…Oh, and I’m sleeping with my sister-in-law…Just that, although sometimes she caresses me in the night and I smooth back her soft hair and when I lie behind her, my front to her back, she knows how I feel about her, unfaithful bastard that I am…I’m not myself. Am I?
The only big news was the email I had received from ASU, blowing me off because of a new round of budget cuts. After all the in-person courting that I received after the election, I lost the job via an email. And it was just to be an adjunct professor, the minimum-wage counter help of academia.
“That must have pissed you off.” He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. The only item of luxury in the entire office was where he sat, in a new executive office chair.
“History teaches humility and skepticism.”
“Right. Told you that you couldn’t go back to that P.C. shit. And that they wouldn’t have you. When Jennifer was at Stanford…” This was his oldest daughter. “…she said to me, ‘Why do I have to study something called HIS-story. What about HER-story?”
I could have pointed out that the word came from the Greek for inquiry and had nothing to do with pronouns, but he was right about the broader issue. I was mad as hell. Hurt, too. Me, the guy who couldn’t get tenure at San Diego State University, for God’s sake. Now I was rejected for a part-time teaching gig when I knew they were still taking on kids with half my credentials. I felt like even more of a failure, that I let down Lindsey, too. A couple of times I went off on Robin, although I immediately apologized. She accepted my outbursts with surprising equanimity, considering that I always imagined her to be someone who would cold-cock anybody who crossed her. But I had learned new things about her and we had grown closer. She would say, “You’re not yourself, David.”
Peralta spoke. “I hear you went to visit Amy Preston.” He dropped it light as a feather.
“That’s true.”
“Why were you out there at that gun shop?”
“He misses the cops,” Robin chimed in, gently punching my shoulder.
“I don’t doubt it,” Peralta said. “How’d you like Barney?”
“Barrel of laughs.”
“He’d kill you in a heartbeat. Did it occur to you that ATF might have an operation going?”
“Actually, no.” I felt the anger start to pulse in my temples. “If PPD wasn’t going to protect Robin, why wouldn’t I try to follow a lead and get ahead of the bad guys? Kate Vare takes this from a major case to the circular file and I’m just supposed to let it be?”
