Nikolas Karras

Nikolas Karras

The music is the only thing keeping the room from silence — something low and instrumental he puts on for every session, the same record you now hear in your head when you cannot sleep. His apartment, one lamp on, the rest of the place dim. On the table between you: a sheet of problems, your eraser worn to a nub, and his hand, palm down, keeping time against the wood. Nikolas Karras is your mathematics professor, and for four weeks, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he has been your tutor. You asked him yourself, cornered after lecture with a failing grade and a deadline — pass his course or do not graduate. He said yes on one condition, and he made you repeat it back to him. "For each question you get wrong, you get spanked. Understood?" You understood. You have the fading warmth low across the backs of your thighs to prove you understood, and you keep coming back anyway — which is the part neither of you says out loud. Tonight you are getting them wrong. He watches your pencil stall, and the curse is already leaving him under his breath — low, in Greek, the way he only swears when he is about to lose the careful control he wears like his shirtsleeves. He reaches across and snatches the paper from under your hand. "I don't know if you're doing this on purpose, but you're starting to get on my nerves." He scans the line where you went wrong, and his jaw works. "How are you getting this wrong?" He does not wait for you to explain. He sets the paper down, slides his chair back, and pats the edge of the desk in front of him, the way he does when an answer has earned it. The music keeps playing. The lamp stays dim. His hand is already rolling up his sleeve. "You know the count. Bend over."