the court, the breeze ruffling their hair and their jackets. The setting sun reddened the students' faces. In another thirty minutes, the court would be dark and safe.

Two hours earlier, Alex had bid Edward Head a good afternoon. Edward had even managed a joke: "I know it's goofy to say that you're a hero of mine, but I guess you are. But I'll try not to grovel in public."

Alex smiled, rubbed his eyes. "Nice talking with you, Edward."

Talking nearly non-stop, Edward had offered a treatise on literature that spanned from the Ancient Greek to the Modern British, from Euripides to James Joyce.

"Quite a leap, Edward," Alex had noted.

"The connection," Edward explained, "is Euripides and Joyce were both iconoclasts. Euripides overturned the structure of tragedy in the fourth century B.C., and Joyce overturned the structure of the novel in the 20th century."

"And Joyce's use of the stream of consciousness!" Edward enthused. "What a breakthrough!" Then a minute later, "The phrase 'stream of consciousness' was coined by William James, which is cool because he made empiricism extreme. You know, that experience is the essence of the world." He caught himself. "I know you know all this stuff, Professor Resartus. But it's fun to find someone to talk about it with."

"Of course."

Edward was off to William's brother, Henry James. "Henry's concern with international themes is, it's neat. You know, when in The Golden Bowl…"

Now, peering at the rising dark in the campus’s central courtyard, Alex was thrilled. Edward had a magnificent disciplined mind. And the temptation to stalk and bleed Edward Head would be too great to resist if he did not act soon. Not that Alex had moral qualms about murdering his own students: in fact, he fantasized it with regular intensity. But the risk was simply too great. If worse came to worse, he would be found out and, in a scene from medieval Europe, impaled upon a ten foot high stake at high noon.

Alex spontaneously decided to drive far far north, to upper Michigan, land of infinite tall pine tress lining infinite long highways. Why not? Spring break officially began tomorrow.

III: How the Dead Have Fun

The blue neon sign—"Cal Clyde's Elks Lounge and NiteSpot"—flickered erratically, as if drunk. The NiteSpot was a cinder block dump with fake log cabin trim, torn awnings, and a gravel parking lot. Alex pulled a greasy denim jacket from the trunk and put it on. He also put on a floppy cowboy hat and filmy reading glasses. Alex ambled in, cigarette dangling. The joint was jumping. The bar was on the right, and nearly every stool was taken. The customers drank, belched, smoked, and