At the end of last June, I saw my neighbor in the dormitory apartment moving out.
He handed me some books and a few belongings. They weren’t things I truly needed, but I accepted them anyway. I knew how exhausting it was to move from New Mexico to Wisconsin, and I decided it was fine to take them even if I later gave them away or set them aside. That day, Madison was unusually hot.
When I went to his apartment to bring him a drink, I saw him through the slightly open door. He was sitting against the wall in a corner of the empty room. I knocked. He accepted the drink, and we exchanged a few words.
He told me he had lived there for five years. He had finished graduate school, but the job market was bleak and he still hadn’t found a position. For the time being, he said he would stay near campus, though he didn’t know where he would go afterward. As a foreigner myself, I understood exactly what that meant.
No longer a student, if he failed to secure a job within a month, his visa would expire and he would have to return home. I told him that my husband’s contract was also nearing its end and that we were in a similar situation.
We both needed luck.
Market volatility had grown under the policies of the Trump administration, and opportunities for foreigners became even more limited. Although he said he would stay nearby, he only returned to the empty apartment in the dead of night and slipped away before dawn, when no one was around. His movements were captured by the camera at the front door. One day, I noticed a bag left by the back entrance, holding toiletries and a pillow.
A few days later, the dormitory hired a cleaning company for a thorough service. After that, he never returned. When a new neighbor moved in, I disposed of the bag on his behalf.
Quite some time has passed since then. The news has gone beyond simply being “bad” and is growing increasingly frightening.
Even so, I hope that luck found him. And for us, too, it feels like a time when we may once again need luck.