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By Root 2667 0

was, but there was no need to ask about Charles. The night before I’d had to bring him home in a taxi, help him upstairs and into bed, where, judging from the condition in which I’d left him, he still was now. Two cream cheese and marmalade sandwiches lay wrapped in napkins by Camilla’s plate. She hadn’t been there when I brought Charles home, and she looked like she’d just got out of bed herself: tousle-haired, no lipstick, wearing a gray wool sweater that came down past her wrists. Smoke drifted from her cigarette in wisps that were the color of the sky outside. A tiny white speck of a car came singing down the wet road from town, far away, twisting with the black curves and growing larger by the moment.

It was late. Lunch was over, people were leaving. A misshapen old janitor trudged in with mop and pail and began, with weary grunting noises, to slop water on the floor by the beverage center.

Camilla was staring out the window. Suddenly, her eyes got wide. Slowly, incredulously, she raised her head; and then she was scrambling out of her chair, craning to see.

I saw, too, and jumped forward. An ambulance was parked directly beneath us. Two attendants, pursued by a pack of photographers, hurried past with their heads bent against the rain and a stretcher between them. The form upon it was covered with a sheet but, just before they shoved it through the double doors (long, easy motion, like bread sliding into the oven) and slammed them shut, I saw, hanging down from the edge, five or six inches of yellow rain slicker.

Shouts, far away, downstairs in Commons; doors slamming, a growing confusion, voices shouting down voices and then one hoarse voice, rising above the others: “Is he living?”

Henry took a deep breath. Then he closed his eyes; and exhaling sharply, a hand to his chest, he fell back in his chair as if he’d been shot.

This is what happened.

At about one-thirty on Tuesday afternoon, Holly Goldsmith, an eighteen-year-old freshman from Taos, New Mexico, decided to take her golden retriever, Milo, for a walk.

Holly, who studied modern dance, knew of the search for Bunny but like most students of her year had not participated in it, taking advantage of the unexpected recess to catch up on sleep and study for midterms. Quite understandably, she did not wish to run into a search party while on her outing. Therefore she decided to take Milo out behind the tennis courts to the ravine, since it had been canvassed days before and was, besides, a spot of which the dog was especially fond.

This is what Holly said:

“When we were out of sight of campus, I unhooked Milo’s leash so he could run around by himself. He likes to do that.…

“So I was just standing there [at the edge of the ravine] waiting for him. He’d scrambled over the embankment and was running around and barking, usual stuff. I’d forgot his tennis ball that day. I thought it was in my pocket but it wasn’t, so I went off and found a few sticks to throw to him. When I came back to the edge of the embankment, I saw he had something in his teeth, shaking it from side to side. He wouldn’t come when I called him. I thought he had a rabbit or something.…

“I guess Milo had dug him up, his head and his, um, chest, I guess—I couldn’t see very well. It was the glasses I noticed … slipped off one [ear] and kind of flopping back and forth like … yes, please … licking his face … I thought for a moment he was …” [unintelligible].

The three of us went rapidly downstairs (gaping janitor, cooks peeping from the kitchen, the cafeteria ladies in their nurse cardigans leaning over the balustrade) past the snack bar, past the post office where for once the red-wigged lady at the switchboard had put aside her afghan and her bag of variegated yarns and was standing in the doorway, crumpled Kleenex in hand, following us curiously with her eyes as we rushed through the hall and into the main room of Commons, where stood a cluster of grim-looking policemen, the sheriff, the game warden, security guards, a strange girl crying and someone taking pictures and everybody talking