Page 465 - WhyAsInY

Chapter Twenty-Six
Singled; Out
MAY 8, 1985 – DECEMBER 3, 1989
In which our author wanders in the desert for forty . . . thousand one hundred and four hours, more or less (but who’s counting?), until he returns to Scarsdale.
Act Two, Scene One
I am standing in the lobby just inside the entrance of Fierman Hall (no, not a dorm at Mount Holyoke; it’s 6:00 p.m. on January 4, 1989, and I am forty-four years old), having traveled there from my office at Coronet Properties, 505 Park Avenue. It’s three degrees and incredibly blustery out. My hair, I am later told, is scruffy and windblown, which, it turns out, is a good thing. I’m in a suit and wearing an overcoat and, unfash- ionably, a six-foot-long woolen scarf of alternating sections of purple and white, more appropriate for a high school student than for a general counsel. Lesley Posner had knit it for me when I was accepted at Amherst, and it was the warmest add-on outer garment that I could find. This is not exactly a Paul Stuart look, but, I am also later told, it adds to my panache; if I were perfectly Paul Stuart–clad, that fact would have in any event gone unnoticed. Finally, and the best touch of all to com- plete the picture, I am holding, not a briefcase, but a book, one about computer theory it turns out. That, too, I’m later told, was a good thing.
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