The Best Laid Plans Part 7

I know I am offending democracy, but under the circ.u.mstances, I'm losing little sleep over it all. Aye, I guess I, too, am a buffoon. But you must shoulder some of that blame.

AM.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

With two weeks to go, our small but committed team had settled into a comfortable routine and rhythm that bravely but barely kept the Liberal cause alive in c.u.mberland-Prescott. The two Petes sustained their valiant canva.s.sing and managed to bring their own special brand of political punk advocacy to neighbourhoods in every region of the riding. Their presence in some ultraconservative areas was tantamount to two unarmed n.a.z.is strolling through downtown London at the height of the blitz. Yet, they persevered. I'm still trying to divine what kept them going day after day. Perhaps I was just naive, and they were only looking for better marks in English, but I don't think so. They were already among my top students. I marveled at their equanimity in the face of, at best, guarded ambivalence and, at worst, naked hostility. I knew how demoralizing it could be to spend two or three hours each day selling something that no one was buying. In most ridings in the country, canva.s.sers would encounter a supportive Liberal voter every few houses. In c.u.mberland-Prescott, it was more like every few days.

Muriel spent her time working the phones correction, phone and annotating the official voters list, which was now available following the enumeration process. Lindsay continued her examination of the polls, using the returns from the previous election to identify any pockets of Liberal support. She also laid out the McLintock pamphlet I'd written. She was a whiz with Photoshop and had inserted a doctored photo on the front panel that showed a thoughtful Angus deep in discussion with our party's leader. Of course, the two men had never met, nor even been in the same room together. At least, the leaflet voters crumpled up and tossed back at the two Petes finally featured some local content.

I helped out with the canva.s.s and did my best to keep morale boosted above mild depression. I also stayed in very close contact with the national campaign to make sure they knew we were doing our part.

On E-day minus 14, I parked in the lot on Slater near Metcalfe just behind the modest building that served as the national campaign headquarters for the Liberal Party of Canada. I'd just dropped the two Petes off on campus and was right on time for a meeting of campaign managers for the eastern-Ontario ridings. We had these little get-togethers every two weeks so that the national leaders.h.i.+p could keep its finger on the local pulse and so we could benefit from the alleged insight and expertise of the senior campaign strategists.

I took my regular seat around the vast boardroom table with my back to the large second-floor window. I was easily distracted by the human and automotive traffic flowing past and would rather look at the wall opposite and the framed photo of the Queen and Pierre Trudeau, signing the Const.i.tution on the lawn of Parliament Hill. Six other local campaign managers joined me on my side of the table. I knew them all four women and two men, representing two Ottawa ridings and four more rural const.i.tuencies. I liked three of them (idealist policy wonks) and could take or leave the other three (cynical political operators). We left the other side of the table free for the big wheels of the party.

Fifteen minutes after the meeting was supposed to have started, Bradley Stanton, the Leader's chief of staff and deputy campaign director, and Michael Zaleski, the president of National Opinion and the Liberal Party's pollster, sauntered in and sat across from us. I wasn't Stanton's biggest fan. He'd been almost solely responsible for the decision in the dying stages of the last campaign to "'go negative" and hammer away at rumours of the Prime Minister's failing health. The PM had lost weight and had looked a bit gaunt. As it turned out, the Conservatives set us up by starting the whisper campaign themselves, hoping we'd take the bait. Stanton didn't just nibble at the worm, he swallowed it whole, along with the hook, line, sinker, and half the rod. As soon as our declining-health-innuendo ads. .h.i.t the air, the Tories rolled out the truth about the PM's recent weight loss. A videotape released to the press gallery showed the Prime Minister weight training, running, and (wait for it) sparring in a boxing ring as part of his three-month-old fitness regimen. The final insult? Well, with four days left in the campaign, while our reprehensible ads were running, casting doubt on the health of the Tory Prime Minister, he actually ran in the National Capital Marathon, finis.h.i.+ng in just over three hours and forty-two minutes, coming in twelfth out of 469 runners in his age category. Overnight, the Liberal four-point lead in the polls evaporated to be replaced by a three-point deficit. Our majority government became theirs because of Bradley Stanton's "do whatever it takes to win" approach. He gambled; we lost, which for staunch Liberals across the country meant that Canada lost.

I knew Zaleski, the pollster guru, reasonably well and had worked with him a few times when slaving over the Leader's response to the Government's last Throne Speech. After all, I wanted to hit the right b.u.t.tons with Canadians support the Government on measures enjoying considerable public approval and bash the Tories on those that did not. He seemed a nice enough guy, but I worried that he was better at delivering the advice the Leader wanted to hear rather than what he needed to hear.

In a glance, they took us all in and then focused on me. Neither of them could stifle the early tremors of a smile. "Addison, good of you to take the time away from your close race in C-P," opened Stanton.

"Bradley, always a pleasure," I replied. I thought his sarcasm was a little out of line, given that having me find the candidate and run the campaign had been his idea in the first place. I thought he owed me.

"Look, we might as well get started," Stanton said. "Thanks for coming. This won't take too long. I'm going to give you an update on the national campaign and what we're discovering on the ground. Then, I'm going to ask Michael to share the national numbers with you and how they look on a riding-by-riding basis in the const.i.tuencies for which you are responsible."

When he'd finished this preamble, Stanton sat down for the rest of his talk. "The Leader is doing a great job on the trail. We've got the reporters on the bus eating out of our hands. His rural and urban stump speeches are both going over well, and our 'time for a change, a change for our time' line is taking root. Nice turn of phrase, Addison," he commented with a nod in my direction.

I actually thought the line was a little trite and not clever enough when I first penned it, but the Leader had really taken to it. The success of such lines is really all in the context and delivery. The right speaker, in the right setting, at the right point in a speech, with the right crowd, could carry it off. Otherwise, it could go over like a concrete zeppelin. To his credit, not to mention his speech writer's, the Leader seemed to be making it fly. In what little media coverage of the national tour I'd seen, the crowds occasionally joined him in reciting the line. It made for solid TV in a Barack Obama "yes we can" kind of way.

I considered this somewhat of an achievement given the Leader's oratorical limitations. He spoke in a rather narrow band of inflection. So narrow that it often approached monotone. We'd coached him for hours on end with clandestine visits from Stratford actors, firebrand preachers, and even a popular professional wrestler known for his emotional and motivational prebout diatribes. Nothing seemed to work. Even when he managed to step up his performance, it was obvious that he wasn't comfortable in his own skin. Well, you work with what you have. The Leader did have several other redeeming qualities that I know I could cite if I thought about it for a time.

"That a.s.shole Cameron's budget is our biggest challenge in the campaign," Stanton continued. "I've never seen such balanced and carefully constructed fiscal virtuosity. Canadians love the budget, and they love Cameron. Sorry, Daniel, but it's an incontro-f.u.c.king-vertible fact." He finished with his hands up in surrender. I've always found the use of profanity for effect to be a practice of the weak-minded. In Stanton's case, my theory held.

The woman next to me piped up then, mercifully leading us away from any more Eric Cameron idolatry. "Brad, on what issues are we finding traction?"

"Good question, Susan. In the jerkwater rural towns, the Leader is really hammering away on the Tories' plans to reduce and eventually eliminate any form of agricultural support programs in the name of free trade. We're getting a great response from the farmers, and the Prime Minister actually took a tomato in the forehead yesterday on the same farm in the Annapolis Valley that we'd visited the week before. In the urban centres, health care and federal support for cities are the hot b.u.t.tons, and we're right there with our Smart Health and Smart Cities programs. I forget exactly what those initiatives are, but I'm certain they're groundbreaking, and they seem to be popular with the electorate," he remarked, without even the decency at least to look sheepish.

Stanton stopped to take a swig from a bottle of Evian before he wrapped up his part of the presentation. "Finally, as I alluded to earlier, the Tories are really trying to ride the Cameron budget into the sunset, and that's what really worries me. I think you all know Michael Zaleski from National Opinion. He's going to give you a look at the national numbers before zeroing in on your ridings and, more importantly, your candidates. Michael."

Michael Zaleski, like Stanton, remained in his chair and just talked about the numbers. There was no handout, no PowerPoint presentation, just a stack of cross-tabs in front of him. I expected this. Polling numbers were hot commodities during campaigns, so it was not uncommon for the national campaign only to talk about the numbers even with insiders like campaign managers. History had shown that hard copies could easily go astray and perhaps fall into Tory hands or, worse, a reporter's.

"Thanks, Brad. Nationally, the numbers have stayed painfully stable during the campaign as if we weren't even fighting an election. We've been doing weekly tracking on our standard general-population national survey with a sample of 1,500 Canadians, large enough to give us reasonably accurate regional breaks. Of decided voters, the Tories have held steady at 43. We're at 38, and the NDP are at 19. What tells us that there is, in fact, an election up for grabs is that the undecideds have grown to 33 percent. Now, if we look at the demographic makeup of the undecideds, we see a preponderance of young- to middle-aged women and of immigrants who have recently become citizens. These two categories of voters among the decided electorate tend to vote as follows: Liberals 44, Tories 38, and NDP 18, which bodes well for us," Zaleski droned on as he flipped through his printouts. I'd spent five years bearing witness to Government by poll and Opposition by poll. I wasn't sure I could take much more of election campaign by poll.

Unfortunately, my fellow campaign managers weren't quite so jaundiced. Noticing that they were still conscious, the polling pooh-bah went deep on the numbers while I drifted and counted the number of times he said "in terms of," an affected crutch phrase I'd come to loathe for some inexplicable reason. Instead of spending half an hour on pollster-babble, Zaleski could have summed up the numbers quite simply. If there were no knockout punches in the Leaders' debate the following week, it looked like the Tories would be re-elected with a slim majority or, at worst, form a minority government. With so little time left before the vote, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Liberals to turn enough minds. The only hope was a total flame-out of a scandal that might send the Tories into free fall at terminal velocity our own faint hope clause.

I tuned back in when Zaleski started into the riding-by-riding breakouts. I admit I was curious about the numbers in c.u.mberland-Prescott. As I expected, he offered up the results for the other six ridings first, leaving my freak show until the end. Things looked quite good in the other campaigns. In the two Ottawa const.i.tuencies represented in the room, we were ahead by reasonably comfortable margins. The favourable ratings of both of our candidates had improved since the start of the campaign. In fact, the Ottawa Centre candidate had doubled her positive ratings after a rather lackl.u.s.tre start. Short of catastrophes in getting out the Liberal vote, these two urban ridings were ours to win. This was particularly impressive as, entering the election, we'd been neck and neck in both. It reminded me that it really was possible for individual campaigns to overcome national trends and a.s.sert some local control. Yes, the coattails effect was alive and well as local candidates rose and fell on the performance of their Leaders. But we did have some influence over our destinies at the gra.s.sroots level.

"In the four rural ridings here this morning we'll get to you in a minute, Addison we have four very tight races that could go either way. And we seem to be moving in the right direction in all of them," Zaleski noted.

Zaleski then proceeded to break down the data for the other campaign managers. The room hung on every number as if the words came straight from G.o.d. Predictable. In modern Canadian politics, the pollster stands first in the line of succession should G.o.d ever be unable to perform his/her righteous duties. The Z-man, as Zaleski was sometimes called (much to my nausea), reviewed the individual candidates' numbers before noting how crucial these six ridings were to our national electoral fortunes. Stanton couldn't resist jumping in for a little ham-handed pep talk.

"So it's absolutely critical that you six really bear down in the last two weeks. Winning your seats would be huge for us. We're in a fight to the death, and victories in your ridings could push us over the top. We must win all of your seats. Defeat is not an option." (I was close to hurling at this point.) He actually punched his fist into his other hand when he made this last statement, reminiscent of a Batman and Robin exchange. (Holy blowhard, Batman!) I know I should have kept my yap shut and let him finish his very, very bad Knute Rockne impression. But then again, I really didn't like Stanton.

"You've given us the national picture," I said, "but how do our numbers look in the seat count a.n.a.lysis across the country. That's what really matters on E-day. Michael, I a.s.sume you've run those results." I turned to Zaleski and tried to look earnest. My fellow campaign managers nodded in agreement.

"Of course, we've run those numbers," Zaleski started as he flipped through the large stack of computer printouts in front of him. "The seat a.n.a.lysis shows that we're likely to "

"Hey hey, Michael!" interrupted Stanton. "We agreed we weren't going there in these briefings." Stanton glared at him and then at me. "Let's just move on to the train wreck in c.u.mberland-Prescott, shall we? The rest of you are free to go unless you want to hear about the state of affairs in Canada's safest Tory seat." His tone was frigid. No one left.

"Michael?"

"Right. c.u.mberland-Prescott. Well, it's not a pretty picture for the Liberal cause. Never has been, as you all know," Zaleski said.

"Let's just hear the numbers, shall we?" I prodded gently.

"Well, of the decided voters, which const.i.tutes 90 percent of those eligible, 92 percent are for Cameron, and the support is rock hard. When we really get into the numbers, we've found only a handful of NDP supporters, all of whom seem to be related to the candidate. As for the Liberal candidate " Zaleski consulted his notes again. "One Duncan Angus McLintock, our extrapolated numbers tell us that approximately 350 voters correctly identified him as our candidate but that only 127 say they'll vote for him. The lion's share of our support is firmly rooted in the over-75 demographic with another pocket among those with more than two postgraduate degrees. If the undecideds break down on election day in the same proportions as the decideds, we should finish with somewhere just south of 140 votes," he concluded in a tone that might as well have just voiced "ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

"Have we moved up or down since the campaign started?" I asked.

"m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t," Stanton whispered not quite under his breath.

"Ah, well, Muriel Parkinson earned 3,600 votes last time around, so I'd say our support has dropped significantly since you signed up Mr. McLintock," reported Zaleski.

Thanks. The other campaign managers and the party's pollster kept their heads bowed in cla.s.sic funeral-visitation style as they filed past me and out the door.

"Addison, would it be helpful if the Leader paid c.u.mberland-Prescott a visit in the last week of the campaign?" Stanton inquired. "He and your Angus McGillicuddy could do some main-streeting rally the troops, as it were."

I was nearly certain he was just kidding, but in case he wasn't, I needed to play it right. Angus wouldn't even be in the country next week. "It's McLintock. Kind of you to offer, Brad, but I really don't think a tour stop in c.u.mberland is a good use of the Leader's time with one week to go in a close election. Better to have him in the neighbouring ridings where he could really tip the balance our way," I replied.

"Oh, I wasn't offering up the Leader. I was just asking whether you thought it would be helpful. Keep smiling, Addison. It's not over until the ballots are counted." Stanton chuckled as he made good his escape, leaving me alone at the table.

I found Muriel in her usual spot by the window, a marked-up voters list on her lap and my old cell phone implanted in her ear. She took one look at me, ended her call, and waved me onto the couch beside her. She turned over the voters list she was calling, but not before I'd seen the sea of blue from the highlighter she held in her hand. Two other apparently exhausted blue highlighters rested at the bottom of a nearby wastepaper basket while brand new red and orange highlighters remained in their unopened packaging on the side table next to her. No need to open them.

"Daniel, whatever is the matter, dear boy?" she asked, patting the seat next to her a paragon of grandmotherly sympathy. "You look like c.r.a.p!" I was always caught off guard when she slid into sailor mode.

"Hi, Muriel," I replied, sinking onto the plastic-encrusted cus.h.i.+on. "I've just come from national headquarters for a little peek at the numbers. We're doing well across the country and in the eastern-Ontario ridings. However, that's the end of my glad tidings. Angus seems to enjoy the support of half of your housemates, but that's about all. Cameron owns the entire riding."

"Well, of course he does. Where have you been?" Muriel poked.

"I know, I know, but it seems so much more depressing when the cold, hard numbers are thrust in front of you. And I a.s.sure you, they're very cold and very hard."

"Don't get so wrapped up in it. It was doomed from the start," she soothed. "'Twas ever thus. This isn't about winning. It's about making sure the cause is well served in an admittedly quixotic quest. I never once allowed myself even to contemplate the possibility of winning. If I ever had, I'd have been lost."

I smiled and gave her frail shoulders a quick squeeze. I could feel the involuntary vibrations of her Parkinson's.

"You know, Daniel, I love my granddaughter very much," she started in a serious tone.

"Muriel, we went to Starbucks to talk about the campaign. It wasn't a date," I pleaded.

"You misunderstand me, college boy. It's been a while since she's been out with anyone. She's so focused on her schoolwork and my well-being. I'm worried about her. She's not getting any younger."

"Please, Muriel, she's only 28. She's pursuing a master's in political science. She's intelligent, quick-witted, confident, and beautiful to boot. I don't think you need to worry about her. She'll do just fine."

"Well, I'm glad you think so. If I were you, I'd consider asking her out again. I have a feeling she'd say yes."

"Muriel, we're not in public school. I'm not going to pa.s.s you a note to give to her." I feigned disinterest for as long as I could, which was about nine seconds, before turning towards her again. "Okay, you got me. What do you mean you think she'd say yes if I asked her out? Has she been talking about me? If so, I need all the details just so I don't put a foot in the wrong place, like in my mouth."

"I'm not about to betray her confidence any more than I already have. Let's just say I see a spirit and an energy I haven't seen in her for a long time. I don't think it's because she's studying the Senate or visiting me and my merry band of aging lechers, who shamelessly ogle her whenever she's here. And if you mention one word to Lindsay about this, don't bother coming back here."

"You've been very bad, Muriel. And I thank you." I was surprised and pleased. It's always easier to navigate the shoal-infested waters of the early relations.h.i.+p when you have insider a.s.sistance reading the charts.

Something caught her attention out the window, and I followed her gaze. I heard her sharp intake of breath. She seemed transfixed by something along the banks of the Ottawa River.

"Well, dip me in chocolate and call me candy," she said as she shook her head, still looking out the window.

"What?"

"Do you see that big, old, dead tree on the sh.o.r.e there?" she asked and pointed.

I found it. "Yep."

"Do you see that long tree branch that's now floating down the river?"

"Sure do."

"Well, that huge, dead limb has been hanging out over the river, threatening to fall, ever since I came here. I've watched it bend over in the west wind. I've seen it bowed so it dipped into the water under the weight of a heavy snow. I've even been sitting here when kids have swung on it, trying to break it off. Against all of those trials and probably many I haven't witnessed, that tenacious limb has just held on for dear life, refusing to fall. Who knows how many years it's been swaying there on the verge of collapse. Well, I just watched it fall all on its own. No wind, no snow, no kids just age and gravity."

"It's surely a sign," I said in mock reverential tones.

"Don't you make fun of me," she snapped, cracking me lightly in the ribs. For all I knew, she'd hit me as hard as she could.

"So sorry," I said, my hands in plea position, "I wasn't mocking you. I'm a believer in signs, too. What do you think it means?"

"I have no idea, but it seems so odd that after all that limb has been through, it would just up and fall completely on its own." She continued her vigil until the limb floated out of sight, heading east, before she looked at me. "It could mean something as basic as all that was is no longer."

I returned home to the cacophony of a revving engine, reverberating through the walls of the boathouse. When I looked in the window, I was greeted with yet another bizarre sight. The craft appeared to be hovering with its skirt fully inflated, looking like a giant inner tube surrounding the entire vessel. From my vantage point outside the door, I could just see Angus's legs, emerging from underneath the near side of the hovercraft. By my reckoning, this would put his head directly under the fan and engine mounted on top. His legs weren't moving, and for all I knew, he'd already been decapitated. I opened the door, unsure of what to do next. Option one was to crawl under the craft and check on Angus. Option two was simply to head upstairs and forget what I'd seen. Option two won by a landslide, but I found enough balloting irregularities to throw the legitimacy of the vote into question.

On my stomach, I easily wriggled under the pressurized skirt. It gave way lightly, spilling air around me as I inched underneath. The noise was fearsome. There was some light underneath, shed through the fan housing. In it, I could see with considerable relief that Angus had not been eaten by the evil hovercraft but was calmly working on the scoops that could swing down into the air flow and redirect it through the side vents on top of the hovercraft.

I could tell by the way he banged his head on the underside of the hovercraft when he saw me that he hadn't expected us to meet in this particular location. He waved his wrenchy-thingy at me with some menace. Eventually, I figured out he wanted me to return to my normal upright position outside the confines of the hovercraft's air cus.h.i.+on what he called the plenum. I slid back out and was brus.h.i.+ng the sawdust off my jeans and sweater when he appeared at my side. He reached into the c.o.c.kpit and dialed back the engine until it stopped. The craft immediately settled onto the floor of the workshop as the skirt billowed out, now free of the solid form it was given by the rus.h.i.+ng air.

"That's twice now you've snuck up on me, Addison! A third time will find you in the river," he bellowed.

"I'm sorry! I thought you were dead, crushed by the weight of your own masterpiece. What would you have done if you'd walked into the workshop and seen my p.r.o.ne and stationary form, sticking out from underneath as the engine roared?"

"I'd have dropped a ball-peen hammer on yer crotch and told you to get the h.e.l.l away from my hovercraft."

"All right, all right, I give up. You think I enjoyed crawling into the belly of the beast to save you? In the future, I hereby promise not to attempt a rescue regardless of your predicament," I intoned with due solemnity, and my right hand raised.

He softened, and a flicker of a smile flirted with the corners of his mouth. "Aye, but you did see the height of that cus.h.i.+on?" His smile germinated.

"I sure did. It was flying high. It's amazing, Angus. Congratulations."

"Aye, the cus.h.i.+on pressure's even higher than I'd calculated, and the skirt leaked not a molecule of air."

"Except when I crawled underneath."

"Aye, but that's behind us now, laddie."

We sat out on the dock, he with a shot of Lagavulin and I with a cold c.o.ke. The river moved with gentle purpose towards the east. I told Angus all about the briefing session with Zaleski and Stanton, including the dismal and still declining Liberal support in c.u.mberland-Prescott. Angus was utterly exhausted and quite short of breath when his laughing jag eventually slowed to a dull chortle. The Lagavulin spread in a wet splotch across his flannel work s.h.i.+rt where he'd dumped the scotch in the throes of hilarity. He finally grew silent, save for his wheezing.

He could tell that I was not pleased by his over-the-top reaction. "I'm sorry, but I couldna help myself. Besides, I should be more upset than you. I know plenty more than 140 people in this town. I thought my support would be at least up around 275," he sputtered before convulsing again in poorly restrained giggles.

"Yuk it up all you want. It's no skin off your hide. But I still have to face my former colleagues in the Leader's office, and I can tell you, my stock is in free fall."

"Are you absolutely sure about the numbers?" he asked after a while.

"Plus or minus 3 percentage points 19 times out of 20," I sighed.

Angus nodded with some finality. We sat in relative silence for a time as the sun traced its arc towards the west.

"So when do you leave for Papua New Guinea?" I inquired.

"I'm off the day after tomorrow until very late the night of this blasted election. And dinnae think my timin' is coincidental. My bags are packed, my pa.s.sport is primed, and I've already booked a cab to the airport," Angus explained with some satisfaction.

"Angus, I would have taken you to the airport," I commented.

"Not in that death trap on wheels you won't. Besides, what if there's a campaign meeting scheduled in the back seat at the same time. I wouldna' want to take HQ out of commission even for an hour," he mocked gently. "It's kind of you to offer, Daniel, but I'm takin' no chances."

"Well, after today's sobering lesson in public opinion, you can leave with a clear conscience. Nothing threatens Eric Cameron's coronation. He will have succeeded in hoodwinking 38,000 voters yet again, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. I feel about as useful as a seamstress in a nudist camp," I said.

"Aye, I've never been to a nudist colony," Angus remarked with what appeared to be genuine interest.

I had a night of marking ahead. My E for E students had handed in their first a.s.signment the week before, and I had studiously avoided reviewing them. I just wasn't sure what to expect, based on how the cla.s.ses were proceeding. I bid Angus good night and climbed up to my apartment. By ten o'clock, I was halfway through the book reports. Most were as I expected pathetic. But occasionally, I found a diamond in the rough or, as it turned out in one case, a diamonoid. A particularly obnoxious and boisterous engineer, who usually sat amidst a cabal of disciples, had apparently read and had written a book report on John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. This book was one of my favourite novels, and I was intrigued, if not a little suspicious. His book report was outstanding. He picked up some fine nuances in the characterization and provided compelling comparisons and contrasts with some of Irving's other works, notably, The World According to Garp. I was impressed, but my spidey senses were tingling to beat the band.

Have I mentioned that Google is a wonderful thing? I typed a particularly cogent and well-crafted sentence into the powerful search engine and banged Enter. Busted. In seconds, several different versions of the essay appeared in an orgy of plagiarism. He was smart enough to hijack an appropriate essay but not smart enough to realize that I would know he couldn't possibly have written it. Plagiarism is a big deal at universities. Just ask Dean Rumplun. I had the authority and the evidence to put this guy on probation, if not out the door. But I also had the power to be lenient and forgiving with a student whose engineering career could be crippled by one youthful indiscretion. After the quick chat I planned to have with him, I figured he'd be a little more attentive in cla.s.s and hoped his acolytes might even follow suit.

As I lay in bed, Angus was still engaged below me, though mercifully the ear-splitting engine remained idle. As usual, I could hear him chatting away in an almost jovial tone. Beyond his m.u.f.fled musings, the only other thing that seeped into my room through the floor vents was the paint-peeling stench of one of his flatulent depth charges. I'd heard the noise but dismissed it as a particularly sonorous boat horn out on the river. I opened the window, gathered the quilt around my nose, and drifted off.

DIARY.