The Dean's daily work: the diddle-check, the informal counseling, the physical presence

texture · YDAU (the November present)

• When: YDAU present (10 Nov office scene; ongoing duties)
• What: As Dean of Females Avril presides (when Rusk is "otherwise engaged," which is nearly always) over the mandated monthly "diddle-check," gently probing the under-thirteen girls about being "touched by a tall person in an uncomfortable way." With Lyle and Mario she is one of the three who "take up most of the psychic slack, for practical purposes, among E.T.A.s in the know" (the counselor Rusk being "whatever's just slightly worse than useless"). Her physical presence is fixed: vividly white hair (that mostly skipped the gray stage), imposing height, and a voice "higher... than one would expect... high and sort of airy. Oddly insubstantial" — Orin says she dislikes music because when she hums along "she sounds insane." Chain-smokes Benson & Hedges only in filtered venues; a pen perpetually in her mouth.