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51 7 We spent the rest of Thursday watching the Bourne Trilogy again, ordered Domino’s Brooklyn-style pizza for dinner, and killed two bottles of Chianti. We’d enjoyed the films before, but this time I think both of us connected viscerally to Jason Bourne floating in the sea, getting picked up by that Italian trawler, not knowing who he is or why he remembers the few things he does. That was us after the nighttime raid: confused, isolated, lost. Stefan watched the three movies in virtual silence, transfixed, but he didn’t seem to experience any catharsis by the end of the evening, because the next morning, Friday, he didn’t want to get out of bed or even talk about investigating Lucky or anyone. “Leave me alone.” He actually pulled a pillow over his head as if that would make me and the world disappear. I wasn’t going to argue with somebody who’d been humiliated so profoundly by the cops, so I walked Marco and then had breakfast by myself. I left Stefan a pot of fresh mocha java coffee and hoped the aroma would finally tempt him downstairs. Marco might manage it, too, because sometimes he’d jump onto the bed and nuzzle your face till you had to admit he was there and that he needed your attention. He was a Westie, and the one time I’d watched the Westminster Dog Show, the announcer said of the breed, “Westies will not be ignored.” I didn’t like the idea of Stefan glooming in bed, but I had to get to SUM. I could have walked the ten minutes to campus from our house, but I drove because I felt I needed the safety of metal around me. On the way over, I was startled to realize that we hadn’t received any media calls yet. Was it possible the police raid had slipped under the radar? But what about all our neighbors? Wouldn’t somebody have notified the Michiganapolis Tribune or one of the trashy AM stations? Nowadays 52 everybody wanted to be a mini-celebrity and break a story of some kind, or be interviewed about it. Campus actually wasn’t quite as lush as usual this spring, because of our drought, but even so, it looked appealing, though it wasn’t remotely as old as Yale or other eastern schools. It’s a vast sprawling place with architecture ranging from sandstone buildings of the 1850s through glass boxes only a few years old, anchored by a core of ugly 1950s buildings of brick construction that was for the most part well landscaped enough to seem inoffensive. I was headed to my office in Parker Hall to consult with my administrative assistant, Celine Robichaux, about fellowship applications. We already had picked someone for this coming year, but we were scheduling people three years out, and there were hundreds of applications. I say “we” because Celine was my sounding board as much as Stefan when it came to picking the visiting author. As a Wharton scholar, I was drawn to social satirists, and they both helped me widen my range. Her opinion helped a lot because she was astute and widely read but didn’t feel any investment in the world of authors and academics, and she was quick to spot phonies, snobs, and potential trouble makers. There was one author of literary novels whose books I enjoyed, but Celine had studied the man’s tweets and Facebook posts and this author had bad things to say about almost everyone, especially his students. “We don’t need that kind of PR, Nick.” Likewise, Celine had suggested we pass on an author of literary thrillers who it turned out would only travel from New York with an entourage including his acupuncturist, his nutritionist, and a tennis pro for whenever he felt the need of a game. And she had also nixed an up-and-coming young author of trashy, amusing “bloodbusters” (vampire-killer novels), because the author, Tiffani Lovegrove, evidently took her last name too literally and had some raunchy photos on Tumblr. They would surely have gotten into the local news and caused a PR tornado if she came to our campus. I was lucky to have Celine, who was originally from Louisiana, though I didn’t detect much of an accent. She was efficient, imaginative, and cheerful in a department of depressives and malcontents, and kind in a university whose values...

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