Ronnie and I faced the divergence after our sophomore year. We live separately. After Ian flipped out and left the Pelham program, Ronnie was single for awhile. Now she seems to have settled into something with Prof. Pelham’s colleague. Horace is old enough to be Ronnie’s father. Sometimes I wonder if he’s her way of continuing the Program now that she’s upper division and has had to make room for the new crop of freshmen. Sometimes I think it’s all about her unsatisfactory history with her father. Anyway, I understand they’re enjoying Don Quixote together (the Smollett translation). I’m weirded out. I’m reading Salinger and Wilde.

I’m still with Chaz. We maintain separate places (my studio apartment, his room in a shared house) but we spend most nights together. I still read, he still programs, and we seem to be less compatible, but we continue to smoke weed so we rarely fight. We have to find a new dealer.

Pip got busted, big time. Coincidentally the arrest happened right after I finally met him and immediately before I realized who he is.

He’d become somewhat famous for his neat baggies and elegant horticultural comments. His were buds of beauty, seedless and with flecks of red or gold hairy fibers. He was working part-time as a projectionist in the avenue movie house and I hear he spent the moments when he wasn’t setting reels packaging his product and taking customer messages. As Chaz says, he just let it get out of control. He wasn’t vetting the friends of friends of his regulars and it was just a matter of time before he did business with a narc.

It was a scandal. As word spread the connection was made: the son of Professor Pelham was in jail. It was all Pelham in the local news, and then Peter Pelham, and pretty soon I understood that Chaz’s dealer was my lost lust.

I don’t know when or why Peter became Pip. It was hard to get any facts at first, what with all the rumors about Pelham child psychology (how could a boy from such a background go so wrong?) and tax bills (there was a persistent story that the state was going after Pip/Peter for some old $100/ounce tax on the books, instead of for possession and sale).

But we got together with a collection of old buddies last night, and I think we have it as straight as we’re going to. Pip/Peter is going to jail, but it’s county jail and it’s kind of a part-time lockup. We hear he will attend classes during the week and sleep at his parents’ house. If I understand the arrangement, he’ll be spending weekends in jail for the rest of this year. And Chaz has found a lesser but adequate source.