The semester Marya became acquainted with Imogene Skillman, thefts began to occur in Maynard House, where Marya was rooming in her sophomore year at Port Oriskany: at odd, inspired, daring hours, sometimes in the early morning when a girl was out of her room and showering in the bathroom just down the corridor, sometimes late at night when some of the girls sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee, their voices kept low so that the resident adviser would not hear. (The kitchen was supposed to close officially at midnight. Maynard House itself “closed” at midnight—there were curfews in those days, in the women’s residences.) A wristwatch stolen from one room, seven dollars from another, a physics textbook from yet another . . . the thief was clearly one of the residents, one of the twenty-six girls who roomed in the house, but no one knew who it was; no one wanted to speculate too freely. Naturally there were wild rumors, cruel rumors. Marya once heard the tail end of a conversation in which her own name—“Knauer”—was mentioned. She had brushed by, her expression neutral, stony. She wanted the girls to know she had heard—she scorned even confronting them.

One Saturday morning in November Marya returned to her room after having been gone less than five minutes—she’d run downstairs to check the mail, though she rarely received letters—to see, with a sickening pang, that the door was ajar.

Her wallet had been taken from her leather bag, which she’d left carelessly in sight, tossed on top of her bed.

Her lips shaped empty, angry prayers—Oh God please no—but of course it was too late. She felt faint, sickened. She had just cashed a check for forty-five dollars—a week’s part-time wages from the university library—and she’d had time to spend only a few dollars; she needed the money badly. “No,” she said aloud, baffled, chagrined. “God damn it, no.”

Someone stood in the opened doorway behind her saying, Marya? Is something wrong? but Marya paid her no notice. She was opening the drawers of her bureau one by one; she saw, disgusted, frightened, that the thief had been there too—rooting around in Marya’s woolen socks and sweaters and frayed underwear. And her fountain pen was gone. She kept it in the top drawer of the bureau, a prize of her own, a handsome black Parker pen with a thick nub . . . now it was gone.