Free The Bluest Blood by Gillian Roberts

the removed books she wished she could read. They filmed her doe-in-the-headlights gape for much too long, and I could only hope they edited out a whole lot of it later on.
    And then they were finished with us. At least they hadn’t interviewed Alex Fry. God knows what outrageous things he’d have said.
    We had acquired a fringe of people with no idea what was going on, but who wanted in on it. If it was good enough for a television crew, it was more than good enough for them.
    Tawdry of me to feel such glee at the way Havermeyer’s decision had backfired, but I couldn’t help myself. It felt like maybe this one time, the forces of good might actually triumph.
    Maurice Havermeyer, Ph.D., did not share my delight. Throughout the day, like a horrified slow learner, he’d gone to his office window, stared at the protestors in wordless misery, then retreated. Then he’d reappear, repeating the intent observation as if hoping his earlier impressions had been a hallucination. But there they’d be again, and there they intended to remain until the books were returned (or summer vacation appeared, whichever came first) whether or not prospective applicants would have to pass through their midst to enter the building. If, of course, anybody still wanted to apply to Philly Prep, knowing what kind of principal it had.
    At one point during the day, I’d been in the outer office gathering mail and messages, when a shell-shocked Maurice Havermeyer walked out of his inner sanctum. “This is terrible,” he said. “This has to stop.”
    That was when I really worried about the state of his mind. He’d spoken in unadorned, intelligible sentences, forgetting to modify, embellish, and obfuscate. He’d spoken so clearly and succinctly, I knew he was on his way to a breakdown.
    Near the end of my sidewalk time, as I was about to return to my classroom, a shiny-bright TV-type tapped my shoulder. “We’re taping a roundtable on this issue today at four-thirty,” she said. “We want a faculty member and we liked your segment. We’d like you to be part of it.”
    I was flattered, but said, “No, thanks.”
    “You’re popular with the students. They also suggested you.”
    Even more flattering, but tonight was promised to Mackenzie and Mandy. A cohabitation special. Candlelight, music, good wine, and aged steaks. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow the cop goes to Kansas to retrieve a baddie. He’d said for one night only, but I’d seen how many books he’d packed—“in case”—and I wasn’t holding my breath.
    “Please,” the TV woman said. “We need you.”
    I smiled, but shook my head. Too often, C. K. and I were like little figures that emerge periodically on a big clock. Animated, determined, and on the move, we nonetheless never got anywhere or bridged the space between us. Sometimes now, both locked in our separate concerns, we didn’t seem together even when we were in the same place, and we barely ever used home as home base. This dinner was one attempt to change that.
    “It’ll take an hour at most,” she said. “Four-thirty to five-thirty, that’s all.”
    “Thanks, but—”
    “Look.” The TV lady’s tone announced she was coming in for the kill. “With all due respect, do you want your principal, the one who removed the books, to be the only representative of your school? Of educators?”
    I sighed. “How late did you say we’d be?” Maybe Mackenzie could meet me at the station. Maybe steak was a bad idea. He was, after all, on his way to beef-land. And no maybes about it—he’d be proud of my standing up for our constitutional rights. Right?
    *
    Once , after being out in a small motorboat all day, I could still feel the motion of the waves even on dry land. That’s how it was when the teaching day was done, pictures still playing through my mind, sounds echoing in the empty school. I made two phone calls—one to Mackenzie, rearranging our evening, and one to my friend Sasha, to see if