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pretty, but dangerous.' He laughed, a short thin man with gray hair cut down to a bristly cap. Deep grooves beside his mouth cut into the flesh. 'Even when school is not in session, the headmaster must slave away at his desk. This means that you will almost always find me here. My name is Mr. Broome. Don't be shy. If you have a problem you want todiscuss with me, just make an appointment with Mrs. Olinger.' He stepped backward and leaned against a dark wooden bookshelf, his arms crossed over his chest. The headmaster wore horn-rimmed glasses the color of a marmalade cat. His shirt was very crisp. I see now that he was perfect — the 'final detail in his whole paneled, oriental-carpeted, book-filled office, the detail around which the delicate, deliberate, old-fashioned good taste of the office cohered.
     
         'Of course,' he said, 'it is rather more likely that your visits here will be in the service of a less pleasant function.'
     
         His mouth twitched.
     
         'But that should concern only a small portion of you. Our boys are generally worked pretty hard, and they don't have the time to find trouble. One word of warning. Those who do find it don't last long here. If you want to enjoy the benefits of being a student at this school, work hard, be obedient and respectful, and play hard. Considering the advantages, it is not too much to ask.' Again, his taut, measured replica of a smile. 'Just what we have the right, not to mention the duty, to ask of you, I should say. It is my intention, it is the school's intention, to leave our mark upon you. Wherever you go in later life, people will be able to say, 'There is a Carson man.' Well.'
     
         He looked over our heads at the teachers; most of us too swiveled our heads to look back. Mr. Whipple was leafing through the forms we had filled out. Mr. Ridpath stood at a sort of soldierly ease, his feet spread and his hands behind his back. The other two stared at the floor, as if putting themselves at a private distance from the headmaster.
     
         'You have them, Mr. Whipple? Then please bring them here.'
     
         Whipple moved quickly around us to the desk and laid the pile of forms immediately before the headmaster's leather chair. 'The two on top, sir,' he muttered, and vanished backward..
     
         'Ah? Yes, I see.' He uncoiled, the frames of his glasses glowed red for a moment as he passed before a stand of candles, and he lifted the top two forms. 'Messrs. Nightingale and Sherman will stay behind amoment. The rest of you may return to the library to pick up your textbooks and schedule cards. Lead them away, Mr. Ridpath.'
     
       
     
      Fifteen minutes later Nightingale and Sherman appeared in the door of the library and moved aimlessly toward the now book-covered tables. Sherman's cheekbones were very red.
     
         'Well,' I whispered to him, 'What'd he say?' Sherman tried to grin. 'He's a frosty old shit, isn't he?' We compared our schedule cards before our lockers in the second-floor front corridor of the modern addition, where the inner walls were tall panes of glass looking out onto a gravel-filled court with a single lime tree.
     
       
     
      I heard weeks later from Tom Flanagan why Bob Sherman and Del Nightingale had been kept behind by Mr. Broome. Nightingale had not filled in the blanks for parents' names. He had not done so because his parents were dead. Nightingale lived with his godparents, who had just moved from Boston into a house on Sunset Lane, four or five long blocks from the school. Sherman had been dressed down.
     
       
     
       
     
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      New York, August, 1969: Bob Sherman
     
          
     
      'Why am I here?' Sherman asked. 'Can you answer that? What the fuck am I doing here when I could be out on the Island sipping a Coors and looking at the ocean?' We were in his office, and he was speaking loudly to be heard over the rock music pumping put of the stereo system. The