Not bad for a guy in his late forties.

He glanced at the statue of John Harvard in front of University Hall. Two tourists were rubbing the toe for luck, an old tradition, even though nobody had any idea of what John Harvard really looked like. The bronze Puritan staring quizzically at his shiny left shoe was just a figment of the sculptor’s imagination.

But good luck was good luck.

So Fallon went over and gave the toe a rub. He didn’t get nostalgic about Harvard. He wasn’t one of those “best years of your life” types. But he was thankful for all that he’d learned there, for the friends that he’d made there, for the doors that had opened to him … so thankful that he wanted his son to go there, too. That was why he rubbed the toe, and that was the real reason he was at Harvard that evening.

 

A short walk across the Yard and through the Square brought him to the offices of the Harvard College Fund.

As Peter knew from experience, it didn’t matter whether your parents could pay the whole $35,197 annual tuition or whether they lived in a cardboard box under a freeway. If you were smart enough, creative enough, athletic enough, or had whatever other enough the admissions department was looking for, you, too, could go to Harvard, because if you got in and couldn’t pay, Harvard would give you the money. It was called “need-blind admission,” and it guaranteed that Harvard always got its pick of the best students. Even the ones from under the freeways. Especially them.

Most need-blind money was raised by the Harvard College Fund. Every alumnus heard from the Fund every year, and usually more than once. If you hadn’t given, you were urged to give. If you had, you were urged to give more. And every five years, you were deluged with letters and phone calls urging you to give even more than before, because it was a reunion year and you wouldn’t want to embarrass your class, now, would you?

Harvard fund-raising was polite, efficient, professional, and enormously successful. It could also be relentless and shameless. Since Peter Fallon could be all of the above, he knew he’d fit right in at a Fund phone-a-thon. If he raised a few bucks, he might score a few points for his son’s Harvard application. And a divorced dad liked to score all the points he could for a son he saw only on weekends.

At the Fund office, Peter put on a name tag, picked up a pile of solicitation cards, and was directed to a large room of office cubicles where Fund functionaries labored by day and alumni called classmates by night.

As he slipped into a cubicle, a balding head popped up on the other side of the partition: “I expect you to raise ten thousand tonight, Peter.” It was Tom Benedict, one of Peter’s old classmates, now a professor of English who had ridden the fast train to tenure and straight through to middle age. His stomach looked like a soup bowl under his sport coat, no matter how hard he tried to hold it in.

And wise-ass students referred to his course, the Literature of the American West, as “Cowboys with the Combover.”

But Peter knew that Benedict still liked a little competition, so he said, “One bottle of ‘ninety-six Burgundy, premier cru, to the one who raises the most money tonight.”

“You’re on.”

Then Peter looked at his cards. He had been given the R’s. First call: someone named Raab. The printout next to the name said that he was an attorney in Chicago who gave five hundred dollars every year.

“Bingo!” said Peter as soon as he hung up.

“How much?” asked Benedict.

“Five hundred.”

Second call: John Ripley. Peter remembered him from crew and remembered him as notoriously tight. He remembered right.

Twenty dollars. Peter thanked him, since any contribution moved the class closer to its participation goal, but no bingo.

Third call: a Boston doctor named Ramsey: Five hundred and bingo!

“Peter” —Benedict looked over the partition—”this is the Harvard College Fund, not some sweaty boiler room selling aluminum siding to old widows. Stop with the ‘bingo!”

Fallon just laughed and delivered another bingo.

That was when Benedict slipped him a name and address. “They gave me the D’s, Peter, but I think that you might want to call this one yourself.”

Fallon looked at the name: John Dalton. Spouse: Evangeline Carrington.

“Of course, if you’re not up to it,” said Benedict, “I’ll call. I’ll tell her that her old boyfriend is sitting right here, but he doesn’t want to talk to her.”

“You’re playing dirty, Tom,” said Peter.

“Bingo.”

Of course Peter wanted to call her. There had been weeks since his divorce when he’d wanted to call her every night.