One Coffee With

"What the hell's going on!" he yelled at the workman. "Will you watch what you're doing?"

He was too late.

The dot of the sculpture's lowercase i was a fifteen pound hollow metal ball that hung from the left cross-bar of the capital T by a slender three-foot chain. As the enraged workman shook his fist at Professor Qui

"See what you make me do?" screamed the workman. "I kill you for this! I punch your nose in, you rohadt alak!"

A fellow worker from Buildings and Grounds blocked the workman's furious lunge toward Riley Qui

"I'll have you fired!" Professor Qui

Laughter, catcalls and applause from the surrounding windows followed the deputy chairman's stormy withdrawal from the field of battle.

Thus the arrival of the first piece of artwork for the Art Department 's spring faculty exhibition.

At that point, Wednesday morning stopped being normal at Vanderlyn College. Especially for the Art Department.

3

IN a department rampant with egoists, eccentrics and aesthetes, the chairman's secretary, Sandy Keppler, was sensible, efficient and decorative, with long blond hair, fair skin and a smile that began in blue eyes and ended in devastating dimples. But even her considerable tact and charm were taxed by the effort of soothing Professor Qui

Sandy listened to him rage and then put through his telephone call to the office of Buildings and Grounds. Before long Qui

The official in Buildings and Grounds might have been inattentive, but those members of the department who had come to work early were all ears, drifting in and out of Sandy 's office on flimsy pretexts. Qui

It did not puzzle Piers Leyden, however. Not only did Leyden (Assistant Professor, Life Painting) know why Qui

Qui

"An interesting phenomenon, laughter," he observed coldly. "I shall certainly have to incorporate more of it myself in my new book."

Qui

It was Leyden 's turn to glower.

Sandy managed to prevent open warfare by reminding Qui

By ten-twenty-five, though, the floor was quiet, things seemed almost normal, and Sandy felt she could safely start on her usual trip to the cafeteria for coffee. Although she was really secretary only to the chairman, Oscar Nauman, Sandy considered the whole department her responsibility. She sheltered its people from Administration's hectoring; she typed their essays for scholarly art journals and their subsequent angry rebuttals to the editors of those same journals; she listened with amusement to their jokes and with sympathy to their diatribes; and-as with her intercession between Leyden and Qui

In that uneasy coexistence Sandy Keppler's artful curves were one subject both factions could usually agree on, although Piers Leyden, a neo-realist, thought she could have modeled for Fragonard, while Dumont, a baroque specialist, argued for Tiepolo. It was a spirited battle, but since Sandy 's heart belonged to David Wade, one of the young untenured lecturers, discussion of her body remained purely academic.

To add to her charms, she did as favors tasks that others might have considered demeaning. She wanted a midmorning cup of coffee, and she wanted to drink it in her big, shabby office amid rowdy, disputatious staff and students, so why should she be selfish about it? As long as it was her choice and not something demanded, Sandy was quite willing to fetch refreshments for anyone else.

As she skimmed down the hall to the elevator, she was intercepted by Associate Professor Albert Simpson (Classical Art History) and Lemuel Vance (Associate Professor, Printmaking), who both fumbled in their pockets for change. Vance wanted hot chocolate.

"Tea for you, Professor?" asked Sandy.

"No, I think I'll have coffee today," said Professor Simpson. "Black with one sugar, please."

Lemuel Vance couldn't resist the gleam of Sandy 's long bare legs beneath a spring green cotton skirt.

"Summer must be 'icumen in,'" he gri

Vance knew all about the practical aspects of pants-their comfort, their convenience, their warmth in cold weather-and one always ran the risk of being called a chauvinist if one expressed a simple admiration of female anatomy, but how lovely were young girls in spring dresses! The pale green and gold of her reminded him of Botticelli's Venus, and he was unwisely tempted into a classical allusion. "You look as fresh as Aphrodite when she was first fashioned from sea spray!"

Professor Simpson could never let a classical misapprehension go uncorrected. "Actually she wasn't formed from sea spray, you know," he told Vance kindly. "If you'll recall, Cronus mutilated his father, Uranus, and flung the-"

Belatedly the elderly historian remembered that Sandy was a living, breathing girl, not a mythological abstraction. Unwilling to elaborate further on Cronus's unfilial behavior, he broke off in old-fashioned reticence.

Vance waited questioningly. "Flung what where?" he prompted.

"I'll lend you a book," Simpson said austerely and moved away.

Sandy slipped into the elevator, choking back laughter at Lemuel Vance's blank look. She knew exactly what part of Uranus's anatomy Cronus had thrown into the sea. David had explained the birth of Aphrodite very graphically once. Still, it was sweet of Professor Simpson to be too embarrassed to recount the three-thousand-year-old tale in mixed company.

On the first floor she picked up the department's morning mail, then walked downstairs to a snack bar adjoining the main cafeteria. There was the usual assortment of students: some munched corn muffins and worked crossword puzzles with buttery fingers; others sipped weak tea and idled away the time in conversation till their next classes; still another, a determinedly solitary girl, hunched over a chart of French conjugations with the desperate and fatalistic air of one who had flunked too many pop quizzes.