“I’m sorry,” she said, with an utter sincerity of contrition.

Carl crinkled his brow. “For what?”

“For dragging you off like this. For taking up your time. I mean—” She pressed her fingers to the sides of her head just above the cheekbones, where the flux of various miseries was beginning to take the form of a monster headache. “I mean, I didn’t ask, did I, whether you had other plans for this evening?”

He produced one of his clockwork smiles. “That’s okay, Miss Whiting. I didn’t exactly plan on coming here to Elmore tonight, but what the hell. Like you say, the food’s great. You worried about your folks?”

“My feelings are pretty much the opposite of worry. I’m thoroughly pissed off with all of them.”

“That’s what I’d gathered. Of course, it’s none of my business, but I can say for a fact that your father didn’t have much choice whether or not to go to Chicago.”

“Oh yes, I learned long ago that business is business. And I don’t — I can’t — blame him. But Serjeant could have come. He is my brother.”

“I didn’t mention it before, Miss Whiting—”

“Beverley,” she corrected. Earlier she’d made a game of making him call her by the name on her false ID.

“I didn’t mention it before, Miss Whiting, because it didn’t seem my place to, but the reason your brother couldn’t come for you is that two weeks ago he got his license suspended for drunk driving. He was driving home from Elmore, as a matter of fact.”

“He could have come along with you then. So could Alethea.”

“Maybe they could. But I don’t think either of them cares that much for my company. Not that they’ve got any kind of grudge against me. But after all, I’m just one of the operations managers, not a friend of the family.” With which — and with, it seemed, no sense at all of its being a questionable act — he poured the last of the wine in the carafe into his own glass.

“If you want to take me home now, that’s all right.”

“Just relax, Miss Whiting.”

“Beverley.”

“Okay, Beverley.”

“There actually is a real Beverley Whittaker. She was in Switzerland, hiking. We met in a hospice about halfway up Mont Blanc. There was the most incredible lightning storm. Once you’ve seen lightning in the mountains, you can understand why the Greeks put their most important god in charge of it.”

Carl nodded gloomily.

She had to stop chattering, but the long silences, when they developed, panicked her equally.

Another couple had gone out on the dance floor, but just as they started dancing the music stopped. The silence enlarged.

She had a rule of thumb for such situations, and it was to take an interest in other people, since that was what they were interested in.

“And, uh, what are you in charge of?” she asked.

“Pardon?” But his eyes connected just long enough to let her see that he’d understood — and resented — the question.

Which, nevertheless, she must repeat. “You said you were an operations manager. Which operation do you manage?”

“Whatever has to do with the work crews. Recruitment and housing primarily. Transport, payroll, supervision.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a job that has to be done.”

“Of course. My father says it’s the most important operation on the farm.”

“That’s a way of saying it’s the dirtiest. Which it is.”

“Well, it’s not what I meant. In fact, I wouldn’t say that.”

“You would if you had to deal with some of the types we end up with. In another month or so, at the height of it, we’ll have something like twelve hundred on the payroll, and of that twelve hundred I’d say a good half of them are no better than animals.”

“I’m sorry, Carl, but I just can’t accept that.”

“Well, there’s no reason you should have to, Miss Whiting.” He smiled. “Beverley, that is. Anyway, it’s a good job, and a hell of a lot of responsibility for someone my age, so it would be crazy to complain, if that’s what it seems like I’m doing. It’s not.”

They were rescued by the waitress who came and asked them what they wanted for dessert. Carl asked for Bavarian cream. Boadicea, because it was her first meal back in America, ordered apple pie.

A new polka had started up, and Boadicea, admitting defeat, turned her chair sideways to watch the dancers. There was a couple out on the floor now who actually could dance, whose bodies moved with the motions of life. They made the other dancers look like the simulacra you paid to see inside a tent at a county fair. The girl was especially good. She wore a wide, whirling, gypsyish skirt with a flounce at the hem, and the sway and flare and swirl of the skirt seemed to infuse the bland music with energies of an altogether higher order. The boy danced with equal energy but less panache. His limbs moved too abruptly, while his torso seemed never quite to unlock from its innate crouch. It was the body of a Brueghel peasant. Even so, the delight in his face was so lively, and it was such a handsome face (not in the least a Brueghel), that you couldn’t keep from feeling an answering delight. The girl (Boadicea was sure) wouldn’t have danced nearly so well with someone else, would not have been so set-on-fire. Together, for as long as the polka lasted, they brought time to a stop at the Elmore Roller-Rink Roadhouse.

Among the traditions and institutions of Amesville High School Mrs. Norberg of Room 113 was one of the most awful — in, as Boadicea liked to say, the original sense of the word. Some years before, in a tight three-way contest, she had been elected to the House of Representatives on the ticket of the American Spiritual Renewal Party. In its heyday the A.S.R.P. had been the rallying point of the Farm Belt’s most diehard undergoders, but as their first fine vision of a spiritually awakened America faded, and especially when the party’s leaders were proven to be as venal as run-of-the-mill Republicans and Democrats, its members returned to the G.O.P. or became, like Mrs. Norberg, lone voices crying in a wilderness of political error.

Mrs. Norberg had taught American History and Senior Social Studies at the time of her election, and when she returned to Iowa after her single term in Washington she taught the same subjects, and she was teaching them still, though recently she had added to the stature of her legend by having spent a two year so-called sabbatical in a rest home in Dubuque, where she was taken (much against her will) after having been inspired one day to cut off a student’s hair in the school lunchroom. Her students referred to this as the Iceberg’s second term of office. They knew she was crazy, but no one seemed to mind all that much. Since Dubuque her frenzies against gum chewers and note passers were much abated, and she limited herself to a teacher’s conventional weapon, the report card. On an average, twenty percent of each year’s graduating class failed Social Studies and had to take a make-up class to get their diplomas. All her known enemies were failed, of course, but so might be, it seemed, anyone else. Her F’s fell, like the rain, on the just and unjust alike. Some even claimed that Mrs. Norberg drew names out of a hat.

This would have been alarming enough with regard only to its gross injustice, but Boadicea had a special reason to dread the Iceberg’s class, in that it had been her Uncle Charles who had taken away Mrs. Norberg’s seat in the house. When she had expressed her misgivings to her father, he was dismissive. A majority of the people one had to deal with, Grandison declared, were lunatics. One of the chief reasons for Boadicea’s attending a public high school was precisely that she might come to terms with this unpleasant truth. As to the possibility of failing, she need not worry: Grandison had already arranged with the principal to correct any grade she received that was less than a B. All she had to do, therefore, was go to Room 113 for one hour every day and sit. She might be as reticent or as outspoken as she chose — it wouldn’t matter. But as to getting rid of Mrs. Norberg, that was not to be thought of. Incompetent she might be, or even bananas, but she was also the last certified undergoder on the high school’s faculty, and any attempt to dislodge her would have raised a major stink throughout the county and possibly across the state. In three years she would retire: till then she had to be endured.