10. One Client Left - Lords of Serendipity

Later that same day, Allard walked the four floors of the brownstone where Arcadia’s data science TAs had their offices. Confirming he was the only person in the building, he closed the door to his office and placed his laptop on the desk. He took out a notebook. Inside the notebook were the names of all the students who had paid him to ensure their final grade for STA 105 was at least a 76.

He paused, surveying his materials. He was ready to begin. He felt like a priest, a surgeon, a painter, a general.

Allard logged in to the university’s grading system.

He opened his notebook. It was, actually, a grade book. It had a British racing green cover with Teacher’s Record Roll embossed in gold cursive. His mother gave him a new one every Labor Day. She was pleased he took this traditional approach to this work while everything else about him was “computers.”

Allard placed a ruler under the top name on the gridline page and started going back and forth from page to screen, section to section, changing grades for the 120 students on his list for the fall semester.

But two things happened, this cool and windy Thursday night in late October, just as Allard was changing Jan Fung’s grade from a 67 to a 76. Actually three things. For his whole post-puberty life, Allard had experienced a vaguely sexual feeling whenever he inverted a number. But he was used to that, so it wasn’t a distraction. Instead, the distraction was the black screen of his phone, sitting beside the grading book his mother had given him. He’d turned his phone off to avoid her calls. Ever since Patricia started working from home—after whatever had happened at the Haven library—she had been texting and calling him with unprecedented frequency. And he was generally consistently good, he thought, about acknowledging receipt, even answering now and then. Just not when he had to do his grading work! But what if she was calling not out of her usual needy, greedy boredom? What if she was calling because living by herself, confined to that little apartment above the used bookstore, with nothing to look forward to the next day, she just needed someone, and he was the only person willing, however barely, to be needed by her?

Allard turned on his phone and saw his mother had in fact been trying to reach him.

He texted that he was still grading and that he would call her on his way home. She texted back within seconds, which didn’t feel great. How long had she been sitting there, by herself, staring at her phone, waiting for him to reply?

He sighed and went back to work. Remembering where he was, he changed Jane Fung’s grade to a 76 and kept going, reaching Vartan X. Tovmanian when someone tapped on his office window.

It was early evening but already dark outside. With the light on in his office, he couldn’t see who it was.

Another tap. More of a rapping.

However you plotted it, the probability of a neutral or positive outcome to approaching the window and letting an unknown person into the office of an empty building was very, very low. But what if someone had been recording him changing grades? That probability was even lower than the probability of something good coming from going over to the window. And wasn’t he just another graduate student working late at his desk?

Another rap. Now lots of rapping.

This is how mistakes are made. Panic. Distraction. Overthinking. Not thinking enough. Changing the plan, even when you know the plan is sound, the plan has been working, the plan is working, the plan will continue to work if you don’t change the plan.

While someone kept banging on his office window, Allard continued with his grade entries. He finished, logged out of the grading system, shut his laptop, and put it in his backpack. He put on his jacket and turned off the lights and walked out of the office, at which point the window noise stopped, at which point Allard stopped.

The unknown person was running around to the front of the building.

Allard was going to be confronted coming down the stone steps, and then what? Be asked for wallet, cell phone, laptop? Get beaten up? Get filmed? Get filmed getting robbed and beaten up? While not particularly athletic, Allard was a bigger guy. And he was solid. Lard Hamburger, the kids used to call him. Knowing how she reacted to being called Patty, he had never told his mother. But he’d jumped on a couple of them in the field behind school and gone spread-eagle and wouldn’t get off until they agreed to call him Pancake. It would probably take a weapon to hurt him, or the unknown person would have to be into martial arts or ex-military.

Allard snorted.

This was why it was good to study statistics. An English graduate student with these same thoughts would already be calling campus police and writing a poem. A statistician would know that the likelihood of an extreme negative outcome to meeting a stranger in front of a public building on an early evening in late October, with students everywhere, was negligible.

And if he was wrong?

Lard Hamburger. Pancake.

Allard went through the front door. No one was there. As in, no one: not students, and not any unknown person, either. The only sound was crashing waves. Across from the department was a raised grass embankment that ran the length of the road. On the other side was a freeway. There was a pedestrian bridge nearby, used mostly by runners and by old people reading paper newspapers on its wrought-iron benches. The students called it the Beach because of the sound of passing traffic and the bald lawn.

Allard shrugged and descended, deciding that after a grading session like this, he deserved take-out ramen instead of microwave ramen while he checked the latest Google Alerts about his father.

Excuse me.

Allard continued walking.

Excuse me! Excuse me! Excuse me!

Allard turned around.

Walking toward him slowly, cautiously, black bags under his eyes showing in the yellow lamplight, was a skinny young brown man in dark blue jeans and scuffed brown shoes. His jacket was open, showing a red Staples shirt. His hair was greased down and he had a scraggly beard. He was holding a beat-up portfolio held together by rubber bands, with papers sticking out, torn and crushed.

Can I help you?

You already did. Remember?

No.

I took STA 105 in freshman year. Three years ago. You were my TA.

Okay. I’m sorry, but I teach hundreds of students a year. If you want to discuss it, my office hours are—

I paid you for at least a 76.

Allard looked around. No one else was nearby. Was it good that no one was nearby?

The young man hadn’t come any closer.

Listen, I’m not sure what you’re looking for here, but I will remind you that I continue to retain—

I know, I know. No recording devices, okay? And I know you still have scans of my student visa and passport. You will always have my papers. I burn you, you burn me. Because what do we have? I still remember what you told me. See? I did learn something. I learned that we have an alignment of interests. A reciprocal investment. A symbiotic relationship. A marriage. Until death do us part. Now do you remember me?

Allard looked at the young man more closely. He remembered the words, but he used them with a lot of students. He did recall a conversation with a British-sounding Indian student on his way to C-suites who told Allard he already had a tutoring business of his own. Had he become this homeless-looking kid, standing in front of him?

Okay. What was your name again?

Adi Bhopal. My tutoring clients call me Johannes.

Right. And you received the grade you insured for yourself. Anything else?

I’m graduating this year.

Congratulations.

I’m applying to graduate school.

Best of luck.

I need higher than 76 in STA 105.

When you signed up for my service, I told you what you would be offered.

No. I mean, yes, I know that. I’m not asking you to change my grade, officially. I don’t have time for that.

Then what? I also told you, there’s no refunds.

No. I don’t want a refund. I want to take the STA 105 exam in December. You grade it and write a letter saying what my new grade would be, if I was taking the course now. And I’m going to study. I’m really going to study. I won’t sleep or eat or anything. Just study. And I’m not asking for any help, you know, that other way. Just let me take the exam, grade the exam, and tell them my real score. Whatever I get, fair is fair, and then you write the letter stating what my overall grade would have been.

Why don’t you just take the course again in the winter?

No money for an extra course. Just let me take the exam in December. Please?

So you want me to find a way to let you take an exam in a course you’re not enrolled in, then grade the exam, then write a letter saying what your grade would have been?

Yes. Exactly. Thank you.

Allard shook his head.

I don’t do that kind of thing. Here Allard stood a little taller, slinging his backpack for effect. Frankly, I’ve said this before, and I will say it again, to whoever asks, I don’t care how much money you offer me—

No!

Allard stepped back.

No. Sorry. Just, you don’t understand. I have one client left, and she’s just a poor village girl from Sri Lanka who thinks she’s going to Harvard someday. I pick up shifts at Staples and deliver food to other students.

I don’t follow.

I’m out of money! And I’m out of time! But I’m not trying to cheat. I’m asking you, can you just help me? Can you actually, actually help me?

Allard said nothing.

It’s life or death for me, okay? Because if I don’t get into that program I lose my visa and then I need to leave the country and then my brother would be here by himself and my parents spent all this money on my studies and they’re planning to emigrate and if I get a graduate degree that will help get a green card and then I can sponsor them and I’m older than my brother so this is my duty. This is my duty. They did all of this for me and so I just have to do this one thing for them, okay? I need higher than 76 and then I can do this for them, okay?

Johannes looked down and made a helpless gesture with his hands.

I don’t have another option. I can’t go home like this.

Do you really think a letter from me, about what you scored retaking an exam for a course you took three years ago, is going to help you get into graduate school?

Just help me.

And you’re not offering to pay me.

Correct.

Okay.

Okay? As in, you’ll help me?

No. As in, good luck to you.

Johannes nodded, chewing on his lower lip.

Help me. Just. Come on. Please. Help me. Let me write the final exam again.

Allard turned around and walked away, his ears straining through the crashing cars crashing waves, straining to hear someone running after him. His shoulders tensed for when he got pushed, jumped, stabbed. But nothing. And when, eventually, Allard turned around, Johannes was gone.