Rodin's Debutante (33 page)

HOPKINS WENT AWAY
. The TV crew gathered its gear and vanished. Dusk came on and soon Lee was the only spectator save for the firemen who had retreated to the truck's cab and a few boys gathered around the burnt-out car, suitcases and athletic gear gathered at their feet, waiting for a ride home. Authority was nowhere visible and the boys were passing around cigarettes. Lee stepped closer to the heat of the rubble, fumaroles secreting gray smoke. Debris seemed to extend to the limits of Lee's eyesight, in places ten feet high and more. Sparks collected and spun like fireflies. He moved as close to the free-standing chimney as was safe to do and remembered that the fireplace was big enough for a man to stand full height. Lee stepped back, his eyes burning from the smoke. They would never rebuild Ogden Hall. Ogden Hall was a vanished civilization. Somewhere in the incinerated ruins were homely items from the kitchen and dining hall and the transcripts of a thousand students and the remains of two thousand leather-bound books and deep in the ashes Rodin's beautiful debutante, the marble scorched but surely intact. Lee imagined her excavated years from now, sometime late in the next century, recognizably a bust from Rodin's hand—and the story would end there. Lee remained the longest time, remembering the Chicago girl in the alcove as the Illinois seasons changed, dark to light to dark once again.