She, up on her toes, turning like a favorite page in a book—awash in sunlight, smiles at me. I admire her dancer’s legs. Lean supple body.
She’s an athlete, yes—but in truth, as delicate as our relationship. The heart of her wounded and bled so many times it makes her vulnerable.
Imprudent.
I’m tender with her.
And have no remorse.
We met in the campus library. Fall semester.
She sat in a high-back blue chair, an opened book in her lap, one leg pulled up under the other, her lower lip pushed out in thought. It appeared as through she was looking out the window beyond anything she could see.
One hand traced the shape of her ear as if she was recalling what someone said—a promise, a pretty bit of praise—a bittersweet regret.
The late afternoon light caressed her face like an old friend and it seemed, that for her, no other person occupied the room.
I don’t ordinarily approach unfamiliar women without an introduction—especially students, but her essence—the depth of her, that autumnal melancholy drew me out of my own reticence—surmounted my sense of propriety. I sat in the chair across from her and waited. She came out of her reverie as if from a deep sleep. Coming to awareness in harmony with her thoughts.
Discovering me discovering her, she offered a small smile.
“Hey,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt, but wherever you were, that’s where I want to be.”
“Someplace private?” It was a gentle rebuke.
“Right.” I rose to leave.
“Stay. You can’t retreat with a line like that. Sit. What’s your name?”
“Colin.”
“Perfect. You look all Colinesy with your tousled hair and chiseled chin. I’m Sofia.”
“Greek. For wise woman.”
“Wow. Already you know me.” Another wry rejoinder.
I grinned—already hooked. “No, but I’m hoping that changes. What is Sofia reading?”
She held up the slim volume. “Keats.”
“Ah. An English major.”
“Minor. Dance is my major.”
And that is how we began.
Her beguiling aspect and droll manner captivated me. I walked her to a local vegan café. We ordered tea and strumpets—her word. She laughed at the joke. Laughter soft and laced with disquiet.
We spoke of dancing. The art of communicating without a voice. Choreographing. Her body the author of her thoughts. It animated Sofia—reflecting on movement through space. The freedom it allowed.
She impressed me as incredibly mature for a 25-year-old. A certain wisdom bred from circumstances I had no access to then encompassed her being.
I played to her quick smile—flashes of light that punctuated our conversation. That dispelled, briefly, shadows lingering in her aura.
An hour in and I felt we were intimates. Inexorably connected.
Me, the journalism professor. Sofia the good news I had been needing.
She leaned in to sip her tea and I brushed back a lock of hair from her face. Impulsively. Neither of us affected surprise. Our eyes met and I saw it, then. The tenderness of my gesture having released the profound wanting resonant inside. And just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished as she turned away having revealed too much.
Too soon.
“Come see me dance,” she said deflecting the moment. “Tomorrow night. In the Keller Center. The one with all the glass.”
“I know the building,” I said. “Love it.”
We exchanged phone numbers, and I left her there for my next class.
The Keller Center had won numerous awards for its innovative use of steel and interlocking glass panes. It soared and created in space just as the dancers fortunate enough to matriculate there. I looked forward to spending time in its provocative interior with Sofia gracing the stage and my thoughts.
Sofia Komza appeared prominently in the program. Dancing in four of the eight performances. Choreographer of the last—a work called Up Out of Myself. That piece burst onto the stage with exuberance. Almost defiantly. Movement fully in tune with the orchestration. I felt we audience members were voyeurs peeking in through a window at an artist expressing her private and intimate self. Uninhibited. Challenging even gravity.
Afterwards, in the airy lobby, I spotted her in contentious conversation with a thick-set man who seemed particularly persistent.
I recognized him and approached, but she waved me off.
Discomforted, I backed away and went home.
At nearly three in the morning Sofia called. “I’m out front,” she whispered into her phone. “Come get me.”
I slipped into my jeans and sandals and hurried outside without considering the circumstances prompting such a summons and found her huddled on the bus stop bench at the far corner. The overhead yellow lamplight masked her Romanesque features. I sat beside her. She leaned into me. The faint buzz of the streetlamp played over our tableau. Moths flitted recklessly with it.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“I was up anyway,” I lied.
“Liar,” she said.
“How did you get here?”
“Google and public transportation.”
A low-slung car approached. Slowly as if stalking the night. Sofia tensed. I put an arm around her shoulders and watched the vehicle pass, the engine rumbling. It struck me then that we were vulnerable to some sort of danger.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said.
“No, I don’t need him to know exactly where you live.”
“Should we call the police?”
“They’ll slap his wrist and send him back onto the field. Besides, it’s not what I want.”
“That football player,” I said ignoring the second part of her response.
“The football player.”
“Damn. Has he hurt you?”
“He apologized.”
“Seriously?”
“This is not your story, Colin. All right.” It wasn’t a question.
“Fine,” I said taking her meaning. “But you came here, to me, for a reason.”
“Is there an explanation for everything?”
She disarmed me again. “No,” I admitted.
“No,” she echoed speaking to herself.
“So. What do you want me to do? Now.”
“Hold me.”
“And?”
“Remember his name.”
His name peppered the sports pages of local newspapers and the campus Daily Journal of which I am, as a journalism professor, the faculty advisor. I certainly knew of him. A superb athlete who filled the stands with his prowess. A winner. A money-maker.
Mr. Personality.
I drove Sofia back to her apartment feeling helpless. I offered ineffectual and unsolicited advice which she acknowledged with her silence. It galled me to think this man-child celebrated by the community was being given a pass. Especially by Sofia. It seemed an unfathomable commitment. But what did I know—really? Being eight years her senior provided no special insight into the complexities of relationships. The often-convoluted dynamics of lovers.
At that point, I couldn’t even define the dimensions of my own growing attachment.
“Be careful.” were my parting words.
He scored four touchdowns in Saturday’s game against the arch rival. Out-of-town. Big news. Front page news, and I signed off on it with a grimace.
Sunday, I texted her. It couldn’t be helped. I couldn’t be helped. It seemed, yet, inexorable.
She had rehearsal, but upon my insistence would meet me at 4 in the Keller Center.
I found her on stage working out a series of moves—deep in concentration. Defying human kinetics, untethered from scrutiny, she danced her way through an interior story. I watched utterly enthralled and applauded rather too enthusiastically when she settled to the stage as if light as snow and just as translucent.
Unperturbed by my presence she looked up. “You’ll have to pay for that,” she said.
“Really? How?”
“We’ll see.” She stood and stretched. “Do you dance?” she asked—bent at the waist, hands on the floor.
“I’m not Nureyev, but I can cut the rug.”
“Cut the rug? What’s that from, the 19th century?”
“Nearly.”
She stood erect as dancers do and offered her hand. “Come up here. Show me.”
“That may not be entirely appropriate,” I said—checking her resolve regarding our student/faculty relationship.
“Did you think of that when you accosted me in the library?”
I had thought of it, of course. The university had no written directives banning adult student and teacher engagement, though it was discouraged for obvious reasons. Beyond that, in my defense, we were engaged in separate departments and I had no sway over her academics. If any of us enjoyed a superior position, it was Sofia.
Chastised and wanting—needing to be in close proximity to her, I clambered up onto the stage.
“I’m way out of my element here,” I said faced with Sofia and the lights.
“Okay. You follow,” she responded.
“He won’t be bothered?” I asked, accent on the he.
“He isn’t here. We are. Let it be.”
“Okay. Sorry. I’m all yours.”
That quick smile then, and she assumed my positions. Left arm around her waist. Right arm up and hand firmly grasped in hers. Then she stepped into me.
I breathed her in. She smelled of jasmine. Her leonine eyes burrowed into mine, and using the metronome in her head, she counted us around the stage.
Every one-two-three, one-two-three drawing me deeper and deeper into an infatuation neither time nor distance and possibly even death could extinguish.
At least, not mine.
We shared a pizza in the student union. It proved difficult to be understood for all the noise bouncing off the chrome and steel walls and fixtures. Outside, under a hundred-year-old olive tree, she shared her life.
How she grew up in leotards and dance shoes and emotional chaos. A childhood bookended by a father who drank too much and hurt too deeply and a step-father who spoke rarely and cared too little. Her mother cherished her daughter, but nurtured a career in community theater where she played in one farce after another and finally to devastating effect in the one featuring her own life.
Sofia buried her mother at 12 and remained suspectable to the whims of men and her wayward heart ever since.
She offered a laugh when she said that. An attempt at mocking the truth so it became something else. Deprecating what she knew to be fatal about herself. Taking on her Greek mythological heritage where even personal insight can’t overcome flawed nature.
She talked. I listened. Emersed in her story. Enraptured by the pastiche of her features—her striking aquiline nose, wide expressive mouth, dark eyebrows, flamboyant ebony hair. All together original and unapologetic.
I fixed her on my mind.
In parting, we hugged. I had cajoled her into making a date for a Saturday drive to vineyards an hour from the campus.
Her companion at an away game again.
I collected Sofia at her apartment. She looked glamorous I told her. Movie star sunglasses. Cocky houndstooth fedora. Red capris and white lacy top.
The drive to the vineyards took us through high rolling grasslands rimmed by the jagged remnants of volcanic mountains. Tawny and white antelope came quickly to alert as we motored past. They bounded away very much like the dancer Sofia was. She admired them.
I her.
Rune Vineyards had an open-air tasting bar covered with a jaunty cherry-red triangular canopy. It dipped and billowed in the slight breeze that riffled the surrounding thigh-high grasses making them appear as restless waves in an ocher sea.
I bought our five glass-tasting tickets and we started with a cabernet. Sat on the teal Adirondack chairs.
We were a long way from everywhere and let the moment settle.
“I taste cotton candy and peanut butter,” she said poking at my sensibilities.
“What? No arugula?’ I batted back.
“Just a hint, but that’s more than enough.”
We tapped glasses. A companionable gesture redolent as the October day.
“I’m happy you came along,” I said.
“I’m happy I was able to.”
“Able to.”
“Don’t start.”
“Can I simply ignore it? Can you?”
Sofia swung around to face me directly. “Friends know their boundaries if they want to remain friends,” she said
I understood the implication and not wanting to put her off tried a different tack saying, “You’re a special woman.”
She settled back in her chair. “I’ve been told.”
“By him.”
“More or less.”
“And when it’s less?”
“Damn. There’s your journalistic self butting in. Give it a rest. Drink and be merry, Colin.”
I did drink, but the wine didn’t dissuade me from saying what I felt and probing asked. “I wonder why you did come out with me?”
“What? The handsome, erudite professor needs reassurance.”
“More like clarity.”
“Don’t overthink it, Colin. We enjoy each other’s company. Right?”
“I care for you, Sofia. More than a little.”
“Already?”
“Is there a timeline?”
Sofia tipped her fedora acknowledging my return. “All right. Noted and appreciated. But don’t tell me I can do better. That’s been tried.”
“And?”
“People looking outside in don’t understand what they’re seeing, Colin. Examine your own life.”
Examine my own life, indeed. Two years married and a bitter divorce. The ardor then the acrimony. My marriage one more example of the perplexities of coupling. What right do I have to question Sofia? The challenges of two strangers each fraught with their own neurosis attempting to create a third entity beyond themselves ever baffling. It was for me. The point where lives intersect a delicate balance. A tenuous shifting between give and take. A Tolstoian arrangement where every unhappy couple is a story unto themselves. In my case, a story I couldn’t, yet, properly appraise. If I’m unable to apprehend my own affairs, I thought, how could I reflect on Sofia’s? Judge hers.
“I was right before,” I said, “Sofia translates to wise woman.” And saluted her with my empty glass.
She forgave my intrusion with that flash of grin. “Now, let’s try the pinot noir,” she said.
We did. And she dug into my own life. The death of a sibling in a car accident. Enlistment in the military. Passing muster as an elite Navy Seal. She lightly mocking ‘my warrior mentality’. That marriage. My jumping through the hoops of academia—fast-tracking to a PhD. A nascent writing career.
We took our time with the wine and each other.
I refrained from any further scrutinizing of Sofia’s current relationship. Let her come to it as she would. And she did drift there. In truth, she needed to talk about it. Consider it. How he lifted her up when she had been hurt and unable to perform. The unencumbered exuberance of his manner and physicality.
It was clear, the push and pull of him compelled and mystified her. Their intricate dance. Their impassioned duet and the inadvertent missteps. The falls from grace.
It’s those falls that nagged at me. Became magnified in my imagination. Created images that incited my—protective impulse.
One other vineyard later, we drove back to the city. I dropped Sofia off at her apartment. She hesitated before opening the car door.
“Today was good, Colin. Very good,” she said as if testing the sentiment, and kissed my cheek.
“I’m glad,” I said.
“You give me—perspective. Something I know I need.”
I watched her walk away. Boyish hips in rhythm, up off her toes. I watched and wondered at my own…intoxication.
The following week, I worried for her. Stoked speculations about our improbable future. Caught what I thought were glimpses of her everywhere on campus which brought me to alert and heightened my senses.
I texted her several times, but received no responses, and being taken up by my classes and the Daily Journal, I neglected our—acquaintance.
That week later, having put the paper to bed and finished scoring student essays, I came up for air and being in the vicinity of the Keller Center, tried the main entrance doors. They were locked. As I turned to leave, my peripheral vision caught a shadow darting across the lobby. Sofia. I knocked on the door window. She hesitated. I knocked more insistently and signaled for her to let me in.
She considered—appeared trapped between escaping or giving way. I gestured ‘what-the-hell’ which seemed to tip the balance in my favor and she pushed on the panic bar allowing me entrance.
Even in the dimly lit lobby I saw the bruise. Alongside her left eye. She couldn’t keep it from me though it was clear she wanted to.
“What happened, Sofia?” I demanded.
“Don’t, Colin.”
“That son-of-a-bitch.”
“He doesn’t know his own strength.”
“That’s utter bullshit, Sofia.”
“It’s not entirely his fault. I’m not always there for him.”
“That doesn’t give him the license to slug you.”
“I hit back.”
“What sort of a relationship is that?”
“Don’t even tell me you’re an expert on relationships,” she snapped at me.
I backed off. “Fine. But I can tell how I feel. It hurts seeing you like this.”
“Is that helpful?”
“It could be, but the—abuse has got to stop.”
“How? How, Colin?!” The defiance and desperation in her voice stalemated us.
We glared at one another. Me dumb-struck for, in truth, I couldn’t answer her. I was enraptured myself.
Still, I heard in her question the sense of complicity. The anguish of a heart and mind in battle with one another. The lucidity of knowing and the keenness for needing. A mirror for my own emotional state coming into full flower, and having no reply to her question, I mutely and oh-so-gently fingered her bruise.
My tenderness elicited tears. They glistened in her eyes. She ached to be reconciled, but remained unable to explain herself, even to her own satisfaction.
But who among us can?
And the rising to anger at the injustice of such injury engulfed me. I clenched my hands to fists.
Life, thus far, may have convinced her she warranted such abuse, that love and pain were companion pieces—inseparable, but I wasn’t having it. I had breathed her in and nurtured an allegiance that now demanded proof of my commitment
Proof of my sincerity.
Sofia sensed my burgeoning outrage.
“I need you to leave, now, Colin,” she said. “Please.”
I slammed out of the Keller Center aflame with images of him battering her—the cock-of-the-walk preening in public, assaulting Sofia in private.
It consumed me, surmounted reason. If she couldn’t free herself, I would.
And after I found out where he lived, duty impelled action.
Confrontation.
And when he attacked me, when he attacked me—
It was so damned easy persuading him to find another mark.
It’s three days later. Her bruise is fading.
I’ve made her dinner. Chicken Kiev. A favorite.
She wonders where he’s been.
I defer.
What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
Anymore.
*****
Gavin Kayner’s plays, prose and poetry have won numerous awards and appeared in a variety of publications.
