list.
“How weird was that?” Carrie, an eleventh grader said. “We’re all stuck listening to the talk about life while a guy’s dying right outside the auditorium.”
Lewis, a cute sophomore, broke the meditative gloom this produced. “What about a follow-up?”
“To that?” My mind was still on that ironic juxtaposition.
“To the drug thing. Why don’t we talk to the police about how come we can find the dealers, but they’re still there, like the cops can’t.”
“Excellent!” someone said.
Zachary, our new expert, smiled. “It’s not like the TV dramas of the inner city. The dealers aren’t hanging on the corner, waiting to make a sale. You know the dude, you say what you want, he gets it from somebody else. And he maybe only has a total of five pills at a time. Not that high on a cop’s priority list. And who’s going to tell, anyway? Aside from that, he’s just a kid like us, making a few extra bucks. And he doesn’t sell heroin or crack, only pharmaceuticals.”
“But how about somebody like me?” I asked. I felt a twinge of guilt about using them as information sources, but I kept thinking about staid-looking, middle-aged Tomas Severin with that drug coursing in his veins. “Someone my age? Older? How would they find the person?”
“Like . . . for which one?”
“Like . . . the date-rape drugs.” Like the drug in Tomas Severin.
“Ask any kid,” someone said, and everybody laughed.
“Or make it yourself, if you’re careful. Or so I heard,” another boy said.
“You’ve got to know what you’re doing, man,” his friend said.
He shrugged.
“I’m not planning to cook any up,” I said quietly. “Not to worry.”
At least the uneventful day had been well rounded. A start with girls destroying their bodies, and a conclusion about the ease of obtaining drugs. And somewhere to the side, a murdered man.
Who was it called school an ivory tower?
----
Eight
----
I N Hollywood they call them hyphenates. Writer-producer. Director-producer. Actor-whatever—you get it. There’s a certain glamour to being a hyphenate there. It suggests a deliberate and chosen expansion of one’s creative roles and life.
There is no glamour in needing a second job so as to pay the rent. Teacher-PI not only lacked the glamour of Hollywood’s hyphenates, but sounded ridiculous. I felt competent and fine as long as the second job remained clerical. I know my alphabet, and I can file. I have also learned to work a computer relatively well. But Mackenzie was supposed to do the heavy lifting. He was the one with the license, and I was his trainee or apprentice. He supervised me, at least in theory. But while I thought of
supervision
as akin to teaching, something that involved pretty constant monitoring and guidance, Mackenzie thought of it as a casual dinnertime catch-up on how the day had gone. He said he trusted my instincts. He said I was smart.
It was a good plan if you wanted to save time and effort. I considered telling my students I trusted their instincts, and they could take the semester off to read great books.
I set out for my two interviews with my usual uncertainty, wishing I had a clear sense of purpose for either of them. Citizen Mackenzie had given Owen Edwards a heads-up about Cornelius, but I still didn’t know any more about him than that he was engaged to a sporadically dotty woman forty-six years his senior. Included in what I didn’t know was what I was supposed to find out or notice.
I drove out of the city into ever-increasing green and open spaces. Ingrid Severin lived in Villanova, in a sprawl of stone behind gates that bordered a city block’s worth of lawn. My ancient, held together with duct tape Mustang so clearly understood that it didn’t belong here that it stalled twice on the cobbled drive.
I was greeted by a silent, efficient woman I assumed to be the housekeeper, and led into a spacious room that overlooked another park’s worth of careful
“How weird was that?” Carrie, an eleventh grader said. “We’re all stuck listening to the talk about life while a guy’s dying right outside the auditorium.”
Lewis, a cute sophomore, broke the meditative gloom this produced. “What about a follow-up?”
“To that?” My mind was still on that ironic juxtaposition.
“To the drug thing. Why don’t we talk to the police about how come we can find the dealers, but they’re still there, like the cops can’t.”
“Excellent!” someone said.
Zachary, our new expert, smiled. “It’s not like the TV dramas of the inner city. The dealers aren’t hanging on the corner, waiting to make a sale. You know the dude, you say what you want, he gets it from somebody else. And he maybe only has a total of five pills at a time. Not that high on a cop’s priority list. And who’s going to tell, anyway? Aside from that, he’s just a kid like us, making a few extra bucks. And he doesn’t sell heroin or crack, only pharmaceuticals.”
“But how about somebody like me?” I asked. I felt a twinge of guilt about using them as information sources, but I kept thinking about staid-looking, middle-aged Tomas Severin with that drug coursing in his veins. “Someone my age? Older? How would they find the person?”
“Like . . . for which one?”
“Like . . . the date-rape drugs.” Like the drug in Tomas Severin.
“Ask any kid,” someone said, and everybody laughed.
“Or make it yourself, if you’re careful. Or so I heard,” another boy said.
“You’ve got to know what you’re doing, man,” his friend said.
He shrugged.
“I’m not planning to cook any up,” I said quietly. “Not to worry.”
At least the uneventful day had been well rounded. A start with girls destroying their bodies, and a conclusion about the ease of obtaining drugs. And somewhere to the side, a murdered man.
Who was it called school an ivory tower?
----
Eight
----
I N Hollywood they call them hyphenates. Writer-producer. Director-producer. Actor-whatever—you get it. There’s a certain glamour to being a hyphenate there. It suggests a deliberate and chosen expansion of one’s creative roles and life.
There is no glamour in needing a second job so as to pay the rent. Teacher-PI not only lacked the glamour of Hollywood’s hyphenates, but sounded ridiculous. I felt competent and fine as long as the second job remained clerical. I know my alphabet, and I can file. I have also learned to work a computer relatively well. But Mackenzie was supposed to do the heavy lifting. He was the one with the license, and I was his trainee or apprentice. He supervised me, at least in theory. But while I thought of
supervision
as akin to teaching, something that involved pretty constant monitoring and guidance, Mackenzie thought of it as a casual dinnertime catch-up on how the day had gone. He said he trusted my instincts. He said I was smart.
It was a good plan if you wanted to save time and effort. I considered telling my students I trusted their instincts, and they could take the semester off to read great books.
I set out for my two interviews with my usual uncertainty, wishing I had a clear sense of purpose for either of them. Citizen Mackenzie had given Owen Edwards a heads-up about Cornelius, but I still didn’t know any more about him than that he was engaged to a sporadically dotty woman forty-six years his senior. Included in what I didn’t know was what I was supposed to find out or notice.
I drove out of the city into ever-increasing green and open spaces. Ingrid Severin lived in Villanova, in a sprawl of stone behind gates that bordered a city block’s worth of lawn. My ancient, held together with duct tape Mustang so clearly understood that it didn’t belong here that it stalled twice on the cobbled drive.
I was greeted by a silent, efficient woman I assumed to be the housekeeper, and led into a spacious room that overlooked another park’s worth of careful
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