"Yes," Eddie said surprised, "I did. Class of '34." He looked again at
the stranger, remembering the first impression he had had of having
known the fellow. He had a rather average Irish type face, with a short
nose and a generous mouth, and crow's feet at the corners of his eyes.
He had freckles too, and his hair, being rather light, might be red. He
searched his memory for a redhead he had known at the University.
"It seems very improbable," the man was saying now, interrupting his
attempts to remember, "it doesn't seem possible that you could be he.
But back at the University there was a fellow I remember very well.
He was a graduate student, and he was doing very interesting research
on the _pronding of povodil_. There was a great deal of talk about it
when his thesis came out. I was just a junior then but I remember it. I
remember him, and you look like him. Of course you look different, but
you look as he would look without povodil and twenty years older. His
name was, let's see, what was his name?... Eddie Tomlinson. That was
it."
Eddie started when he heard his name. He hadn't been listening to what
the fellow was saying, he had been too busy trying to place him.
"Eddie Tomlinson! Why that's _my_ name!" he cried now, in surprise.
"How did you know it?"
"I just told you."
"Oh, yes, yes," Eddie said quickly, not wanting to admit that he hadn't
heard. A face, a situation, a name were coming to the surface of his
mind.
"Jerry Conlan," he exclaimed suddenly. "You must be Jerry Conlan!"
"Yes," said the man absently, "yes, that's my name. How very strange,"
he continued softly, "that you should be Eddie Tomlinson, one of the
most promising young povodilomans of the time ... and you've never
heard of povodil or of prondation or deg or any of it."
He went on mumbling to himself while Eddie remembered that day when,
after an art class, he had gone to watch the light rehearsal of the
Drama Club's newest production and had been so impressed by the
ingenious use of colored light that he had sought out the student who
had designed them. He had talked for quite a while to the fellow, who
had been a redhead named Jerry Conlan.
"So you're Jerry Conlan," Eddie interrupted his neighbor. "And what do
you do these days? Still stage design and lighting? Or is it something
else?"
"Stage design?" asked Conlan, "lighting? What's that?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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