“ICAN’T SEE SHIT,” SIMON GRIPESas he and Dez share the map from Dez’s folder on their way to orientation. They’ve left their residence hall, traipsing down an astonishing ten flights of circular stairs to reach the bottom of the Towers. Now they’ve pushed through a heavy wooden door and find themselves at the entrance to the tri.
Dez is dressed in jeans, a luxe white cashmere sweater, and a bone-colored parka with a fur-rimmed hood, all found in her new closet. She feels like an imposter, but at least she’s comfortable in the lightly falling snow.
“Just because theycanmake it midnight perpetually,” she says as the two of them start trudging across the triangular courtyard, “doesn’t mean theyshould. What about our circadian rhythms?”
“Were you not at that party last night?” Simon says. “I think the only rhythm anyone cares about is getting pounded. Hard.”
“Did you hear Yael this morning, too?”
“Twice today, twice last night. She almost gave me a heart attack with that scarf this morning.”
“How’d you end up at Acheron, Simon?” Dez asks, half smiling. “Where are you from?”
“Cherokee Nation, northwest Oklahoma. Small town, huge family,” he says, catching a snowflake on his tongue. “I already miss them, you know?”
“I miss my family, too,” Dez says, and takes a breath. “My brother’s in the hospital.”
“Shit. What happened?”
“He was in an accident,” Dez says, looking down at her boots.
“He gonna be okay?”
“I hope so.”
“And you came here in the midst of all that?” Simon says, looking over at her. She feels like he’s getting it. Not all of it, but some of it.
“I guess it seemed like …” Dez starts to say.
“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?”
“Right.” She pulls up the hood of her parka. She needs to change the subject. “So, did you apply to other programs?”
“About a dozen. Nowhere else for film. When I got the letter in the mail, I was shocked.”
Dez blinks at him as they come to the end of the tri. To a dark, windowless building made of cold gray stones. “What else did you apply for?”
“Peace Corps,” he says, holding open the door for Dez. “A Shamanic initiation in Peru. Internship at an aerospace engineering startup, total lunatic CEO. This underground music promotion in Tokyo. I’m basically looking for the most fucked-up thing to do at any moment.”
Dez nods as they enter the building, but she’s confused that Simon might have studied so many other things, taken any number of completely different life paths. Dez would be a filmmaker anywhere, even if she hadn’t gotten into a single school. She would be a filmmaker in the afterlife.
They’re standing in a foyer lit by candles wedged in severe wrought iron wall sconces. The chill feels heavy, ancient. There’s a closed door labeledLECTURE HALL, and from within, a rich, baritone voice booms:
“There are two types of Acheron students. Who can tell me what they are?”
“We’re late,” Simon says, and scrambles for the door. “I got the low-down from some last-years at the bar last night, and we’re never supposed to be late to Zarlengo’s class.”
“Who’s Zarlengo?”
“Teaches film theory,” Simon says. “Apparently, everyone hates him.”
By the time he and Dez slip inside the lecture hall, every marble desk seems to be taken. The professor, a weathered man in his sixties, paces a raised dais in the center of the huge room.
Zarlengo’s harsh expression seems to support this reputation. His raven-black suit matches the classroom’s heavy drapery, and his black suede cowboy hat shades all his features but a narrow silver beard.
He glances in Dez’s direction—just as Simon claims the last available seat.
“Would you like a gold leaf invitation to join orientation?” Zarlengo says to Dez.
