ran into the foul weather. One moment they were cruising at eighty miles an hour on the interstate, under a partly cloudy sky, and the next, as they crested a rise and started descending into a valley, the sky was black, rain and hail banging against the roof of the car and washing across the windshield. Edward Everett’s uncle refused to slow down, plowing on past more timid drivers until the Cadillac came upon a cattle truck lumbering in the lane ahead of them. Edward Everett’s uncle stepped hard on the brake and they started fishtailing, Edward Everett certain they’d slam into the back of the truck. A half-dozen Holsteins turned to look at them but seemed unconcerned. Somehow, his uncle slipped into a space in the right-hand lane just in front of a Rambler, then skidded onto the grassy berm before he regained control and stopped.
“Don’t tell your,” his uncle said. “Jesus, I.”
They sat on the shoulder while passing traffic sprayed their car with rainwater. When he found a break in the flow, Edward Everett’s uncle merged and went on to the school, taking his time. There, in the lot, they made a dash for the building. By the time they reached it, Edward Everett was soaked, his shoes oozing rainwater.
The food service manager’s office was just off the cafeteria, a small, windowless room that stank of onions and fryer grease. The office was cluttered, the desk a jumble of file folders partly spilling onto the floor. Balanced on one precarious pile was a cafeteria tray holding the remnants of a half-eaten sloppy joe and a mound of baked beans. There were only two chairs in the office, the swivel chair behind the desk where the food service manager sat and a molded Plexiglas chair stacked with magazines and newspapers. The food service manager—a grossly overweight man whose bulk was squeezed between the arms of his desk chair—did not offer the second chair to either Edward Everett or his uncle and they stood there, Edward Everett thought, like two boys who had been summoned to the principal’s office for not doing their homework.
“We’ve been over this,” the food service manager said, not quite looking at them but instead watching a chewed-up pencil he rolled between his palms. “We’re pretty locked in …”
“We’ve got a new pricing structure,” Edward Everett’s uncle said, opening his briefcase by balancing it against his thighs, snapping the brass latches, and then reaching inside to pluck out a sheet of paper filled with columns of numbers. “I think you’ll find—”
“We’re really …” The food service manager finished his sentence by waving the pencil as if he were a conductor signaling an orchestra to stop playing. “Savvy?”
“Look,” Edward Everett’s uncle said. “I don’t know why you have to be—”
The food service manager let out a laugh. “You go talk to Dick Thornberg and ask him why I have to be.”
“Dick Thornberg,” his uncle said.
“That’s right,” the food service manager said, giving his uncle an odd smile.
“I see,” his uncle said, returning the pricing sheet to his briefcase and snapping it shut with an exaggerated flourish. “I’ll sure give old Dick a call.”
Edward Everett felt as if his uncle and the food service manager were speaking a language he did not understand and he cocked his head quizzically toward his uncle, but if his uncle noticed, he gave him no sign and they left the office.
Upstairs in the main hall, most of the students were gone. From the band room came a discordant version of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” one of the tubas letting out a blatt a beat behind the others in his section.
“Not one of our red-letter days,” his uncle said. “We’ll get them tomorrow.”
Outside, the rain was still falling but its vehemence had abated. In the distance, beyond the neighborhoods that marched up the hillside away from the school, pale patches of sky appeared amid the clouds. A car pulled to the curb, a battered gray Rambler missing its left front quarter panel. The driver, a woman, pushed open the door in a way that suggested the hinges were worn, hopped out, leaving the engine running, and dashed for the entrance, holding a newspaper over her head as a makeshift umbrella.
“Whew,” she said, ducking into the door that Edward Everett held open for her. “That’s one wet afternoon out there.” She rolled the newspaper and then twisted it, squeezing out the water; it ran black along her forearm. “That was