“And who was that?” I asked, deciding to get into their game.

“Who are you?” the one who had passed me the joint asked.

“I don’t mean to get in your conversation, but I once pledged for the Gentlemen of Quality and I just wanted to know who the baddest G.Q. was.”

“He was Peter Prep,” he said, giving his friend a conspiratorial glance. But I had something for their asses.

“Where would I have found him?” I asked.

“He was in the Ivy League.”

“What position did he play?”

“Okay, my man, since you want to be funny—he played the field!”

“What did he have on?”

“You couldn’t miss him. He would be wearing a British casual sky straight out of Scotland, a three-piece herringbone suit, a canary yellow shirt with a maroon tie, a silk maroon handkerchief in the breast pocket, and a pair of oxblood cordovans.”

“What would I have said had I seen him?”

“You wouldn’t have said nothing. You just had to be seen in the spots where he hung out, and sooner or later he would notice that you were bucking for a place among the Gentlemen of Quality. The rest would be up to you. There were a lot of cats who thought they were G.Q.’S, but most of them weren’t for real. They may have been gentlemen of quantity, but they weren’t gentlemen of quality. Being a G.Q. wasn’t a state of mind, my man. It was a fact of life. You didn’t decide to be a G.Q. It just happened that way!”

“ORRR-riiiight!” the other dude said, and they both slapped five.

“I hope you didn’t mind me having a little fun,” I said.

“No, that’s all right,” said the one who’d done most of the talking. “Were you jiving when you said you pledged for the Gentlemen of Quality?”

“No, I really did.”

“Did you make it?”

“No, but I did find Peter Prep.”

“Oh, yeah? Where at?”

“It was back in 1964 at the Forty-Second Street Library. I was working in the stacks below the main reading room. And when somebody wanted a book I would send it up on the dumbwaiter. There was always a lot of action in the stacks. Dudes would be steady trying to get next to broads on a studious tip. You could always tell the cats that had the most smarts. They would dress kind of roguey, wear horn-rimmed glasses, look all wild in the eyes and hair, and always carry a beat-up-looking book in their back pocket.

“Now, the baddest dude in the place was a cat everybody called Booksnake cause he read a lot. I knew he was Peter Prep even though he didn’t dress according to the description. His game was more together than the card catalogue. When the word got around that Booksnake had a cap, goo-gobs of chicks started inviting him over to their cribs to help them get into their books or whatever else they wanted him to get into.