![What you did matters. Or, The Girl With The Number Tattoo #4
Marguerite pushes the heavy door open and thinks, these slow-heads will never help me, not to open the door, nor to lift a suitcase, lifts her badge to the guards, waves it in front of them, as they yet again didn’t notice, takes of her leather jacket and leaves her cross-over on the belt, walks through the detector, is pleased that this time her boots didn’t beep, collects her belongings, and walks towards the elevator. She is a fine young woman, fairly tall at 5’7, her long curly dark blonde hair curls over the light brown leather jacket, she walks swiftly towards the elevator, pushes a strand of hair from beneath the bag’s belt, her high heels clicking on the stone floor, she doesn’t look right not left, boots, legs, woolen tights, black miniskirt, grey merino top, chanel nr. 5 and the long curly honey-colored hair, and in the middle of it all Marguerite’s face, that lovely , and yet somewhat strict face of Greek statue, with a straight nose, large eyes, high-set eyebrows and fair, not somewhat pale, skin. She had highlighted her eyes with smoky lines, and set on a triple coat of mascara; it was Wednesday, and one of the older fellows were supposed to talk. Well then, Wednesday it is, she thought before, putting a coat of mascara after another, and deciding for the suede leather boots, those that went almost over her knees.
She was younger than she looked; she was really just 31, but then, she had been out with her thèse since five years only. Her parents had sent her to a boarding school in Ville de Québec when she was twelve, “pour tu civiliser un peu, ma chérie”, followed by a BA at the Université de Montréal, and for her thèse, she first went to Duke, didn’t like it, left for her aunt’s to Paris, and wrote in three years at la E.H.E.S.S. Et c’est-ca, there she was, 26, a doctorate in hand on comparative political analysis of semi-genocidal multi-language areas. She liked political science, it was exact, you could read ten pieces and come up with an idea, she didn’t have to write beautifully, nor did she have to produce a book. Soon, she was up-and-running for a assistant professorship for modern comparative poli-sci, and got it, with a little help of her French friends. Indeed, she learned to play the foreign card, because she had been abroad, and others werent’t. It was a bit cruel, having been out there and fun, while those who stayed in boring Ontario (and what could be more dull than that) suddenly had a player’s disadavantage. Alors, she started to teach, Pareto, Max Weber, and bits and pieces of that German Herfried Muenkler, offering courses on the conflicts in Bosnia and honor’s course on comparative genocide, published, and then there she was, with an early tenure, a year off coming, and decided to pursue that old idea and do a close analysis of Swiss cantons during the Holocaust, the border policemen taking in Jews, the meso- and macro level. She could do Italian well, was often enough in Nice, and the neighborhood; and then there had been Hans, her off- and on boyfriend throughout the first three semesters in Paris; she could deal with German, especially with the civilized, Swiss German, without the crude ß and the Nordic unpleasant sentence melody. Alors, Switzerland it was, an obvious, safe topic, on which noone knew anything, let alone the poli-sci colleagues; and she would get to fly plenty to Europe, and change in Paris, and generally have fun. It was a great plan! To get a hang of things, she applied to a fellowship at the Holocaust Museum, and got it, soon enough. Et alors, there she was, sharing a fellows study with another seven wonderful human beings, charming PhD students, who, although historians and/or German and Eastern Europeans (well isn’t it the same, really), were decisively so much more fun than the senior people from the large main room.
Mon Dieu! She will never forget the first day at the Center. This young woman with unfortunate hair color and eye-make up of a sick panda-bear, wearing an ill-fitting pant suit, introduced her group to more and more miserable looking, middle aged, overweight men, who looked like they have never lived. She has never seen such an amassment of men with whom she didn’t want to sleep with — if she didn’t count the American Politological Association’s annual meeting, but that was a different category altogether.
As she walked into the library, she noticed groups of people standing together and quietly talking, there was an unpleasant silence and some gravity. She didn’t like it when things happened she didn’t know about. What was this? She speeded up, and walked into the study, and headed for Emilia, her favorite; she was antropologist at the Brooklyn College, living together with her Palestinian partner, Leila; in DC, they moved into a housing project in Capitol Hill and threw amazing house parties on Friday evening. Leila was a vegetarian, prepared mass amounts of colorful salads and delicious spicy soups, and always had a stuffed shisha and great lesbian exploitation videos ready.
Emilia, always composed and oriented, looked today bit beside herself. Chérie, what’s the matter?
-They found Ethan dead yesterday.
- Ethan? you mean the intern?
- Marguerite! he was not an intern! he was a special fellow, you know, the Australian exchange!
- ah well. Special exhange. I remember him filing the ITS files most of the time. Anyways, who found him?
- Deirdre did. She was pulling a late night and then she saw his body and blood-
- I always tell you, there is no point to work here after 4 pm. All use you have from it is that you find dead people. If you are a nerd, you spoil your teint, posture, and have to deal with police. Where is Deirdre now?
- They let her go only today at 8 am, apparently! Interrogating her all night. Noone at the Center answered her calls, so it took so long until she eventually reached someome and they had a sent there their lawyers.
- Merde! that is awful. What a band of chaotic bastards. Bon, as for me, I am pretty certain it was Ethan’s tranquilizers. He was on them all the time. He must have lost balance trying to get on the folders up on the shelf — he would always reach standing from his chair. Thse bastard pills can be dangerous, I tell you. Équilibre, and all.
With these words, Marguerite puts down her cross-over, throws her jacket over the chelf, switches on the ancient computer they were given, and decides to read the latest Brubaker book on inter-ethnic conflicts in Rumania she was saving for a day of trouble. She loved Brubaker’s writings, but they were dense, and she could use dense reading today. Tomorrow would be another day.
24 hour, 180 pages, 643 footnotes, many graphs and several described orgies of violence later, indeed, it was. She went to the librarians to return the Brubaker book, thought she may want to head later with Emilia for a martini and talk a bit about this antro-touch on reading the violence texture these kinky sociologists did lately, it seemed. May be that could go to one of the bars on Logan and she could check out some cute guys. She smiled, unconsciously, at this plan, and then noticed someone staring at her. Peter. One of the senior scholars. An aging guy, once handsome, whose peak was undeniably beyond, but he wouldn’t notice. He was still fun and smart in his own way, but he had an annoying habit of getting too close to her.
-Marguerite, my sunshine, always bring the smile of the morning!
[This is too cheesy to be believed, she thought]
- Peter, good to see you. What’s up?
He came even closer, so she could smell his aging breath and a certain unpleasant smell older men seem to evaporate — perhaps they eat too much meat? — talking about some New Yorker article on some policial scientist’s theory on the inner-Bosnian state conflicts.
- Thank you so much, Peter. I will look into it. If you excuse me now-
She tapped him on the shoulder, and with a wave of hair and energetic hip movement, walked away. Peter, the old creep, reminded her of something else she almost forgot. Or someone. Adam, the real-thing-Europe-sources analytist, fresh from Berkeley, sat in his cave of an office, lunettes en écaille on his nose, in one of his black shirts, remaints of hair, and a happy tommy cat belly. Ever since Marguerite laid her eyes on him, there was something distinctly endearing to his person, a je ne sais quoi.
So she took up a sport of dropping bye, teasing him mildly, waving her hair, touching her neck, talking of this and that and nothing much in particular; he sat back, first unconcentrated, then confused, eventually happy as a child. He was her pet project. Edmund Hillary said of Mount Everest he wanted to climb because it was there; she had Adam.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leoj3vmPfB1qcytr8o1_500.jpg)
What you did matters. Or, The Girl With The Number Tattoo #4
Marguerite pushes the heavy door open and thinks, these slow-heads will never help me, not to open the door, nor to lift a suitcase, lifts her badge to the guards, waves it in front of them, as they yet again didn’t notice, takes of her leather jacket and leaves her cross-over on the belt, walks through the detector, is pleased that this time her boots didn’t beep, collects her belongings, and walks towards the elevator. She is a fine young woman, fairly tall at 5’7, her long curly dark blonde hair curls over the light brown leather jacket, she walks swiftly towards the elevator, pushes a strand of hair from beneath the bag’s belt, her high heels clicking on the stone floor, she doesn’t look right not left, boots, legs, woolen tights, black miniskirt, grey merino top, chanel nr. 5 and the long curly honey-colored hair, and in the middle of it all Marguerite’s face, that lovely , and yet somewhat strict face of Greek statue, with a straight nose, large eyes, high-set eyebrows and fair, not somewhat pale, skin. She had highlighted her eyes with smoky lines, and set on a triple coat of mascara; it was Wednesday, and one of the older fellows were supposed to talk. Well then, Wednesday it is, she thought before, putting a coat of mascara after another, and deciding for the suede leather boots, those that went almost over her knees.
She was younger than she looked; she was really just 31, but then, she had been out with her thèse since five years only. Her parents had sent her to a boarding school in Ville de Québec when she was twelve, “pour tu civiliser un peu, ma chérie”, followed by a BA at the Université de Montréal, and for her thèse, she first went to Duke, didn’t like it, left for her aunt’s to Paris, and wrote in three years at la E.H.E.S.S. Et c’est-ca, there she was, 26, a doctorate in hand on comparative political analysis of semi-genocidal multi-language areas. She liked political science, it was exact, you could read ten pieces and come up with an idea, she didn’t have to write beautifully, nor did she have to produce a book. Soon, she was up-and-running for a assistant professorship for modern comparative poli-sci, and got it, with a little help of her French friends. Indeed, she learned to play the foreign card, because she had been abroad, and others werent’t. It was a bit cruel, having been out there and fun, while those who stayed in boring Ontario (and what could be more dull than that) suddenly had a player’s disadavantage. Alors, she started to teach, Pareto, Max Weber, and bits and pieces of that German Herfried Muenkler, offering courses on the conflicts in Bosnia and honor’s course on comparative genocide, published, and then there she was, with an early tenure, a year off coming, and decided to pursue that old idea and do a close analysis of Swiss cantons during the Holocaust, the border policemen taking in Jews, the meso- and macro level. She could do Italian well, was often enough in Nice, and the neighborhood; and then there had been Hans, her off- and on boyfriend throughout the first three semesters in Paris; she could deal with German, especially with the civilized, Swiss German, without the crude ß and the Nordic unpleasant sentence melody. Alors, Switzerland it was, an obvious, safe topic, on which noone knew anything, let alone the poli-sci colleagues; and she would get to fly plenty to Europe, and change in Paris, and generally have fun. It was a great plan! To get a hang of things, she applied to a fellowship at the Holocaust Museum, and got it, soon enough. Et alors, there she was, sharing a fellows study with another seven wonderful human beings, charming PhD students, who, although historians and/or German and Eastern Europeans (well isn’t it the same, really), were decisively so much more fun than the senior people from the large main room.
Mon Dieu! She will never forget the first day at the Center. This young woman with unfortunate hair color and eye-make up of a sick panda-bear, wearing an ill-fitting pant suit, introduced her group to more and more miserable looking, middle aged, overweight men, who looked like they have never lived. She has never seen such an amassment of men with whom she didn’t want to sleep with — if she didn’t count the American Politological Association’s annual meeting, but that was a different category altogether.
As she walked into the library, she noticed groups of people standing together and quietly talking, there was an unpleasant silence and some gravity. She didn’t like it when things happened she didn’t know about. What was this? She speeded up, and walked into the study, and headed for Emilia, her favorite; she was antropologist at the Brooklyn College, living together with her Palestinian partner, Leila; in DC, they moved into a housing project in Capitol Hill and threw amazing house parties on Friday evening. Leila was a vegetarian, prepared mass amounts of colorful salads and delicious spicy soups, and always had a stuffed shisha and great lesbian exploitation videos ready.
Emilia, always composed and oriented, looked today bit beside herself. Chérie, what’s the matter?
-They found Ethan dead yesterday.
- Ethan? you mean the intern?
- Marguerite! he was not an intern! he was a special fellow, you know, the Australian exchange!
- ah well. Special exhange. I remember him filing the ITS files most of the time. Anyways, who found him?
- Deirdre did. She was pulling a late night and then she saw his body and blood-
- I always tell you, there is no point to work here after 4 pm. All use you have from it is that you find dead people. If you are a nerd, you spoil your teint, posture, and have to deal with police. Where is Deirdre now?
- They let her go only today at 8 am, apparently! Interrogating her all night. Noone at the Center answered her calls, so it took so long until she eventually reached someome and they had a sent there their lawyers.
- Merde! that is awful. What a band of chaotic bastards. Bon, as for me, I am pretty certain it was Ethan’s tranquilizers. He was on them all the time. He must have lost balance trying to get on the folders up on the shelf — he would always reach standing from his chair. Thse bastard pills can be dangerous, I tell you. Équilibre, and all.
With these words, Marguerite puts down her cross-over, throws her jacket over the chelf, switches on the ancient computer they were given, and decides to read the latest Brubaker book on inter-ethnic conflicts in Rumania she was saving for a day of trouble. She loved Brubaker’s writings, but they were dense, and she could use dense reading today. Tomorrow would be another day.
24 hour, 180 pages, 643 footnotes, many graphs and several described orgies of violence later, indeed, it was. She went to the librarians to return the Brubaker book, thought she may want to head later with Emilia for a martini and talk a bit about this antro-touch on reading the violence texture these kinky sociologists did lately, it seemed. May be that could go to one of the bars on Logan and she could check out some cute guys. She smiled, unconsciously, at this plan, and then noticed someone staring at her. Peter. One of the senior scholars. An aging guy, once handsome, whose peak was undeniably beyond, but he wouldn’t notice. He was still fun and smart in his own way, but he had an annoying habit of getting too close to her.
-Marguerite, my sunshine, always bring the smile of the morning!
[This is too cheesy to be believed, she thought]
- Peter, good to see you. What’s up?
He came even closer, so she could smell his aging breath and a certain unpleasant smell older men seem to evaporate — perhaps they eat too much meat? — talking about some New Yorker article on some policial scientist’s theory on the inner-Bosnian state conflicts.
- Thank you so much, Peter. I will look into it. If you excuse me now-
She tapped him on the shoulder, and with a wave of hair and energetic hip movement, walked away. Peter, the old creep, reminded her of something else she almost forgot. Or someone. Adam, the real-thing-Europe-sources analytist, fresh from Berkeley, sat in his cave of an office, lunettes en écaille on his nose, in one of his black shirts, remaints of hair, and a happy tommy cat belly. Ever since Marguerite laid her eyes on him, there was something distinctly endearing to his person, a je ne sais quoi.
So she took up a sport of dropping bye, teasing him mildly, waving her hair, touching her neck, talking of this and that and nothing much in particular; he sat back, first unconcentrated, then confused, eventually happy as a child. He was her pet project. Edmund Hillary said of Mount Everest he wanted to climb because it was there; she had Adam.
