When I pulled an all-nighter—when I had a term paper due, or I was studying for an exam—the snowshoer would drive out to Portsmouth Avenue and pick up a pizza for me. There was a strip of fast-food joints, a bar or two, and gas stations galore. Portsmouth Avenue wasn’t far from downtown Exeter or the academy campus, but it was far enough that you had to drive. Naturally, when I was pulling an all-nighter, Mr. Barlow went to the pizza place dressed as himself. And he always went for a walk, or took a run, in the early morning. After his walk or run, I would hear him in the shower—all this was before the dining-hall bells for breakfast, before the students were up and about in Amen Hall.

I didn’t know that Elliot occasionally took an early-morning walk in downtown Exeter, dressed in Little Ray’s clothes. And when the snowshoer pulled an all-nighter of his own—when he was grading blue books, or otherwise engaged, after I’d gone to bed—I only later learned that he sometimes drove out to the Portsmouth Avenue strip and picked up a pizza as a woman.

This was risky business for Mr. Barlow. I’m guessing it began when I was a student at the academy. I’m not sure if it continued when I was away in Pittsburgh, or if it went on later—when I was a college student in Durham, once again living with him in Exeter. In retrospect, it’s obvious that Elliot’s cross-dressing was meant to be; it was who she was.

Roland’s, that pizza place on the Portsmouth Avenue strip, attracted an unsavory late-night clientele. Maybe it was open later than any other joint with a liquor license in Exeter. Late at night, it was more of a bar than an eatery, but you could call ahead and order a pizza—you could pick it up, if you dared.

Similarly sketchy, in terms of its clientele, was a downtown Exeter convenience store called Verne’s, which was on Water Street—near the falls and the town’s most frequented fish market. Verne’s was open for business as early in the morning as Roland’s stayed open late at night—accordingly, their respective clientele were not unsavory in the same way. Men, drinking alone or together, were the majority of the late-night lowlifes at Roland’s. Teenage boys, actual or virtual delinquents—high school troublemakers (or dropouts), malingering before (and after) school—comprised the young thugs who hung out around Verne’s. Smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk was the closest they could come to political protest.