She was barricaded behind a highly polished oak desk the size of a small pool table, the great overturned bowl of lacquered hair unruffled by the breeze from the air-conditioning duct, which might have come off a jet plane.

“Now look who’s here,” Patty-Cake said with a stiff smile. “Dr. Grant isn’t in quite yet, and neither is Rob.”

Angie managed to look surprised. “That works out just fine, because I wasn’t looking for either of them,” she said. “But I do have a few questions for you.”

“You shy thing.” Patty-Cake tilted her head and produced what Angie thought was meant to be a teasing expression. “You and Dr. Grant used to know each other up there in New York, and you never said a word.”

“Because,” Angie said evenly, “it was a long time ago.” It was never good to hold back anger, her father would say, and here was the proof: her headache ratcheted up a notch.

“Five years a long time?” Patty-Cake wagged her head from side to side. “I guess I’m getting old.”

“I guess you are.”

The silence between them sparked. Angie cursed herself roundly, took a deep breath, and managed a smile she hoped might be interpreted as conciliatory.

She said, “There’s no telephone in my office, and the air-conditioning is either turned off or broken.” Then she evoked all the magical phrases due any keeper of the keys: Don’t want to be a bother and If it isn’t too much trouble and I would be thankful if. She ended with the computer, and decided to leave the locked desk drawers for the next battle.

Patty-Cake tapped a finger on her desk, her smile very white, and bone brittle. “There was a fan in that office. Now, what do you suppose could have happened to it? Maybe the janitor took it off to be rewired. I’ll have to look into that, just as soon as I can.”

Angie said, “And the phone?”

Patty-Cake had already half turned away. “I’ll put in a work order. In the meantime, you’ve got one of those cute little cell phones, don’t you?”

Later, listening to Angie’s reconstruction of this first, lost skirmish in what promised to be a long and messy war, Rivera shook her head. “Run for the hills.”

“Do you think this is about—”

“John? Most definitely. You practically forced him to tell Caroline about you—”

“You think?”

“Well, of course he did. What choice did he have after Patty-Cake walked in on you? And then Caroline told her sisters, and the Rose girls got on the drums—there was high drama down at Fat Quarters, let me tell you—and now Patty-Cake sees you as a threat to her bid for campus domination by means of her niece’s marriage.”