Sarah drank some water to clear all the food from her mouth. “I don’t know,” she said. “He does sound a bit weird, but lots of kids are like that, they grow out of it. He’s probably harmless.”

“You should meet him yourself.”

“Remember when you were first interested in me, and I lived out on Highway 74, and you came around one night, planning to call up to my window, but when you climbed the fence, you snagged your pants-”

“I know the story.”

“-you snagged your pants as you were coming over the other side, and you kept going but your pants got left behind?”

“I don’t see-”

“And my dad heard the racket and went out to investigate, and there you were in your Jockeys?”

I suffered a moment with the memory, then said, “The difference is, you were interested in me, but Angie’s not interested in Trevor.”

“Actually, at the time, I wasn’t interested in you.”

“You weren’t?”

“Not really. But you kind of grew on me. And it took a lot of convincing for my dad to accept a guy he’d first found standing in our backyard in his skivvies.”

“I think you have some of the details wrong. I was wearing a tuck-in shirt that had long tails front and back, so you could hardly even see my shorts.”

Sarah nodded. “I think you’re right. You were the picture of dignity.”

“So you’re saying finding Trevor in our backyard isn’t that big a deal?”

“Did he have his pants on?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, he’s one up on you, isn’t he?”

I finished the last bite of my dinner, rinsed off the plate in the sink and left it sitting in there. This didn’t seem like a good time to tell Sarah about the course of action I was contemplating for after dinner.

“I have to go,” I said. I gave Sarah a kiss. She said she would leave a note on the counter with the details of where she was going to be for the next two days.

“And you can always get me on my cell,” she said, and I ran out the door. Sarah’s Camry was parked behind our new Virtue, so I did some driveway car juggling so I could take the new one to show Angie.

Traffic heading back downtown toward the university was light, and I was down there in about fifteen minutes. It was a nice evening, so I opened the sunroof and occasionally raised the fingers of my right hand into the passing breeze.

What I’d forgotten was that to pull up in front of Galloway Hall meant paying a parking entrance fee to enter the system of roads within the university grounds. I protested to the gatekeeper who handed me my ticket.

“I’m just picking someone up,” I said.

He looked at me with dull eyes. He’d heard this lament before. “If you’re back within five minutes, there’s no charge.”

Given that I’d shown up ten minutes earlier than Angie had asked me to be there, it looked like I was going to be out the five. Slowly, I drove onto the grounds and past the stately, vine-covered buildings. The Virtue, with its little sewing-machine motor, barely made a sound as I wound my way through the narrow, some of them cobblestone, streets.

I found Galloway Hall and a curbside spot a short ways down from it. Angie wouldn’t know what car to look for, so I got up and leaned against our new wheels, keeping an eye on the building’s front door.

Fifteen minutes later, Angie appeared. She spotted me, waved, and walked my way. She gave me a somewhat tentative hug and then stood back to look at the car.

“I like it,” she said.

“Tell your brother,” I said.

“Oh, ignore him. So, I can use this for school?”

“Not every day, but probably when you need it.”

“Can I drive it?” She was doing a circle around the car. As I watched her, I felt, as I so rarely do, at ease, relaxed even. She was here, in front of me, safe, far from Trevor, and looking so grown up as she checked out the vehicle.

I tossed her the keys and she got behind the wheel. I settled in next to her. Angie had slipped the key into the ignition and was familiarizing herself with the controls. “Lights, radio-CD player?”

“Looks like it,” I said.

“And a sunroof! I love a sunroof. We’ve never had a car with a sunroof.”

Angie turned the key, tilted her head, puzzled. “I don’t hear anything,” she said. “Is it on?”

“It’s on, don’t worry about it. Just put it in gear and go.”

She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. “It’s so quiet,” she said. “I can’t believe how quiet it is.”

“I know,” I said. “You know they make you pay for parking just to come in here and pick somebody up?”

“Yeah, they’re real pricks,” Angie said, her chin up in the air as she looked down the short hood. “But not to worry.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know another way out.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Angie smiled mischievously, the way she did when she was a little girl and had taken her brother’s cookie. It was the smile that said she had secrets, that there were parts of her life I knew nothing about.

“There’s this way, you go down the side of Galloway Hall here”-she turned right-“and just keep your eye open for this kind of alleyway.”

“Guess who was at the house today when I got home.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“He said he was looking for his dog.”

“What kind of dog?”

“This black mangy mutt, I don’t know. It looked like, if he was going to have a dog, that would be the dog.”

“You know, it’s not like I hate the guy. He’s just a little too out there for me. This whole black-jacket-and-boots thing, I’m just not into that. And he’s- Wait, here it is.”

She slowed the car, turned into a cobblestone lane that wasn’t much wider than the car, and inched forward.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Where the hell are you going?”

“I never have to pay for parking. I can almost always get out this way.”

“This isn’t even a road!” I said. “It’s a walkway! And besides, your mom or I always give you money for parking.”

“Hey, if you guys want to give me money for parking, I’m not going to turn it down. I put it towards other educational expenses.”

“Like parties?”

“Of course not,” she said, looking straight ahead. “Someday they’re going to get smart and close this off and then I’ll need it anyway.”

“Where does this come out?”

“Edwards Street. There’s a little chain at the end, and you just have to unhook it to get out, there’s not a lock.”

“You better hope not or you’re going to have to be very good at backing up long distances down narrow alleys.”

Like I said, this walkway was only slightly wider than the Virtue, with Galloway Hall on one side and some other building on the other. It wasn’t even suitable for service vehicles, with low, vine-covered archways overhead that I could almost reach sticking my arm out the sunroof. I was starting to feel a bit pissed.

“This is wrong,” I said to Angie.

“Dad, you’re such a Boy Scout, you worry about everything. I’m a student. You cut costs any way you can.”

“What about the ticket you pick up when you enter the grounds? It never gets checked or validated or whatever. You ever hand it in by mistake some other day and you’ll owe hundreds of dollars in parking fees!”

Angie reached over and touched my knee. “Dad, take your medication. And go unhook that chain up there.”

I did as I was told, skulking about like a guilty man, looking over my shoulder for campus security, certain we’d be arrested at any moment. Angie drove through, then I hooked the chain back across and got back into the car.

“You were saying, about Trevor,” Angie said, pulling onto Edwards.

“He had some computer thing he wanted to show you.”

“Any excuse. He’s got some new computer thing every other day. He called me this afternoon, says, guess who? Says it’s Neo, for crying out loud.”

“Neo?”

“Keep up, Dad. The character, in the movie. God. Just promise me, Dad, that you won’t do anything stupid again.”