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pretty fresh, or if it wasn’t I’d have time to make a new one.
    The white-tiled staff room smelled like dishwasher soap. A dozen women sat with their legs crossed on the couches while the loveable Grey and Dreaper, a couple of oversized math teachers with beards, sat playing canasta with Mahinda, a twig-necked divorcé from Sri Lanka.
    â€œStay after dismissal today, Peter,” said Mahinda, “and I will teach you to play once and for all. Against two colonials they will never win.”
    â€œTell me again how I’m a colonial?” I asked.
    Cam Vincent, our principal, circled the table to peer down at their hands, sporting a jet-black crewcut like he’d walked straight off an old baseball card.
    â€œGiller, listen.” Cam stretched hairy arms way over his head like he’d been up early digging coal. “Turns out Nella’s having her back surgery right around Christmas, George should be back by then, and her blocks are mostly eleventh grade, so—”
    â€œOh, yeah, believe me, I want any classes I can get. All these kids are great,” I mostly bullshitted. “Really engaged with the material.”
    â€œYoung and motivated,” sneered Dreaper. “Kids’ll be the perfect age when we bring back the draft.”
    â€œNo, no, if they already had Doctor Reid,” said Grey, “then Mensa’s got to have helicopters circling overhead. This is Genius School!”
    Back in September they’d giggled until they’d spilled their peppermint tea, telling me how Reid had his Ph.D. in Biology but instead of lecturing at Harvard he’d parked his ass back in his hometown to teach high school like a sucker. I could’ve told them that, similarly, I’d started my master’s in biochem—planning to delve into stem cell research on, not surprisingly, Parkinson’s disease—but switched to education in order to earn an imminent-baby-supporting income somewhat sooner. But then Grey and Dreaper would’ve pointed out that if I’d only stayed in medical research I could’ve bought and sold Hoover ten times over. I massaged my irate earlobe.
    â€œHelp, Doctor Reid!” Dreaper waggled his hands. “I swallowed a roofing nail!”
    â€œI don’t feel this Congo mess will carry on much longer.” Mahinda licked a fingertip and commenced rearranging his canasta hand. “You see it with the Tamil Tigers at home, or the IRA, the PLO in those other places, if these rebel movements cannot renounce violence they eventually go down in flames.”
    â€œBullshit,” said Dreaper, setting his cards down to reposition his belt under his gut. “These M23 guys we’re fighting now, they were the Congo Army, then they quit for better money from the Rwandan guy! They’ve got a million guns, a million guys with nothing else to do, and we’re scrambling around trying to keep them from raping their own women! And that’s a noble cause, I’m not going to complain about that, but that’s not a job for a human being! We’re getting torn to pieces by these M23 guys circling around at night, we—”
    â€œInfrared goggles,” offered Cam. “See anything in the dark.”
    â€œTried that, remember?” Grey cupped his hands behind his head, displaying damp armpits. “That infantry platoon killed those endangered goddamn anteaters.”
    â€œIsn’t it the LRA we’re fighting?” I asked.
    â€œThat’s the trouble over there,” Cam said earnestly, dragging the back of his hand beneath his chin. “Can’t say who exactly we’re engaging. Boys just keep coming home with their lips cut off.”
    We all went quiet, the soles of our shoes squeaking absently on the tile. The women on the couches were laughing at yet another story about that kid with Asperger’s.
    â€œSo the ball hits the bottom of the rim,” gasped Melissa Jordan,