to know everything there was to be known at once. You old boys simply took advantage of the
situation.”
I stood there shaking in my wet sneakers. If only I had truly taken advantage of the situation,
seized and held and prized the multitudes of advantages the summer offered me; if only I had.
I said nothing, on my face I registered the bleak look of a defendant who knows the court will
never be swayed by all the favorable evidence he has. It was a schoolboy look; Mr. Ludsbury
knew it well.
“There’s a long-distance call for you,” he continued in the tone of the judge performing the
disagreeable duty of telling the defendant his right. “I’ve written the operator’s number on the
pad beside the telephone in my study. You may go in and call.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
He sailed on down the lane without further reference to me, and I wondered who was sick at
home.
But when I reached his study—low-ceilinged, gloomy with books, black leather chairs, a pipe
rack, frayed brown rug, a room which students rarely entered except for a reprimand—I saw on
the pad not an operator’s number from my home town, but one which seemed to interrupt the
beating of my heart.
I called this operator, and listened in wonder while she went through her routine as though this
were just any long-distance call, and then her voice left the line and it was pre-empted, and
charged, by the voice of Phineas. “Happy first day of the new academic year!”
“Thanks, thanks a lot, it’s a—you sound—I’m glad to hear your—”
“Stop stuttering, I’m paying for this. Who’re you rooming with?”
“Nobody. They didn’t put anyone else in the room.”
“Saving my place for me! Good old Devon. But anyway, you wouldn’t have let them put anyone
else in there, would you?” Friendliness, simple outgoing affection, that was all I could hear in his
voice.
“No, of course not.”
“I didn’t think you would. Roommates are roommates. Even if they do have an occasional fight.
God you were crazy when you were here.”
“I guess I was. I guess I must have been.”