Desmond turned away from the window. He’d almost forgotten the student was still in his office. Roger, Roger . . . Lovell, was that it? He was a desperately thin boy who seemed—was it possible, at age nineteen?—to be losing his hair. He wore baggy, sweaty T-shirts, and enormous eyeglasses that made him look a little like a bug or some prehistoric creature. Colleges ought to offer makeovers as part of the whole package, along with job placement and health care. Based on his prose, Roger was exceptionally bright and capable, but he spoke so rapidly, everything came out in a garbled wad, and it was almost impossible to tell what he was saying.

“I see,” Desmond said.

“Gugugugugugood. Gla yagree.”

Had he said he was thinking of turning his mother into a crack head? Maybe so. He was enrolled in the Creative Nonfiction class and the consensus among the other students was that his memoir lacked tension and dramatic coherence. Maybe, one girl had suggested, he’d have a stronger story to tell if his father had cancer or his mother had a drinking problem.

“I’m not sure I do agree with you,” Desmond said. “You might want to continue writing as truthfully as possible about your childhood and see what story emerges from that naturally.”

Roger started to roll his hands over each other so quickly they became a blur. “Yabba gadda gedda sumthin inna . . .”

He should tape Roger and play it back at a lower speed to find out what he’d said. In the meantime, it was probably best to check out. Desmond turned back to the window. Based on the letters and postcards Anderton had sent, she and her husband had hardly had a loving marriage. It wasn’t likely she’d gone into such deep mourning after he died she couldn’t perform, so what was it that had caused her to drop the ball professionally? He was certain the answer to this would cast a long shadow over the rest of her life and fill in the missing pieces.

“Yathinga heron addis beda?”

Desmond looked at Roger again. The kid was leaning forward in his chair, eyes immense behind the glasses. “A hearing aid?” Desmond asked.

“Nanananana. Heron addis.”

He felt like suggesting he just do away with mom altogether. Dad, too, while he was at it, claim he grew up in an orphanage. There was dramatic tension for you. Everyone in the class had signed up for it because they wanted to write nonfiction, but they made so few distinctions between what had happened in their lives and what had happened in the scores of memoirs they’d read, it might as well be a course in science fiction. “A heroin addict? Claim that she’s a junkie?”

“Yayayayaya. Mayme ayes.”

“Maniac?”

“Nono. Mayme AIDS. GivarAIDS.”