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said. “Let’s just lock the rest of the toner up, bring it out when we need it and have you there to put it in the machine. That way at least we’ll keep what we have.”
    â€œYessir,” said the chief, but he disapproved of the plan. Catching a thief was preferable to stopping thievery, and locking up the toner would only add to the atmosphere of suspicion and guilt.
    The major focus of the school board meeting would be the same thing that had dominated the committee meeting the night before: what to do about the eight new teachers and their improper visas. As he had with the committee, Jerry would tell the school board what had taken place at the ministry, and he would have his secretary telephone the ministry as soon as it opened so that he could clarify the previous afternoon’s call. As he wrote, preparing each aspect of the issue carefully, Jerry felt the pure pleasure he got from running such a school. The issue was a thorny one but he would conquer it in the end. It was, after all, the unpredictability of his work that drew him, the improbability of a thing occurring only a moment before it did.
    Members of the school board filed in slowly, but by seven-fifteen the president had called the meeting to order, and the first monotonous items on the agenda were introduced. Jerry paid little attention during this part of things. He knew the minutes of the previous meeting would be accurate, that the charts and tables he had prepared were ready for those who wanted them. For Jerry this was a time to relax, to prepare himself for the meatier issues that were at hand.
    Just as Jerry began to settle into the rhythm of the meeting, however, someone moved to suspend the normal agenda and get right to the matter of the visas. Then the school board president addressed Jerry directly. “You’ve been around too long to make a mistake like this,” he said. When he spoke, the other board members turned in their chairs.
    Jerry waited a moment, looking at the man. He respected the school board president as a man who handled his job at the American Embassy in much the same way that Jerry ran the school. He was a no-nonsense kind of man, and Jerry was momentarily embarrassed to understand that the president saw his handling of the visa problem as a mistake. He nevertheless looked at the man evenly. “When I was in San Francisco I was convinced by the Nigerian consul general that the law had changed,” he said. He was angry to have been taken by surprise by the suspended agenda and by the president’s comments, and he would have continued strongly, but just then his secretary came into the room, telling him that he was wanted in the outer office. Jerry didn’t suffer interruptions gladly, but he remembered that he had asked the secretary to get the ministry on the phone, so he stood and followed her out of the room, contenting himself only by staring calmly into the president’s face and by saying that perhaps he could come back with a firmer statement on how to clear the matter up.
    But when Jerry got to the main office and picked up the phone, all he heard was a dial tone, and when he looked at the secretary she shook her head. “No,” she said. “In your private office.” Had someone from the ministry actually come out to the school to see him then? he wondered. Surely it wasn’t the minister.
    Jerry went quickly down to his private office door, pausing only to straighten his tie. He had an automatic smile on his face but when he opened the door and saw who was waiting for him his smile collapsed. Nurudeen was there with a man who was probably his father, a well-dressed man standing with one hand on top of that empty toner can.
    â€œI’m sorry,” the principal said, “but I’m in the middle of something; all this will have to wait.”
    Nurudeen had Jerry’s thermos in his lap and on his face was a look of pure pain, as if his stepmother