Burial of the Dead

SEASONAL COLDS - Ann Dillon

ANN DILLON

With the black mini-puffball two inches from her lips and the razor line of shadow bisecting her smooth cheek, Ann Dillon walks about the well appointed office and tells the Vice Consul to the Romanian Ambassador that as Trustee and Chief Executive Officer of the Kost-O’Neal Charitable Trust, she will commit to the staffing and rehab of several orphanages dotting the Romanian countryside like the dark pebbles of bad memories. “We can do that,” she says, her voice a whispering rasp, thick with a cold brought on by a virus wrapped in Autumn’s changeable weather. “I’ll have to ask the Board about those other items,” she says, passing the second of four wall size windows, her fingers touching the velvet face of one rose petal, the whole time knowing there is no Board of Trustees, except for her, because she is the Board when she wears that hat and meets with herself in her office once every two months to do those things only the Board can do, directing herself as the Trust’s CEO to do those things only the CEO can do. “I’ve come a long way,” she says to herself, as she listens to the Vice Consul wrap up his part of the conversation, padding his closing remarks, maintaining a front, so serious and engaged, as indirect as romanita, old-world-aristocracy, comfortable with approximations and evasions designed to draft the borders of intention, meant to express what isn’t there, leaving for inference the implication of what is – a skill suited to children born last in large families who learn the value of never saying what they mean in order to get what they want.

“I’ve come a long way, indeed,” Ann tells herself as the Vice Consul takes another side-trip to Buffalo to get to Albany, and she edits him mercilessly, riding the sound, foregoing the sense, as she remembers the place from where she came – the air conditioned auditorium with the halogen lights, the almost imperceptible buzzing, the screech of folding chairs, when she struggled to take the Bar Exam with a summer cold and the menthol-medicinal lemon lozenges with the almost bitter taste. She remembers the proctor, the awful man who decided to ruin her life, the sweaty tall guy with the comb-over and serial killer eyes embedded in many-layered lenses, correcting for some strange astigmatism. She remembers how he stared at her from the moment she entered the auditorium, staring at her legs with his up-and-down eyes, never still, never settled, but wanting to see every part of her and loathing himself for being the kind of loser who looks at a woman that way, knowing he can never have her, but wanting her all the same and then hating her for it.

“His eyes,” she thought that morning in late July, all those years ago, were furtive little beads popping snatches of look-see as she struggled with her sore throat and then the cough that started mid-morning and bothered those around her. And yet she was so smart, so prepared, she sailed through it, her photographic memory scanning three years of law like turning the pages of a Time Magazine, taking the exam to satisfy her divorced parents, the trade-off for having ruined their lives and expectations for grandchildren – the trade-off for not liking boys.

The morning session ended with a bell ringing, and they collected the tests and she stayed at her seat and ate the sandwich she’d brought for lunch when he crossed the floor and stared at her again, making her hurry, making her finish her sandwich too quickly, making her stand up and walk away, too quickly, leaving some things behind, feeling something come off of him as she passed him, something desirous and pathetic, misshapen, and he repulsed her and he knew it and felt it, and it pissed him off.

The afternoon session called for essays, and she wrote until the bell rang when she put her pen down and looked around, rubbing her neck, thinking only of cool sheets, a warm bed and several weeks with nothing to do but rest and recuperate. The proctors collected the blue booklets and the guy walked down the other side of the room as Ann reached for the box of lozenges and put them in her purse. Then the guy crossed the room and told the woman collecting Ann’s booklet to stop. The woman stepped back; they whispered. He pointed to Ann, approached her from behind, tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to follow him. At first Ann refused until the woman proctor said it would be best if she just went along, and the three of them walked to a room behind a room behind a door in the far wall of the auditorium. The other proctors had gathered there and they were talking and laughing and drinking coffee from a huge coffee urn. Only one or two looked at Ann as she followed the awful man to another room where a little-woman (couldn’t have been more than four feet tall) sat on a raised chair behind a small desk, her hair pulled back in a bun, her mouth etched with a downward crease. She asked the guy what the problem was and the guy said he’d caught Ann cheating, and Ann protested and things began to spin out of control when the guy asked Ann to take the box of lozenges from her purse. Ann said he was crazy, but placed the small box on the desk before the little person. Then the guy told the woman to take out the white paper inside the box, and she did so, and there, in the smallest possible script, they saw figures and numbers and letters, handwritten, something like a code, and the little woman looked at it, looked at Ann and started to make phone calls.