He began to nod, did the briefest of double takes, and then shook his head. “Everyone’s a goddamn comedian,” he said. I walked away, a smile on my face. When I glanced back, he had sat down in the chair and was looking over the clipboard.
I walked up the drive to the Hill. Here and there, I saw small knots of adults, men in slacks and khakis, some in blazers, some with wives, all talking and gazing around with contented looks of nostalgia. Suddenly I felt exposed, walking alone past the broad steps of Farquhar Gym. Running into Lester Briggs had been a surprise, but a relatively easy one to navigate. I now had the irrational fear that Fletcher Dupree would step out from behind a hedge, a smirk on his face and a “water buffalo!” joke at the ready. The administration wouldn’t want me here. My classmates were strangers to me. Why had I come back?
“Mr. Glass?” a voice said. I started and turned to see a boy in shorts and a red-and-gold Blackburne polo coming down the gym steps, a tennis racket in a bag slung over his shoulder. It took me a moment to realize it was Ben Sipple.
“Ben!” I said. “Hi. What are you doing here? Isn’t school out?”
He shook his head. “Sixth formers are still here—exams next week. The tennis team made it to the state championship.”
“Didn’t know you played tennis. Congrats. You must be good.”
“I guess,” he said. “Thanks. Uh, weren’t you fired?”
For a second I stared at him. Then I laughed. He frowned, puzzled.
“Yeah, I was,” I said. “But it was a mistake. What they fired me for.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. It was the verbal equivalent of a shrug, as if he were thinking adults were strange but didn’t want to say it out loud. Then he added, “I heard something like that. That someone was selling drugs and tried to put it on you.”
So Sam Hodges had understood my e-mail. This buoyed me up considerably. “Yeah, well,” I said, unwilling to enter into specifics. “I’m here for a class reunion, though. Alumni weekend and all that. You doing okay, Ben?”
He considered this for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to go visit my dad this summer, in Boston. He broke up with his girlfriend, so it’ll just be the two of us for a couple of weeks.”
“That sounds good,” I said.
“Yeah, well.” He hesitated and then suddenly stuck his hand out. “Thanks, Mr. Glass, for . . . everything.”
I shook his hand. “Sure thing, Ben. You take care, okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.” He waved and then ran up the gym steps two at a time, disappearing through the doors as I stood at the foot of the steps, watching him go.
REGISTRATION WAS IN THE front hall of Stilwell, printed name tags lined up by graduating class on a long table. I signed in with a woman I didn’t recognize from the alumni office, smiled through her polite greeting, and looked for my name tag. I found myself looking for other names, too—Trip Alexander, Daryl Cooper, Miles Camak. And Fritz Davenport. Even though I now knew Fritz was okay and safely on the other side of the country, it felt wrong that his name wasn’t included.
“Matthias?” A tall, prematurely balding man in a crimson polo beamed at me. It took me a second to recognize him, and when I did, I remembered him playing the Beastie Boys at full volume on dorm and endlessly watching Dracula in the A/V center.
“Max?”
Max Goren laughed and gave me a bear hug, which, startled, I returned as best I could. “Knew it was you!” Max was saying. “God, what’s it been, since graduation? Come on, the alumni tent’s behind Stilwell. Cash bar, but what the hell.” He steered me past the table and on into the dining hall. There were only a couple tables of sixth formers in there, and they all looked up at me and Max, the same look on all their faces: What are those older guys doing here? I knew what they were thinking; I’d thought it myself when I’d been a student. I grinned at them. A few politely smiled back.
Max was chattering about real estate in Richmond, where he lived with his wife. “Expecting a daughter end of next week,” he said proudly. “Kristie’s at home fit to bust, didn’t want to ride in the car over here, but she told me to go on, give her the last peace and quiet she’ll get for a long time.”
As he went on, I nodded and made inquisitive noises at the appropriate moments, but mostly I was wondering when Max Goren had grown up. He’d always been a nice guy but a bit of a clown, and now here he was a bona fide adult, a real estate agent, married with a kid on the way. When had that happened?
At the back of the dining hall were double doors that led outside to a set of steps down to a brick patio, behind which was a little-used lawn ringed by boxwood hedges. The alumni tent was pitched here, bigger than the one at the Game this past fall but with the same fold-out chairs and tables, the same cash bar. This time there were other people scattered in groups, talking, laughing, telling stories. Three wrinkled gentlemen in sweaters despite the warm evening wore name tags declaring them members of the class of 1946. Another group of what looked like college students clutched bottles of beer and looked around a bit confusedly, as if unsure of how to act. I guessed they were here for their fifth-year reunion. I understood how they felt.
Then Max was saying, “Hey, look who I found!” and I saw, in a corner of the tent, a table of beaming faces turned my way. I registered Miles Camak and Roger Bloom and Tom Dodrill among the small crowd before they were all on their feet, shaking my hand and slapping me on the back, someone putting a cold beer in my hand. I was so flustered with all the greetings and questions and smiles that I couldn’t speak for a few moments, just grin bashfully and exchange high fives and drink my beer. Miles introduced me to his wife, a petite blonde with a big smile. Roger had apparently been in the middle of telling the story about the fake list of football players’ numbers he’d been given for Third Form Night, and as he continued, I laughed along with the others, joined with them by both the memory and the ability to laugh at what had seemed so terrifying all those years ago.
Then I saw Fletcher Dupree sitting across the table from me. He looked stouter, something about him a bit blunted. He gazed at me, and I raised my beer in his direction. “Fletcher,” I said, and my classmates grew a bit quieter, sensing a different kind of reunion.
Fletcher nodded. Deliberately he said, “Matthias, what’s going on?”
I shook my head. “Not much,” I said. “You?”
“Heard you were teaching,” he said, and I heard in his voice a hint of goading. I saw Roger Bloom and Tom Dodrill glance back to me.
“Was,” I said. “I was teaching. Here.”
“Didn’t like it?” Fletcher asked. “Kinda different from writing novels.”
I took a deep breath. “I liked it okay up until the point some kid stashed drugs in my desk and tried to frame me for selling to students,” I said evenly.
Silence. Fletcher looked like a dog that had just found a fresh bone to gnaw. “You were framed for selling drugs?” he asked.
“I read about that,” Tom Dodrill interrupted. “It was in the Charlottesville paper. Wasn’t it Kevin Kelly?”