In this short scene, the main character, a young student at a small liberal arts college in California, tells his father that he is going to look around the campus to see if there are any students there who might be interested in pursuing a career in science and engineering. The father is surprised to learn that his son is sick, and the young man goes to get him. He finds that the college is not very crowded, and that there are a lot of students in the surrounding area. The young man wonders why his father has gone to get his son, but the father tells him that he should go on his own. He then tells the boy that he has a fever and that he needs to go to the doctor. The boy is very excited to see his father, and asks if he has any friends he can call to help him out. The man says that he doesn't have any friends and that it would be impossible for him to call on them, but that if he did, it would save him if the doctor helped him out, and so he leaves the boy with a bunch of books to stack on the side of the room. He hears rumors that one of the professors at the university is a "demon" in his lectures, and he wants to use the room as a place where he can hide his illicit love for another student. He wants the room to be as clean as possible, so that the other student will not know about his affair with another student, and will be able to retaliate if he should find out. He also wants to make sure that the room is not dirty, because he knows that the professor will retaliate by cutting off the room from public view if he finds out about the affair. This is a dirty secret, he says, because the professor knows how to retaliate. He tells the young men to hurry up and leave the room by 5:00 p.m.