A FALSE NOTE
63
But soon, oppressively, almost as she felt the saffron dusk filter–
ing in through the window, she felt him begin to smother her, and
behind the fac;ade of her work, of the stillness of the room, there
was this gradual consciousness, this gradual suffocation-him-sitting
there in stolid, demanding silence, a monolith that cast its preponder–
ance into the suddenly shrunken, suddenly crowded space. She looked
up at him; but the eyes that she expected to be staring at her were
directed in contemplation at the window.
"What do you want to see the Dean for?" she asked, resentful
that she had made herself speak.
The question did not startle him; and she realized that, although
he had not been watching her, he had been willing her to speak.
She detected a subtle triumph in his eyes.
"My grades," he told her. "I got to see him about my grades."
"Oh," she said, and went back to her work.
But now that she had spoken, it seemed that her question was
tacit permission for him to speak. "I suppose you get a lot of fellows
in and out here about their grades and things," he said. "I guess
I'm just another cipher to you."
"Cipher?" The word hung in the air, and she tried, puzzled,
to grasp it.
"A zero," he said. "Nothing." He paused. "I bet if I ask you
now, you couldn't even remember my name without looking at your
pad."
She didn't say anything. She plucked a cigarette from the
package lying on her desk and slowly lit it. She looked at him, ex–
haling the first good cloud of smoke. She saw that his eyes had
narrowed slightly in appraisal, in challenge.
"McKinnon," she said. "Your name is James McKinnon."
He grinned then. And beneath her anger, she felt a hollowness,
almost a defeat in the impulsive reaching of her fingers for the pad,
the scissor sound of ripped paper, and the crumbling of the leaf in
her moist palm. She tossed the wad at the wastepaper basket.
"That's good," he said. "That's good of you to remember."
She said flatly, unthinking, "It's my job to remember names."
"That's what I mean," he said. "That's exactly what I mean.
It's part of your job to remember names."
