almost an extension of his fingers. It struck Nat that no written material presented any challenge to Professor Uzig, that all texts were instantly transparent to him. “What’s the alternative?” Nat said.
“To your metaphor, or to the action of the citizen, the metaphor accepted?”
“The latter,” said Nat.
Professor Uzig didn’t move, didn’t speak, just watched Nat over the papers in his hand. After a while Nat couldn’t stand the silence any longer, and said: “I meant what’s the better alternative.”
Professor Uzig laid the papers on his desk, aligned them neatly, squarely, and sat back in his chair. “You used continuously in the proper manner,” he said. “And you can write a periodic sentence. Admission is granted.”
“Thank you,” Nat said.
“The first class is today at one-thirty. You will have read the first part of Beyond Good and Evil. ”
“By Nietzsche?”
Oh, how Nat wished he could have that question back.
A s for continuously, he’d used it by chance, having no clue that it differed from continually until that moment. It was also the first time he’d heard the expression periodic sentence.
Back at his desk in room seventeen on the second floor of Plessey Hall, overlooking the quad, Nat had just begun reading the preface to Beyond Good and Evil — “Supposing truth to be a woman”-when he heard a knock at the door. Unusual, because almost everybody simply walked in.
“Come in,” he said.
A woman in a long fur coat entered. For a moment he didn’t recognize her. Then he did: Wags’s mom. He rose. “Hi.”
“Hello,” she said. “Nat, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She glanced around the room, then back at him. “Nose to the grindstone, I see.”
“Just trying to keep up. If you’re looking for Wags-Richard-he’s not in right now. I haven’t actually seen him yet.”
“You won’t. Richard won’t be coming back, at least not this semester.”
“But… but we don’t even have the results yet. And he was doing fine. Better than me.”
She gave him a look that might have been cold; but why? They didn’t know each other at all. She took off her black kid gloves, snagging one for a moment on a ring. “He needs rest.”
“Why? What happened?”
“You’d know better than I.”
“What does that mean?”
A cold look, beyond doubt. “No one is blaming you, but it might have been nice if you’d drawn our attention, or the college’s, to the kind of shape he was in.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? Richard should have been under a doctor’s care. He is now.”
“But for what?”
She regarded him in puzzlement, slightly exaggerated puzzlement. “You act like someone not very bright, yet Richard says you are most emphatically the opposite. Are you really saying you had no idea of the mental state he’s been in?”
“Everyone’s under a lot of stress here.”
“I’m sure. But not everyone is driven to a breakdown.”
“Wags had a breakdown?” Nat wasn’t even sure what the word meant, not in practice.
“Wags, as everyone calls him for some reason, had a breakdown.”
“Is he all right?”
“Just dandy.”
She stood over Wags’s desk, gazing at something he’d scratched into its surface: Help! We’re prisoners of the future! or something like that, as Nat remembered. Her eyes moistened, but nothing leaked out. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its edge. “He’s a little better, in fact, and thanks for asking. They’re probably letting him come home next month.”
“From where?”
“A very nice place, not far from here.” Her hand went to Wags’s chem lab notes, stacked neatly on the desk by Nat before vacation; squared the way Professor Uzig had arranged Nat’s papers on his own desk not long before.
“Do they allow visitors?” Nat said.
“They do,” said Wags’s mom. Her eyes moistened again. Nat looked away.
Nat helped her pack Wags’s things and carry them down to her car. On the last trip, she came out of Wags’s bedroom holding his pillow, and said: “Wasn’t there a TV?”
“Oh,” said Nat.
“The guest room TV, I think it was.”
“Damn it,” he said.
“What?”
Nat told her about the theft before Christmas, his call to campus security, and how he had forgotten to file a report the next day.
“You forgot?”
The cold look was back. How to explain about the twins, the shattered aquarium, Lorenzo? “I’m sorry,” he said.
She was already on the phone. Someone from campus security appeared five minutes later. Nat recounted waking up, seeing the thief run off, losing him in the basement corridor. The security officer took notes and said: “Know anything about the TV in the student union?”
“The TV in the student union?” said Nat.
“The high-definition one in the lounge. It disappeared three days ago.”
“No,” Nat said, “I don’t know anything about it.” He felt the gaze of Wags’s mom. “Why would I?”
The security officer was watching him too. All that scrutiny made Nat feel like he’d done something wrong, not just forgetting to file the report, but really wrong. And he hadn’t. He’d never stolen anything in his life, not even a pack of gum. Anger, an uncommon feeling, rose inside him; and he rose with it: a tall kid, and strong. He wanted an answer to that question: why would I? No answer came, but in the silence, Nat got past the uniform of the security guard, the implacable expression on his face, even noticed a resemblance to his next-door neighbor back home, the weekend clerk at the hardware store. His anger subsided. “I was away over Christmas,” he said. “I got back late last night.” He sat down.
The security guard closed his notebook. “A big guy with a ponytail, you say.”
“Yes.”
The security guard turned to Wags’s mom. She was wringing the kid gloves gently in her hands. “We’ll do what we can,” he said.
“I don’t really care,” said Wags’s mom.
“Beyond Good and Evil — part one,” said Professor Uzig. Philosophy 322 met in the small domed room at the top of Goodrich Hall, one floor above the professor’s office. Windows all around and lots of wood-mahogany molding, wide-plank pine floor, oval cherrywood table, and sitting at it Professor Uzig, Nat, Grace, Izzie, and four other freshmen, only one of whom, the top student in his English class the previous semester, Nat knew. “Who wants to go first?”
Everyone looked at everyone. No one spoke. Outside, Nat saw a crow fly by, and beyond it a black plume of smoke rose from somewhere in the lower town, an area he’d not yet set foot in. The flats, they called it, probably where the security officer, and all the hardware clerks, maintenance people, gardeners, secretaries, receptionists lived. He looked back across the table, found Izzie gazing at him. Grace too. They both gave him a little nod, the same nod exactly, and at exactly the same instant. And despite the fact that he had barely had time to get through
