“Professors!” Dean Comstock calls out, Mr. Orange Bow Tie today, hissilver cuff link gleaming as he extends a hand to us. I was kind of hoping handshakes would go the way of the dodo bird after COVID-19, but the dean’s an old-school kind of guy, so I shake his hand.
“Good to see you, Reid,” I say, though I’d rather have my fingernails removed with pliers.
As Anshu has pointed out several times, Reid indeed looks the part of a law professor, with his sport coat, circular eyeglasses, salt-and-pepper goatee, and general air of smugness.
“No class today?” Reid asks me, sizing up my usual attire, a button-down shirt and jeans.
Well, that was a little below the belt, wasn’t it, Reid? I mean, you know how I dress, and you know that your buddy Dean Cumstain just bulldozed the field so you could glide into the full-professor spot untouched. You could at least show some semblance of grace, but you can’t help yourself, you have to take me down a peg anyway?
You do know how this all played out, don’t you, Reid? I’d imagine the dean didn’t spell out every detail for you, but I have no doubt that he let you, and your big-bucks daddy, know that he was responsible for “talking some sense” into me or “helping” me “understand” the situation. He “took care of it,” I’m sure he told you, in his faux-diplomatic way.
Yeah, you know that. You’re smiling at me with that patronizing, blue-blood smirk, that aura of cutthroat privilege. You don’t mind that the hierarchical levers were pulled on your behalf. Hell, you’re proud of it, and you’re happy to let me know it. Sure, I didn’t submit my materials, so ultimately I was a good little boy, but how dare I eventhinkof applying for that seat when you applied on the first day and let the world know that REID SOUTHERN wanted that position. How dare I evenconsiderchallenging your ascension to the throne. Really, who do I think I am, contemplating that I am even remotely on your level?
Right, Reid?
“Congratulations,” Anshu says to Reid. “I look forward to your joining us.”
“That’s good of you to say, Professor,” Reid replies. “By the way, Simon, I read your blog the other day,” he adds, calling me by name after referring to Anshu by his title. Yeah, I notice things like that. “Something about the Eleventh Circuit and the third-party doctrine?”
“Right.”
“It was a fun piece,” he says.
A fun piece? I dissected that court opinion and exposed it for the circular reasoning that it was.
A fun piece. Our courts are lying down and allowing the government to expand its reach beyond anything anyone would ever have envisioned, and it’s a fun piece?
I smile at him.
Easy now, Simon.
I pat my pocket, pull out my phone like I just got a text. “Will you guys excuse me one minute?”
I step away while they chitchat. I take a breath.
Easy now. Good, clean thoughts. Calming exercises, go.
“Tear” and “tier” are pronounced the same but “tear” and “tear” are not.
“Fat chance” and “slim chance” mean the same thing.
I dig into my email. Not the In-Box or the Sent but the Drafts folder.
“Arkansas” and “Kansas” are pronounced differently.
We drive on a parkway but park in a driveway.
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, is a humanitarian a cannibal?
Fuck it. I’m done being calm. I find the email for Joyce Radler in administration and read it over:
Dear Joyce: Please find enclosed the full set of materials for my application for full professor, in PDF format as requested. Please let me know if I can provide you with any additional information.
I hit “send.” With three and a half hours to spare.
With the massive attachment, it takes a good half a minute to send. When my phone belches a confirmatorytha-woop, I look up and smile.
So now I’ve applied, Reid. It’s you and me, vying for the slot.