Monitor, and wait for her to make the first move. He nodded thoughtfully at the botched quotations and oversimplifications in the article.
Sarah was aware of this; she had watched him page slowly and intensely through the paper, waiting with mild dread for him to get to the back page, see the picture and say something embarrassing. Instead— even more embarrassing — he actually read the article, and before he reached the bottom of the page, the student ahead of Sarah stomped out and she found herself impaled on the azure gaze of the chief bureaucrat of the College of Sciences and Humanities. 'How,' said Mrs. Santucci crisply, 'may I help you?'
Mrs. Santucci was polite. Her determination to be decent, and to make all things decent, was like that of all the Iranian Revolutionary Guards combined. Her policy of no-first-use meant that as long as we were objective and polite, any conversation would slide pleasantly down greased iron rails into a pit of despair. Any first strike by us, any remarks deemed improper by this grandmother of twenty-six and player of two dozen simultaneous bingo cards, would bring down massive retaliation. Sarah knew her. She arose primly and moved to the front chair of the line to look across a barren desk at Mrs. Santucci.
'I'm a senior in this college. I was lucky enough to get an out-of-Plex apartment for this fall. When I got there today I found that the entire block of buildings had been shut down for eight months by the Board of Health. I went to Housing. Upon reaching the head of that line, I was told that it was being handled by Student Affairs. Upon reaching the head of the line there, I was given this form and told to get signatures at Housing and right here.
Mrs. Santucci reached out with the briskness that only old secretaries can approach and seized the papers. 'This form is already signed,' she informed Sarah.
'Right. I got that done at about one o'clock. But when I got to my new temporary room assignment it turned out to be the B-men's coffee lounge and storeroom for the northeast quad of the first sublevel. It is full of B-men all the time. You know how they are— they don't speak much English, and you know what kinds of things they decorate their walls with'— this attempt to get Mrs. Santucci's sympathy by being prissy was not obviously successful— 'and I can't possibly live there. I returned to Housing. To change my room assignment is a whole new procedure, and I need a form from you which says I'm in good academic standing so far this semester.'
'That form,' Mrs. Santucci noted, 'will require signatures from all your instructors.'
'I know,' said Sarah. All was going according to plan and she was approaching the center of her pitch. 'But the semester hasn't started yet! And half my courses don't even have teachers assigned! So, since I'm a senior and my GPA is good, could the Dean okay my room change without the form? Doesn't that make sense? Sort of?' Sarah sighed. She had broken at the end, her confidence destroyed by Mrs. Santucci's total impassivity, by those arms folded across a navy-blue bosom like the Hoover Dam, by a stare like the headlights of an oncoming streetsweeper.
'I'm sure this is all unnecessary. Perhaps they don't know that their lounge has been reassigned. If you can just explain matters to them, I'm sure that Building Maintenance will be happy to accommodate you.'
Sarah felt defeated. It had been a nice summer, and while away she had forgotten how it was. She had forgotten that the people who ran this place didn't have a clue as to how reality worked, that in their way they were all as crazy as Bert Nix. She closed her eyes and tilted her tense head back, and the man in the chair behind her intervened.
'Wait a minute,' he said righteously. His voice was high, but carried conviction and reasonable sensitivity. 'She can't be expected to do that. Those guys don't even speak English. All they speak is Bosnian or Moldavian or something.'
'Moravian,' said Mrs. Santucci in her Distant Early Warning voice, which was rumored to set off burglar alarms Within a quarter-mile radius.
'The language is Crotobaltislavonian, a modern dialect of Old Scythian,' announced Sarah, hoping to end the conflict. The B-Men are refugees from Crotobaltislavonia.'
'Listen, I talk to Magrov all the time, and I say it's Moravian.' Sarah felt her body temperature begin to drop as she chanced a direct look at Mrs. Santucci.
Trying to sound prim, Sarah said, 'Have you ever considered the possibility that you are confusing Magrov with Moravian?' Seeing the look on Mrs. Santucci's face, she then inhaled sharply and shifted away. Just as the old bureaucrat's jaw was starting to yawn, her chest rising like the return of Atlantis, Casimir Radon leaned way across and yanked something out of Sarah's lap and— in a tone so arresting that it was answered by Bert Nix outside— exclaimed, 'Wait a minute!'
Casimir was meek and looked like a nerd and a wimp, but he was great in a crisis. The lost continent subsided and Mrs. Santucci leaned forward with a dangerous frown. Out in the hallway the exasperated Bert Nix cried, 'But there's no more minutes to wait! To save the Big U we've got to start now!'
Casimir had taken Sarah's room assignment card from the stack of ammunition on her lap, and was peering at it like a scientific specimen. It was an IBM card, golden yellow, with a form printed on it in yellow-orange ink. In the center of the form was a vague illustration of the Monoplex, looking decrepit and ruined because of the many rectangular holes punched through it. Along the top was a row of boxes labeled with tiny blurred yellow-orange abbreviations that were further abbreviated by rectangular holes. Numbers and letters were printed in black ink in the vicinity of each box.
Bert Nix was still carrying on outside. 'Then fell the fires of Eternity with loud & shrill Sound of loud Trumpet thundering along from heaven to heaven, A mighty sound articulate Awake ye dead & come To Judgment from the four winds Awake & Come away Folding like scrolls of the Enormous volume of Heaven & Earth With thunderous noises & dreadful shakings rocking to & fro: The heavens are shaken & the Earth removed from its place; the foundations of the eternal Hills discovered; The thrones of Kings are shaken they have lost their robes and crowns … and that's what poetry is! Not the caterwaulings of the Unwise!'
Finally, Casimir looked relieved. 'Yeah, I thought that might be it. You were reading this number here. Right?' He got up and stood beside Sarah and pointed to her temporary room number. 'Sure,' said Sarah, suddenly feeling dreadful.
'Well,' said Casimir, sounding apologetic, 'that's not what you want. Your room is not identified by room number, because some rooms repeat. It's identified by door number, which is unique for all doors. This number you were looking at isn't either of those, it's your room ID number, which has to do with data processing. That ID number refers to your actual door number, incorrectly called room number. It is the middle six digits of this character string here. See?' He masked the string of figures between the dirty backward parenthesis of his thumbnails. 'In your case we have E12S, giving tower, floor and wing, and then 49, your actual room number.'
Sarah did not know whether to scream, apologize or drop dead. She shoved her forms into her knapsack and stood. 'Thank you for your trouble, Mrs. Santucci,' she said quickly. 'Thank you,' she said to Casimir, then snapped around and headed for the door, though not fast enough to escape a withering harrrumph from Mrs. Santucci. But as she stepped into the hallway, which in order to hold down utility costs was dimly lit, she saw a dark and ragged figure out of the corner of her eye. She looked behind to see Bert Nix grab the doorframe and swing around until he was leaning into the office.
'Listen, Genevieve,' he said, 'she doesn't need any of your phlegm! She's President! She's my friend! You're just a doorstop!' As much as Sarah wanted to hear the rest of this, she didn't have the energy.
Casimir was left inside, his last view of Sarah interrupted by the dangling figure of the loony, caught in a crossfire he wanted no part of.
'I'll call the guards,' said Mrs. Santucci, who for the first time was showing uneasiness.
'Today?' Bert Nix found this a merry idea. 'You think you can get a guard today?'
'You'd better stop coming or we'll keep you from coming back.'
His eyes widened in mock, crimson-rimmed awe, 'Ooh,' he sighed, 'that were terrible. I'd have no reason to live.' He pulled himself erect, walked in and climbed from the arm of Casimir's chair to the broad slate sill of the window. As Mrs. Santucci watched with more terror than seemed warranted, the derelict swung one window open like a door, letting in a gust of polluted steam.
By the time he was leaning far outside and grinning down the seventy-foot drop to the Parkway and the interchange. she had resolved to try diplomacy— though she motioned that Casimir should try to grab his legs. Casimir ignored this; it was obvious that the man was just trying to scare her. Casimir was from Chicago and found that these Easterners had no sense of humor.
'Now, Bert,' said Mrs. Santucci, 'don't give an old lady a hard time.'
