Five years on, Will has almost forgotten about the incident with Professor Evans. It’s clear from the moment that Alekhine arrives that he has not. It’s all he talks about.

Will has been living alone since Chloe moved out six months ago, so there’s room for a permanent houseguest. In a lot of ways it’s a relief to have someone around. In the weeks before Alekhine arrived, Will had started making excuses to not go home, for example staying at the bar after his coworkers left, drinking draft beers and waking up with a hangover that felt, he told people later, like someone had covered him in sugar and left him on top of an anthill.

Things, Will thinks, have changed. In college, their friendship was defined by his awe of Alekhine. It was defined by the force of Alekhine’s charisma, by his active, rangy, scheming intelligence. Alekhine came up with the ideas and Will helped carry them out. It helped that Alekhine was brilliant. Even his silly ideas, like choosing to go by his last name after finding out about the famous chess master, seemed inspired.

It’s Friday night, and Will and Alekhine are playing FIFA. Will is up three, thanks mostly to Aubameyang’s pace. “It’s like a cheat code,” Alekhine keeps saying — he’s said it after every goal and he’s said it a few other times. He pretends that he’s kidding — or at least capable of taking it well when the Arsenal striker runs around his center backs — but Will can tell he’s angry. He’s beyond angry. He’s irate.

Will lives in a little house about a mile and a half from campus, in a mixed neighborhood of students and professionals. It’s an up-and-coming area: his neighbor plays cello in the city symphony. Will’s front door is red, and it’s offset on either side by cypress trees that are starting to overtake the roof. Like most everyone else on the block Will’s one-thousand square feet are cooled by an industrial air conditioner, which rattles constantly as it pummels the city’s one-hundred-degree summers.

Alekhine throws the controller down after Will’s fourth goal. “I’m bored,” he says. “Let’s go out.”

The bar they pick isn’t a college bar, but for whatever reason it’s full of college students. This doesn’t seem to bother anyone on staff, though the place is pitched to adults with its Edison bulbs, bow-tied bartenders, and fourteen-dollar cocktails.

Will and Alekhine sit at the bar. Alekhine is talking about what he’s been doing for the past five years. Will knows most of it but he likes Alekhine’s stories. “Did I ever tell you I worked on a couple of episodes of SVU?”

“Maybe?”

“I was a PA for a while. I freelanced for a production company. They did Law & Order and I worked on three of those. I met Ice-T.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah it wasn’t bad. The money sucked though.”

“I guess it’s one of those things where you have to be able to afford to break in. Like you can only do it if you can figure out how to work for free for a year or two.”

“More like three.”

“It’s like being a TA.”

“Yeah. You know how much I owe from that year? In loans.”

“Nope.” This is a lie. Will has a good sense of the number. He just doesn’t want to guess.

“Seventy.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Meanwhile Evans has tenure.”

They end up hanging out with a group of college kids: two guys and a girl. Will watches Alekhine chat them up on his way back from the bathroom. He waits to be asked over. He feels some version of their old dynamic resuming. There’s a surge of joy when Alekhine gestures towards him.

Crossing the bar, Will thinks that he’s been Alekhine before, selling college kids on a look at their future. The hangouts always follow exactly on the premise. The kids are interested until they’re not. They want to know what adulthood is like while being certain that they won’t end up like Will. I’m doing great, Will always wants to tell them. Sometimes he does.

Then he arrives and it’s all Alekhine. Alekhine is telling the kids about winning the history department prize. He looks at Will for confirmation. “He did,” Will says. Then, Alekhine tells them about a giant party they had to celebrate. It was probably just a mid-sized party but Will agrees again. “Two hundred people,” he says. “Everyone.”

“Any of you have Tony Evans for Civil War?” Alekhine asks.

“I have him for America in Transition,” the girl says. Her name is Celeste. “It’s about the Civil War.”

“I guess he changed it. Wanted to make it sound more sophisticated.”

“It’s more about the causes. And also the influence now.”

“How is it?”

“Interesting.” She drinks, looks at them. “Honestly, he seems kind of bored. I guess after you write that many books…” Alekhine cuts her off:

“Also, he’s fucking old.” Celeste doesn’t respond and the mood at the table cools palpably. “Anyway, you guys want to hear a story about him?” The group shrugs.

“So basically, he took bribes from like fifteen students. For grades. It was a huge thing our year. Remember Will?” Will nods even though the story is completely made up. “Everyone knew about it and people we knew were getting called into the Dean’s office. Then, it just went away.”

“Weird,” Celeste says. Her friends look dubious. Finally, one of them speaks up.

“Bullshit. There’s no way that would stand.”

“Tenure man.”

“Whatever.”

“You should try it,” Alekhine says to Celeste. He grins at her. “Why not?”

“My grades are good. Thanks anyway though.”

“Yeah, well, he always liked girls,” Alekhine replies. “Bit of a pred honestly.”

Celeste looks at her friends, who look at Celeste. “We’re going to get the check.”

+

Over the next week Alekhine does two things. First, he creates burner emails using the names of students he finds on Facebook. From these he spams the dean and the head of the history department with accusations against Professor Evans. These mostly involve cheating. Some involve the professor having said inappropriate things in class.

Second, he enlists various local barflies and other people he meets to call both departments and reiterate the accusations.

Will doesn’t find out about either of these activities for several days. He has to work and Alekhine never mentions it. Their dynamic drifts back towards its historical normal. Alekhine tells Will about everything he did that day and Will listens. Alekhine makes plans and Will tells him he’ll come along. When Will doesn’t come along Alekhine makes him feel bad. He makes him feel like he missed something life changing.

Alekhine tells Will about the emails and phone calls on Thursday night. They’re at a table on the back deck of a local beer bar. They’re surrounded, completely surrounded, by kids from the university. “Do you think we blend in?” Alekhine asks. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.”

“Yeah, I think about it too. Like I don’t feel old, but all these kids think we’re old.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’ve been calling the university. As a student. To tell them about Evans. All the shit he’s done.”

“What?”

“Like his department and the dean.”

“What are you saying to them?”

“A lot of stuff.”

“Like about you and him?”

“Of course not. They wouldn’t care about that.”

“So what are you saying?” Alekhine explains. At some point Will cuts in and says the obvious: that none of it is true. Alekhine tells him that it doesn’t matter. It’s emotionally true.

“You should stop. Seriously. This can’t end well.”

“I’m not going to stop.”

“Please.” Will pauses, drinks. “I talked to my boss. I thought you could come work with us. The money’s good. There’s room to grow.” Alekhine responds by asking him to call the dean.

+

Alekhine first encountered Professor Evans during Junior year. He was in the professor’s Civil War class and things were, as far as anyone could remember, uneventful. Alekhine finished the semester with an A-. This was one of his weaker grades in the major, but not weak enough to mean much.

Later, Alekhine would say that the Professor always had it out for him. By junior year, Alekhine was the uncontested star of the history department. He’d had dinner with several professors, was being pushed by the department head to carry straight through to graduate level studies. His article on the early-nineteenth-century U.S. economy had been published in a reputable journal. The Dean of Students knew his name.

It was a bit strange how little interest Professor Evans expressed in Alekhine during their semester together. This could — until later — easily be explained away. Other students deserved attention, too. And maybe Professor Evans was annoyed by all the acclaim Alekhine got. Maybe he didn’t buy it. Maybe he found it ridiculous to call a twenty-year-old kid a genius.

Things got stranger in the Master’s program. Alekhine stayed focused on U.S. history and served as a TA on a unit about the American Revolution. For the most part, his interests centered on the earlier years of the American republic so he rarely crossed paths with Professor Evans.

Will was working in marketing at that point, at the job he had before his current one. He saw Alekhine on weekends. They went drinking. Will usually paid.

Over drinks, Alekhine told Will about a newfound interest in the Civil War. “I was thinking it’s kind of the real thing that made modern America. That and Reconstruction. Everything now, good and bad, came from that period.”

He then explained that he’d found an error in the historical view of that team, an error that many historians, including Evans, had made. “I’m writing a paper on it. A big one.”

For a while, that was all there was. Will would see Alekhine and amidst their talk of girls and work and people they knew, the paper would come up. It was moving along. Alekhine was confident.

A few weeks before he finished, he asked Will over to his apartment. Alekhine was living in TA housing, in a low-rise brick building on the edge of campus, just across the street from a sushi restaurant and a dive bar.

What Will would remember later was Alekhine’s excitement. He had discovered something new. “Think about these people’s lives, Will,” he said. “You walk for days to somewhere you’ve never been. It’s hot. The food sucks. Your friends are dead all around you.”

“Yeah.”

“We think we understand things, but we barely understand anything.”

A few days later, he submitted the paper to his advisor. Some amount of time after that, his advisor slipped the paper to Evans.

Thinking about it later, Will marvels at their naivete. Of course, the advisor went to Evans, they were colleagues. And, of course, Evans knifed him.

Within a month, Evans had reported three “plausible instances of plagiarism” from Alekhine’s time as an undergraduate. Two were in his course. At his hearing, the department head showed Alekhine the papers. “These sections were cited in my originals,” he said. “I have the copies.” The feeling was he could have doctored those. Really the decision had been made. It was a formality. The levers of power were pulled. He got to keep his Bachelors. Otherwise he was out on his ass.

Alekhine stayed with Will for a few weeks after the department delivered its final verdict. He was mostly silent, empty and crumpled like a paper cup lying in the road. Then, he moved to New York and five years passed.

+

After the bar, Will and Alekhine go home and watch Ninja Warrior. Alekhine rolls a joint. He’s good at it. He uses his pinkies to catch the weed as it spills off the edges.

Watching him, Will finds himself thinking about Evans. He’s been trying, since Alekhine arrived, to put himself in the shoes of the then fifty-something professor. On the surface, he can understand the motivation. Alekhine was a threat. Even at twenty-seven he understands the tenuousness of things, the need to find and preserve your place.

Still, he tries to imagine how it felt to let the façade of authority slip and to reveal the desperate, scrambling person underneath. He tries to imagine Evans sweating in his office as he doctored the papers. Will thinks that maybe he could be that person. He has a bit of authority now and knows what it feels like to put the mask of power over his soft inner self. Then again, you weren’t supposed to act on those feelings. One of the responsibilities of authority was not to let slip how scared you really were.

They smoke the joint and go to bed.

+

On Saturday night Alekhine meets a girl at one of the country bars downtown. She’s wearing a light green dress with a gold pattern that shines in the neon. She’s standing next to them at the bar, singing along to a Johnny Cash song. Alekhine asks her to dance.

This, too, feels like college. Will orders another drink, looks around. It’s packed. People are clumped together all the way up to the stage, which features a middle-aged man in a black cowboy hat and black boots. He’s playing a green resonator guitar. This makes Will think of the Paul Simon song — shining like a National guitar. The guitar isn’t a National though.

They’re at a different bar when Alekhine asks the girl to call the Dean’s office. “Sound distraught,” Alekhine says as he presses the phone to her ear. Her name is Joey, but she gives a fake one on the phone. The name she gives is Meghan Marcus.

There’s a moment right before the machine beeps when her face shifts from unfocused to serious. Her mouth slacks, her eyes narrow and glaze slightly. “I’m calling about Tony Evans.” Her voice comes out through her nose in a way that sounds like a clarinet reed.

+

Things continue like this. All day — while he’s at breakfast, while he’s at work, when he’s at home — Will has the sense of Alekhine moving in the shadows. He can almost hear his friend furtively typing, whispering accusations into the phone. He starts to worry about his IP address. He starts to worry that they’ll track things back to him and put him in jail.

On Thursday, Alekhine tells him about the hearing. “With Evans. Next week. Closed door.” For the first time, Will thinks that Alekhine might pull off his plan.

Later, Will won’t be able to explain how Alekhine convinced him to go to campus on the day of the hearing. He won’t be able to explain how he ended up standing less than a hundred feet from the entrance to the main administration building, on the edge of the staff parking lot, under a cherry tree. In his memory there’s pollen and white buds blowing in the wind around his head. They blow up like a tornado. None of it will make sense.

He and Alekhine stay under the tree for a long time. “I just want to see him come out,” Alekhine says. He says this several times as the afternoon passes.

When it happens, it seems to happen in slow motion. The administration building features a grand set of front steps that run high enough that the main entrance is on the second story. They’re granite, banded by a pair of stone lions.

Evans emerges through the front, closes the big door behind him. He walks down the stairs. He looks concerned but not concerned in the right way.

Evans hasn’t even hit the parking lot before Alekhine is on him. “Remember me?” he asks. Alekhine’s voice is raised but he’s not yelling.

“I’m sorry?”

“You should be.”

“I should be?” Evans seems bemused. Will thinks that the meeting must have gone in his favor. He also thinks that he should get out of there. He should grab Alekhine and go. He starts towards his friend.

“You know who I am,” Alekhine says. “I know you know who I am.”

Evans looks at him again. He looks him up and down. They’re about the same size, similar builds. Evans is fit for an old man.

“I guess I have you to thank for my meeting?”

“I’m sure lots of people want to meet with you.”

“Well you’ve had your fun.” The tone is, “I’m still the adult here.”

So Alekhine shoves him. Evans stumbles backwards but doesn’t fall. There’s two ways for things to go after this point, and they go the less likely one. Evans shoves Alekhine back. Then, he raises his fist and punches Alekhine. He aims for his head but Alekhine — who is surprised — manages to dip to the side. Evans’ fist hits his ear. “That hurt,” Alekhine grunts. It’s a compressed sound, an angry pop from the center of his body. This is now a real fight.

Will is standing about five feet away. He’s on a red brick path that links the parking lot to one of the college’s lawns.

For the first few moments he still feels like grabbing Alekhine and running away. But Evans is holding his own. Seeing his friend hit, shoved, generally at risk, triggers something in Will. He feels the anger take over.

It’s a blur, but Evans is on the ground. Will has shoved him from the side. The professor has caught himself and is trying to get up. “Stay down,” Alekhine yells. He kicks Evans. Will kicks him, too. They’re kicking him. That’s what they’re doing.

A crowd has gathered. Will and Alekhine look at each other. They don’t need to speak. They both turn, run. They head through the parking lot, for the road. They’re next to each other. They’re laughing. They’re going to run all the way home.

+++