"This meeting of the Kaplan University chapter of Sigma Sigma Sigma will come to order," said Sir Warwick Carlisle, president of the frat as he gaveled for silence. "Give me your attention."
The brothers seated along the long mahogany table in the dining room of the frat house, dressed as usual for the monthly house business meeting in khaki trousers, white shirts, the green, gold and black diagonal stripe ties of the Tri-Sigs, and green blazers with gold buttons and the fraternity patch on the breast pocket quieted down. The seniors, all of whose Tri-Sig frat names were taken from the TV series
Firefly
, were nearest the head of the table. Next to them were the juniors whose house names had been taken from characters in
Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
At the lower half of the table sat the sophomores, named for various of the Marvel Comics X-Men. And at the foot sat the newly admitted members of the Tri-Sig pledge class, namesakes of the male crewmembers of Captain Jonathan Archer's NX-01 USS
Enterprise.
"Dues and expenses are up to date, and the cooking rotation is working out well. I'm not as happy with the house-cleaning, however. Master Ki-Adi, Captain Ohnaka, you're the mentors for Trip and Hayes. They aren't doing a good job; this place is starting to look slovenly. Straighten them out."
The custom was that each junior was assigned a pledge to help along once they were admitted to membership. For the next two years, the mentors would guide their protégés along the pathways of the frat, teaching them Sigma customs and taking responsibility for them. Good work by the freshmen reflected favorably on the juniors; likewise, failure to perform or bad acts reflected badly. How one brought his protégé along counted for a great deal when the outgoing seniors selected the officers for the next year from amongst the juniors. The way Warwick had dealt with Jim Powell had had much to do with his being made president of the Kaplan chapter this year. The juniors named for a Jedi Master and a pirate captain glared at their charges with the silent promise they'd be ripped up one side and down the other for embarrassing them.
"Last item. The National Chapter has decided where the annual Spring Break trip will be. They've made a deal with a hotel in Manzanillo, on the southwest coast of Mexico. It's a big tourist port best known for its fishing and snorkeling. However, a member of the National Chapter who has been there reports that the beaches are excellent and a lot of Mexican and Canadian girls are to be seen there; and there are clubs in the town and at a couple of the resort hotels. Plus which, if you like tequila it's dirt cheap and because the cruise ships call there they have booze for sale to tourists for way below wholesale up here. Manzanillo hasn't been 'discovered' and done to death the way Puerto Vallarta, Cancun and Acapulco have been. And being it's so far south, it's outside the drug cartel war zone on our southern border.
"If you'd like to go, a sign-up sheet is posted on the bulletin board by my door, along with the airfare and room costs. A 50% deposit is due the first of next month, and the balance a month later. If you aren't paid in full a week before departure, you don't go; and there will be no refunds except for illness or a genuine family emergency.
"Any questions? No? Then I declare this meeting closed." He rapped the gavel. The brothers surged out of the dining room and up the stairs to Warwick's room to read the flyer and cost breakdown sheets he'd posted, and to sign up for the trip.
An hour later, Jim's concentration on the paper he was writing for his History of the Civil War class was broken by a knock on his door. A new brother stuck his head in.
"Professor X? The prez is looking for you."
"Thank you, Brother Mayweather. My respects to Sir Warwick, and I will be along in a minute." The freshman Tri-Sig looked at him oddly before he closed the door.
A few minutes later, Jim knocked on Peter Carlisle's door on the second floor of the four story mansion. In the 1900s when the university had been founded in southern Dutchess County, the rich industrialist who had decided to be sure his not-overly-bright grandchildren had at least one college they could get into had taken over a failed seminary out in the sticks from New York City to be its campus. He also bought up the nearby summer places of New Yorkers who wanted country getaways in more fashionable areas; and in turn college fraternities (and later, sororities) purchased the mansions from his estate. The Tri-Sig chapter at Kaplan had been established just after World War I, and the brothers themselves had rebuilt the upper floors of their mansion into dorm rooms for the brethren and small suites for the officers. The principal difference was the suites on the second floor each had their own bathrooms, as opposed to communal baths on the upper floors where the rank and file brothers hung their hats. The frosh lived under the eaves in what had been servants' quarters back in the day, little changed from when the place had been built. The sophs and the juniors occupied the third floor, with a few lucky juniors on the second; the seniors had the larger rooms and suites on the second floor to call home. The first floor held the public rooms of the frat plus the dining room and the kitchen, while the basement had been converted into a private club and a laundry. It was generally conceded that the Sigma Sigma Sigma house had one of the better fraternity house layouts on campus.
"Come in!" Jim heard through the heavy door. He walked in and over to the walnut office desk where his mentor was working on something. Peter leaned back in his executive chair and looked at his charge.
"You asked to see me, milord?"
"Yes, Professor. Sit, sit, sit." Jim sprawled into Warwick's club chair as the chapter president looked him over. He was still the same gawky, awkward guy on the autism spectrum he'd first laid eyes on as a "legacy" the previous year, who usually looked
past
people rather than looking
at
them; was often unsure how to behave, especially around girls; and with the disconcerting habit of answering all questions honestly. He looked much better since Warwick had taken him in hand, guided him through buying a new wardrobe, ordering him to see a barber and a nail tech every two weeks without fail, and requiring him to read and be tested on a number of books on manners, but compared to the other Tri-Sigs he was still the resident geek. He frowned, unsure how to begin.
"I see you've signed up for Spring Break."
"Yes," Jim agreed, fishing his wallet out of his pocket. "Do you want me to pay for it now, Warwick? I have my credit cards right here ..."
"That's not why I asked you to come see me, Prof. I don't know how to say this gently –"
"Then just say it, boss. You've always been straight with me."
Warwick sighed. "Jim, are you really sure you want to do this? Don't you remember when happened last year, when you went to Fort Lauderdale and all of the girls you met either wouldn't talk to you or gave you a verbal smackdown? Remember that little Phi Mu who made a date to meet you at the Café Matorano on Seminole Way, never showed, and then claimed she thought you meant the
other
Café Matorano in downtown Lauderdale when you confronted her with it, right before she laughed in your face? After that bitch was done with you, you looked like a puppy that had had a tin can tied to its tail and been kicked down the street! You hardly talked to anybody after that, and you stayed in your room with the door locked. And when you
did
come out of your room, the only places you went were to the nearest fast food joints and the beach at night, when there was no one around."
"Look on the bright side, boss. I had a wonderful meal and I got to watch the best bits of
The Godfather
while I was eating."
"That's not the point! Dammit, I just don't want you hurt again.
"Look. I know you're autistic, though not as bad as many, and you have a memory that is eidetic or near enough you need a magnifying glass to see the difference. But even with all the work your brothers and I have done with you, for all practical purposes you might as well be one of George Lucas's droids when it comes to interacting with girls. Last spring break, you went down in flames in an American town where everyone speaks English. How do you think you're going to cope in a resort city where they no habla Inglese?"
"Bastante bien. Yo hablo a español. Tenia cuatro años en la secundaria, y era miembro del Club Español."
Warwick stared at him. "You speak Spanish?"
"Yes. Not like a native, of course, unless the native is from Castile. Castilian is kind of like High German compared to what they speak in Mexico, but even though I don't really think in it I can generally make myself understood. Sometimes on the weekends I drive down to Spanish Harlem to buy papayas and mangoes, and eat in little restaurants just to listen to the people talking, people from Central America and Puerto Rico mostly. It keeps my ear in."
"Well, that could help. Having a native-speaker may cause some girls from other colleges who are spring breaking to appreciate you more."
"Besides, milord, I know very well girls look at me like I belong in a zoo. But I'm not going on a drunken pussy hunt the way everyone else is. Manzanillo is famous for its sportfishing, snorkeling and scuba diving. I qualified as a diver in high school, and there is a wreck in a bay north of the city that's shallow enough for amateurs to try. It will be my first wreck dive. I expect to be so busy fishing and diving, I won't miss the non-attention of the girls." He did something he did not often do because he found it so difficult: he met Warwick's eyes. The chapter president's expression was somewhere between reluctance and acceptance.
"Well, if you're sure, Prof. You want to make the deposit now?"
"No, I'll pay the whole thing, milord." Jim handed Warwick a black Amex card. He ran it though the card scanner he plugged into his cell phone and that was it: Jim Powell, known to his Tri-Sig brothers as Professor X, was going to Manzanillo.
That weekend, Jim drove home to the house he had inherited from his parents when he was fifteen. He walked into the kitchen and found his housekeeper Consuela and his cousin Fiona just sitting down to dinner. After being hugged by both of them, he joined them at the table. Dinner conversation consisted of catching up with each other. Both of them were astonished at his having signed up for the fraternity's trip to Mexico, but for different reasons.
"
Querido niño
, do you not follow the news?" asked Consuela. "The State Department has issued travel warnings for Mexico!"
"Not for all of it,
