Ground Lines

Cooper

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Cooper.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4542-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4536-6 (e)

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 1/25/2016

To Ivy, and Mary, and Paulie

For Pop, and Mom

And for my students (most of them)

for EJM

But it is the same land.

And I begin to know the map

And to get my bearings.

Eric Van Der Meyer had just finished stapling another McDonald’s application to the last page of one of his student’s essays when he heard several muted, evenly paced knuckle-raps on the door leading to the English department core, capped by a louder, popping finale. Midway through a punishing pile of Turn of the Screw papers, he welcomed this unlooked-for opportunity to stray from his marking labors. Gazing upward and back over his left shoulder, he softly grumbled, C’min! and spun his seat in a slow arc in order to greet the knocker.

Lt. Gus Gurney leaned into the classroom, supporting himself on the oversized metal door handle as he peered in. Van Der Meyer could see only the profile of the man’s head, held steady and uncertain, the rest of his body hidden by the angled, protruding door. Whoever he was, he appeared to be having difficulty adjusting his vision from the obscuring dimness of the core to the brightly illuminated confines of room 34.

Van Der Meyer took the lead.

How can I help you?

The police officer squinted to his left in the direction of the seated voice, smiled weakly, and nodded his head in greeting. Stepping further into the classroom, Gurney pivoted around the door’s edge, and immediately began to push back on the handle, tilting once again. The industrial-grade door closer would have none of it. Indifferent to any sort of human persuasion, it flaunted yet again its obstinate resistant power, emitting, as it ever did, a barely audible hiss with each impertinent shove.

From his chair, Van Der Meyer, who had witnessed the door go through its implacable circuit innumerable times, made a fleeting attempt to intervene (You don’t have to push the … it’ll clo—), only to lean further back in patient expectation. Evidently, the visitor had a firm determination to see to it that the door did not remain ajar, and Van Der Meyer could think of no good reason to play the spoiler.

Task completed, Gurney turned once more and repeated his nod to the teacher. Mr. Van Der Meyer?

Yes.

The newcomer produced a St. Louis Police badge. I’m Lt. Gurney. May I ask you a few questions?

The normally stolid English teacher hesitated, creaked forward in his chair to get a clearer glimpse of the badge, before eventually nodding his head. Of course.

Pulling a red Class Record Book from his briefcase, Gurney turned to the single page that held any interest for him. Van Der Meyer instantly recognized the handwriting.

Do you remember a student from last year named Ellis Mulnay?

Van Der Meyer rocked lightly in his chair. Yes.

He was in your fifth-hour class last year?

Van Der Meyer maintained a carefully modulated back and forth motion, peering up and down the class roster.

You didn’t mark him absent on May 5th?

Van Der Meyer snorted and leaned back abruptly in his chair, whose aging workings obliged by emitting a grinding metallic squawk. I don’t know. Each syllable received an equal emphasis.

He eyed the lieutenant and smiled, spinning once again in a slow arc. What’s it say?

You didn’t. And we think he was.

Applying the heel edges of his shoes to the tiled floor, the teacher gently put the brakes on his turning seat. He squinted pensively, looked up and down the line of the 5/5 column, and shook his head. He returned his attention to Gurney. What d’you want me to do? He smiled briefly, letting out a short, clicking exhalation and rocking back once more. "What can I do?" He lifted both of his thick hands from the chair’s arms before returning them to the worn leather surfaces.

We’d like to have Mulnay absent on that day. It’s important.

Why? But now a sudden burst before Gurney had time to respond: Wait. Did you check—

The Student Information System? Yes, he self-responded. We did. We did. Gurney gazed about the room. More than once. Tables were arranged in three jagged arcs, first three, then five, then seven. Chairs had been positioned for students entering from the opposite door. And he’s not marked absent for fifth hour. The squat detective continued to scan the classroom for a convenient place to sit down. Van Der Meyer, comfortably ensconced in his own seat, joined the search for another nearby chair. Just as the cop appeared to be giving up hope that he would be taking a load off anytime soon, the teacher swung back to his left, eyeing a dingy molded-plastic chair stationed in the corner, facing the rear wall and only inches from it. The seat of the chair balanced at a steep angle three lengthy lightwood broadswords, worn points down, hilts leaning against the wall. Regrettably, each one of the decidedly non-menacing weapons had long since surrendered whatever Elizabethan pretensions it may once have held. Taken as a whole, moreover, the peculiar combination of elements all but begged for a resolution to urgent aesthetic questions. Contemporary art installation? Subversive Dadaist masterpiece? Or was it merely Van Der Meyer’s sly modernist tribute to the dunce genre? No matter. Not wasting a single moment on such rarefied speculations, Van Der Meyer seized one of the chair’s legs, holding it aloft and steady as he spun back around, paying no heed whatsoever to the ensuing disarray. Scarred wooden blades clacked to the tile, like broken spokes to a wheel that had gone missing ages ago.

Forgot this was back here, he explained as he skated the chair in the lieutenant’s direction. Never use it.

Gurney, whose eyes still seemed to be making adjustments, lowered himself gratefully. Index finger and thumb were engaged in gentle eye massage, interspersed by a couple of exaggerated eyelid stretches. He appeared to relent a bit. Got a dead kid. Seventeen. Maybe sixteen. Killed last spring.

Van Der Meyer said nothing.

Shot on May 5th. Just after one in the afternoon. Gurney leaned forward in his chair in order to withdraw a handkerchief from the rear right pocket of his pants. Van Der Meyer mutely observed that the crumpled cloth had long since passed even the most forgiving recommended due date for a Tide-job. The cop blew his nose repeatedly but lifelessly, re-crumpling the cloth twice in the process. Leaning forward once again, he returned the rag to its cell, never once looking at it. He leaned back in the plastic chair. In the city.

Van Der Meyer waited for more.

We know Mulnay shot him. Gurney breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly, his left elbow resting on a corner of the teacher’s desk. He carefully positioned a finger next to an empty square.

Van Der Meyer gazed at the unmarked space. His eyes then wandered back to the edge of the Record Book’s margin, raking the column of alphabetized names for some sort of assistance, some kind of explanation.

You didn’t mark him absent.

*   *   *

On a very cold January 1st, a date Morton Caper’s grandmother still occasionally referred to as the Feast of the Circumcision, a metallic green Buick Le Sabre drove north towards the heart of Pittsburgh. The car washes dotting the road into the city were closed for the holiday, a fact that would render absolutely certain something that was quite likely in any case—namely, that the sedan would continue to abide a quite visible layer of dried mud, as well as a somewhat thinner layer of road-salt residue. Morton, his grandmother, and his father were headed to Mass at St. Mary’s at the Point, and thence to the Fulton Newsstand on Stanwix Street, where his father would purchase the New York edition of The New York Times. He did this regularly, and for one reason: to read (aloud, circumstances permitting) the Society page. The marriage announcements and their attendant articles filled him with great mirth, especially the fastidious care with which family partnerships were traced and celebrated, like an unusually ornate recipe. Somehow, laughing at a distant world of financial alliances made between the Von Such-and-suches and the de Moneyeds provided an outlet for something that puzzled and intrigued and amused him. And you could only read the announcements in the actual New York paper.

On KDKA, the announcer interrupted whatever New Year’s Day program was in progress to deliver the dreadful news that Roberto Clemente had perished in a plane crash the night before.

Charles, his grandmother asked. Is that true?

Must be. Wouldn’t say so otherwise.

They continued to drive north on 19.

Is it true?

Must be. It’s on the radio.

They went to Mass downtown. Numbed, Morton submitted to the familiar regimen of standing and kneeling and sitting, not knowing what to think or how to feel. Nothing said or done in the course of the service could possibly hope to address the incomprehensible New Year’s disappearance.

After picking up the Times (which, of course, had been printed far too early to carry any of the plane crash news), the Capers began the winding trip south, back towards Mt. Lebanon.

In the ensuing weeks and months, Morton would think a great deal about plane crashes, dwelling especially on the fact that they happened very suddenly. Quick life brought to a very quick end. But then again, the plane’s occupants would also often be granted more than enough time to contemplate their impending ruin. Clemente would have. His plane had failed over the sea. In one discussion Mort had had with his father, the latter remarked how the water may as well have been concrete. That stuck with him. It was as if the speed of the rapidly falling object changed the substance of the patiently waiting sea. The plane had been received, violently, and had disappeared. It was now under ocean water, but would still be there. Scattered, but partly there. The food on board the plane (probably too much of it loaded onto the old DC7, it was later observed) as well as the occupants, would become in one fashion or another food for the ocean.

On the northern cusp of the city’s snaky southern border, they ate brunch somberly at the Redwood Motel on that New Year’s morning, listening to the urgent but hushed conversations of other diners, all of whom had heard but not yet read the appalling news.

Back in the Buick, whose exterior had a fresh spray of road salt behind all four wheels, they set out on the final leg of the circuit, black-tipped snow and ice attending them the whole way home.

*   *   *

Split lunch, Van Der Meyer thought. Split fucking lunch.

The sixth and seventh hours are marked ‘absent.’ Kid was killed at 1:05 in the afternoon. We’ve checked. That’s sixth. Gurney had the demeanor of a person who had done his homework, complacency and accusation equally apportioned.

I know, Van Der Meyer said.

He had to miss your fifth, too. North city’s about 25 minutes.

I know.

What do you mean, you ‘know’?

I know where north city is, the teacher explained to the cop. And we’ve got split lunch.

What’s ‘split lunch?’

Second.

Second what?

Second lunch.

Second lunch is . . . ?’

Between first and third.

We can—

The hour is split in two. With lunch in between. The English department gets it every year. Sucks.

Gurney looked unimpressed. So what? Who cares if—

Mulnay could’ve come to the first half of the hour, left campus, done what you think he did, and—

"Never come back. And we know he did it."

Van Der Meyer furtively consulted the clock face suspended above the classroom’s whiteboard.

Don’t you know if a kid doesn’t—

I may not have noticed.

‘Noticed?’

Van Der Meyer lowered his gaze. Uneven black and red smears betrayed imperfectly erased lecture notes.

Any chance, the detective continued, you could remember your way –thumb and index finger now took the measure of beard stubble— into an absence?

No. Van Der Meyer shook his head. No. Definitely not. He was doing his level best to scour the events of the previous spring—anything that stood out as in any way suspect. A persistently underperforming Mulnay who inexplicably turned industrious. A Mulnay who may have suddenly disappeared for the latter half of a school week, only to return midday on Monday, talkative and confident. A shy Mulnay who, without warning, turned abrasive. Vice-versa. All of this without Gurney noticing that his mind was churning. I can’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

You can’t? Gurney’s face assumed an exaggerated expression meant to convey an icy mixture of bewilderment and contempt. "Yesterday’s lunch?" Still in his chair, he arched his back stiffly while holding his face in ice-mode, both nostrils emitting chiding streams of CO², a nasal stereo performance fine-tuned over decades of police work. Into the bargain, Van Der Meyer found himself ideally positioned to register the cop’s affinity for Camel Lights. Or—wait just a minute—did the prolonged exhalation bear trace evidence of an L & M loyalist? Pugnacious Tareyton toker? Whatever his tobacco preferences, every single molecule of Lt. Gus Gurney conveyed the unmistakable message that he had never—not once in all his policing days—encountered such an inexcusably defective memory.

After a brief pause, the teacher appeared to have reconsidered. You’re right. I can, Van Der Meyer conceded. I had bratwurst. I remember it very well, now that you mention it. It was left over, he added helpfully, from the night before. He smiled.

Gurney, motionless and blinking at a metronomic tempo, blankly absorbed the recently revised lunch testimony.

Van Der Meyer continued to smile broadly. I like bratwurst, he enthused. He paused once again and nodded his head faintly up and down, still grinning. So I remember.

That’s interesting. What else do you ‘like’?

Van Der Meyer’s eyes stared into a middle distance. A ‘dick’ is a detective, isn’t it?

Gurney’s face was stone. Yeah, that’s right. Used to be. Just so. Standing up slowly and with visible effort, the detective took two short, shuffling steps in the direction of the seated teacher, all the while nodding his head in the affirmative, as if to visually confirm his verbal response to Van Der Meyer’s vocab inquiry. But people don’t use it that way in the present day and age, he said in a voice just this side of a whisper. The lieutenant tilted his head to his left and down in a dramatic manner. Maybe you should follow their lead.

Thanks for the advice.

You’re welcome, word-boy.

Gurney rotated a quarter turn, the heels of his charcoal wingtips producing distinctive rasping sounds on the institutional tile. He presented his profile to Van Der Meyer for the second time. Appearances suggested that he was attempting to extricate an enticing khaki-colored morsel of foodstuff from between his canine and left incisor, his tongue his tool. Additional auditory evidence tended to corroborate this conjecture, even as it put to bed any fears Van Der Meyer might have nursed that the law officer would prove to be unduly anxious about the unsettling noises likely to accompany such an undertaking. In the meantime, the unwilling and all too captive audience for this solo matinee performance placed his left hand back on the stack of Henry James essays, not making any effort to read them or even to pick up a marker.

Evidently satisfied, at last, that his upper dental mop-up operation had been successfully executed, Gurney now turned his back completely to Van Der Meyer and began to walk sluggishly towards the core door. We’ll be talking some more, he grunted to the wall.

Yes, sir.

Alone, Van Der Meyer observed the heavy door repeat its slow, immutable round. His hand remained motionless on the essays. As the door clicked shut, he reached for a different and much smaller pile of quizzes lying on his desktop, not looking at them.

Exiting the core into a blinding hallway, Gurney raised his right forearm defensively against the sunlight. A custodian was standing on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows, expertly wielding a jumbo squeegee. More light, he mumbled to himself. In the thick of a maelstrom of students darting in every direction for their next class, he spotted what he and his partner would often refer to as a pander commander. Except this guy wasn’t a pimp. White guy. White shoes. White belt. Another teacher, probably. The detective shook his head and grinned. How can they let him dress like that?

Red pants. No. Watermelon. Gurney smiled again. Satin green shirt. Green (or is that teal?) cardigan.

Color words. Funny.

Dude shooting color everywhere.

*   *   *

1. Lack of sunshine.

2. Dearth of sunshine.

3. Absence of sunshine.

This list—or something very like it—was the terse response of a newly arrived writer-in-residence at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-to-late 80’s. The question had been: What three things do you like least about Pittsburgh? Both the question and the responses were published in a Saturday edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in the space reserved for local culture. He was a good writer and left before two years were up.

These remarks were made, it bears repeating, in the 1980’s. By that time, Pittsburgh was a galaxy away from what it had been in earlier decades. Of course, suburb-coddled, cake-eating Morton Caper had not grown up in anything like the steel city of lore, when men had had to change their white collars (if they wore white collars) at work halfway through the day. When the sun would be obscured at noon. Hell with the lid off.

Those conditions had been significantly addressed in one way or another by some sort of Renaissance project in the 50’s. Exactly how that worked he still didn’t understand, given that the J & L steel and rolling mills on both sides of the Monongahela were still putting out loads of smoke deep into the 70’s, let alone the less centrally located but much larger plants in Homestead, Braddock, Beaver Falls, and elsewhere. But if you definitely couldn’t stare straight at the sun at noon, because the mills no longer provided that sort of dismal shield, Pittsburgh was nonetheless something of a mecca if you were an overcast-skies enthusiast. It was and it remains among the gloomiest places in the United States, never very far from Portland or Seattle.

Caper recalled, with genuine pleasure and affection, a very gray city. Buildings (especially churches, for some reason) were often caked and baked in black. A heavy snow would only exaggerate this dark hue, not least because the white blanket would immediately be absorbed by the native soot, often retaining it for weeks at a time. He thought he remembered reading somewhere that when the Oakland Raiders visited the city in 1972, for a game that would become legend because of an Immaculate Reception, Al Davis, the wicked lord of the California team, remarked that it was like landing in East Germany. Caper, of course, didn’t know if Davis really said this. But he thought it was pretty funny, and—at least with respect to chromatic distribution—not altogether off-base.

*   *   *

Arriving at the sprawling campus on the following day, this time with his partner Greiner, Gurney eyed the same technicolor teacher walking along the same hallway. Different get-up, equally loud.

He tapped Greiner’s shoulder and pointed. Watermelon pants.

What?

Watermelon pants. Only he’s changed into some new neon.

Gurney and Greiner were looking for Keith Luebbert, the English department principal. They were hopeful that he would help them get the fifth-hour absence they desired.

Luebbert agreed to meet the detectives back in Van Der Meyer’s room.

Who’s the Tropicana man walking the hallways? Gurney asked Luebbert the moment he entered the classroom.

Excuse me?

The fruit salad. Looks like he’s one of your teachers.

Cape, Van Der Meyer offered, without looking up from a small pile of quizzes currently encumbering his conference hour.

Cape?

Yeah, he answered, still not lifting his eyes from the pile. Caper. He’s an English teacher.

Gurney smiled and shook his head. Is he fruity?

Van Der Meyer studied the visiting cop, slowly puckering his lips so as to preempt any wayward smile that might be contemplating a brief visit to his visage. He blinked. People don’t use that word that way in the present day and age. The non-smile was still a go. Maybe, he said confidentially, as would a man who had the best interests of his interlocutor at heart, you should follow their lead. Then he stared down at the square, tiled floor in a disciplined manner, grinning gently. And no, he’s not.

Gurney responded by making, not for the first time, an ill-advised observation: Sounds like a castrated rooster.

"That’s a capon, Gurney, Van Der Meyer pounced. A caper, he cast his eyes to the ceiling, as if to consult a hovering lexicon visible only to him, is a trick, or a stunt, or—the next three words received special emphasis—a clever theft." The pleasure of saying this to a smartass cop lifted his spirits measurably.

Gurney chewed gum.

Just then Caper himself entered the classroom. Holding a pile of student essays and a weathered red copy of Dante, he looked quizzically at the four men gathered, waiting for an explanation.

Know what a capon is, Cape? Van Der Meyer asked cheerily.

A very, Caper’s voice conveyed all of the tragic pity he could reasonably muster at such short notice, unhappy rooster. With solemn deliberation, he consulted the book’s creased red cover.

Luebbert exhaled a laugh.

‘It’s no life being a steer,’ Van Der Meyer said directly to Caper, still smiling.

Amen, amen, dico vobis…

Fuck’re you talking about? Gurney asked, putting forth no discernible effort to conceal his irritation. Greiner, however, was suddenly brightly attentive, and made ready to join the conversation at the first opportunity.

Caper and Van Der Meyer, each believing the uncouth question had been directed specifically to him, began to respond at the same time. After the two exchanged hasty, inquisitive glances, Caper graciously yielded to the younger, more lumberjack-like man.

It’s a line from a Hemingway novel, Van Der Meyer explained. Capons and steers, steers and capons. Same thing.

Caper quietly hummed When the Caissons Go Rolling Along.

Greiner leapt at his opportunity. That’s not even Latin, you know, he said enthusiastically.

Caper stared. Half of it is.

Are we going to get our fucking absence? Gurney boomed.

No one witnessing Caper’s reaction to Gurney’s thundering question could harbor any doubt that he was sincerely baffled. Wan’ me to leave?

Yes! Gurney responded emphatically, not bothering to look in Caper’s direction.

The teacher nodded and spun around in one movement, exiting to the English department core.

With no opportunity to ask about the Inferno quizzes (his reason for entering Van Der Meyer’s room in the first place), Caper nevertheless found himself quite intrigued by this urgent "absence" matter. Wait a sec. Maybe he said absinthe. No. Couldn’t’ve. Makes no sense. Good lunch conversation anyway. Absinthe of malice. Funny? Ask Iris. Might use it as a photo caption. Absinthe-minded? Yellowish-green number, maybe with the killer paisley shirt. Blows ‘em away every time. Absinthe makes the shirt grow fabu…Subtitle? This mean green ensemble’s addictive! There’s that line, too, from Twelfth Night, or maybe Midsummer or Much Ado or one of those allegedly funny plays: Melancholy’s green and yellow cast. Probably something better than that. More haunting rhythm. Always is.

Caper shook his head yet again in doleful tribute to his memory’s limitations—long term, short term, all terms. All of those characters in the comedies, he wearily recalled—hell, at least a dozen, often quite a few more—and each one sharing more or less equal stage time to boot. Toss in the fact that you’ve got to keep track of beaucoup plot twists, meddlesome imps, mistaken identities, gender swaps. Nor does it help that their names all end in an a or an o or an i. Io, too. Atio and assio. No need to buy a vowel when the Italian influences are so pronounced. But somehow for Shakespeare all of this doesn’t constitute quite enough dramatic intrigue, so He decides to exacerbate Cape’s interpretive labor. The Bard has to have it that three-quarters of the characters go off and disguise themselves in order to win yon lover over there, or perhaps dupe cunning rival over here. Failing that, the poor lovesick suckers get disguised by a mischievous sprite or some other sort of comical demon. Can’t keep the names straight to begin with, and now for more than half the cast Cape’s got to keep track of two. Oh yeah, Claudio’s also ‘Duke Something-o,’ except nobody other than that other guy’s twin brother knows about it. And remember, he can’t change back to being just plain ol’ Claudio without the pixie and the pixie dust, right? Caper, not immune to conducting very precise calculations on the date when his pension would kick in, shook his head sternly once more. Too old to teach any of those plays ever again. Leave ‘em to Roegner and all the other nimble, young instructors. These kids can quote the stuff from memory. It’s all the C-man can do just to drop one of the titles now and again in casual conversation, hoping he hasn’t mangled the job in the process.

Absinthe, baby. Ab-Romantic-sinthe. A beverage with a most colorful past. Green and yellow. Yellowish-green. Poe, they say. Not to mention quite a few others of the artistic persuasion. Kicked out of UVa, or so the story…Maybe just dropped out. University has a vested interest in keeping that sort of ambiguity going. Tourists love it. How many times had he been politely accosted on the way to class? Excuse me, young man. But could you please tell us which room Edgar Allan Poe lived in? Caper couldn’t.

Absintheur? Words don’t come any cooler. But just how could you wangle the thing into an actual convers—

Don’t forget West Point, before that. Kicked out or went AWOL. Would be very difficult, come to think of it, to name any writer less likely to have been been cut out of officer cloth. Second Lieutenant Poe, reporting for duty, sir.

Kidding me?

Duty. Honor.

Absinthe.

Trochees one and all. Raven, too, most of the way through. All of the way. Bump-bah, bump-bah, bump-bah, bump-bah…Regular drumbeat of ghastliness.

Gurney. Greiner. Mulnay.

Absence.

Not everyone, you had to admit, is cut out for the full four, a whole course of studies capped by a slow, celebratory stroll across the stage for the diploma. Or an officer’s insignia.

Lindbergh’s colors, too. Close enough, anyway. That particular coincidence is unlikely to have been remarked before, now isn’t it? LHS has absinthe colors. Should incorporate that happy fact into of some of our cheers. Green and Yellow, Yellow and Green/Come on Flyers, let’s get spirited! Spirit of spirits. Drinking man’s liquor. Parisian cafes. Would make your hair stand on end, and your body fall down in the street. Definitely would lend a whole new layer of meaning to Flyers, too. The girls could rhyme with green about a thousand different ways. Not so much with yellow. Not at all with absinthe. Of course, there’s absence, but that’s not really…

Don’t think I should share any of these soaring flights of fancy with my tender young students.

E. A. Poe ends up in a Baltimore gutter, according to the story. Just where certain people would expect a dropout to drop. Face down. Absinthetown. Wonder if that’s really true? Sounds like just the sort of tale Edgar A. would have orchestrated in one of his more lucid moments, eyes on the legacy prize. Untimely demise. Kicks influenza’s ass. Consumption and rheumatism couldn’t hope to buy anything like that sort of literary luster. Burnishes the green and yellow legend, doesn’t it? Never forget, dead writers need to appeal to the young, over and over and over again. The black-clad teen demographic laps up that sort of thing, and always would. Move over Cobain Morrison & Hendrix LLC. Make room for E. Allan Poe, Esq. If the father of the detective story had a mind to keep those old heart-thumping tales beating, forever stoking a yearning in the pale bosoms of young readers, he couldn’t have died a more fitting death. Maryland gutter. Prostrate. Louche.

Absinthe.

Cool.

Caper paused in the middle of the assembled eating tables, four or five set end to end, a semi-permanent banquet arrangement for English teachers. Something had captured his eye. Picking up a sturdy white plastic implement, he helped himself to two modest slices of chocolate cake.

Exiting the core, Caper approached two rather alienated-looking youths pressed against one another in the hallway, baggy garments commingling in deep sympathy. Sucking face. Wonder did kids still say that? Hmh. Give it a rest, he barked. The two separated just a bit and looked blankly at Caper. It’s revolting.

*   *   *

Departing the building once again, an agitated Gurney released a loud and abrupt guttural noise. Damn, he gasped. Also a food seasoning. Midget-olives or something. Can’t stand ‘em.

What the hell are you talking about? Greiner asked.

Gurney shook his head. Nothing. Should’ve said something else to Van Der Meyer. The cops continued to walk toward the parking space reserved for police. Timing.

Greiner thumbed his key fob. The gray Caprice chirped, blinked its running lights.

*   *   *

Returning from Guidance, Caper entered the core once again, easing his pace as ever to allow his eyes to adjust to the three rows of bright blue fluorescent lights radiating from above, each line extending all the way back to the dead end of the tunnel-like corridor. As he did so, a ceiling air vent positioned only a few feet inside the door blasted chilling air directly onto the crown of his head, the combined effect producing a casual derangement of his eyes, one that he now took for granted. It did not help matters that for all their radiant power stretched along the ceiling, the triple line of lights seemed to be mysteriously impeded somewhere in the middle air, rendering them incapable of providing the dull linoleum floor tiles with the illumination they deserved. For this exact reason, a visitor to this passageway, sure to hear some sort of hum or clatter or muffled laughter behind each one of the nine classroom doors, or perhaps a silence signalling boredom or studiousness or a mixture thereof, was equally certain to walk with unsteady step, her head amply klieged even as her shoes trod on an entirely different, and far