He was just about to try the door when a woman emerged, blinking against the light. Startled, he took a step back and made a clumsy swipe at the door, meaning to hold it open for her, but missing it altogether. “Oh,” he gasped, “I’m sorry, I just—”

She was in her thirties, dressed in the black skirt and white blouse he’d pictured on Lori, she wore her hair in a flip and was squinting at him out of a pair of cat-eye glasses, and what was she, a secretary? Instructor? Professor? She said, “Yes? May I help you?”

“I was just wondering,” he said, and the words seemed to bloat in his mouth, “if you were open. Or in session, I mean. For the summer? Do you have summer sessions? At all?”

They were standing there in the sun on the steps of a building twice the size of the Alte Haus and every bit as elaborate—gables, turrets, fish-scale shingles, bracketed overhangs, spindlework run riot—on a day that capitalized on silence. She gave him a long look. “The fall term starts the day after Labor Day.”

“Because I was looking for one of your students—Lori Cunningham? And I thought she might be in the dorm. You do keep the dorm open for out-of-state students, foreign students, and, and—such? Yes? Right? Isn’t that the way it works?” He smiled, but she didn’t smile back.

“Any inquiries about our students,” she said, enunciating carefully, “should be directed to the dean of women.”

“Look, I’m not some deviant, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said, holding her eyes even as the building began to ripple and her face flew off and came roaring back again like a volleyball spiked over the net. “I’m a psychologist. And I just—who is the dean of women? Can I speak with her?”

“She’s in Vermont. On vacation. She won’t be back till school starts.”

“Oh, come on, somebody must be in charge—I just need a way to contact her, this girl. I could leave a note—could I leave a note? There must be a mailbox, right? Doesn’t everybody rate a mailbox? Even lowly undergrads?”

This was humor, or an attempt at it, but she wasn’t smiling. And why was that? Because she was a hard cold icy bitch, that was why, and didn’t he know the type?

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’ll have to come back next month.”

Next month? Was she crazy?

“This is urgent, don’t you get that? Can you even begin to imagine what I’m going through here? I don’t want next month, I want now!”