Luckily I’ve brought a change of clothes. The fresh outfit was in my duffel bag along with a hairbrush, flat shoes, my tooth-brush, all of Malison’s books, a Walkman, tapes of several of Malison’s readings, the last three term papers I wrote on his last three novels (scarred with the ludicrous comments of my teachers), copies of all the supportive letters I’ve written Malison over the years, some dope, two Valiums, my diaphragm, all the short stories I’ve written since I was fifteen, my novel in progress (which I really need his opinion on), some Scotch tape, and the solution for my contact lenses. I’m not taking any chances tonight!

11:22. I’ve been standing in the hallway outside Malison’s hotel room for the last half-hour rereading my favorite passages of Magnetic Plugs and Smithy Smithy. His lecture must have ended by now, and I fear they are holding him hostage with another mindless question-and-answer session. My God, how much do they expect him to take?!

He’d looked so tired when I saw him this afternoon before my master’s class. I’d left my desk and was on my way to the bathroom when I passed him in the hail. It was incredible. The air was charged. Malison was wearing a pair of camouflage fatigues and a sports coat made of something rough, something like burlap. I thought he had silver hair, but up close I could see it was kind of a flat gray color, a color I like a lot more than silver. His eyelids were dark and puffy because the department heads had tired him out, but the eyes themselves were a rare in-tense shade of brown, like two clean pennies shining. Malison was walking toward the classroom with Brouner, the department head, who was running off at the mouth about his favorite subject — himself. Brouner was saying, “You might have heard of me. I had an essay on art and analysis in last month’s Forefront,” and Malison said, “If you’ve been published in Forefront, then no, I haven’t heard of you.” Malison is so blunt, so matter-of-fact, so uninterested in playing games. He wouldn’t be caught dead reading Forefront.

I tried to catch his eye in the hallway. I wanted to let him know that everyone knows what an asshole Brouner is, but then Professor Nobody came up and started yapping at me about my overdue essay, and Malison was herded into an office. I can’t imagine what’s keeping him now. If I know Malison, he’s fed up with the English Department; he’s not going to jump through any more of their hoops. Where could he be? I’ll wait here for a few more minutes, and if he doesn’t show, then I’ll head over to the Pavilion of Thought. The suspense is killing me.