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Show Anting Alone Page 198 he'd been caught in the act of whacking off or picking his nose. "We figured that we might do worse than to leave you a note here at your residence," he said, "since you don't seem to have been checking your box at school with anything resembling regularity, shall we say?" "Who's we?" asked Sam. The English professor gestured. There were two more of them waiting in the Volvo. English professors A, B and C we'll call these guys. "We were just going to take a late lunch. To discuss you, in fact, Mr. Edwine," they said. (All in unison? Sam didn't really notice, but he wouldn't have been surprised at all.) "What say you join us?" What say pip pip indeed all that rot righto eat shit - "I have a previous engagement," said Sam. "This is rather important, Mr. Edwine. It has to do with the renewal of your instructorship next semester -" Ah hah. Professors A, B and C were inviting Sam along to a late-luncheon/ inquisition in some unknown, depressing, middle-aged eating and drinking place, not to the department proper. Sam just might go, who knows? So, anyway. Who were these professors A, B and C, Sam's three would-be inquisitors? Professor A was the departmental fiction-writing man. He was of the popular, even venerable school of thought which expresses great contempt for literature that makes explicit moral points. Professor A felt, deep in his bones, that the word didactic had seen its day; so he preferred an ironic application of the old Puritan term useful. "My, this is quite a |