Invasion of Privacy

appearing to be 195 South. It was fairly wide for five or ten miles, and I drove past large contemporary homes clinging to the ridges, more modest trailer parks sprawling in the flats. Pretty soon the road narrowed, though, and I could appreciate the booth woman’s advice about being patient. But at least the slower speed gave me time to sightsee.
    The views would make you realize why eastern Washington is part of “Big Sky Country.” White, puffy clouds couldn’t quite cover the stretch from horizon to horizon, letting the sunshine through in gauzy cascades, like a series of bridal veils. The topography below was hilly but contoured, all swells and curves, almost feminine. The colors were shades of brown, green, and gold, the stubbled remnants of last summer’s crops, with dust devils kicking up tan funnels fifty feet high. Farmhouses painted gray and barns red dotted occasional oases of spindly pines and broader deciduous trees, curling tracks of driveways bringing pickup trucks toward access roads.
    Every twenty miles or so I passed big, silvery silos like the Tin Man’s head from The Wizard of Oz, the superstructures over them probably grain elevators. There were a few herds of beef cattle too, and when the highway veered near or through the towns, you could see men in straw cowboy hats and tooled leather boots, a motel marquee advertising an “Ice Cream Social.” The rolling wheat can sure smell sweet.
    Closer to Moscow , I went by a big, bare mountain to the east with signs saying “ Steptoe Butte State Park .” After the downtown of Colfax, I hit Pullman , then turned east onto Route 270 and crossed into Idaho .
    There seemed to be more trees, and bigger ones. Ponderosa pines, long-needled and almost bulbous. Douglas firs with that disheveled, “Bill the Cat” look to them. Tamaracks sprouting golden needles that I remembered somebody once telling me fell off the “evergreen” come winter.
    Even gaining three hours by flying west, it was nearly 5:00 p.m. when I found the University of Idaho on a hillside in Moscow, the campus dominated by what looked like an airplane hangar in gray, brown, and gold mosaics—the “Kibbee Dome.” The rest of the buildings were mostly Gothic stonework, though, which surprised me, I guess because I suffer from the easterner’s prejudice that only we have “older” architecture. Leaving the car in a visitors’ lot, I started up one of the tree-lined, crisscrossing walkways, little markers identifying this spruce or that cedar as being planted by President Howard Taft or Eleanor Roosevelt.
    After asking directions from a strolling undergraduate wearing a “Lady Vandals” sweatshirt, I finally located the registrar’s office in a red-brick annex to the main Administration Building . There were peach-colored tiles climbing halfway up the walls from yellow granite floors, a set of interior windows showing one woman still toiling away at her computer. A sign read: TRANSCRIPT REQUEST TAKES 3 TO 4 DAYS.
    As I reached into my jacket pocket, the woman looked up from her keyboard. “Can I help you, sir?”
    “Actually, I’m just glad to find you still open.”
    A warm smile as she stood and came to the window. “My husband doesn’t get off his job till five-thirty, so I kind of flex-time it here.”
    “I need to see a former student’s file.”
    “You mean transcript?” she said, glancing toward the sign.
    “No, I already have that.” I handed her my stock letter with the forged “Lana Stepanian” at the bottom. “I’d like the file itself.”
    The woman went through the letter quickly, then slowly. “Well, we don’t have our own form for that, but this seems more than fine.” She appeared a little pained. “Of course, the photocopying would be awfully expensive, and I’d have to mail the package to you after we received your check.”
    “Actually, I’m in kind of a bind, timewise. I really have to see the file today, though I shouldn’t need any copies.” The woman looked at me differently. “Where’re you from?”
    “You don’t get many Boston accents out here?”
    “No, but I thought that’s what I heard. My husband and I had a great vacation there—oh, it must be three years ago now. Paul Revere’s House, Faneuil Hall, the wonderful churches along the Freedom Trail.”
    “Plus you get to walk it instead of driving two hours south from Spokane .”
    “Oh my, you didn’t come all the way to Moscow just for this, did you?”
    I