Long Knives Read Online Free PDF Page A

came immediately to mind.
    For a couple of minutes we sat silently, studying our menus. Finally, Dean Blender put down his menu again, but instead of saying “Nothing on here looks quite right for a ferret,” he said, “You know, Jenna, I’m quite surprised.”
    I hadn’t a single, solitary clue what he was talking about. I elected to say so, although during that microsecond in which words move from brain to mouth, I decided to omit the so clearly called for profanity. “Dean Blender,” I said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any idea what you’re surprised about.”
    “Jenna, you don’t need to call me Dean Blender. As I’ve mentioned before, Matthew will be just fine.”
    “I apologize. I was taught as a child to be more formal when dealing with authority. But before we get into a serious discussion about anything, can we order coffee and breakfast? Especially coffee? I’ve had only one small cup this morning, and I need more than that to function well.”
    “Of course, of course,” he said. “And I do apologize for asking you to meet me so far from campus at such an early hour. But it’s close to another meeting I have scheduled at nine thirty. Plus, with my busy schedule and all my fund-raising, I rarely get to meet one-on-one with my faculty anymore, and this seemed like a grand opportunity to catch up.”

    I think my lips twitched slightly at his reference to his faculty , as if my colleagues and I were his personal possessions. But before I could say anything that would have further cemented my reputation as one of his faculty who always spoke her mind, a cute waitress, no doubt a UCLA undergrad, appeared at the side of our table, order pad in hand. She bore a name tag announcing her name as Tiffany.
    “What would you guys like?” Tiffany asked, looking at me.
    “A giant cup of coffee and a green onion scramble, please,” I said. “And no salt on it, please.”
    “We don’t have giant cups of coffee. Just one size, kinda small, actually.”
    “Then please bring me two.”
    “Okay. Toast or bagel?”
    “Just the eggs, thanks. No side dishes.”
    The waitress turned to the dean. “And you, sir?”
    “Coffee. One cup only.” He gave her a wink. “And a toasted bagel with cream cheese. And please, the bagel cut in half, cream cheese spread on the first half only—in a thin, nongoopy layer—the second half left dry.”
    “Well, sir,” she said, “we’re short a waitress this morning, and they’re short in the kitchen, too. So if it’s okay with you, I’ll bring you the cream cheese, and that way you can put it on just the way you like it. Will that work for ya?”
    “Sure, sure,” he said.
    She turned and departed, leaving the two of us to resume our conversation.
    “So,” I said, “I think you were about to tell me what has so surprised you.”
    “Right, right. Well, candidly, I’m surprised that you’ve done so well here.” He waved vaguely in a northerly direction, as if to acknowledge that here referred to the UCLA Law School, which was less than a mile north of where we were sitting in Westwood Village, the commercial area just south of the campus.
    “Why’s that surprising?”
    “You’re probably unaware of this, but there was quite a debate in the faculty as to whether to make you an offer of a tenure-track teaching position.”
    “I’m quite aware.”
    “You are?”
    “Dean, secrets at the law school have a half-life of about three days. I hadn’t even taught my first class before I heard that I was a controversial hire because I had spent too many years practicing law before I arrived—God forbid—plus I didn’t have, in addition to my JD, a PhD in economics or political science or history or whatever’s trendy these days.”
    He had put his right hand in front of his mouth and partly over his nose, a habit of his I’d noticed in faculty meetings that he often engaged in right before telling a lie. When he did that, his long, thin, turned-up nose