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everything else but. How’s your Swedish?’ He laughed and ran to the door again to check on his missing Alabaman. Finding no one, he returned to his desk and said, ‘In Boston you’ll find a splendid group of people. They’ll give you surprising assistance. There’s a girl up there … her name is … Jellinek will know when he gets here.’
    This exhausted what he could tell Joe, so the two wasted the better part of an hour discussing the university situation in California. The professor had a high opinion of the California schools and said he might like to teach there one of these days. ‘It’s where the action is,’ he said, and Joe thought that no matter where he said he came from, someone always said, ‘That’s where the action is.’ It was a phrase without meaning.
    ‘Torremolinos is different,’ the professor said nostalgically. ‘For young people it’s the capital of the world. You’ll find more ideas there in a week than you will at Yale in a year. The right kind of ideas, that is. The irrelevant ones.’
    When another half hour passed, with the Alabama deserter still missing, the professor suggested, ‘We both seem to be stood up. How about having dinner with me?’ He took Joe to an Italian restaurant, where six students were waiting, two with their girl friends. ‘I’ve brought along the walking delegate from California,’ he said, and it was understood that Joe was a fugitive of one sort or another. No one asked details, because there was a good chance that before the year ended, each of them might be in similar circumstances.
    There was much talk of the Vietnam war, much irritation expressed at the tardy rate at which desegregation of education was progressing. There were no Negroes in the group, but no collection of blacks could have defended the Negro cause more ably than these whites. ‘The time is coming,’ the professor said, ‘when Yale has got to face up to the Negro problem. And do you know when that time will be? When we are surrounded on seven sides by a solid black urban population.’
    At this point the professor asked, ‘Any of you seen Jellinek?’
    ‘He’s in jail.’
    ‘Oh my God! What happened?’
    ‘Tried to wreck the draft board.’
    ‘Damned inconsiderate. Our delegate from California is heading for Boston, and Jellinek has the name of our contact there.’
    ‘Gretchen Cole. Plays guitar and sings at the Cast Iron Moth.’
    ‘The same! I met her when I lectured at Radcliffe. Splendid child. She’ll get you into Canada.’
    ‘You’re smart to be hauling ass out of this rat trap,’ one of the students said.
    It seemed strange to Joe that a group of young people so able should have become so alienated from American life. No one tried to stop him from fleeing the country; he judged from what the students said that the professor who had encouraged him to accept exile was one of the brighter men at Yale; obviously he was one of the most popular, yet he openly espoused flight as the only honorable alternative.
    As the night wore on, the professor took Joe aside and said, ‘I just had an idea. It’s not a very good one but it might work. Joe, how tough a man are you?’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Can you defend yourself? I don’t mean with your fists. Against heroin? Against the whole complex?’
    ‘I keep my nose clean.’
    ‘I figured. If you do get to Torremolinos and you’re broke and the police are breathing down your neck and threatening to throw you out of Spain, there’s a name you might look up … at your own risk. Write it down. Paxton Fell. He has money.’
    When the time came to leave, one of the students took Joe aside and slipped him a handful of bills. The student said, ‘Good luck,’ and they parted.
    He arrived in Boston at sunset, lean and shaggy and ill-tempered. It took him some time to locate the Cast Iron Moth. He had found the address in the phone book but was quite helpless when it came to spotting the street, forit lay in