“Mort came looking for you in the library,” he gasped, hands on his knees. “Said he wants to see you, Wheeler, and Creech in—” he tried to catch his breath “—his office in five minutes.”

“He say why?”

“No, but it’s definitely trouble.”

Waltham and I ran across the hall to Wheeler’s room. Candle informed us he was in the can “sawing one off.”

The Cornwall cans. I put them in the same league as the Providence Train Station’s men’s room. A nightmare. And due to Wheeler and Candle’s presence, our hallway’s can was the worst on campus. The floors were always puddled, the sinks lined with stubble, and since Christmas vacation there’d been a kielbasa damming up the throne on the far left. Wheeler used to peek in periodically just hoping that all the toilets would be occupied so he’d have an excuse to piss in the sink. And there were no doors on the stalls. I think this was an alternative to saltpeter. You’d be sitting there and someone would be standing three feet in front of you brushing his teeth. And worse, when you were brushing your teeth you’d have some animal behind you, grunting.

We found Wheeler nestled in one of the stalls, studying The Wall Street Journal. Before I could manage a word, Waltham frantically outlined the situation.

“All right,” Wheeler said, sticking his face back in the newspaper. “Don’t get hysterical, girls. Just tell the sniveling idiot I’ll be down to see him in fifteen minutes.”

Waltham looked to me for help. I shrugged.

“But he wants to see you now!” Waltham cried.

Wheeler turned a page. “Well, Irving, presently there is an excruciatingly knobby turd dangling from my anus. So he’ll just have to wait.”

When we entered Mort’s dimly lit office twenty-five minutes later (it took Wheeler a while to brief Creature on what we could expect), Mort looked at his watch and announced, “You’re twenty-one minutes tardy—as usual.”

The little light came from a lamp on Mort’s desk. Only one of its two bulbs worked. The shadow of the blown one loomed like a cobra’s head on the lamp shade. We sat in three straight-backed wooden chairs. The smell of pipe tobacco and books filled the room. Mort sat rigid, staring each of us down. A long list of offenses lay before him. Finally, he stood and looked out the window at the dark soccer field.

“How old are you boys?”

“Seventeen, sir,” Wheeler said.

“Seventeen, sir,” I said.

“I’m a couple years older,” Creature said.

Mort turned his head so that he could see us out of one eye. “That wasn’t the question.”

“Uh, nineteen, uh, and a half.”

I lowered my head and smiled. Mort spun and slammed his hands on the desk.