By the time he was leaning far outside and grinning down the seventy-foot drop
to the Parkway and the interchange. she had resolved to try diplomacy-- though
she motioned that Casimir should try to grab his legs. Casimir ignored this;
it was obvious that the man was just trying to scare her. Casimir was from
Chicago and found that these Easterners had no sense of humor.
"Now, Pert," said Mrs. Santucci, "don't give an old lady a hard time."
Bert Nix dropped back to the sill. "Hard time! What do you know about hard
times?" He thrust his hand through a hole in his jacket, wiggling his long
fingers at her, and wagging his out-of-control tongue for a few seconds.
Finally he added, "Hard times make you strong."
"I've got work to do, Pert."
This seemed to remind him of something. He closed the window and cascaded to
the floor. "So do I," he said, then turned to Casimir and whispered, "That's
the Julian Didius III Memorial Window. That's what I call it, anyway. Like the
view?"
"Yeah, it's nice," said Casimir, hoping that this would not become a
conversation.
"Good," said the derelict, "so did J. D. It's the last view he ever saw.
Couldn't handle the job. That's why I call it that." The giggling Bert Nix
ambled back into the hail, satisfied, pausing only to steal the contents of
the office wastebasket. Through most of this Casimir sat still and stared at
the faded German ti 1 poster on the wall. Now he was really in the talons of
Mrs. Santucci, who had probably shifted into adrenaline overdrive and was
likely to fling her desk through the wall. Instead, she was perfectly calm and
professional. Casimir disliked her for it.
"I'm a junior physics major and I transferred in from a community college in
Illinois. I know the first two years of physics inside and out, but there's
a problem. The rules here say physics courses must include 'socioeconomic
contexts backgrounding,' which I guess means it has to explain how it fits in
with today's something or other.
"In order to context the learning experience with the real world," said Mrs.
Santucci gravely, "we must include socioeconomic backgrounding integral with
the foregrounded material." "Right. Anyway, my problem is that I don't think I
need it. I'm not here to give you my memoirs or anything, but my parents were
immigrants, I came from a slum, got started in electronics, sort of made my
own way, saw a lot of things, and so I don't think I really need this. It'd
be a shame if I had to start all over, learning, uh, foregrounded material I
already know."
Mrs. Santucci rolled her eyes so that the metal-flake blue eyeshadow on her
lids flashed intermittently like fishing lures drawn through a murky sea.
"Well, it has been done. It must be arranged with the curriculum chair of your
