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short walk from the big neo-gothic buildings at the center of campus. At the top of the crest was a well-lit house covered in wisteria that looked like a miniature version of Vassar’s imposing main building. Just to be sure, they reread the placard posted at the bottom of the rise, which informed them that this mansion-looking place was, in fact, the President’s Guest Cottage.
    They had set up beds in the lounge of Lathrop, Ted’s dorm (Ted had borrowed sleeping bags from his friends in the Vassar Hiking Club), just in case, but this was looking a whole lot more promising.
    David followed Mickey as he leapt up the steps andsnatched the note pinned underneath the ornate, rust-covered doorknocker.
    â€œBlah blah blah, sorry I couldn’t meet you, blah blah blah, please make yourself at home, blah blah … the campus’s newest athletic facility, an Olympic-sized pool, is located, blah blah blah …,” Mickey read. “Cool.”
    He pushed the door open and walked into a gigantic room with a peaked ceiling, mahogany details, and a stone fireplace that was taller than David. There was a crackling in the fireplace, and they realized that someone had gotten a fire going for them.
    â€œSweet jeez,” said Mickey.
    â€œYou better not break anything,” David said.
    â€œAh, man, you’ve got to get over all these neuroses. What you
meant
to say was that this is a house where we better not
not
have a killer party.”
    â€œOkay, you’re right,” David said. “If we don’t have a total blowout party in this house we should go back to New York in shame.”
    As he said it, he even felt himself mean it a little bit. Mickey had already gone up the stairs—David could hear his feet thumping around on the second floor—and David turned to survey their new accommodations.
    The couches and chairs—and there were many of them, set up across the room in various formations that looked conducive to very important sorts ofdiscussions—were made of a dark reddish-brown leather, and there were white fur rugs thrown across several of them. David felt like he had unwittingly stumbled into a Ralph Lauren ad. He threw himself onto the couch closest to the fire—it gave gently and then held him with a reassuring firmness—and then he noticed the bar.
    Just to the left of the fireplace there was a collection of cut-glass decanters gleaming with golden liquid. David righted himself and sidled over to the bar, where he poured a healthy portion of something that smelled like burnt rubbing alcohol. He felt five years older just inhaling it, and when he examined himself in the mirror behind the bar, he discovered that it was true: In the red-hand-stained suit, with a tumbler of very old grain alcohol in his hand, he
did
look more sophisticated. Except, of course, for the fact that the hem of his pants was above his ankles, which reminded him that he wasn’t, in truth, very sophisticated at all.
    â€œYo, Davey,” he heard Mickey yelling from somewhere inside the cottage.
    David gave himself one last glance in the mirror and climbed the stairs. After peeking into a series of immaculately made up rooms, he found the one Mickey was in. There was a large canopy bed with drawn curtains made out of red and gold brocade. On thewall next to the bed there was a plaque. He was stepping toward it when Mickey waved him away.
    â€œIt just says the bed was a gift from the Rockefellers—it’s originally from Versailles,” Mickey, who was standing on the balcony, told him nonchalantly. “What do we have here?” he added, gesturing toward the tumbler.
    David handed Mickey the scotch as he joined him on the balcony.
    â€œWhoa,” Mickey said. Then he swigged from the scotch, coughing satisfactorily when it was gone. He looked toward David with glassy eyes, but David was looking at something else.
    Below them, in the fifty-meter pool that was housed