Raf had long been using my ID number and signing for drinks and food in the downstairs bar and cafeteria.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a bar bill this large,” the desk officer said.

We waited in the velvet-draperied reading room, a half- dozen dons and Raymond and I, drinking coffee from a silver pot and china cups. The profs turned newspapers, folded them, dozed.

“I’m just here to fix the furnace,” Raymond whispered to me.

“Relax.”

“No, I’m just the pest exterminator, if anyone asks you. I came about roach control.”

He followed me over to a bow window. We watched bundled-up literature students rushing in and out of Warren House; watched young women treading snow. They wore cheap white yarn gloves, metal-tipped cowboy boots, down jackets opened at the throat on their grandmothers’ pearls.

A chime called us to dinner.

We let ourselves be guided across the maroon carpeting to a corner table. The room had scarlet linen and miniature paintings beaming with lacquer, long windows, and a view of a forty-foot hemlock in the yard.

“O.K., so you’ll help me with which fork and all, right?” Raymond said.

“This place, I think they give you only one fork,” I said.

We ate iced oysters with hot sauce. “Raf!” Raymond said.

I shucked another oyster. “He better show up,” I said.

Raf lifted me up out of my chair and turned me around. He folded his arms over my shoulders and kissed me. He smelled clean, of the outdoors and winter. On his hands were big gloves of wet leather, which he kept, fingers spread, away from his embrace.

I pulled back, and saw that he looked gaunt but darkly appealing. A long chesterfield topcoat hung from his shoulders.

“I remember you,” I said.

He shrugged and gave me his crinkly grin.

“Lifeboy!” he shouted at Raymond. The other diners twisted in their seats.

“Raf, Jesus,” I muttered.

He lunged at Raymond in a half-fall, and hugged him. “Didn’t we cut a swath down on the bayous?” Raf said.

“Turn me loose,” said Raymond. “Let go.”

Raf did. He swirled out my chair and I got resettled.

His own seat he jammed between Raymond and me. He crossed his legs knee on knee, flapped open his napkin, and dropped it over his lap. He removed neither his coat, muffler, nor gloves.

“June, how are your boys?” he asked our waitress.

“Oh no, you,” she said to Raf. She was a woman about Dottie’s age, in a simple woolen dress with a corsage.

“ ’S all right, I’m sober. Bring us seared beef tips and glazed carrots. You’ll love those, Ray. And that lawn-mower-bottom spinach.”

“My youngest got accepted at Notre Dame,” June told Raf.

“Eureka!” he shouted.

While we waited for our food, Raf talked to us or to himself aloud. He talked about signs and signifiers, reflexive texts, Italian cinema, public sculpture, and private interests.