'By observation?'
'By observation. They sat together, they giggled together like much younger people. They clung together in the hall during the break. They held hands. They whispered. I've been in love, or infatuated, or both many times. I know it when I see it.'
'Tell me about Luis,' I said. 'Is he Hispanic?'
'Yes, from Proctor, and like many Hispanics in Proctor, I fear he is very poor. The college runs an outreach program for the disadvantaged, as they like to call them. It sets aside a certain number of scholarships for the community and Luis took advantage of one of them.'
'How old?'
'Luis? A bit younger than Lisa, perhaps, say twenty-six, twenty-seven.'
'Does he have an accent?'
'Not very much, enough to discern, but nothing to impede communication.'
'What else?' I said.
'Luis, like Lisa, was very bright, but very uneducated. Most of what he knew that was germane to my classroom, he learned from television and movies. I am not entirely sure he knew where film ended and life began.'
'`Germane to my classroom'?' I said. 'Why the qualifier?'
'Because I have some sense that he knows many things about life in the Proctor barrio that I cannot even dream of.'
'Is he in any of your classes this year?'
'No. I'm a visiting professor here so I can do some postdoctoral study at Brandeis. This is my one class of the semester.'
'He still enrolled at the college?'
'I don't know. Dean Fogy can tell you. I don't believe he was entirely comfortable in an Anglo academic setting, even this one.'
'He ever come around to see Lisa before class or after?'
'Not this year.'
'Any observations you've made on Luis you'd like to share?'
'In some ways he was quite formidable. Very tall. Athletic looking.'
'How tall?'
'Unusually tall. Taller by several inches than you. Though not perhaps as thick. How tall are you?'
'Six one.'
She looked at me appraisingly for a moment.
'He was probably six feet four or five,' she said. 'Very intense, full of machismo. I know that is said of many Latin men, but Luis did tend to strut.'
She leaned back a little and closed her big eyes behind her huge glasses and thought for a moment.
'And yet he was also very innocent,' she said. 'He believed in absolutes, in the kind of world you see in television movies. Good is always good. Bad is always bad. Nothing is very complicated, and what is once is forever. He imagined the kind of life that one would imagine if one grew up staring at television. No experience seemed to shake that imaginative conceit.'
'You wouldn't know where he lives?'
'No, I'm sorry. I guess I'll have to refer you once again to dear Dean Fogy. The college must have an address.'
'Anyone named Vaughn in Lisa's class?'
'Not that I recall.'
'You know anyone named Vaughn?'
She smiled.
'There was a baseball player named Arky Vaughn,' she said.
'Yes there was,' I said. 'Pirates and Dodgers. Probably not our man.'
'Horace Walpole and Arky Vaughn,' she said. 'I am impressed.'
I gave her my card.
'If there's anything else that you think of, no matter how inconsequential, please call me.'
'I'll be pleased to,' she said.
I started for the door and stopped and turned back. 'I have met a number of professors,' I said. 'And none of them were notable for honesty, humor, lack of pretense, and ability to observe. What the hell are you doing here?'
She smiled at me for a moment and then said, 'I came for the waters.'
