Down the Rabbit Hole is a new section of The Mirror that showcases student work from across campus. Submissions of all genres are welcome — please send works of 3,000 words or fewer to mirror@thedartmouth.com. The following is a work of fiction.
It started on a dreary summer evening in 2001. I remember the day well. I’d been at the ham radio club meeting at the community center earlier that night and was sitting at my computer with a Miller Lite in my hand -— just sitting there, minding my own business, sipping on my Miller and reading news and maybe checking out a few cat pictures or whatever.
That was when I saw her, on the left side of my screen in a banner ad, winking at me from a green and yellow rectangular frame. She had green eyes with blonde hair and little dimples on her cheeks — she was very beautiful.
I felt self-conscious for a moment (since after all I was sitting in front of a computer at 2 a.m. on a Monday morning with six empty beer cans in front of me and my left hand down my pants for the reassuring feeling it gave me). I started to get a little anxious, the kind of anxious you get when you realize all your friends have girlfriends and mortgages and you’re still pretty into your joint-rolling skills. I looked down at the keyboard, then back up at the woman. “Alexa, Age 31,” read the caption underneath her in sparkly script, and I marveled at the coincidence.
The more I sat there watching her, the more I felt like I knew her. She had a tight smile and a mischievous softness in her eyes that made me wonder which of the many secrets we shared was on her mind. She looked like she could enjoy a nice Miller Lite from time to time. My pulse quickened. I thought about teaching her radio:
“Calling O4ZAS, this is N24RC. I’m here with my smoking hot girlfriend ... just, uh, FYI.”
The caption caught my attention and I read its entirety for the first time:
“Alexa, Age 31. Alone in house? Wish have beautiful lady make feel new? Pick face, see it soon!”
The website was based in Poland. My breathing tightened. I watched my cursor begin to make its way to the left side of the screen, felt my pointer finger twitch on the mouse. With no small effort I managed to peel my palm away and set it gingerly on the desk.
I closed the browser window, cracked a brew and leaned back in the worn leather chair. I gave myself a little kick and spun a few circles as I gazed up at the ceiling. I saw the woman engraved there, smiling down at me. Her face was filled with kindness and her mouth with Miller Lite.
There wasn’t much going on for me that summer, aside from teaching a remedial English class on American literature where my students showed up blazed and left bored. I didn’t forget about Alexa. It was silly, really. I was an amateur radio operator, a denizen of the internet, a high school teacher for the public schools of Cleveland and a fan of “Lost.” She was posing for a mail-order bride advertisement in Poland.
Besides, the whole mail-order bride thing always kind of creeped me out. Who would want to sell the rest of their lives so they could come here to eat cheeseburgers, pay for health insurance and get screwed over by the electoral college? Not me. Wouldn’t pay for someone to do it, either.
Still, I found myself returning to the same sleazy websites every couple of weeks hoping to catch Alexa’s face on another banner ad, maybe have the composure to take a screenshot this time. And every once in a while, when I’d had a few beers and could justify it to myself, I would browse Polish directories of international marriage brokers and look for her eyes. I don’t remember finding them.
I grew up on the western coast of Canada in British Columbia, just a few minutes outside of Vancouver. It was a good place to grow up, and it’s true what they say about Canadians being nicer. They couldn’t give a shit about how good you are at sports or the money you make or how bad I am at making eye contact. In Vancouver we lived in the kind of neighborhood that doesn’t seem to exist anymore — a little street in a little neighborhood where the road saw more roller hockey games than cars. The memories are fond.
When I was 14 years old, we moved from Vancouver to a suburb of Chicago for my dad’s work. He was pretty excited about the whole idea — our new house had a long driveway, and he got a thick stack of gold-embossed business cards. The picture-perfect town of Lake Forest had manicured lawns, an old market square, good schools, big houses and a community sailing program. When we showed up, we were assigned a welcome family to help settle us in: the Papastefans. The father, Tom, was a soybean trader, thick around the middle, and his wife Valerie was a delicate extrovert who always seemed a bit fatigued when she wasn’t at a party. Their daughter, Sarah, avoided me for reasons that were a little unclear, probably because I had a high-pitched voice and she was too preoccupied with steaky dudes and her eating disorder.
The Papastefans’ front lawn gleamed green and sported the permanent imprint of a fresh mow. Their double-entried driveway wrapped around an absurd granite fountain, the kind with little naked stone babies standing and pissing everywhere looking fancy. I hated that fountain, and I quickly came to hate Tom and his soybeans, too, and eventually the whole goddamn town.
About a year after I first saw Alexa staring back at me through my computer screen, I took a glance at my email inbox and dropped the beer I was holding. Four emails down, below an IHOP advertisement, a Drudge Report newsletter and a bank statement was an email from an address I did not recognize. It read, “Thank you for business! Your beautiful Polish lady depart today on ship for America. She arrives nine days and looks forward very much to meet you. Your friend at, GLOBAL PARTNER SEARCHES, INC.”
I tensed for a moment and then relaxed, the message was clearly a scam of some sort. I jumped over to Google and did a search. The top link was unambiguous:
“Beautiful Polish girls look for love and marriage in America! Be no more lonely! Best price all of Europe!”
I had an uneasy feeling. Was it a scam? Or maybe ... but how the hell could that have happened? Would they give me a refund? I found the company’s phone number and dialed it. The air around me was very warm. I began to sweat.
“Hello?” A man with a heavy accent greeted me, his voice distorted by the 4,400 miles between us.
I spoke quickly.
“Hello, my name is Nicholas Black, and I’ve just received an email about some woman coming to visit me? Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Oohoo, Mister Black! So good to hear from, you! You will be happy, your bride has just left for the States this morning!” he exclaimed. My eye twitched.
“My ... uh ... what?” I whispered.
“Bride! Remember? You asked special. Very excited,” he replied.
“What is her name?”
“Everything is okay, Mister Black? We talked before. Remember?” he asked.
“What is her name?” I repeated, losing patience. I tensed.
“Of course, her name is Alexa. You know. Green eyes. Very beautiful.”
* * *
She arrived at my door nine days later, in a pair of khaki shorts and a loose-fitting shirt. She had a small leather suitcase, the kind without wheels. It was Alexa all right, though her eyes were more bluish than green and her dimpled cheeks had evaporated into a thin face with sharp cheekbones.
“Hello, Alexa,” I intoned, trying to disguise my racing pulse.
“Hello, Neek,” she replied with a restrained smile and a husky accent.
She looked nervous, too. I offered her a drink. As it turned out, she didn’t mind Miller Lite but preferred vodka. She certainly was beautiful.
I tried to think of something to say as we sat in the den sipping vodka sodas. It was four in the afternoon.
“So, uh, how was your trip?”
She looked startled by my question. “It was good, Neek. Maybe — how you say? — too small.”
“You mean, uh, cramped?”
She gave me a look telling me she had no idea what that meant.
“You know, cramped. Too many people in a small area,” I clarified.
She nodded absentmindedly, head swiveling as she took in the den and what she could see of the kitchen. Then she looked back down at her vodka, then up to me. She looked satisfied.
“What is your job, Neek?” she asked me innocently.
“I am a high school English teacher,” I answered. Her face leapt into a smile.
“You can teach English to me!” she exclaimed. I chuckled.
“I suppose I can try, Alexa, but I’m used to teaching Americans who already speak very well.”
“Well, you can try?” she asked hopefully. I nodded.
“Are you hungry, Alexa? Do you want to get some food? There’s a Polish place around the corner you might like, or we could try some American food.” Her nose wrinkled and her eyes lit up.
“I do not want Polish food. I do not want Polish anything. We are in America, I must be American!”
And so it went — that night we ate cheeseburgers from the B Spot a few blocks away while I gave her a primary school history lesson (“There was a great man, who never lied, named George Washington ...”). The next day, we went to a shooting range. I stood behind her and supported her hands as she chewed through 12 gauge shells with a grin on her face like a 10-year-old kid who’d forgotten to take his Ritalin. I took her to City Hall, and we stood under the dome, and I explained American politics as best I could. She liked to sit and watch me use my radio, and she smiled when I introduced her as my girlfriend. It was all very exhilarating.
The next day we went out for a drive, and I was in a talkative mood. I told her a bit about my childhood cat, Chester, and she explained the best ways to make pierogi — if the dough won’t seal, add some water (and apparently they put prunes in their dumplings over there ... seriously). Half an hour outside Cleveland, we found ourselves on a big road in a wealthy neighborhood. Kids played on their lawns as we cruised past, wielding baseball bats, street hockey sticks and other weapons of terror.
After a few minutes, Alexa pointed out a magnificent house. I pulled over so we could inspect it. The cast iron gate was wide open and the driveway could be seen circumscribing a tiered stone fountain. I was reminded of the old Papastefans back in Lake Forest.
“It is beautiful,” Alexa remarked, pointing at the fountain before us. I didn’t disagree.
By Taylor Cathcart '15.
