The outer suite door to the newspaper office was locked so he used his keys. He had worked for the paper a year and a half and had been night editor this semester. It had amazed him, at first, that he could be part of the making of the student paper that he read every morning, that he could be good at it and then be put in charge of part of it. His job had been to oversee the graphic production of the paper in the evening. He had done a lot of different jobs for the newspaper and when that thought occurred to him as he walked into the suite, it gave him a notion for where to look for a job for the summer. But that would be later. Right now he made his phone call.

After a couple of rings Ben answered, with a lot of noise in the background, people yelling, bottles clinking. “Hey,” Ben said. “It’s hard to hear you. There’s a baseball game over here in the stadium, we’re playing Clemson and getting our asses beat.”

Ronny wanted to sound casual, as if it were nothing to him to hear Ben’s voice; he took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair. “Sounds like Ehringhaus. You got some rest?”

“Didn’t need it. Rested all I wanted to at your house. Laid down for a couple hours here but that was gravy.”

“Man.”

“What?” A note in Ben’s voice, a softness that was unexpected.

“Well, I was calling for Tate. You’re a nice bonus.”

Hearing this quiet breathing reminded Ronny of that breath on his cheek. Ben said, “I told him you’d write it for him. He’s jumping up and down. He says you’re his pet faggot, too, now.”

“Well, no, I’m not.”

Ben’s voice turned husky, the tone changed, as though he had pulled the receiver close. “That’s what I want to hear. Stick with me and only me. That’s the solution.” Then his voice roughened again. “Fucking Tate just walked in.” In his usual tone of athletic bluster.

“Okay. Well, I’ll see you when I see you.”

“There’s no way to call you over there?”

“No. There’s no phone in the room and I don’t have the money to put one in, not for just three months.”

“You need to make friends with that old lady. Here’s Tate.”

“Hey, little motherfucker,” Tate said. “Listen. You do this for me and I owe you big. I’ll buy you a big piece of pussy for your birthday, how’s that?”

Ronny took a deep breath and put some effort into sounding blithe. He was looking down the long row of desks where the reporters sat at their typewriters and tapped out their stories. A couple of the sportswriters were sitting in their section at the far end. Ronny said, “I’m putting my moral and ethical well-being on the line for you, Tate.”

“Then I hereby grant you the privilege of calling me Mule Man.”