This show among the students went on all the time, actually; the performance was just a little stiffer for Mr. Figarty. Even I had brushed my high black boots. I stretched them out in front of me on the grass, felt sure they had some significance.

Sam wandered through the crowd, smiling in his new gray-and-white-striped robe. Rennel stumped behind him, glowering in black leather motorcycle pants. They must always have been this way. Bare-faced when their fathers wore beards. Long gowns when their fathers wore tights and bloomers. I lifted a hand and they came toward me. Sam smelled sweaty, looked uncomfortable in all that wool. His hair was curlier in the humidity.

“It’s all arranged,” he said. “Figarty will come over at about four this afternoon. He has to go to a faculty reception after the reading. Wait till you meet him! He’s very cheerful and wise. If he didn’t laugh so much, I’d think he was enlightened.”

Rennel stretched out on the grass, flexed his pectorals, arranged the leather at his crotch to look more swollen. Out of the corner of his eye he looked to see if anyone was watching him.

“Are you trying to say that an enlightened man doesn’t laugh?” he asked. “It’s an instinctive reaction in many cases. He’d have to be very inhibited not to. That’s a direct contradiction of the whole concept of enlightenment.”

“But he’d only laugh genuinely, never in purely social contexts,” Sam replied. “He’d never laugh to be polite or to cover up embarrassment.”

They went at it. Above us the trees were in bloom. They swayed, flirted, vain in their own fashion.

The dean of students appeared wearing a well-cut suit, shining shoes, and a conservative frown.

“We’re honored today … a man you all know … Somewhat unusual to welcome back a man expelled from this institution some seventeen years ago … Jacob Figarty!”

The poet approached from the trees. He was a paunchy little guy in work clothes and sandals, with a Benjamin Franklin hairdo. He clinked little bells, sang Hare Krishna, hopped up to the microphone, grinning. He released a roll of papers from an elastic band and flung them on the podium.

We all leaned forward, we mystics in Spartan rags and gypsy dresses.

Figarty began to read. The lines flipped and jumped. He stopped, giggled.

“Excuse me, I was just remembering—when I wrote this I was smashed out of my mind. Had to go puke between each line.”

We roared. Sam rolled around, laughing. Rennel smirked his approval. I liked the poems, then. They were all about sitting on the railroad tracks in a condition of some kind, how wonderful the world is—Zap! It was lovely in the soft sun, watching the famous man who was standing there to be enjoyed. We waited for him to take off his clothes; he was known to do it.