The man whom he succeeded would long ago have thrown Raul out on his ass. Henderson had been magnanimous. He had been willing to accept Raul’s reasons for cutting, and the day he was to see him, he had broken a rule. For a moment, Henderson had to reflect that Raul’s luck was awful. To have been caught on that day, and by him, was phenomenal. After all, this was the real crime.
His secretary handed him Raul’s and Jeff’s folders. He looked at their schedules. They had told the truth, but he knew that already. He walked into his office. Raul and Jeff were sitting on the couch, their books on the coffee table before them. Henderson sat down, opening Raul’s folder. In it was his letter to Raul’s parents that smoothed everything over. It infuriated him. And Raul, oblivious, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows, maddened him still more.
“You were to see me today, isn’t that so?” he asked Raul.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you too, Jeff.”
Jeff gulped. “Yes, sir.”
“All right.” He shifted in his chair. “You’ve let me down,” he said, looking at Raul. “Both of you. Raul, I was willing to let your cutting on Thursday and Friday pass. It seemed reasonable to me that you needed a rest. I’ve protected you from the faculty. Many of them, most of them, think that you should be thrown out. Mr. White, Mr. Miller, and I have all stuck our necks out.” He paused. “I’ve written this letter to your parents, and I’m not going to change it, in spite of this. I don’t want either of you to tell anyone about this. I’m not. I don’t know why, but I’m going to give both of you another chance. But the next time that either of you breaks any rule, no matter how trivial, you’re out!” He looked at Raul and then at Jeff. “Jeff, I’ll see you later today.” He paused again, rising. He pointed to the door. “I don’t want to see either of you in here again like this. Now get out!”
Out of both shock and fear, Raul and Jeff hurried out. The grace and dignity of both the man and his office had been violated by his tone. Jeff was whispering excitedly to Raul as they walked through the building, but Raul was not listening. He was smiling strangely.
Those advisers at school — Mr. Miller, Mr. Bowden, and Mr. White — who took on the aspect of sorrowful fathers when they saw Raul after this incident warned him about the influence he had on Jeff, and Jeff on him. Though Raul would answer heatedly that, if either was being influenced, it was Jeff, he wasn’t fooled. A very old tactic, he thought mildly, very cheap.
He saw more of Jeff because of this, though his other fair-weather friends avoided prolonged contact. Raul preferred it that way. He found solitude comforting: he emerged stronger and wiser. Within, desperately, he felt the need for strength — an invulnerability to the insults, minute and monstrous, his station in life seemed to invite.
A few days after the happening in Henderson’s office Raul, getting into a subway car to go home, met his mother. He exclaimed and sat down next to her. He was pleased to see her. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
His mother briefly considered lying but felt that Raul deserved more than that. “I went to see the school psychiatrist.” Raul’s anger was transparent. “He asked to see me,” she went on.
“Oh?” His mother, a miraculous calm on her face, nodded. Raul, annoyed at her not elaborating, burst out, “What happened?”
“Nothing,” she said, a little annoyed at his tone. “I didn’t know what to say. I told him I was upset and confused and that I didn’t understand why you were cutting.”
“And? What did he say?”
“Nothing. He said I shouldn’t worry.”
Raul turned away in anger. “Why did you go?”
“I wanted to.”
“What do you mean, you wanted to!”
His belligerence was presumptuous and angering.
“You know, I didn’t have to tell you I went. I have my reasons and I’ll keep them to myself,” she said.
“I would thank you, when you play with my life, to consult me first.”
She laughed. “I’m responsible for you. It’s our money you’re wasting.”
Too old an argument to pursue. Raul closed his eyes in shame and anger. “Did they ask Dad?”
“They asked both of us.”
“And did he go?” he asked, about to scream.
“No. Your father said he didn’t think it was necessary.”
Raul calmed. It came out of pride, he thought, but at least his politics are correct. “Are you going to go every week?” Raul asked with evident sarcasm.
She looked at him and frowned. “He just wanted to see me.”
That night Raul trembled with rage. His mother going didn’t matter so much. It was the school and its cheap tactics. Its cheap rationalizations. The society’s cheap process: get all the anti-nine-to-fivers, the capable students who won’t go to school, bend them, dull the pearl that flaws their normality. They wouldn’t give an inch of their curriculum, of their blundering faculty. And that they dared try this filthy cheap trick on him. It was an insult to his perception. Now they not only denied his identity, they were trying to recast it.
But how could he strike back? It seemed that they wanted him: if they were willing to tame him, they wanted him. He had to destroy that hope irrevocably; lead them on, and smash it. Appear wildly defiant, beautifully opposed.
The last week of regularly scheduled school, Raul saw Mr. Miller each day, talking eagerly of next year’s productions, outlining his intense studying for final exams. He would linger after class with his English teacher, Mr. Bowden, doing the same. He imitated the humble tones of other “rebels” reforming, harboring jealously the knowledge of its falsity. He went into the same detail with his parents, acting it out, reading Dreiser on the sly.
After closing exercises, four days were given to exams. These days carried a sort of emotional ambiguity: the brief days, only two hours of tests per day, had an air of college freedom, but the tests’ intensity seemed to concentrate school pressure into one overpowering dose. On Friday, after the farewell speech, the students hurried about with the frightening joy of experimental rats whose maze has been widened. Raul, whimsical amidst this activity, met Alec, whom he hadn’t seen for three weeks, in front of the theater.
“Ah,” Raul said, seeing him, “so you’ve come to bid adieu to the ol’ theater.”
“I, yes. But why you asked to come with me, I don’t know.”
“I won’t see it for a long time.”
“Just the summer.”
“True,” Raul smiled.
Alec mistrusted that smile. They went up the stairs in silence. The auditorium was deserted. Alec stopped him while they were walking down an aisle. “You are going to stay?”
“Of course,” Raul said, laughing. “I’ve been studying my ass off for the finals.”
Alec smiled affectionately. He patted Raul on the shoulder. “Good,” he said.
They went up to Miller’s office. His stage manager and technical director were going over the last details of locking everything up. He nodded at Raul and Alec, who sat down quietly. When they were alone with Miller, Alec said, “Shutting up shop, eh?”
Miller nodded, dragging on his cigarette holder.
Raul watched that object of pretension tap against an ashtray. “You won’t be here during finals?” he asked.