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each other genially. As they appeared to have much to say to each other, Claire offered to move to allow them to sit in adjoining seats.
    “Absolutely not,” Professor Hammer protested.
    “Wouldn’t hear of it,” Professor Residue insisted.
    As the food arrived and wine began to flow (a battalion of waiters delivered and disposed of plates and refilled glasses with fluid ease), and the ambient noise in the hall grew steadily louder, Professors Hammer and Residue began to talk over her, leaning forward over the table and practically knocking their heads together in their desire to communicate. They spoke English, but Claire was thoroughly bewildered by the subject of their discourse. Their lively conversation’s intelligibility was not improved by Professor Residue’s obvious hearing impairment.
    “The First and Third made a good showing in the Bumps last year, did you hear?” Professor Hammer shouted.
    “Of course I heard,” Professor Residue shouted in reply. “Do you think I’m deaf?”
    “I meant, did you hear the news?”
    “Did they win or lose?” Residue repeated. “Are you mad? They won, of course. It’s the First and Third, by God,” he said, banging his fist on the table.
    Claire gazed longingly at Andrew Kent. He appeared to be having a perfectly enjoyable time with Carolyn Sutcliffe. They were probably talking about perfectly normal things in perfectly normal voices in a perfectly normal language. Once or twice she’d seen Andrew glance in her direction, but only briefly and never in any meaningful way. He hadn’t tried to catch her eye or ask how she was doing or make an attempt to rescue her from her present company.
    As Claire looked around, she realized that most of the fellows were not old duffers like Hammer and Residue but colleagues who fell into a broad age category between thirty and sixty-five. The fellows, or members of the college, were not just teachers but also the custodians of Trinity’s past, present, and future, who collectively managed the school’s day-to-day educational operations and its general business, including its various trusts and endowments and its legendary prodigious wealth. She had heard that underneath the college’s stone buildings lay vaults filled with the many gifts—silver tea sets, gold bars, priceless antiquities, and the like—bequeathed to the college over the past four and a half centuries. Secret rooms as rich in treasures as Aladdin’s cave. She wondered if it was true.
    Claire also noticed that there were very few female fellows among this sea of black dinner jackets and bow ties. From where she sat, without craning her neck too noticeably Claire could count only eighteen women, including herself. Granted, there were probably a few more at the table behind her, and a few others who weren’t attending the dinner; still, that meant there were probably no more than thirty female fellows out of a total one hundred and sixty. Even at Harvard, which had not matriculated women until 1972, female faculty were much more numerous than this. She hadn’t known until now that Trinity was still such a predominantly male preserve.
    Claire’s sudden realization made her feel self-conscious. She worried that her strapless gown was showing a bit too much décolletage, and she unobtrusively tried to pull up the top of her dress—an impossible task, it turned out, while sitting down. Not that the gentlemen flanking her appeared to notice her discomfort; they were much too caught up in their discussion.
    “…he was bowled a googly and caught at silly mid-off,” Professor Hammer shouted.
    “No matter what the rest of the world says, cricket’s an exciting game,” Professor Residue passionately agreed, his left hand wildly gesticulating in spite of the full wineglass in it. Claire leaned back as the professor’s drink splashed onto the white tablecloth.
    She suffered through the soup, the appetizer, the palate-cleansingsorbet, the main course, and the