“Service,” said the voice in Las Vegas. Rumor had it that the girls at the phone service, this one and the one in Brooklyn, were nieces of Rocco Lampone’s, all of them gorgeous, but no one ever saw them or knew for sure.

“This is Mr. Barber calling,” he said.

“Yes, sir. And your message, Mr. Barber?”

“Our luggage,” he said, “has been misplaced.” He almost said lost, but lost would have been taken as killed. “It won’t be on the scheduled flight.”

“Yes, sir. Is that all?”

Is that all? When Don Corleone hears that Fredo’s new bodyguards lost him in a casino somewhere in the wilds of Detroit, yes, that’ll be all, all right. “Just say that me and Mr.-” The barber blanked. Goat in Italian was what? He put his hand over the phone. The goatherd was across the hall, getting coffee. “Come si dice ‘goat’?”

“La capra,” said the goatherd, shaking his head.

As if, growing up on Court Street, the barber had ever seen a goat, had ever had an occasion to learn that fucking word. “Mr. Capra and me are looking for it. We hope to be on the next flight out, luggage and all.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Sandra Corleone parked her Roadmaster wagon on the grass near Francesca’s dormitory.

“Oh, Ma,” Francesca said. She slipped into her stylish new raincoat. “You’re not going to park here, are you?”

All the other cars were squeezed onto the pavement of the street and the loading zone.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Sandra said, turning off the car and reaching into the backseat to wake Kathy. As if on cue, two other cars followed her lead. “People have to park somewhere.”

They opened the gate of the wagon, and Kathy loaded Francesca and Sandra up with boxes, which were all from the liquor store her mother’s fiancé owned. Most of the other kids had moving company boxes or steamer trunks. Kathy took only a table fan and Francesca’s Bakelite radio. “Someone has to get the door,” she said.

The front doors were wide open. Kathy punched the elevator for them. Already, their mother was drenched in sweat. She set her boxes down in the elevator. “I’m fine,” she said, too winded to say anything more. She was thirty-seven, ancient, and had gained a lot of weight since they’d moved to Florida.

“I can’t believe you’re making Ma carry the heavy stuff,” Francesca said.

“I’m not feeling that great.” Kathy smirked. “I can’t believe you’re wearing a raincoat.”

“You never know when it might rain,” Francesca said. Kathy knew full well it was the dress code. Francesca was wearing Capri pants. Female students in anything other than a dress were required to cover themselves. Most, Francesca had been told during orientation, chose raincoats. The dress code probably didn’t apply on moving day, but Francesca wasn’t taking any chances. She was the kind of person who followed rules.

When they got to Francesca’s room, Kathy set down the fan and the radio, flopped down on the bare twin bed, curled up, grabbed her abdomen, and moaned.

Francesca rolled her eyes. Because she rarely got cramps, she was skeptical about her sister’s ongoing problems with them. But complaining about it was as useless as Kathy was.

“Where are the sheets?” Sandra said.

“On the other bed,” Francesca said.

“Not those.” She pulled out a nail file and started slicing open boxes. Francesca made a trip by herself. When she got back upstairs the bed was made with pink sheets, and Kathy was propped up on the pillows from both beds, the fan trained on her, her eyes closed, a wet washcloth draped on her forehead, sipping a Coke through a straw, listening to jazz on the radio.

“Where’d you get the soda?”

“The dorm mother came by with them,” Sandra said. “To welcome you.”

“I said I was you,” Kathy murmured.

Francesca was, for a split second, furious. But it probably wasn’t a bad idea. It was just a soda. And as for Kathy’s pretending to be Francesca, it was efficient and would hardly cause trouble in the long run. Just like Kathy herself. “Thanks,” Francesca said.

Kathy waved a hand. “Don’t mention it.”

“I won’t. You going to share that Coke?”

“That’s Charles Mingus there.”

“Wonderful. You going to share that Coke?”

Kathy handed it to her. “Charles Mingus plays bass. Wild, huh?”

Francesca took out the straw and drank as much of the soda as she could, hoping to finish it, but the fizz in her nose overcame her. She handed the bottle back to her sister.

On the next trip down, her mother stuck her head into the common living room, grabbed a delicate-looking wooden chair, and motioned Francesca down a dark hall to the side door. Classes didn’t start until Tuesday, and, thanks to her mother, Francesca had already broken two cardinal rules from orientation-Never leave the side door open and Never take furniture from the living room. Other girls and their parents immediately benefited from this, too, of course.

Her mother took three heavy boxes and could barely walk. Francesca set her load down on the steps to the side door, waiting for her mother to catch up.

“Why couldn’t you have gone to a girls’ school?” called Sandra Corleone, breathing heavily, pointing with her head toward the next building, where dozens of young men and their parents were moving in. Her mother was a loud talker. “Like your sister is?”

Her mother’s sundress was so drenched with sweat that in places Francesca could see her dark-colored bra and underpants. She was not a slim woman, but her underwear seemed unnecessarily gigantic. “How are you possibly going to unload Kathy’s stuff all by yourself?”

“Don’t worry about Kathy. She’ll be fine. You know, no one said the boys’ dormitory would be right next door.” Her voice grew even louder. “I don’t like the looks of that.”

People were looking, Francesca was sure. Francesca was tempted to correct her and say men’s dormitory, except that that would have made things worse.

On the next trip, her mother took a lighter load. Still, by the time they got to the side door, she was huffing and puffing and had to stop. She plopped down on that wooden chair, which made a splintery sound. People are supposed to move to Florida and be out in the sun all the time and slim down so they’ll look good in tennis clothes and at the beach. Her mother was getting bigger all the time. This summer, Francesca had caught Stan the Liquor Man pinching her mother on the ass and saying he liked her caboose. Francesca shuddered.

“How can you possibly be cold?” her mother asked.

“I’m not.”

“Are you sick?”

She looked at her mother, who was practically having a heatstroke in that straining chair. “No,” Francesca said. “I’m fine.”

“Right next door,” her mother repeated, pointing at the men’s dorm with her thumb this time. “Can you believe it? Because I can’t.”

Why she was talking so loud, who knew?

“So why didn’t you want to go to a girls’ school?”

She said this loud enough that Francesca was sure people in the men’s dorm could hear. “This is a good school, Ma, all right?” She extended a hand to help her mother up. “C’mon.”

When they got to Barnard, Francesca knew, all Kathy would hear was “Why did you have to go so far from home?” Anything Francesca did was found wanting for not being enough like what Kathy did and vice versa. Before the homecoming dance, her mother had pulled Francesca aside to extol the virtues of Kathy’s date, whom she later that night dumped. Then Francesca asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. The next day, her mother started listing all the things wrong with him. He’s changed, Sandra said. Anyone with eyes can see that.

Francesca took another trip by herself. It was only then that she noticed how many doors were festooned with Greek letters. Her mother and Kathy had talked her out of coming up the week before, in time for sorority rush, her mother because she had her heart set on the convenience of making one big hoop-de-doo car trip and Kathy because she said sororities were great for WASPs, sluts, or dumb blondes, but not for any sister of hers, who already had a family and who certainly didn’t need to pretend she was the sister of a bunch of slutty blonde WASPs. Francesca had said that cinched it, she was rushing. But she hadn’t. Only now did it occur to her that the friendships made last week might already mark Francesca as a loser, an outcast: as different.