Sarah was aware of this; she had watched him page slowly and intensely through the paper, waiting with mild dread for him to get to the back page, see the picture and say something embarrassing. Instead-- even more embarrassing -- he actually read the article, and before he reached the bottom of the page, the student ahead of Sarah stomped out and she found herself impaled on the azure gaze of the chief bureaucrat of the College of Sciences and Humanities. "How," said Mrs. Santucci crisply, "may I help you?"
Mrs. Santucci was polite. Her determination to be decent, and to make all things decent, was like that of all the Iranian Revolutionary Guards combined. Her policy of no-first-use meant that as long as we were objective and polite, any conversation would slide pleasantly down greased iron rails into a pit of despair. Any first strike by us, any remarks deemed improper by this grandmother of twenty-six and player of two dozen simultaneous bingo cards, would bring down massive retaliation. Sarah knew her. She arose primly and moved to the front chair of the line to look across a barren desk at Mrs. Santucci.
"I'm a senior in this college. I was lucky enough to get an out-of-Plex apartment for this fall. When I got there today I found that the entire block of buildings had been shut down for eight months by the Board of Health. I went to Housing. Upon reaching the head of that line, I was told that it was being handled by Student Affairs. Upon reaching the head of the line there, I was given this form and told to get signatures at Housing and right here.
Mrs. Santucci reached out with the briskness that only old secretaries can approach and seized the papers. "This form is already signed," she informed Sarah.
"Right. I got that done at about one o'clock. But when I got to my new temporary room assignment it turned out to be the B-men's coffee lounge and storeroom for the northeast quad of the first sublevel. It is full of B-men all the time. You know how they are-- they don't speak much English, and you know what kinds of things they decorate their walls with"-- this attempt to get Mrs. Santucci's sympathy by being prissy was not obviously successful-- "and I can't possibly live there. I returned to Housing. To change my room assignment is a whole new procedure, and I need a form from you which says I'm in good academic standing so far this semester."
"That form," Mrs. Santucci noted, "will require signatures from all your instructors."
"I know," said Sarah. All was going according to plan and she was approaching the center of her pitch. "But the semester hasn't started yet! And half my courses don't even have teachers assigned! So, since I'm a senior and my GPA is good, could the Dean okay my room change without the form? Doesn't that make sense? Sort of?" Sarah sighed. She had broken at the end, her confidence destroyed by Mrs. Santucci's total impassivity, by those arms folded across a navy-blue bosom like the Hoover Dam, by a stare like the headlights of an oncoming streetsweeper.
"I'm sure this is all unnecessary. Perhaps they don't know that their lounge has been reassigned. If you can just explain matters to them, I'm sure that Building Maintenance will be happy to accommodate you."
Sarah felt defeated. It had been a nice summer, and while away she had forgotten how it was. She had forgotten that the people who ran this place didn't have a clue as to how reality worked, that in their way they were all as crazy as Bert Nix. She closed her eyes and tilted her tense head back, and the man in the chair behind her intervened.
"Wait a minute," he said righteously. His voice was high, but carried conviction and reasonable sensitivity. "She can't be expected to do that. Those guys don't even speak English. All they speak is Bosnian or Moldavian or something."
"Moravian," said Mrs. Santucci in her Distant Early Warning voice, which was rumored to set off burglar alarms Within a quarter-mile radius.
"The language is Crotobaltislavonian, a modern dialect of Old Scythian," announced Sarah, hoping to end the conflict. The B-Men are refugees from Crotobaltislavonia."
"Listen, I talk to Magrov all the time, and I say it's MoraVian." Sarah felt her body temperature begin to drop as she chanced a direct look at Mrs. Santucci.
Trying to sound prim, Sarah said, "Have you ever considered the possibility that you are confusing Magrov with Moravian?" Seeing the look on Mrs. Santucci's face, she then inhaled sharply and shifted away. Just as the old bureaucrat's jaw was starting to yawn, her chest rising like the return of Atlantis, Casimir Radon leaned way across and yanked something out of Sarah's lap and-- in a tone so arresting that it was answered by Bert Nix outside-- exclaimed, "Wait a minute!"