'How did they finally get tripped up?'
'Tax evasion. They got greedy.'
'I see. Then your uncle actually could show up for an accounting one day?'
'There is always that possibility. Of course, there have been very few successful revivals.'
'The possibility doesn't trouble you?'
'I deal with things as they arise. So far. Uncle Albert hasn't.'
'Along with the university and your uncle's wishes, I feel obliged to point out that you are doing violence in another place as well.'
I looked all around the room. Under my chair, even.
'I give up,' I said.
'Yourself.'
'Myself?'
'Yourself. By accepting the easy economic security of the situation, you are yielding to inertia. You are ruining your chances of ever really amounting to anything. You are growing in your dronehood.'
'Dronehood?'
'Dronehood. Hanging around and not doing anything.'
'So you are really acting in my best interests if you succeed in kicking me out, huh?'
'Precisely.'
'I hate to tell you, but history is full of people like you. We tend to judge them harshly.'
'History?'
'Not the department. The phenomenon.'
He sighed and shook his head. He accepted my card, leaned back, puffed on his pipe, began to study what I had written.
I wondered whether he really believed he was doing me a favor by trying to destroy my way of life. Probably.
'Wait a minute,' he said. 'There's a mistake here.'
'No mistake.'
'The hours are wrong.'
'No. I need twelve and there are twelve.'
'I'm not disputing that, but-'
'Six hours, personal project, interdisciplinary, for art history credit, on site, Australia in my case.'
'You know it should really be anthropology. But that would complete a major. But that's not what I'm-'
'Then three hours of comparative lit with that course on the troubadours. I'm still safe with that, and I can catch it on video-the same as with that one-hour current events thing for social-science credit. Safe there, and that's ten hours. Then two hours' credit for advanced basket weaving, and that's twelve. Home free.'
'No, sir! You are not! That last one is a three-hour course, and that gives you a major in it!'
'Haven't seen Circular fifty-seven yet, have you?'
'What?'
'It's been changed.'
'I don't believe you.'
I glanced at his IN basket.
'Read your mail.'
He snatched at the basket; he rifled it. Somewhere near the middle of things he found the paper. Clocking his expressions, I noted disbelief, rage and puzzlement within the first five seconds. I was hoping for despair, but you can't have everything all at once.
Frustration and bewilderment were what remained when he turned to me once again and said, 'How did you do it?'
'Why must you look for the worst?'
'Because I've read your file. You got to the instructor some way, didn't you?'
'That's most ignoble of you. And I'd be a fool to admit it, wouldn't I?'
He sighed. 'I suppose so.'
He withdrew a pen, clicked it with unnecessary force and scrawled his name on the 'Approved by' line at the bottom of the card.
Returning the card, he observed, 'This is the closest you've come, you know. It was just under the wire this time. What are you going to do for an encore?'
'I understand that two new majors will be instituted next year. I suppose I should see the proper departmental adviser if I am interested in changing my area.'
'You'll see me,' he said, 'and I will confer with the person involved.'
'Everyone else has a departmental adviser.'
'You are a special case requiring special handling. You are to report here again next time.'
'All right,' I said, filing the card in my hip pocket as I rose. 'See you then.'
As I headed for the door he said, 'I'll find a way.'
I paused on the threshold.
'You,' I said pleasantly, 'and the Flying Dutchman.'
I closed the door gently behind me.
Chapter 2
Incidents and fragments, bits-and-pieces time. Like- 'You're not joking?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'I'd rather it looked like hell for the obvious reasons,' she said, wide-eyed, backing toward the door we had just come through.
'Well, whatever happened, it's done. We'll just clean up and ... '
She reopened the door, that long, lovely, wild hair dancing as she shook her head vigorously.
'You know, I'm going to think this over a little more,' she said, stepping back into the hall.
'Aw, come on, Ginny. It's nothing serious.'
'Like I said, I'll think about it.'
She began closing the door.
'Should I call you later, then?'
'I don't think so.'
'Tomorrow?'
'Tell you what, I'll call you.'
Click.
Hell. She might as well have slammed it. End of Phase One in my search for a new roommate. Hal Sidmore, who had shared the apartment with me for some time, had gotten married a couple of months back. I missed him, as he had been a boon companion, good chess player and general heller about town, as well as an able explicator of multitudes of matters. I had decided to look for something a bit different in my next roommate, however. I thought I had spotted that indefinable quality in Ginny, late one night while climbing the radio tower behind the Pi Phi house, as she was about her end-of-day business in her third-floor room there. Things had gone swimmingly after that. I had met her at ground level, we had been doing things together for over a month and I had just about succeeded in persuading her to consider a change of residence for the coming semester. Then this.
'Damn!' I decided, kicking at a drawer that had been pulled from the desk, dumped and dropped to the floor. No sense in going after her right now. Clean up. Let her get over things. See her tomorrow.
Somebody had really torn the place apart, had gone through everything. The furniture had even been moved about and the covers pulled off the cushions. I sighed as I regarded it. Worse than the aftermath of the wildest of parties. What a rotten time for breaking and entering and breaking. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods, but it was
