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breach of confidentiality, of course, so it’s not something I wanted to talk about anywhere near the campus. But under the circumstances…”
    I immediately understood what he was saying—that Aldous Hartleb, my next-door office neighbor, close friend and lover, would probably not be getting tenure.
    “Have you told him?” I asked.
    “No, of course I haven’t. That would be presumptuous of me, because I could be wrong and, as I said, it’s confidential. I’m not even supposed to be a part of it at this point. And the process isn’t done yet. But I thought it would be a kindness to let you know my sense of things due to the, uh, situation.”
    “Would you like me to be blunt?”
    “Are you ever anything but?”
    I stared at him without responding.
    While he stared back, no doubt wondering if I was going to explode, I took the time to think carefully about the tenor of my response. Since the moment I learned to talk, I had for the most part lacked a filter in front of my mouth. Overall, that approach had served me well. In recent months, though, I had been consciously trying to moderate my tone. Not because I enjoyed doing so but because it had seemed a better way to get ahead in an arena where civility, even if often faked, was so prized.
    I went for unfiltered.
    “Bluntly, I think that you’re too chickenshit to tell him yourself and you want me to do it for you.”
    “That’s not what I intended at all.”
    “Well, intended or not, I’m not doing it. Plus I’m no longer interested in dining with you.” I screeched back my chair and got up.
    “Where are you going?”
    “To my office. I have work to do on my law review article.”
    As I reached the door of the restaurant, I glanced back at him. He had pulled my scrambled eggs over in front of him and was busy putting ketchup on them.
     
     

CHAPTER 6
    M y car, of course, was still in the UCLA parking lot, up by the law school. I could have grabbed a bus to get back, but I needed time to think. So I walked back, or maybe stomped back is a better way to put it, making my way through the campus on foot.
    As I passed the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, it occurred to me that I could go back to the ER, try to find Dr. Nightingale again and check on Primo. But due to the privacy rules, he probably wouldn’t tell me anything beyond what the dean had learned, so I skipped it. In any case I wasn’t particularly anxious to see Dr. Nightingale again.
    When I got to Bruin Plaza, which is about a five-minute walk north of the hospital, I saw that the large metal sculpture of UCLA’s mascot—the Bruin, a baby bear—had been boarded up inside a large, white wooden box. That meant the big game between USC and UCLA was imminent. Maintenance had boxed up the bear to prevent USC vandals from throwing red paint on it, as they had done a couple of years before. Over at USC, their maintenance team had no doubt done something similar to protect Tommy Trojan, their half-naked warrior statue, from our student vandals. One year UCLA students had cut off Tommy’s sword and welded it to his behind.
    Despite what I had just told the dean, I could tell Aldous if I wanted to. Or I could keep quiet about it. I mulled over my choices as I turned right out of the plaza and climbed up Bruin Walk, which runs up the steep hill beside the seriously hideous, modernist Ackerman Union.
    If I told Aldous, it for sure wasn’t going to help our relationship. Aldous was a proud guy, and although he’d probably appear to brush off the whole thing, I didn’t think he’d be happy about his lover getting tenure when he didn’t. And not all that pleased to have her deliver the bad news to him, although he’d hide that, too. On the other hand, if I didn’t tell him, he’d find out sooner or later. And once he found out I’d kept it from him—the dean would no doubt figure out a way to let him know that I had—the deceit wasn’t going to bring us any closer.
    On some level my