yancey’s decision about leaving school was made for him. yolanda disappeared.
one day yancey came home from school and yolanda just wasn’t here. her device was gone too. yancey had never seen the table in the apartment without it.
there was nothing on the table or on top of the television.
he knew right away that she was gone, had deliberately left. he checked her bedroom. the bed was made. the closet was almost but not quite empty, as were the drawers in her dresser. the top of the dresser was bare, and there was nothing on the little table beside her bed but the lamp which had always been there.
she had not left a note - she didn’t use paper much - and she had not left any phone or other device behind. and no cash money - yancey would have been astonished if she had.
yancey thought for one second about calling the police. but only for one second.
he had enough in his account for a few days. he would tell xenia tomorrow that he was ready to start full time, and he would call the school to tell them he was leaving.
but he would not be able to continue paying the rent. he would have to notify the rental office tomorrow. when he did that, and told them yolanda had just disappeared, the people at the rental office might ask if he had called the police. if they did, but he did not expect that they would, then he would contact the police.
xenia might be able to help him find a cheap place. at the back of his mind was the thought that she might invite him to move in with her - yeah, right. if she could not help him, he would probably have to throw himself on the mercy of the revolution.
tomorrow was time enough for all that. he was surprised, but not completely shocked at yolanda’s departure. she had been casually threatening to leave for years.
he wondered if she had left anything in the refrigerator.
it did not look like she had taken anything from the refrigerator.
yancey made himself an avocado and banana sandwich on soy bread. it was one of his two nights off at the restaurant, or he would have waited to eat there.
he decided to flip through the channels on the television instead of reading the book he had taken from the library. yolanda had always watched what she wanted to watch.
*
yancey tried the history and the alternate history channels. he could never understand between the difference between “history” and “alternate history” although he had heard it explained several times in school., the last time by a teacher that there was “no clear line” between the two.
the show on the history channel was called “the rose and the wind”. the title did not seem to refer to anything in particular in the story, which concerned the war between genghis khan and saladin. according to the subtitle, it was the second episode of ten.
the alternate history show was titled “the wind never surrenders” and was about the rebellion of mumfaz mahal against churchill. it was the twentieth episode of twenty-four, so yancey decoded to watch the show about genghis and saladin.
saladin had been taken prisoner by genghis and held in a dungeon beneath a gladiatorial arena. saladin was to fight seven battles to the death in seven days, each against a different beast, monster ,or mongol hero, and if he survived them all he would be given a mule and allowed to make his way back across a thousand miles of desert to his own camp. so great was the mercy of genghis.
as a further complication, every night that saladiin survived he was to be visited by a different beautiful woman. would the lovemaking help or hinder him in his efforts in the arena? the question was discussed at length in scenes in genghis’s harem, with the conversation led by the emperor’s wife, played by the famous actress lucy loo. lucy loo was, of course, secretly in love with saladin, and engaged in various plots to free him.
yancey enjoyed the scenes of saladin’s lovemaking with the beautiful women, and also the scenes of battle in the arena, but the women’s spirited arguments and ragging on each other in the harem put him to sleep…
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