“Phil,” he says to the president. “It happens. In a population this big, there are bound to be some deaths. We had three last year alone, and the year before that, there were two—”

“Not in my building,” President Allington says. I can’t help thinking that he is trying to sound like Harrison Ford in Air Force One (“Get off my plane”).

But he sounds more like Pauly Shore in Bio-Dome.

This seems to me like an appropriate time to go back to my office. I find Sarah there sitting at my desk, talking on the phone. No one else is around, but there’s still a disagreeable amount of tension in the room. It seems to be emanating from Sarah, who slams the phone down and glares at me.

“Rachel says we have to cancel the hall dance tonight.” She is practically glowering.

“So?” This sounds like a reasonable request to me. “Cancel it.”

“You don’t understand. We’ve lined up a real band. We stand to lose about fifteen hundred dollars from this.”

I stare at Sarah.

“Sarah,” I say. “A girl is dead.Dead.”

“And by veering from our normal routine because of her selfish act,” Sarah says, “we will only cause her death to be romanticized by the student population.” Then, coming down off her grad student high horse for a second, she adds, “I guess we can make back the lost revenue in T-shirt sales. Still, I don’t see why we should cancel our dance, just because some nutcase took a dive off the top of an elevator.”

And people say show biz is rough. They’ve obviously never worked in a dorm.

Excuse me, I mean, residence hall.

Being this is New York City, where so many unnatural deaths occur every day, it ends up taking the coroner’s office four hours to get to Elizabeth’s body.

The coroner arrives at three-thirty, and by three thirty-five, Elizabeth Kellogg is declared dead. Cause of death, pending an investigation and autopsy, is recorded as acute trauma, in the form of a broken neck, back, and pelvic bone, in addition to multiple fractures to the face and extremities.

Call me a dreamer, but I don’t think anybody in the student population will be romanticizing her death when they find this out.

Worse, the coroner says he thinks Elizabeth has been dead for nearly twelve hours. Which means she’s been lying in the bottom of that elevator shaft since the night before.

And okay, he says she died on impact with the cement floor, so death was instantaneous. It’s not like she’d lain there, alive, all night.

But still.

There’s no hiding the coroner’s van, or the body that is eventually trundled out of the building and into it. By four o’clock, the entire student population of Fischer Hall knows there’s been a death. They also know, once the elevators are turned back on, and they are finally allowed to take them back to their floors, how she died. I mean, they’re college students: They’re not stupid. They can put together two and two and come up with four.

But I can’t be too concerned with how the seven hundred residents of Fischer Hall are dealing with the news of Elizabeth’s death. Because I am too busy being concerned with how Elizabeth’s parents are dealing with the news of her death.

That’s because it was decided by Dr. Jessup—a decision backed up by Dr. Flynn—that because of Rachel’s previous contact with Mrs. Kellogg concerning Elizabeth’s guest privileges, she should be the one to make the call to the dead girl’s parents.

“It will be less of a shock,” Dr. Flynn assures everyone, “for the Kelloggs to hear the news from a familiar voice.”

Sarah is unceremoniously banished from the office once the decision is made, but Dr. Jessup asks me to stay.

“It’ll be a comfort to Rachel,” is what he says.

He clearly hasn’t seen Rachel in action in the cafeteria, cussing out the salad bar attendants for accidentally putting full-fat ranch dressing in the fat-free ranch dispenser, the way I had. Rachel is hardly the type who needs comforting.

But who am I to say anything?

The scene is excruciatingly sad, and by the time Rachel hangs up the phone, I have what feels like an oncoming migraine as well as an upset stomach.

Of course, it could be the eleven Jolly Ranchers and the bag of Fritos I’d had in lieu of lunch. But you never know.

These symptoms are made worse by Dr. Jessup. Chagrined by Dr. Allington’s remarks, the assistant vice president has thrown caution and New York City health codes to the wind, and is smoking energetically, his rear end resting against the edge of Rachel’s desk. No one offers to open a window. This is because our office windows are on the ground floor, and every time you open them, some wit walks up to them and yells, “Can I have fries with that?” into our office.

It is right then that it occurs to me that Rachel is finished with her phone calls, and that I am no longer needed to be a comfort to her. There is nothing more I can do to help.

So I stand up and say, “I’m going to go home now.”

Everyone looks at me. Fortunately Dr. Allington has long since departed, as he and his wife have a house in the Hamptons and they head out there every chance they get.

Except that today Mrs. Allington wouldn’t leave through the front door—not with the coroner’s van parked out there on the sidewalk, behind the fire engine. I had to turn off the alarm so she could leave by the emergency exit off the side of the cafeteria, the same door through which the security guards usher the Allingtons’ more prestigious guests—like the Schwarzeneggers—when they have dinner parties so that they don’t have to be bothered by any students.

The Allingtons’ only child, Christopher—a very good-looking guy in his late twenties, who wears a lot of Brooks Brothers, and is living in graduate student housing while attending the college’s law school—was behind the wheel of their forest green Mercedes when they finally left. Dr. Allington solicitously placed his wife in the backseat, their overnight bags in the trunk, then hopped into the front seat beside his son.

Christopher Allington peeled out so fast that people attending the street fair—oh yes. The street fair went on, in spite of the fire engine and coroner’s wagon—jumped up onto the sidewalk, thinking someone was trying to run them down.

I’ll tell you something: If the Allingtons were my parents, I’d have tried to run people down, too.

Dr. Flynn recovers from my announcement that I’m leaving before anybody else. He says, “Of course, Heather. You go on home. We don’t need Heather anymore, do we, Stan?”

Dr. Jessup exhales a stream of blue-gray smoke.

“Go home,” he says to me. “Have a drink. A big one.”

“Oh, Heather,” Rachel cries. She leaps up from her swivel chair and, to my surprise, throws her arms around me. She has never been physically demonstrative with me before. “Thank you so much for coming over. I don’t know what we would have done without you. You keep such a level head in a crisis.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. I hadn’t done a single thing. I certainly hadn’t bought her those flowers Dr. Jessup had recommended. I’d calmed the student workers down, maybe, and talked Sarah out of having her dance, but that’s it, really. Not exactly anything life-saving.

I look everywhere but at anyone else’s face as Rachel hugs me. Hugging Rachel is a lot like hugging—well, a stick. Be cause she’s so thin. I sort of feel bad for her. Because who wants to hug a stick? I know all those guys who go after models do. But I mean, what kind of normal person wants to hug, or be hugged by, a lot of pointy bones? It would be one thing if she were naturally pointy. But I happen to know that Rachel starves herself in order to be that way on purpose.