Free Joe College: A Novel by Tom Perrotta Page B

for a few seconds at the peculiar wedge of cake resting on top of it.
    “I’m curious,” he said. “What would you call this?”
    “Angel food?” Matt guessed.
    “No, shapewise.” Albert tilted the plate so we could get a better look. The cake stuck there as if it had been glued on. “Is there a name for this shape?”
    “It’s almost like a rhombus,” I ventured. “Except for that curved part.”
    “Why does everything have to have a label?” Matt asked. “Why do you think that’s so important to you?”
    Albert looked like he was about to say something nasty, but then thought better of it. He banged the plate down on top of the steam table and turned to Matt with a plaintive expression.
    “Just cut it straight, okay? Is that too much to ask?”
     
     
    Nick didn’t normally work Thursday nights, so I was surprised to see him sitting at the worker’s table with Kristin, Sarah, Djembe, and Brad Foxworthy, the weekend dishwasher, who was subbing again for Dallas Little. Dallas weighed three hundred pounds and was supposedly having trouble with his feet, though Milton, the usual Thursday-night chef, viewed this complaint with a certain amount of skepticism. “Oh, yes,” he’d mutter, whenever the subject of Dallas’s podiatric ailments surfaced, “the man’s feet hurt. You bet your feet hurt, you spend all day on the corner with a can of malt liquor in your hand. Bet your head hurt too.”
    I took the first available seat, next to Brad and across from Nick, who acknowledged my arrival with his customary curt nod. His face was utterly blank, a practiced mask of boredom and reserve. With Kristin just a few seats away, I knew better than to refer, even ellipticallv, to our strange encounter outside her window on Tuesday night.
    “Milton sick?” I asked.
    Nick shook his head. “Bowling. His team switched to a Thursday-night league.”
    “I didn’t know Milton was a bowler.”
    Nick took a moment to dab at his perspiration mustache with a paper napkin. When he took the napkin away, the mustache was
still there, but his expression, without changing much at all, suddenly seemed unfriendly.
    “What’s it to you what Milton does in his spare time? You keepin’ tabs on the man?”
    “Come on.” I chuckled defensively. “I was just making small talk.”
    “Hey, Brad,” Nick said, “Better watch yourself around this one. He’s got us under surveillance.”
    Brad was usually too preoccupied by his meal to bother with conversation. He hunkered down over his plate with the single-minded concentration of a man who didn’t always get enough to eat, and had to stock up when the opportunity presented itself. That night, though, he made an exception.
    “You a Bonesman?” he asked, his eyes widening with curiosity behind his thick glasses, one earpiece of which was held in place by a cocoonlike mass of electrical tape. Brad had dropped out of Yale Law School a couple of years earlier, and had since developed some sort of paranoid obsession with Skull and Bones, the notorious secret society whose tomblike headquarters was located right next to our dining hall.
    “I can’t believe this.” My face flashed hot with guilt, as though Nick’s accusation were somehow true. “All I said was that I didn’t know Milton was a bowler.”
    “And a damn good one,” Nick added. “One-eighty-seven average.”
    “That is good,” I said, my indignation already fading into uncertainty. Maybe I’d misread Nick’s expression; maybe he’d just been kidding around. “I’m lucky if I break one-fifty.”
    “The CIA runs this whole place,” Brad continued cheerfully. “‘Light and Truth,’ my ass. ‘Darkness and Skulduggery’ is more like it.”
    A moment of silence overtook the table. The only one who didn’t notice it was Kristin, who was caught up in an urgent-sounding conversation with Djembe.
    “Suck my cock!” she commanded, in a guttural impersonation of a male speaker. “Kneel down and lick it,