me, Richard. What do you hope to find here?"
I wanted to say, 'you. This room. This air. Whatever this was.'
Instead, I murmured something forgettable about being drawn to classical languages.
It was a lie. I was drawn to them. And most of all, to her.
⏤⏤⏤
Later that night, in the dormitories, I found myself on the fire escape, trying to read Catullus by moonlight, muttering to myself decent then not-so-decent translations as if osmosis could drag me into their world. The door behind me creaked.
"That’s not a good translation," came a voice. I turned.
Claire was leaning against the railing, coffee cup curled into her hand like it was thrown on to the wheel for that purpose alone.
"It’s all right," I managed.
"All right doesn’t get you into Julian’s classes." She stepped closer, peering at the page. "He likes the artistry, but only if they’re falling apart. Yours is too new. You smell like a transfer."
"That obvious?" I questioned, my eyes darting down to the teetering liquid in her cup. Threatening to spill over the edge but caught by a very thin surface tension.
"Like milk in a cellar." But she smiled. "I meant that nicely."
A pause. The air between us pulsed like a tuning fork. She looked at me again, the way she had in the courtyard—like she knew something I didn’t.
"You’ll get in," she said, finally. "But once you're in, there's no going back."
"To what?" I responded, furrowing my brows as I caught her sharp eyes.
She took a languid breath, her eyes blinking just the same. She stood, then, taking a step back away from me—from the window.
"To whatever came before."