"Yes," Eddie said surprised, "I did. Class of '34." He looked again at the stranger, remembering the first impression he had had of having known the fellow. He had a rather average Irish type face, with a short nose and a generous mouth, and crow's feet at the corners of his eyes. He had freckles too, and his hair, being rather light, might be red. He searched his memory for a redhead he had known at the University.
"It seems very improbable," the man was saying now, interrupting his attempts to remember, "it doesn't seem possible that you could be he. But back at the University there was a fellow I remember very well. He was a graduate student, and he was doing very interesting research on the pronding of povodil. There was a great deal of talk about it when his thesis came out. I was just a junior then but I remember it. I remember him, and you look like him. Of course you look different, but you look as he would look without povodil and twenty years older. His name was, let's see, what was his name?... Eddie Tomlinson. That was it."
Eddie started when he heard his name. He hadn't been listening to what the fellow was saying, he had been too busy trying to place him.
"Eddie Tomlinson! Why that's my name!" he cried now, in surprise. "How did you know it?"
"I just told you."
"Oh, yes, yes," Eddie said quickly, not wanting to admit that he hadn't heard. A face, a situation, a name were coming to the surface of his mind.
"Jerry Conlan," he exclaimed suddenly. "You must be Jerry Conlan!"
"Yes," said the man absently, "yes, that's my name. How very strange," he continued softly, "that you should be Eddie Tomlinson, one of the most promising young povodilomans of the time ... and you've never heard of povodil or of prondation or deg or any of it."
He went on mumbling to himself while Eddie remembered that day when, after an art class, he had gone to watch the light rehearsal of the Drama Club's newest production and had been so impressed by the ingenious use of colored light that he had sought out the student who had designed them. He had talked for quite a while to the fellow, who had been a redhead named Jerry Conlan.
"So you're Jerry Conlan," Eddie interrupted his neighbor. "And what do you do these days? Still stage design and lighting? Or is it something else?"