The Doctor summoned me to his house for another strategy session. I arrived just after midnight and found him in the den, performing the half moon pose while listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon at ear-splitting volume. An episode from the third season of I Love Lucy was playing on the big Plasma TV, also at full volume.
The Doctor is getting very serious about this school board run. The rectangular table along the wall was heaped with California Department of Education publications, pamphlets on school funding and standardized testing, a large map of the school district with boundaries outlined in red, books by Jonathan Kozol and several thick reports from the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The Doctor came out of the half moon pose and turned the music and TV volume down. “Immigration,” he said.
“What about it?”
“Molly Ivins.”
“Columnist. What about her?”
“She wrote a piece. I quote: “You want to shut down illegal immigration? You want to use the military as police? Make it illegal to hire undocumented workers and put the National Guard into enforcing that. Then rewrite NAFTA and invest in Mexico.” Smart lady. She also said the president is insane. No surprise there. Back in the day people who lived in fantasy land got locked away in state mental hospitals. Now the nutcases are running the show. I bet the Feds have a permanent tap on Molly’s phone. I bet Bush and Rove have an enemies list so long it makes Nixon’s look like the work of a two-bit amateur. Bush and Rove are vindictive, spiteful bastards – not that Nixon was a creampuff. Nixon would have turned on his own mother if it suited his purposes.”
I pointed at the table. “Homework?”
“A bit of light reading. Tell me, is there anybody in this state that can explain school finance? Christ, it’s like trying to unlock the genetic code of a spider monkey. I’ve read a lot of total gibberish in my time, including Marx, Engels, Chairman Mao and Susan Sontag, but school finance takes the cake. How do you deal with this stuff every day and keep your sanity?”
“I stay as far from any accounting function as possible,” I said. “I’m a word person.”
“Words are weapons,” said the Doctor. “Use them wisely, use them well. When we get into the heat of the campaign I will need you to be on your game, sharp as a tack, firing on every cylinder. We will attack the rat bastards where they live and make them rue the day they were born. We will beat them like a drum and leave their bones to rot in the sun. Indeed! We will take no prisoners and leave no witnesses to testify against us. Once we get a decent head of steam there’ll be no stopping us, and any fool with the cajones to get in our way will be crushed!”
I had no idea what the Doctor was talking about and in fact I felt unnerved by the demented look in his eyes, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to contradict him. In case you haven’t noticed, the Doctor is one of those hypercompetitive people for whom mere winning isn’t enough; he has a gladiator mentality and needs to destroy his opponents in the bloodiest manner possible. I suppose no man can survive for long in the cutthroat drug trade without a psychopathic streak.
The Doctor opened a pill bottle, extracted half a dozen yellow pills, and popped them in his mouth. Within thirty seconds his facial muscles went limp, and the craziness left his eyes. Smiling at me, he resumed the half moon pose and launched into a long monologue on the arcane subject of Equalization funding in public schools.
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