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too aware of what goes on inside little skinny guys who can’t play guitar but more than anything want to play guitar. We just want to be in the vicinity. That much Mad Matt and I shared.
    “Good, stay,” he said, straightening up. “You aren’t going to regret it. And I’ll let you in on something—”
    Finally, I thought, he’s letting me in on something.
    “There ain’t no such thing as bad fame. The point of getting on my show? Is getting on my show. Being known is being great. No matter what I do to you, the girls are gonna want you, and the guys are gonna hate your guts with envy.”
    I was swimming in it now. The lead cannonball in my stomach had dissolved, and in its place was a launch of balloons like at the start of the Olympics.
    “Hell,” Matt said as he backed through the door into his booth. “We might even make you mayor.”
    “Jesus, don’t do that ,” I said.
    He settled in comfortably at his desk, waited for the song to end, and gave me a brand-new thumbs-up, with a big-brotherly smile. This time I returned salute.
    “Okay, constituents, we’re back. And our next topic with the candidate will be how the former mayor is enjoying his stay at the federal country club. Fins Foley: life on the inside.” He drew out the last word suggestively, and pointed to Sol for sound effect. He hit a button and the sound of a howling dog rang in my headphones, screaming, like he was being torn in half.
    Was that supposed to be Da, or me?

SEAT OF POWER
    F LEXIBLE CAMPUS WAS ALREADY working exactly the way it was supposed to work. It was designed to give the student a glimpse of the real world and how he was going to fit into it.
    I found out, for example, that I was not a night person.
    The morning after my first full night at WRRR, I woke for school at eleven o’clock. Who knows how long I would have sacked if my mother hadn’t ambled in with an armful of my laundry, all folded and fluffed high with Downy fabric softener, which made my skin break out but which I couldn’t stop nuzzling anyway because I was addicted. There, I said it, all right?
    “Ahhh!” she shrieked.
    “Ahhh!” I shrieked.
    As she picked up my things—they’d bounced all over the place with all that Downy spring in them—she scolded me.
    “My god, Gordie, I thought you left hours ago.”
    “Well, Ma, didn’t you get suspicious when you didn’t see me at the breakfast table?”
    “I did so see you there. You ate English muffins with your father and me. You had three glasses of cranberry juice.”
    “Oh,” I said. I looked under the covers and saw that I was, in fact, dressed for school. “I must have fallen back asleep.”
    “Oh, do you think so?”
    She could be wicked sometimes with the sarcasm.
    “Sorry, Ma. Won’t happen again. Just getting used to the new hours.”
    “Yes, well, if you want my vote—”
    “I do,” I snapped reflexively.
    “Not that vote. I mean, if you want my opinion, I think the mayor nonsense is probably a better fandango for you than the disc-jockey nonsense. The hours suit you better.”
    Just then, from out of the dirty pile of laundry she was scooping up, my little flippy phone started its Fisher-Price beepity squeak.
    “Jesus,” she said, dropping the laundry again.
    “Ma, you know, if these chores are getting to be too much for you in your silver years...”
    Phone buddy blipped again.
    “Yes, well, when I’m living in the mayor’s mansion with you, I’ll be able to lie there like a lump too and watch somebody else do it.”
    She brought the clothes over and dumped them on me rather than rooting around for the phone herself.
    “Hello, Da,” I said.
    “If that’s not the most ridiculous, pretentious little...” Ma didn’t like the FinsFone much.
    “That your ma? Tell her hi for me.”
    “Da says hi, Ma.”
    “Hi, Da, don’t buy him any more toys, Da,” she said on her way out.
    “Whoa, wait a minute, Gordie.” I heard paper rustling in the background. “What’s