Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

That night I wrote in my journal: 'Trees are schizophrenic now and beginning to lose control, enraged with the shock of their fiery new colors. Someone – was it van Gogh? – said that orange is the color of insanity. Beauty is terror. We want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us.'

I went into the post office (blase students, business as usual) and, still preposterously lightheaded, scribbled a picture postcard to my mother – fiery maples, a mountain stream. A sentence on the back advised: Plan to see Vermont 's fall foliage between Sept.25 and Oct. ijth when it is at its vivid best.

As I was putting it in the out-of-town mail slot, I saw Bunny across the room, his back to me, scanning the row of numbered boxes. He stopped at what was apparently my own box and bent to stick something in it. Then he straightened surreptitiously and walked out quickly, his hands in his pockets and his hair flopping everywhere.

I waited until he was gone, then went to my mailbox. Inside, I found a cream-colored envelope – thick paper, crisp and very formal – but the handwriting was crabbed and childish as a fifth-grader's, in pencil. The note within was in pencil, too, tiny and uneven and hard to read:

Richard old Man What do you Say we have Lunch on Saturday, maybe about i? 1 know this Great little place. Cocktails, the business. My treat. Please come.

Yours,

Bun

p.s. wear a Tie. I am Sure you would have anyway but they will drag some godawful one out of the back and meke (s. p.) you Wear it if you Dont.

I examined the note, put it in my pocket, and was walking out when I almost bumped into Dr Roland coming in the door. At first he didn't seem to know who I was. But just when I thought I was going to get away, the creaky machinery of his face began to grind and a cardboard dawn of recognition was lowered, with jerks, from the dusty proscenium.

'Hello, Doctor Roland,' I said, abandoning hope.

'How's she running, boy?'

He meant my imaginary car. Christine. Chitty Chitty-Bang Bang. 'Fine,' I said.

'Take it to Redeemed Repair?'

'Yes.'

'Manifold trouble.'

'Yes,' I said, and then realized I'd told him earlier it was the transmission. But Dr Roland had now begun an informative lecture concerning the care and function of the manifold gasket.

'And that,' he concluded, 'is one of your major problems with a foreign automobile. You can waste a lot of oil that way. Those cans of Penn State will add up. And Penn State doesn't grow on trees.'

He gave me a significant look.

'Who was it sold you the gasket?' he asked.

'I can't remember,' I said, swaying in a trance of boredom but edging imperceptibly towards the door.

'Was it Bud?'

'I think so.'

'Or Bill. Bill Hundy is good.'

'I believe it was Bud,' I said.

'What did you think about that old blue jay?'

I was uncertain if this referred to Bud or to a literal blue jay, or if, perhaps, we were heading into the territory of senile dementia. It was sometimes difficult to believe that Dr Roland was a tenured professor in the Social Science Department of this, a distinguished college. He was more like some gabby old codger who would sit next to you on a bus and try to show you bits of paper he kept folded in his wallet.

He was reviewing some of the information he had previously given me on the manifold gaskets and I was waiting for a good moment to remember, suddenly, that I was late for an appointment, when Dr Roland's friend Dr Blind struggled up, beaming, leaning on his walker. Dr Blind (pronounced 'Blend') was about ninety years old and had taught, for the past fifty years, a course called 'Invariant Subspaces' which was noted for its monotony and virtually absolute unintelligibility, as well as for the fact that the final exam, as long as anyone could remember, had consisted of the same single yes-or-no question. The question was three pages long but the answer was always 'Yes.' That was all you needed to know to pass Invariant Subspaces.

He was, if possible, even a bigger windbag than Dr Roland.

Together, they were like one of those superhero alliances in the comic books, invincible, an unconquerable confederation of boredom and confusion. I murmured an excuse and slipped away, leaving them to their own formidable devices.

Chapter 2

I had hoped the weather would be cool for my lunch with Bunny, because my best jacket was a scratchy dark tweed, but when I woke on Saturday it was hot and getting hotter.

'Gonna be a scorcher today,' said the janitor as I passed him in the hall. 'Indian summer.'

The jacket was beautiful – Irish wool, gray with flecks of mossy green; I had bought it in San Francisco with nearly every cent I'd saved from my summer job – but it was much too heavy for a warm sunny day. I put it on and went to the bathroom to straighten my tie.

I was in no mood for talk and I was unpleasantly surprised to find Judy Poovey brushing her teeth at the sink. Judy Poovey lived a couple of doors down from me and seemed to think that because she was from Los Angeles we had a lot in common. She cornered me in hallways; tried to make me dance at parties; had told several girls that she was going to sleep with me, only in less delicate terms. She had wild clothes, frosted hair, a red Corvette with California plates bearing the legend judy p. Her voice was loud and rose frequently to a screech, which rang through the house like the cries of some terrifying tropical bird.

'Hi, Richard,' she said, and spit out a mouthful of toothpaste.

She was wearing cut-off jeans that had bizarre, frantic designs drawn on them in Magic Marker and a spandex top which revealed her intensely aerobicized midriff.

'Hello,' I said, setting to work on my tie.

'You look cute today.'

'Thanks.'

'Got a date?'

I looked away from the mirror, at her. 'What?'

'Where you going?'

By now, I was used to her interrogations, 'Out to lunch.'

'Who with?'

'Bunny Corcoran.'

'You know Bunny?'

Again, I turned to look at her. 'Sort of. Do you?'

'Sure. He was in my art history class. He's hilarious. I hate that geeky friend of his, though, the other one with the glasses, what's his name?'

'Henry?'

'Yeah, him.' She leaned towards the mirror and began to fluff out her hair, swiveling her head this way and that. Her nails were Chanel red but so long they had to be the kind you bought at the drugstore. 'I think he's an asshole.'

'I kind of like him,' I said, offended.

'I don't.' She parted her hair in the center, using the curved talon of her forefinger as a comb. 'He's always been a bastard to me. I hate those twins, too.'

'Why? The twins are nice.'

'Oh yeah?' she said, rolling a mascaraed eye at me in the mirror. 'Listen to this. I was at this party last term, really drunk, and sort of slam-dancing, right? Everybody was crashing into everybody else, and for some reason this girl twin was walking through the dance floor and pow, I slammed right into her, really hard. So then she says something rude, like totally uncalled for, and first thing I knew I'd thrown my beer in her face. It was that kind of a night. I'd already had about six beers thrown on me, and it just seemed like the thing to do, you know?

'So anyway, she starts yelling at me and in about half a second there's the other twin and that Henry guy standing over me like they're about to beat me up.' She pulled her hair back from her face in a ponytail and inspected her profile in the mirror. 'So anyway. I'm drunk, and these two guys are leaning over me in this menacing way, and you know that I Iciiry, he's really big. It was kind of scary but I was too drunk to care so I just told them to fuck off,' She turned from the mirror and smiled brilliantly. 'I was drinking Kamikazes that night. Something terrible always happens to me when I drink Kamikazes. I wreck my car, I get into fights…"