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He did! He remembered wanting to complain about it at the time, but since he’d passed the tests he hadn’t bothered. The day of the test a sparrow had got into the auditorium. It kept flying witlessly back and forth, back and forth, from one sealed window to the other. Who could concentrate with that going on? They decided that Birdie would apply to be retested on both the Stanford-Binet and the Skinner-Waxman. If for any reason he wasn’t feeling confident on the date the Regents office slotted him into, he could take a rain check. Mr. Mack thought that Birdie would find everyone ready to bend over backward.

The problem appeared to be solved and Birdie was ready to go, but Mr. Mack was obliged, for form’s sake, to go over one or two more details. Beyond hereditary factors and the Regents tests, both of which measured potentiality, there was another group of components for accomplishment. Any exceptional service for the country or the economy was an automatic twenty-five points but this was hardly anything to count on. Similarly, a demonstration of physical, intellectual, or creative abilities markedly above the levels indicated by et cetera, et cetera.

Birdie thought they could skip that too. But here, beneath the eraser, here was something to consider—the educational component. Already Birdie had five points for finishing high school. If he were to go on to college—

Out of the question. Birdie wasn’t the college type. He wasn’t anybody’s fool, but on the other hand he wasn’t anybody’s Isaac Einstein.

In general Mr. Mack would have applauded the realism of such a decision, but in the present circumstances it was better not to burn bridges. Any New York City resident had a right to attend any of the colleges in the city, either as a regular student or, lacking certain prerequisites, in a General Studies Annexe. It was something for Birdie to bear in mind.

Mr. Mack felt terrible. He hoped Birdie would learn to look at his reclassification as a setback rather than a permanent defeat. Failure was only a point of view.

Birdie agreed, but even this wasn’t enough to obtain his release. Mr. Mack urged Birdie to consider the question of contraception and genetics in the broadest possible light. Already there were too many people for the available resources. Without some system of voluntary limitation there would be more, more, disastrously more. Mr. Mack hoped that eventually Birdie would come to see that the Regents system, for all its obvious drawbacks, was both desirable and necessary.

Birdie promised to try and look at it this way, and then he could go. Among the papers in the gray envelope was a pamphlet, “Your Regents,” put out by the National Educational Council, who said that the only effective way to prepare for his reexamination was to develop a confident, lively frame of mind. A month later Birdie kept his appointment on Centre Street in a confident, lively frame of mind. Only afterward, sitting by the fountain in the plaza discussing the tests with his fellow martyrs, did he realize that this had been Friday, July 13th. Jinxed! He didn’t have to wait for the special delivery letter to know his score was a cherry, an apple, and a banana. Even so, the letter was a mind-staggerer. He’d gone down one point on the I.Q. test; on the Skinner-Waxman Creativity Scale he’d sunk to a moron-level score of 4. His new total: 21.

The 4 riled him. The first part of the Skinner-Waxman test had involved picking the funniest punch line from four multiple choices, and ditto the best endings to stories. This much he remembered from before but then they took him into a weird empty room. Two pieces of rope were hanging from the ceiling and Birdie was given a pliers and told to tie the two ropes together. You weren’t allowed to pull the ropes off their hooks.

It was impossible. If you held the very end of one rope in your hand, you couldn’t possibly get hold of the other rope, even by fishing for it with your toe. The extra few inches advantage you got from the pliers was no help at all. He was about ready to scream by the end of the ten minutes. There were three more impossible problems but by then he was only going through the motions.

At the fountain some jerkoff boy genius explained what they all could have done: tie the pliers to the end of one string and set it swinging like a pendulum; then go and get—

“Do you know what I’d like to see,” Birdie said, interrupting the boy genius, “tied up and swinging from that ceiling? Huh, schmuck?
You!”

Which the others agreed was a better joke than any of their multiple choices.

Only after he’d lucked out on the tests did he tell Milly about his reclassification. A coolness had come into their love affair about then, just a cloud across the sun, but Birdie had been afraid all the same what her reaction might be, the names he might be called. As it turned out, Milly was heroic, all tenderness, concern, and stout-hearted resolve. She hadn’t realized before, she cried, how much she did love, and need, Birdie. She loved him
more
now, because— But she didn’t have to explain: it was in their faces, in their eyes, Birdie’s brown and glistening, Milly’s hazel flecked with gold. She promised to stand by him through the whole ordeal. Diabetes! And not even his own diabetes! The more she thought about it the angrier she got, the more determined never to let some Moloch of a bureaucracy play God with her and Birdie. (Moloch?) If Birdie was willing to go to Barnard G.S.A., Milly was willing to wait for him as long as need be.

Four years, as it turned out. The point system was gimmicked so that each year only counted half a point until graduation, but that was worth 4. Had Birdie been content with his old Regents scores, he could have worked his way back up to 25 in two years. Now he’d actually have to go for a degree.

But he did love Milly, and he did want to marry Milly, and let them say what they like, a marriage isn’t a marriage unless you can have children.

He went to Barnard. What choice had there been?

On the morning of the day of his Art History test Birdie lay in bed in the empty Annexe dorm, drowsing and thinking about love. He couldn’t get back to sleep, but he didn’t want to get up yet either. His body was bursting with energy, full to the top and flowing over, but it wasn’t energy for getting up to brush his teeth or going down to breakfast. Anyhow it was too late for breakfast and he was happy where he was.

Sunlight spilled in through the south window. A breeze rustled outdated announcements pinned to the bulletin board, spun round a shirt that hung on a curtain rail, touched the down on the back of Birdie’s hand, where her name was now just a faded smudge inside a ballpoint heart. Birdie laughed with a sense of his own fullness and the promise of good weather. He turned over on his left side, letting the blanket slide to the floor. The window framed a perfect blue rectangle of sky. Beautiful! It was March but it might have been April or May. It was going to be a wonderful day, a wonderful spring. He could feel it in the muscles of his chest and the muscles of his stomach when he took a breath of air.

Spring! Then summer. Breezes. No shirts.

Last summer out at Great Kills Harbor, the hot sand, the sea breeze in Milly’s hair. Again and again her hand would lift to push it back, like a veil. What had they talked about all that day? Everything. About the future. About her rotten father. Milly was desperate to get away from 334 and live her own life. Now, with her airline job, she had the option of a dorm, though, not being as used to a communal life as Birdie was, it was hard for her. But soon, soon….

Summer. Walking with her, a snake dance through the other bodies spread out across the sand, lawns of flesh. Rubbing the lotion into her. Summer Magic. His hand slithering. Nothing definite and then it
would
be definite, as daylight. As though the whole world were having sex, the sea and the sky and everyone. They’d be puppies and they’d be pigs. The air would fill up with the sound of songs, a hundred at a time. At such moments he knew what it must be like to be a composer or a great musician. He became a giant, swollen with greatness. A time bomb.

The clock on the wall said 11:07.
This is my lucky day:
he made it a promise. He threw himself out of bed and did ten push-ups on the tile floor, still damp from its morning mopping. Then ten more. After the last push-up Birdie rested on the floor, his lips pressed against the cool, moist tile. He had a hard-on.

He grabbed it, closing his eyes. Milly! Your eyes.o Milly, I love you. Milly,o Milly,o Milly. So much! Milly’s arms. The small of her back. Bending back. Milly, don’t leave me! Milly? Love me? I!

He came in a smooth, spread-open flow till his fingers were covered with semen, and the back of his hand, and the blue heart, and “Milly.”

11:35. The Art History test was at two. He’d already missed a ten o’clock field trip for Consumership. Tough.

He wrapped his toothbrush, his Crest, his razor, and foam in a towel and went to what had been, in the days when the Annexe was an office building, the executive washroom of the actuarial division of New York Life. The music started when he opened the door: SLAM, BANG! WHY AM I SO HAPPY?

Slam, Bang!
Why am I so happy?
God Damn,
I don’t really know.

He decided to wear his white sweater with white Levi’s and white sneakers. He brushed a whitening agent into his hair, which was natural again. He looked at himself in front of the bathroom mirror. He smiled. The sound system started in on his favorite Ford commercial. Alone in the empty space before the urinals he danced with himself, singing the words of the commercial.

It was a fifteen-minute ride to the South Ferry stop. In the ferry building was a PanAm restaurant where the waitresses wore uniforms just like Milly’s. Though he couldn’t afford it, he ate lunch there, just the lunch that Milly might be serving that very moment at an altitude of seven thousand feet. He tipped a quarter. Now, except for the token to take him back to the dorm, he was broke. Freedom Now.

He walked along the rows of benches where the old people came to sit every day to look out at the sea while they waited to die. Birdie didn’t feel the same hatred for old people this morning that he’d felt last night. Lined up in helpless rows in the glare of the afternoon sun, they seemed remote, they posed no threats, they didn’t matter.

The breeze coming in off the Hudson smelled of salt, oil, and rot. It wasn’t a bad smell at all. Invigorating. Maybe if he had lived centuries ago instead of now, he’d have been a sailor. Moments from movies about ships flitted by. He kicked an empty Fun container out through the railing and watched it bob up and down in the green and the black.

The sky roared with jets. Jets heading in every direction. She could have been on any of them. A week ago what had she said, “I’ll love you forever.” A week ago?

“I’ll love you forever.” If he’d had a knife he could have carved that on something.

He felt just great. Absolutely.

An old man in an old suit shuffled along the walk, holding on to the sea railing. His face was covered with a thick, curly, white beard, though his head was as bare as a police helmet. Birdie backed from the rail to let him go by.

He stuck his hand in Birdie’s face and said, “How about it, Jack?”

Birdie crinkled his nose. “Sorry.”

“I need a quarter.” A foreign accent. Spanish? No. He reminded Birdie of something, someone.

“So do I.”

The bearded man gave him the finger and then Birdie remembered who he looked like. Socrates!

He glanced at his wrist but he’d left his watch in the locker as it hadn’t fit in with today’s all-white color scheme. He spun round. The gigantic advertising clock on the face of First National Citibank said 2:15. That wasn’t possible. Birdie asked two of the old people on the benches if that was the right time. Their watches agreed.

There was no use trying to get to the test now. Without quite knowing why, Birdie smiled. He breathed a sigh of relief and sat down to watch the ocean. In June there was the usual family reunion at The Sicilian Vespers. Birdie polished off his tray without paying too much attention to either the food or the story his dad was dawdling over, something about someone at 16th Street who’d opted for Room 7, after which it was discovered that he had been a Catholic priest. Mr. Ludd seemed upset. Birdie couldn’t tell if it was the idea of Room 7 or the idea of having to cut down his intake because of the diabetes. Finally, to give the old guy a chance at his noodles, Birdie told him about the essay project Mr. Mack had arranged, even though (as Mr. Mack had pointed out and pointed out) Birdie’s problems and his papers belonged to Barnard G.S.A., not to P. S. 141. In other words, this would be Birdie’s last chance, but that could be, if Birdie would let it, a source of motivation. And he let it.

“And you’re going to write a book?”

“Goddamn, Dad, will you listen?”

Mr. Ludd shrugged, wound the food on his fork, and listened. What Birdie had to do to climb back to 25 was demonstrate abilities markedly above the abilities he’d demonstrated back on that Friday the 13th. Mr. Mack had gone over the various components of his profile, and since he’d scored most on Verbal Skills they decided that his best bet would be to write something. When Birdie asked what, Mr. Mack had given him, to keep, a copy of
By Their Bootstraps.

Birdie reached under the bench where he’d set it down when they came in. He held it up for his dad to see:
By Their Bootstraps.
Edited and with an Introduction (encouraging but not too clear) by Lucille Mortimer Randolph-Clapp. Lucille Mortimer Randolph-Clapp was the architect of the Regents system.

The last string of spaghetti was wound and eaten. Reverently Mr. Ludd touched his spoon tip to the skin of the spumoni. Holding back from that first taste, he asked, “And so they’re paying you money just to … ?”

“Five hundred dollars. Ain’t it a bitch. They call it a stipend. It’s supposed to last me three months but I don’t know about that. My rent at Mott Street isn’t so bad, but other things.”

“They’re crazy.”

“It’s the system they have. You see, I need time to develop my ideas.”

“The whole system’s crazy. Writing! You can’t write a book.”