As Max Saw It by Louis Begley

thinks it’s the last place on the eastern seaboard where adults smoke pot. Toby reinforces that view. They often sit side by side at these parties. It’s nice to know they go back a long way. Occasionally, Toby brings along a third-year law student from Boston University, who is taking Roland’s course not for credit. He is a shy fellow, with glasses and an oddly tight, muscular body. Max and he discuss affirmative action cases, which are all the rage, and this boy Mike is studying in hisconstitutional law class. Toby asks Max to vouch for Mike to Charlie before Mike’s first visit to Billington.
    It’s not always easy for Max to interrupt his work in order to accompany Camilla to Roland’s parties—there seems to be one every evening—and it’s harder still to remain until they end. Camilla loves to stay up. Of course, she doesn’t need to be at the Fogg until eleven, whereas he teaches a nine o’clock class. Fortunately, she doesn’t mind if he doesn’t go or sneaks away early. He leaves her the car. At that hour, it’s easy to catch a taxi at Central Square, and not particularly dangerous.
    T HE REVIEWS OF Max’s book are extravagantly favorable. What’s more, they appear in the principal newspapers and magazines of general circulation, not only in legal journals. He is told that he may have a best-seller on his hands. Toward the end of the semester, Max is asked to do a cover article on the crisis over racial quotas for the Sunday
Times Magazine
. The deadline is tight. He has no experience with this sort of writing and finds it difficult to lay out his arguments in the space he has been given. Obliged to work late, he realizes that at three or four in the morning Camilla is still at Roland’s. The following night he makes himself wake up nearly every hour to fix the hour of her return. By the time the garage door opens and then slams shut, the sun has risen. One evening when she goes out, hot with shame he opens the box in which she keeps her diaphragm. It’s empty. Over the next several weeks he repeats the act he loathes each times she goes out alone. The result is the same. Finally, he puts a scrap of paper where the diaphragm should be. Onit he has written, “With whom are you using it?” She is still asleep the next morning when he leaves for the Law School. Since it is rare for her to be back from the Fogg before six, he does not hurry home. But she is there when he returns, preparing dinner. He wonders what to expect. With Kate, he fought constantly. Camilla and he have never quarreled. She accepts the gin he offers and asks, Didn’t your mother tell you never to touch other people’s belongings?
    Of course.
    How right she was. I wear it every night, to find out whether I am allergic to it or something else is wrong.
    So that’s it. He apologizes and half-believes she has told the truth. They do not refer to the incident again.
    M EMORIAL D AY WEEKEND approaches and so does the Harvard commencement. Camilla must stay in town. There is so much to do. The Fogg is preparing a special event for the overseers and the committee to visit the Fine Arts Department. Max asks if she will mind his going to Billington without her; he has an unpleasant premonition of stagnant Cambridge heat, his own drowsiness as he grades examination papers, hours to be spent in the evenings waiting for Camilla to return from the museum, and telephone calls from noisy restaurants somewhere in the North End. I am stuck here eating the most dreadful pizza. Will you be an angel? Jump in the car and join us. No? Roland will take me home then, on his bike.
    Camilla won’t mind in the least. In that case, he will return only in time for the commencement, when it’s his duty to march in the academic procession as the Wooden Professor.Toby telephones. He is sick with an unpleasant summer flu, too groggy to drive. Can Max give him a ride? They get a late start. On the turnpike, Max lets the Jaguar soar. He hasn’t had a