And actually got away with that apt-though-painful-in-retrospect foreshadowing: our last major heist before both conscience and commonsense risk-benefit analysis set in.
"And Thou shalt not cheat— not even under the benignant cover of Louis Levy's soi-disant Preparatory School."
The Cheatery. It has been made clear, Narrator trusts, that the telephone in B 204, "Will's" studio apartment, was listed as Al's, and the one in Al and Winnie's 304 as hers, for reasons of decorum. When therefore Headmaster Levy desired to telephone prospective tutor Wilfred Chase, he rang up the number supplied him by former tutor Alfred Baumann as his own, understanding the pair to be roommates — which number, however, was the one where Al could be reached in fact: B 304's, routinely answered by Winnie. (Dr. and Mrs. Baumann, when phoning their son, soon learned to expect that it would be Wilfred, his official roomie, who took the call and promised to have said son call back "as soon as he comes in." The actual living arrangement must surely have soon been apparent to them, but for decorum's sake they went along with the fiction, as did M/M Stark — and refrained from visiting their children in situ, where the charade would have been immediately obvious.) All which explaineth why — when Will took the instrument from Win and said "Hello," and was asked resonantly "Is this Wilfred Chase?" and, instead of acknowledging that he sometimes asked himself the same question, said merely "Speaking" — the hearty reply was "Glad to catch you at home, Mr. Chase! I'm Louis Levy. Perhaps you've heard of me from Al Baumann?"
"I have, sir." To put it mildly.
"One of our best preceptors ever! We were sorry to lose him to the higher realms of academia, but so it goes! Now we're looking for another grad student of his caliber to fill a part-time preceptorship that just opened up here, and Alfred tells me you're our man!"
"Very kind of him," Will allowed, thinking, Preceptors? Preceptorship? He really calls them that? Not to mention, Grad student? Me? Of Al's caliber?
"You'll be tutoring a handful of high-schoolers in literature and composition, helping them with their essays and other homework assignments. Good kids, some from our private schools and some from the better public ones. Couple of hours every weekday afternoon — say, half past three to half past five? Two bucks an hour. What do you think?"
From across the room Pal Al smiled, as does his ghost when Narrator here recounts this benign surprise, this little joke of a setup. For in Will's scrabbling after part-time work to supplement the Three Freds' weekend wages from the Trivium — the same scrabbling that led him to peddling roach spray, tallying steel-mill timecards, reshelving library books, and various other jobs — he had envied Al the easy two dollars an hour (not bad money in those days) picked up on the side at Lou Levy's establishment one previous semester. "Best way to learn a book or a language is to teach it" was an oft-repeated Baumann article of faith, and while they'd shaken their collective heads at the nature of Levy's downtown-rowhouse "preparatory school" (dedicated mostly to doing rich kids' homework for them, Al had reported), he had found it possible to improve a bit not only the students' reading and writing skills in their native language, but his own appreciation of the poems and essays involved in their homework assignments. And without mentioning the matter to Will, he had recommended him to Levy as his replacement. "Lit and Phil One and Two it ain't," he would say after the phone conversation in progress. "But some of the brats are likable and even teachable, and some of their preceptors learn a bit about teaching and about the texts. So give it a shot: one more item in your résumé."
But to his caller Will confessed, "I'm not quite a graduate student, Mr. Levy. Actually, I'm just finishing my sophomore year." And would demand afterward of Al, "Why'd you tell him I was a grad student?"
Replied the mellifluous former with a knowing chuckle, "We quite understand that those distinctions get blurred in your university's new fast-track program. But okay by Al Baumann is okay by us." And the latter, with shrug of hands and eyebrows, "Graduate shmaduate: You're good enough for Levy's Prep, and you'll learn a thing or two. He needs to be able to tell the parents that their heirs are getting individual attention from VVLU grad students — which in effect they are, 'cause I'll be checking on you through the first week and as needed thereafter."
"I'll buy that," Winnie declared at this point — Will having accepted Levy's invitation to hop the bus down St. Paul Street next day for the mere formality of an interview. "Come to think of it, maybe I'll apply for a PTP myself: Part-Time Preceptorship? For my résumé."
Which she did, cutting half a day's senior-year classes at Goucher on a pleasant mid-April morning to ride the bus with Fred Three down past the marble-stepped, brick- and Formstone-fronted rowhouse corridor to Levy Prep, and introducing herself to that establishment's pudgy, black-curled, florid-faced, dark-suited but bright-necktied proprietor-cum-headmaster as "Al Baumann's part-time gradstudent fiancée — in case you need another preceptor in Literature, History, French, German, or Spanish?"
Replied the amused, unruffled Levy, "Two questions," and raised first his left forefinger: "Are you out to snatch this young man's job before I've even interviewed him?" Then the finger beside it: "And are you a part-time graduate student or Mr. Baumann's part-time fiancée?"
To Will's considerable surprise, as he'd never heard his Fred-friends speak of themselves as officially engaged to marry, she linked her arm with his, gave the two men an exaggerated vampish wink, and said, "No to the first and yes to the second and third of your two questions." Holding up her own left forefinger, "Al and I think of Wilfred as part of us, and you can't steal from yourself, right?" Then a second finger: "And my courses at Goucher and Peabody this year would be graduate courses if they had a graduate program — which they don't, quite, yet." And then a third: "Plus, Al and I don't regard affiancement as a full-time job."
"Lucky fellow," Levy said smoothly to Will, raising his massive eyebrows, stroking his chin, and gesturing us into his office-cum-classroom. To Winnie then (whose arm and Will's were still linked), "And when you say, quote, which they don't comma quite comma yet, unquote, do you mean that they don't have graduate programs quite yet, or that their present programs are as yet not quite graduate programs? Come in, please, and have a seat."
Unhesitatingly, "I quite agree that those propositions are quite different," Win responded. "Excuse the intensifying adverbs? But in this instance, both are quite true." Pointing then to a short list of long words on the blackboard behind the desk labeled HEADMASTER, "I also happen to know what every one of those sesquipedalia means," she declared. "And I'm sure Will does, too: He's the family wordsmith."
With a knowing smile at the papers he was moving about on his desktop, "All in the family, eh?" said Levy. "Now, then, Miss Stark: If you'll just step into the next room for a few minutes, your friend and I will get down to business. After which, maybe you and I can have a little chat."
Sesquipedalian was, in fact, one of the listed words, along with adjudicatory, misogynistic, eleemosynary, and our language's longest, antidisestablishmentarianism.
"Quite a gal," Levy remarked when Winnie closed the office door behind her. To cover his discomfort at the small smirk in the man's voice and manner, "Smart as a whip," Will agreed, "and plays fine jazz piano as well as classical. She and Al and I work weekends at the VVLU Trivium: piano, bass, and drums. Do you happen to know why people say 'Smart as a whip'?"