Changes

But then the winter came, and something went horribly wrong. Whether it was from cold, or the slow sinking of one corner of the old house into the soft ground beneath (I kid you not), the heavy external back door on the house began not to close. Residents would fly out to an 8:30 class, thinking it was slamming shut behind them, when in fact the warped doorframe would allow the door to swing just shy of shut. At 8:31 AM, the residents in the nearly house without an 8:30 AM class (ie, all the sensible ones), were awakened by the infernal buzzing.

This became unfortunately frequent. Though he felt the pull of his old treachery, our man tried to resist his door-disabling ways. A sign was hung on the offending door: "Please Make Sure I Close!" But it disappeared in only a few days, probably removed by one of the custodians instructed to keep doorglass free of posters. Fabulous. Another sign was hung: "Please Close Me, Dammit." This one remained up for somewhat longer, but it was mostly ignored. After so many years of being able to depend on the closing of an external door at Williams, the seniors of Chadbourne found it unbearably hard to remember that this particular door was bound for betrayal, a Judas in their midst, a soldier with a coughing fit curled up in the Trojan Horse with a coughing fit.