Vag peered into the dark mail box just out of habit. "Never any on Sunday," he murmured as be bumped into a middle-aged tutor on his way upstairs. He flung open the door of Bob's room, but the "hello" died on his lips as the unexpected darkness blinded him. He stumbled against a hard wood chair where there shouldn't have been one and flicked the light switch.

In the middle of the bare floor was a pile of trunks and boxes, neatly scaled and with tags and stickers announcing their destination. Vag pulled off his gloves, methodically, with his teeth, and slid his hands into his pockets. He looked around him slowly at the rectangular islands of clean paint on the walls, ghosts of Bob's school banners and pictures, that had become so familiar. He stared hard at the emptiness. A piece of jagged white wood hanging slantwise on the wall by a single nail caught his eye. Vag cocked his head and read, "H-19, P-14, Comeford to Lyle." He thought of Bob on that fantastic afternoon wading into the melee of wild-eyed goal posters in his shirt sleeves, while Vag held his coat and made conversation with Bob's girl from Vassar.

There was the old Petty girl fluttering on another wall, above the liquor-stained armchair; the one he had helped Bob carry over from Matthews when the moved out of the Yard. "Two years isn't much time," Vag thought. He felt the cigarette cling to his dry lips as he shuffled over to the fireplace. The bricks were cold and black. Vag shivered as he remembered all the week-hour bull sessions its fires had warned, and the way they used to talk about a far-away war with a bottle of scotch on the floor between them.

Vag tapped his cigarette ash into the hearth and watched it drift down onto a pile of half-charred letters, mostly blue and pink ones. All that remained of a burned Crimson said, "Unassigned ERC Goes in February" "That one was no rumor," Vag muttered.

He picked up an old Haig and Haig bottle and sniffed at it absent mindedly. A rude knock on the door shattered his abstraction. He wheeled around to come face-to-face with a brand new cherub of about 17, who set down the bag he was carrying and looked around the room possessively. Vag stifled a snarl. "Are you my roommate?" the Freshman asked, amiably. Vag took the splinter of goal post off the wall, flipped his cigarette into the fireplace and strode out of the room, closing the door behind him.