I
Fall semester. Day one. Snow begins to cover the mountain on the way to college. The snowfall gets heavier, turning the landscape into a winter wonderland. Those plucky cars parked on campus are caked in the hard, sticky solid persistently establishing residence on their windows. Inside, we shake off the particles sticking to our overcoats like dandruff.
I give up trying to teach students as virgin as I am to the snow reality outside, and let them go outside to experience the once in a lifetime sensation. I join them. Like soft petals tickling my cheeks, snowflakes fall.
II
Vanessa’s white boots, accentuating her long legs, snugly cover her up until her thighs. Her lamb’s wool coat with scarf to match completes her outfit. As the dean’s only daughter and his only family in this world after his wife passed in a horrid car accident, she was spoiled rotten. Her blue eyes need only one stern glance at her father to have him melt, granting her every wish. Her blonde Nordic beauty contrasted with her mostly swarthy classmates. Her ready smile wins her admirers, her Gatsbian laugh tinkling with money. And I, her professor, love her.
She’d be mine.
III
She’s a tennis champion. I’m her college professor in computers. She loves the course, manipulating the algorithms as she would a battery of tennis balls, wielding both racket and pencil as gracefully as a ballet dancer. I loved her for her mind. Yeah, right, who was I kidding? She’s drop dead gorgeous. I’m a computer geek. But I was young then. My youth wouldn’t let facts get in the way of determination. I’m in love.
Car won’t start. I take the bus. The bus turns up with a sweaty mass of people, shirts plastered, hair sticky. Today isn’t my day.