The Control by M.W. Layne

Author:M.W. Layne [Layne, M.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

IT’S EARLY SATURDAY afternoon, and unlike my residents who are engaged in properly fun college pursuits, I’m on my laptop digging for anything I can find about a Russian TA with red hair named Jim.

He’s not listed on the Russia and Slavic Studies home page. But eventually I come across a single photo of him, caught in mid-discussion, speaking with Professor Sulke.

I save it to my desktop, but the photo is not captioned, and I glean no details from it.

Social media yields better results.

A Reddit thread about Russian as a second language seems the kind of place a Russian TA might hang out online. And indeed, one of the admins regulating a debate about whether Russian is more difficult to learn than English has a profile photo that looks a lot like Evil Jim.

After an hour poking around archived threads, I find his name on the site.

Andrew Wilson.

Not Jim or James or anything even close.

Just Andrew—the same name he gave me under the overpass.

I pound my fist into the sofa cushion, but I follow through and search for Andrew in the student directory.

With his first and last name, I find him quickly, and when I look into his eyes, I’m still certain that, somehow, he is Bev’s ex. But even so, Jim is not a nickname for Andrew, no matter how I look at it.

I curse and curse until a student photo next to Andrew’s offers a possible explanation. Jerold Lynn Smith has listed his middle name, and Andrew hasn’t.

After a quick scan of the page, I see that plenty of students didn’t include their middle names when they signed up for the student directory. I know I didn’t.

Maybe Bev’s ex is Andrew James Wilson. After all, going by Jim would be better than being known as Andrew or Drew.

This is all conjecture, but it’s all I have.

I do another quick search to confirm the class where I ran into Evil Jim meets twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I don’t want to miss another lunch with Bev next week, but I have to learn more about Evil Jim before I lose my mind.

When I close my laptop, done being a private eye for the day, Bev texts me, telling me what time she wants to come over and asking for my address.

I respond, but she doesn’t continue the conversation.

After rubbing my eyes harder than I should, I scan my living room. It’s claustrophobic in here and dusty, like the apartment where my parents and I lived until I was ten—and like Mooken’s office—although not nearly as cluttered as either.

I have none of Mom’s collectible figurines or her crocheted blankets. And none of Dad’s books or his music CDs. My college apartment is filled with my things and contains nothing that would evoke unwanted memories of home. It’s comfortable and familiar here, and I like it as it is. But I also want to make a good impression for Bev, and there’s a lot to clean before she comes over this evening.

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