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Berkeley to study economics. The developing science of money fascinated him. He thought he could discover a way to make poor people and poor nations rich and eliminate world suffering.
    Mardi had been invited on a full scholarship by three Ivy League universities to undertake a degree in astrophysics.
    “Science is everything,” Mardi would say.
    Quentin was a member of all the right clubs and associations, played football for the school, and had a GPA of 4.2. He secured admission to Brown University to study law. Quentin’s father was a congressman. He was delighted.
    Bob, too, had done well. Like Frank, he wanted to study economics, but his quest had a different flavor. Bob wanted to end up in public service. Bob’s father was an economist. He had all the right connections. Bob’s dad had told him there was no answer in economic science for making poor nations rich or even for making some poor people rich.
    “It doesn’t even matter,” he told Bob. “Study monetary policy and the juiciest jobs will be on offer when you finish.” Like Quentin, Bob went to the east coast because his dad said that was the place to be.
    Bob and Quentin just couldn’t comprehend Frank when he said, “Remember what Mardi said? You study something in order to understand things…to solve the problems of the world…what else is there?”
    “Girls,” Quentin said, laughing. He certainly had plenty of those.
    “My dad said you get the best jobs with monetary policy. He knows,” Bob said.
    Bob and Quentin went east. Frank lost touch with both of them. He wanted to. Frank and Mardi stayed in touch.
    Frank had started dating girls by graduation, but mostly it was limited to taking girls to the school prom. All that changed when he was a freshman at Berkeley. He met Susan, another freshman.
    Susan took Economics 101, but she was greatly interested in the “small is beautiful” framework trumpeted by the economist E. F. Schumacher. Frank did not care much for this theory, but he was greatly enamored with Susan. “Indeed, small is beautiful,” he would say, referring to Susan, who was both small and beautiful. For a while, Frank pretended to go along with whatever Susan liked.
    “Keep an open mind,” she would say, and he did. Yet try as he might, he could not make Susan’s favorite theory work when all the big economic theories were calling for more globalization and teaching the economies of scale. That hardly mattered between them. They both loved cycling and hiking, dancing, and contemporary R&B music. They were in love, and they knew it. They held hands and were always together. He switched courses to take more of hers, but their grades never suffered. They were both conscientious students. They both lived in the dorms, and sometimes at night, she would sneak over to the boys’ college and spend a whole night in the little cubbyhole that was Frank’s room.
    At the end of their freshman year, Susan suggested taking a trip together to Africa.
    “What, are you serious? What will it cost?” he asked.
    Susan had done all the numbers and the itinerary: the student-discount cheap flights, the vaccinations, the weekend American English for beginners workshop they would do in Nairobi to earn money, the backpacker hostels—everything down to the brand of mosquito repellent they would buy. Frank had never been happier, he would have just boarded the plane to anywhere in the world. Susan and Frank expected two weeks of bliss.
    They never even discussed their guardians. They never needed to. Frank knew he would need to lie about going with some friends to avoid large discussions with Uncle Abe and Aunt Leeba. Mardi, he knew, would cover for him.
    They flew Kenyan Airways and did their teaching workshop the very first weekend. Frank was dumbstruck by the poverty. He had never been outside the United States, and nothing that Susan had warned him about could have prepared a nineteen-year-old for that unnerving experience.
    Susan held on to