I got to the Hillston Inn at a little after five. I got some dimes from the cashier and went over to where four phone booths stood flanked against the lobby wall. I looked up the last name of the fat girl, Cindy Waskowitz. There were two Waskowitzes in the book. John W. and P. C. I tried John first. A woman with a nasal voice answered the phone. "I'm trying to locate a girl named Cindy Waskowitz who graduated from Hillston High in nineteen forty-seven. Is this her home?" "Hold it a minute," the woman said. I could hear her talking to someone else in the room. I couldn't make out what she was saying. She came back on the line. "You want to know about Cindy." "That's right. Please." "This wasn't her home. But I can tell you about her. I'm her aunt. You want to know about her?" "Please." "It was the glands. I couldn't remember the word. My daughter just told me. The glands. When she got out from high school she weighed two hundred. From there she went up like balloons. Two hundred, two fifty, three hundred. When she died in the hospital she was nearly four hundred. She'd been over four hundred once, just before she went in the hospital. Glands, it was." I remembered the rebellious eyes. Girl trapped inside the prison of white, soft flesh. A dancing girl, a lithe, quick-moving girl forever lost inside that slow inevitable encroachment. Stilled finally, and buried inside her suet prison. "Is your daughter about the same age Cindy would have been?" "A year older. She's married and three kids already." The woman chuckled warmly. "Could I talk to your daughter?" "Sure. Just a minute." The daughter's voice was colder, edged with thin suspicion. "What goes on anyhow? Why do you want to know about Cindy?" "I was wondering if she was ever friendly in high school with a boy named Timmy Warden." "Timmy is dead. It was in the papers." "I know that. Were they friendly?" "Timmy and Cindy? Geez, that's a tasty combination. He would have known who she was on account of her being such a tub. But I don't think he ever spoke to her. Why should he? He had all the glamour items hanging around his neck. Why are you asking all this?" "I was in the camp with him. Before he died he gave me a message to deliver to a girl named Cindy. I wondered if Cindy was the one." "Not a chance. Sorry. You just got the wrong one." "Was there another Cindy in the class?" "In one of the lower classes. A funny-looking one. That's the only one I can remember. All teeth. Glasses. A sandy sort of girl. I can't remember her last name, though." "Cindy Kirschner?" "That's the name. Gosh, I don't know where you'd find her. I think I saw her downtown once a year ago. Maybe it's in the book. But I don't think she'd fit any better than my cousin. I mean Timmy Warden ran around with his own group, kind of. Big shots in the school. That Kirschner wasn't in that class, any more than my cousin. Or me." The bitterness was implicit in her tone. I thanked her again. She hung up.