Job Interview Over, Urged to "Have a Nice Day," Harry Does the Best He Can Walking to His Car

Part 2: Veteran Teacher Harry Mills Exits His First Job Interview at a Recently Reconstituted High School in Watts After Being Fired From His Previous Post at Another Reconstituted Low Performing Middle School in Nearby Athens

The following is a work of fiction so the author, a Los Angeles public school teacher, can't piss anybody off who could make his professional life miserable. If you haven't already done so, read Part 1 posted July 14. This story is the follow-up. It is written by Mark J. Blocker solely for your entertainment.

Now done with interviewing for the position at newly reconstituted Nickerson Gardens High School in Watts, English teacher Harry Mills walked along 103rd Street hoping he wouldn't get the job after all. Watts had to be the worst pustule festering on L.A.'s wide open face. Gang members getting fucked up in public in the middle of a Wednesday; spray painted profane gang slogans and busted windows on houses unbelievably occupied by breathing, thinking people; washed-up bums sleeping or dying in the middle of the street; and God only knows what else.
Why didn't Mayor Sotomayor's charter school venture, Premiere Schools for Tomorrow, hold the interviews at Nickerson High itself? It couldn't be any worse than the neighborhood surrounding Track Star Elementary.
Across the street a little Latino grocery was the last business still occupying a stretch of four store fronts. They wouldn't even let customers inside. You had to wait at a fortified screen door, tell the clerk what you wanted, give him the money or some food stamps, then he'd go back to get your items--candy, chips, sodas, cigarettes, baby food--whatever as long as it wasn't fresh or natural.
Three blacks in their 20s dressed head to toe in purple stood by a public phone sharing one of those generic cigarettes that mom-and-pop stores weren't supposed to sell as singles. Harry tried to imagine how that busted-up phone could possibly remain operable and who would want to hold the receiver by their mouth and ear. The three purple loiterers appeared more tentative and nervous than menacing. Harry then spotted an LAPD squad car parked amongst several abandoned heaps in an adjacent dirt lot. A pair of buzzed-cut cops behind the windshield surveyed the scene. A teenage hispanic girl wearing a turquoise blouse with "BITCH" written in sequins across her inadequately supported breasts pushed a baby stroller while two toddlers--a boy and a girl--followed behind dangerously close to the curb. Both children craned their necks looking toward Track Star's playground on the other side of the street.
103rd Street is a two lane thoroughfare with a steady stream of cars going about 25 to 30 miles per hour. Various faded, 20-year-old cars sporting an array of dents and scratches were parked along the curb with two- to four-foot gaps in between. The little girl, wearing a floral jumper and her hair pulled up to a stem sticking straight out of the top her head, paused, and from her low vantage point between two parked cars, surveyed the inviting school and its playground. All the older children were playing kickball, soccer, tetherball and foursquare.
Oblivious to the child's redirected movement, the mother . . . aunt . . .  or baby sitter . . . continued pushing her stroller while the little boy turned back toward the girl.
Lifting the hatch to his Prius, Mills watched the little girl and now the little boy. The little girl turned around, bent over, placed her hands on the curb to steady herself, then stepped backwards into the gutter. Harry tossed his briefcase into the car and immediately stepped into the street to stop traffic. Front ends dipped, but no tires screeched. One of the Grape Street Crips by the phone loped past four parked cars to retrieve the girl. He held her hand and walked her along the sidewalk back to the woman, bringing along the little boy with his other hand.
Harry exhaled, dropped his arms and returned to his car. Fishing the keys from his pocket, he turned around to see the young lady bowing profusely and placing her hands together as if praying to the young man. Then she bent down and began slapping the girl who wailed over the sound of tired engines and cracked tail pipes. The Crip shrugged and stepped back toward his group. One of his partners took a long drag and held in the tobacco smoke while the other grinned shaking his head.

Harry turned and surveyed the playground on the other side of the tall, fortified fence. It had the same bars as wrought iron but none of the decor, just vertical bars with two horizontal reinforcements running across at the top and bottom. On the other side, hundreds of 4th and 5th-grade students squealed as they kicked, chased and caught balls that soared and bounced in every direction under a sonic rain of laughter and screams. The school uniforms were navy blue pants or skirts with white tennis shirts. Some children eschewed the formal games and busied themselves simply chasing each other or conversing on benches. A few teachers or aides milled about, usually with a gaggle of students following closely, vying for adult attention. That sun-baked asphalt with its painted white lines, and the adjacent patch of lush green grass hosted several parties every school day at recess and after the last bell. Harry gazed at the pretty lady teachers and the athletic young men supervising the playground. He noticed an older, graying guy with longish hair and a beard wearing shades and a Hawaiian shirt, leaning against the trunk of a purple jacaranda. The learned fool was gesturing wildly and entertaining about a dozen boys and girls. Suddenly a wave of jealousy washed over Harry. Watts isn't such a bad place after all, he thought.
When he pulled away, the Crips, the cops, the mother and the toddlers were all gone. In their place, an almost naked, emaciated whore the color of dusty obsidian hiked up her thong so the fabric disappeared into her repulsive crotch. An unremarkable tit slipped out of her bikini top and swung a little as she waved at Harry to come on over. A drunk was pissing inside the phone booth. He pointed his front toward the street and the urine streamed as if pouring out a cherub into a fountain--but it splattered all over the sidewalk dangerously close to the prostitute's red high heels. The children and the teachers continued their isolated reverie. Harry checked his lane, merged, and got the hell out of there.

Board Selling Off "Low-Performing" Schools to Charter Operators Who Pay Rookies Peanuts

Displaced Veteran Teachers Hunting for Schools Willing to Take on Larger Salaries

Second installment of the adventures of Los Angeles public school teacher Harry Mills

The following is a work of fiction written by Mark J. Blocker.  Its sole purpose is to entertain the reader. Any similarities to real persons either living or dead is coincidental. It's a strict coincidence,  too.  We have rules around here.

"You're fired . . . kind of"
Last March the school board decided to "reconstitute" Missouri Compromise Middle School. They tossed everyone from the principal to the crossing guard because academically the place stunk. The kids, virtually all of them living below the poverty line and north of the 105 Freeway in South Central, flunked the State tests. At least the majority did every year Harry Mills was teaching 8th grade English.  How this was the janitor's fault, Harry didn't know--but he did know the next custodian cleaning the place wouldn't have medical benefits nor a retirement plan while working for Bright Spot charter schools.
So when school ended June 24 everyone was out on their cans--even the students, though Bright Spot won't admit that. While the teachers, principals and support staff were all simultaneously kicked out; the kids will be expelled one by one should they look at an administrator cross eyed or light up a blunt in the back of the class. Students have carte blanche, however, to physically and verbally abuse teachers dumb or desperate enough to work for minimum wage at a charter school. If their employers don't have any respect for them, why should the students?

Find another school
So here's the deal: All displaced staff are still employed by the the Big City School District, but they must secure a position at another school, or they will be placed at a site where there is a vacancy. The  BCSD serves every economic strata from Brentwood's coastal canyon estates to South Central's flop-house tenements in Watts.  "Good" schools fill up immediately. You don't want to wind up at a school that can't find teachers. That's actually just one of many issues upon which administrators and faculty agree. The school district also serves middle-class San Fernando Valley on the other side of the Hollywood Hills. The Valley was out of the question for Harry, though. To arrive at a school before 7 a.m. he'd need to fly from Long Beach to Burbank. It's a big district selling itself off piecemeal school-by-school to the highest bidder.

Willing to work in Watts
Harry's first interview was at Nickerson Gardens High School in Watts. NGHS was also reconstituted, but reformed as a charter that still allowed BCSD teachers to maintain their seniority and benefits. So Harry applied. The interviews were held at Track Star Elementary near 103rd & Wilmington. Mills didn't want to make a U-turn so instead he made three rights and a left on side streets. That was a mistake. Local gang members freely defaced exterior walls of dilapidated bungalows that seemed to lean one way or another.  Groups of sneering young men, each holding a 40-oz or blunt instead of a tool, loitered around junk cars in various states of disrepair. Harry, after giving a double take to a pile of rags thrown in the middle of the street, realized a wino was literally sleeping amongst the potholes. As he steered around the lifeless figure, Harry hoped the man was merely sleeping.
Harry shook his head and paid attention to the radio. KFI. That was another mistake. A pair of right-wing demagogues were complaining that unionized city teachers were "hogs at a trough" and should be "forced to take a 25% pay cut." The 6 furlough days already accepted by the union? Not really a pay cut, the pair maintained, since the teachers were working less hours. Soon the hosts' anger--real or fake--became palpable as they pounded their fists and screamed vindictive insults at local educators through the publicly owned airwaves. Virtually throbbing through the car speakers, the highly rated hate-mongers took a call from a teacher dumb enough to argue with them on their own turf. They cut her off and launched into another scripted, vitriolic dialogue with each other about evil public schools and collective bargaining. That segued into commercials hawking divorce lawyers, rat exterminators and cosmetic dentists.
The school locked its parking lot. Mills had to find a space on the street. He walked along the sidewalk while noting the 12-foot tall, steel-barred fence securing the school. A Crip in a do-rag, low-slung trousers, immaculate high top basketball shoes, and a Manny Ramirez jersey sized him up. Harry gripped his brief case tighter.
"Hello, sir, may I help you?" inquired the courteous gang banger.
"Yes sir," Harry replied, ashamed he had stereotyped the young Black man who graciously escorted him through the doors.  Harry signed in, applied a yellow "visitor" sticker on his snug suit coat, then proceeded.
The room doubled as a waiting room and office. Pristine books about various bullshit pedagogical theories no one believed in anymore lined the shelves. Motivational posters covered the walls. One showed a seagull soaring above a seascape at dawn. "Each day is a fresh beginning!" Pretty tableau, Harry thought. What a shame some kid wrote "48er Crip" by the tide's edge. A table offered nutritious snacks and room temperature bottles of water. Christmas music piped in through the speakers. It was mid-June.
Harry carefully sat down on a chair with casters and waited.
A perky, attractive brunette in her 30s entered and apologized for running late. "Are you in a hurry, do you have somewhere else to go?" she enthused more than queried.
Harry admitted he didn't have anywhere else to go. The lady assured him she would be back "in about 10 minutes" and encouraged him to help himself to a delicious snack in the mean time.
Another woman who looked like she had been seated in that room for 40 years was typing something in a computer. Her workstation was situated by the windows, but the windows had been painted over. She wore Coke-bottle-thick Malcolm X glasses and had graying hair pulled tightly back into a bun. Harry didn't know for sure, but he could've sworn she was eyeballing him.
"You know, I could've sworn a few minutes ago I heard "Silver Bells" over the intercom," Harry announced, trying to make small talk.
"Sir?"
"I said, I think Christmas carols were playing over the loudspeakers and it's almost summer, heh heh."
She cocked an eyebrow, frowned then returned to entering her data.
Harry, 53, and 10 years into teaching, thought about the road that brought him to Watts. He reminded himself, you didn't get into this business to teach The Brady Bunch. Mills wanted to teach poor kids living in the mean city because he went to school with them as a kid in Pasadena's integrated schools. Although he got in fist fights and name-calling contests regularly, Harry found kids from the other side of town interesting. Many adversaries and spectators became ironically friendly after the fights. Mills admired their fortitude growing up in a hostile, sometimes overtly racist town where nothing on the other side of Lake Avenue ever came up roses.

Harry the Humboldt liquor clerk
Harry thought about the jobs that led him here. His favorite: working as a night clerk in a liquor store up in Humboldt County. It was just him standing between a bunch of conniving hippies and $10,000 worth of liquor and food. What a game! At 24, 6'3" and 250 pounds, Harry knew why the red-haired and red-nosed proprietor Dan McCorkle hired him.
"Don't take any shit from those bastards or they'll steal you blind," McCorkle advised after about a week. "If you have to kick their ass, I'll back you up in court."
Luckily, fate never tested that promise. Reason one--Harry didn't believe McCorkle. Also, you never know who is a karate champion. Nonetheless Harry became quite adept at catching shoplifters. Most were his friends. So he learned long before entering a classroom that the world is full of desperate characters wanting something for nothing.

Sales skills come in handy for a teacher
Then, during his 30s, there was a stint editing, Pre-Fab World, a magazine for moguls who manufactured mobile homes. Harry traveled the nation writing stories about how trailers without wheels were going to be our homes of the future. He profiled the men leading the way. Harry's boss, a septuagenarian named Lonnie Cason, had a glass eye. It seemed to look right past Harry. Cason had a knack for telling people to fuck off while making it sound like a compliment. Cockeyed Cason was a great salesman, and Harry's family lived off that skill. The job lasted a quick 7 years. Each one earning Harry a 5% raise. Finally, Harry's price was too high for Cason. He called up Harry one Sunday morning and over the phone told him to fuck off. Cason would mail Harry's final check. It didn't feel like a compliment. The check and two weeks severance did eventually arrive. Two weeks severance pay after seven years. Harry was grateful he now had a union job.
He never forgot the main lesson he learned from Cason: Salesmanship. Earn people's trust by emulating them so they will like you. Avoid confrontation. Always use the pronoun, "we"; never, "you." This builds teamwork and cooperation. Harry rarely had trouble with parents, even when they came in angry. Over the years, he noticed even the most street-smart, resistant students responded positively to kindness and cajoling.

Harry the hard ass newspaperman
After Cason fired him, Harry got a job with the last remaining local newspaper. A few years back some big media conglomerate bought the Gold Coast Telegram, the biggest local daily serving the biggest local town an hour up the coast. It immediately expanded into adjacent towns by offering local businesses cheap ads, thus lowballing competing newspapers. After three years, the Telegram was the last daily newspaper in the county.  So the conglomerate's board of directors authorized the purchase of a city-block-long printing press which allowed a separate section for each town, while sharing sports, entertainment and classifieds. The conglomerate voted to move operations to what once was a strawberry field in the center of the county.
Harry's job was to make sure every ad ran in the correct edition. He also had to supervise three chicks hooked on speed. When Harry arrived, very few ads were running in the correct edition and the girls took turns calling in sick. Harry implemented procedures that corrected the flaws. Since these measures relied on deadlines and accountability, soon everyone but the publisher hated Harry's guts.

2001: Big City School District can't find enough teachers
At that time, a teacher shortage rendered the the BCSD desperate. It offered free credential classes and you could work at full pay the same time. Harry figured, if everyone was going to hate his guts, he might as well get summers off. The move also came with a 30% pay raise.

2011: too many teachers
Ten years later Harry sat twiddling his thumbs waiting for another interview. He knew for certain that working for the BCSD was the best job he ever had. Harry hoped his English instruction had benefited the students as much as their unbridled energy has infused his life with meaning.
"Mr. Mills? We can see you now."
Harry got up and followed the perky brunette down the hall, listening to her heels tap upon the freshly waxed linoleum floor. Harry's black sneakers made no sound at all, as he checked to make sure his dress shirt was still tucked in, his suit pants hadn't rolled over at his waist, and his fly was zipped.
There were three women in the room. All very ironed, bejeweled and studious. The questions, though, were all abstract bullshit and so were his forgettable answers. The key to this teaching business is how well a man or woman commands a room and builds a personal relationship with the students. They need to buy into the information--believe it is important, or "cool" to know. Regurgitation of theorem, pedagogical or otherwise, was never Harry's interest nor strength.  After leaving, he was startled about how little he could recall of the conversation.
Harry did remember how the principal, a voluptuous looking African-American woman dressed in colorful African attire and Rodeo Drive cosmetics, warmly cupped his hand inside both of hers and seemed to sincerely thank him for applying for the job.

Then, he never heard from her again.



Part 2: "Another Interview" to be posted in approximately 1 week

Slugs, Slurs and the Slow Moving Machinations of Big City School District Justice

Over two weeks have passed since the kid slugged me while I was trying to break up a fight outside my classroom. I reported the incident twice to LAUSD police. Once right after the fight, the second time after I noticed a deep purple bruise the size of a half dollar on the side of my gut.
The second cop filed a report and gave me a case number. That was the last time I heard from law enforcement. The dean informed me about a week ago that the police were on campus the previous day looking for me to identify the kid from a line up of perp photos. Why I had to do that is beyond me since they identified the kid and apparently suspended him for two days, according to the vice principal.
After I told the teacher union representative that I was pissed about how my beating was greeted with indifference by the administration and police, the VP dropped by my room last Tuesday to take my temperature. I complained to him that some dumb cluck dropped the ball. He replied that it wasn't him. Of course not, I said.
Besides, it isn't just the school administration and cops who said screw you Blocker. I called up a woman at United Teachers of Los Angeles to report my fair-weather friends. Two days later she called me back at 9 p.m. She said she was going to email me some advice and check with the local rep to ensure my case was handled correctly. I never heard from her again.
Slurs more dangerous than slugs
I probably wouldn't give a damn either way if not for what happened a week prior to my flogging. An F student, trying to be a pain in my ass, told the principal I called another student a "fucking fag" while kicking him out of class for putting on make-up. He was supposed to be doing his class assignment: writing a poem about the prettiest sunset he'd ever seen. The student whom I supposedly slurred, once apprised of the violation came barging back into the room, screaming that I was indeed the real queer.  He bravely challenged me to a fight, threatening to "kick" my "ass" before the girl muscled him out once again.
The Principal wasted no time hauling me onto the hot seat. Who cares whether the accusation is false? The scenario appeared politically chic: pony-tailed biker asshole teacher deprives 15-year-old of the right to cruise for homo-sex in 8th-grade class. She called an immediate meeting in a conference room situated behind her office. The VP sat with her on the other side of the conference table while the union rep and I faced them to hear all the charges. Very official shit. The Principal kept handing me photocopies of District-mandated warnings about the illegalities of discrimination and hate-speech, and notices about what could happen if I am falsely accused again. I ended up with a tidy stack. Meanwhile, the rep was frequently nodding and gulping. I said nothing, just stared at his Adam's apple going like a freight elevator transporting his fluids up and down. I remained silent because the alternate union rep warned me before the meeting to clam up.
She emphasized, "No matter how mad or disgusted you get, stay quiet." Then she reminded me how the faculty and I voted in the other guy as the union representative instead of her, despite her 25 years more experience in teaching and collective bargaining. She even fought for Civil Rights as a young Black woman in the South during the 1960s. I nodded and gulped.
So get this straight: If a kid slugs you and leaves a bruise: suck it up. If an F-student, angry about her grade, falsely accuses you of slurring a male student who is applying cosmetics in your classroom--your ass is skewered over the coals post-haste. And now they want to take away our medical and retirement benefits and fire us without due process too.
All about the Benjamin
Which brings us back to the kid who slugged me. I learned his name from one of the big security guards who eventually arrived and took the fighters away. We'll call him Benjamin. He's a husky African-American kid enrolled in special education "day classes;" meaning, he is not mainstreamed into regular classes despite a learning disability. I have plenty of special ed kids in my classes who are on an "Individualized Education Plan" which I glance at once before throwing it inside a filing cabinet at the back of the room. The details on an IEP are minutia written to legally protect a school; not assist a teacher. Half the time the unlucky kid is diagnosed special ed because he's being raised by a single mother or foster parent eager to receive extra assistance from a bureaucracy also hungry for more money. This leaves the kid dumbed down, coddled and mad. All they really need is a father around to love them and to love their mother.
Benjamin had disappeared for a while after slugging me. The following week he started coming around again, staring at the ground but glancing my way to make brief eye contact.
"Benjamin, come here, please," I finally asked. The cops proved themselves useless, the administrators too busy and the union reps impotent. It was down to me and the kid to straighten this out.
He walked over, staring at his feet. He avoided looking at me once he arrived, too.
"Benjamin, look up at me, son."
His eyes met mine.
"Remember me?"
He furrowed his brow and frowned. His lower lips started quivering, and his eyes quickly filled with tears. Benjamin knew he did me wrong.
"You were pretty angry that day, when you hauled off and whacked me. What were you so angry about?"
"Dennis be talking about my mama all the time. Sayin' shit."
"Well, whad'ya hit me for? I like your mama."
"Cuz you was trying to... whachoo mean? You ain't never met my mama!"
"I'm positive she's a fine lady, and I'm sure she's got better things to do than to come down here and pick you up because you've been fighting...and beating up kindly old teachers."
He shook his head.
"I bet she complained about that something fierce, huh? You probably still haven't heard the end of it."
He grinned and shook his head yes. We shared observations about the mothers we loved, and soon he was disarmed and comfortable. While he nodded I gave him the boilerplate lecture about controlling his anger. "Don't go hitting teachers, for cryin' out loud.  They'll take you to jail! What if I was some little guy or a lady? You'd be in a heap of trouble."
Then I made him apologize.
Looking me square in the eye, he announced, "I'm sorry Mr. Blocker." We shook on it. He gripped my hand like he was picking a dog turd off the carpet with a sheer Kleenex. "Geez, Benjamin, put some grip into this, willya?" Finally, we shook like men, eye to eye.
"Remember to take a deep breath or count to 10 because that's a hell of a right hook you got there."
Benjamin smiled, turned and walked on to class.
We parted friends, I think.
Other teachers tell me, "You should've pressed charges!" After two weeks, though, Benjamin wouldn't understand the arrest. It's just some more bullshit falling out of the sky. Besides, in times like this when bureaucrats and school cops fuck up and drop the ball--it's best that two burly he-men look each other in the eye and shake.
Summer could get hot
Benjamin and I made amends on June 16, 2011. In another week Henry Clay Middle School will be officially closed as an "under-performing" LAUSD campus and handed off to Green Dot charter school company. Green Dot has promised some changes. Two things are certain: Benjamin and I are both out on our asses. He's special ed, and I'm a member of the displaced faculty. There's no room for either one of us.
Oh, and another thing. The principal has not yet issued her finding on the Big Fag Incident. The rotisserie could still skewer me orifice to orifice, slowing turning me over the glowing coals of absurdity until I'm done just right.

Teacher Slugged in Gut, Morale Takes a Hit

Debut Episode: The Life & Times of Harry Mills--Unionized Teacher With an Average Value-Added Score

By Mark Blocker

The following is a work of fiction in both plot and characterizations. The characters and story should not be interpreted to resemble any persons, living or dead. The story's plot should not be perceived as a real event. It is written for the sole purpose of entertaining the reader.


While putting on one of his loud Hawaiian shirts, middle-school teacher Harry Mills noticed the half-dollar-sized purple welt on his ample gut. Damn, that little fucker nailed me good, he thought. Now buttoned up, Harry started getting pissed.
Yesterday afternoon he was standing in the vice principal's office reporting that a student had slugged him as he was attempting to break up a fight outside his classroom. Harry didn't appreciate the way the school cop made him feel like an old bag bitching about a youngster next door. Furthering Harry's belittlement, the VP, Mr. Frost, sat behind his wood-veneer-on-particleboard desk sneering while taking little bites from a yellowing apple core. Despite Frost and the cop's indifference, Harry continued providing his version of the incident. But now he regretted bringing it to the authorities' attention.
The district police officer, over 45 but exceptionally fit with a small waist and muscular chest, stared off thinking about what he was supposed to ask Mills next. Harry was emphasizing the student didn't just "accidentally" hit him. The 13-year-old boy threw a round house that solidly thumped on his mid-section.
"What were you doing to those boys? You weren't grabbing them or anything, were you?" the officer inquired with a cocked eyebrow. Harry thought the guy looked a lot like a character actor who played a lot of bit-part roles in movies and sitcoms of the 1970s and 80s.
"Hell, no. I was standing between 'em during a lull in the action telling 'em to chill out. Then the short, chubby kid on my right socks me in the stomach, and they. . ."
"All right, all right," the school policeman disdainfully waved his hand, "I get the point you think he deliberately hit you." Then the cop squinted his eyes, focusing on something. Harry turned around to look. It was the clock on the wall. 10 to 3. If Harry was back in his classroom he'd be getting ready to dismiss his last class for the day. The lithe but nearsighted policeman said they had to hurry this up because he needed to get outside when the bell rang to help kids safely cross the street. Frost nodded gravely. Harry looked down at the cop's holstered gun. After a tepid effort to suppress a burp, the cop continued, "Were you manhandling the child at all?" That bit-part actor got minor roles in just about every "Blaxploitation" movie of the 1970s. They were all rated R, and even though he was only 13 at the time, Harry proudly saw them all at the theaters downtown on Colorado Boulevard.
"No," replied Mills. "Hell, no . . "
"Did you slur him in any way, perhaps calling him the n-word?" He even played a cool cop with a huge Afro in Superfly's Big Hustle.
"What the fuck? I didn't call him no fucking 'n-word'! What kind of . . ."
"You needn't use foul language with me, suh." This couldn't be the same guy of course, Harry thought, that actor would have to be 80 now.
Frost added, "Yes, Mr. Mills, district policy prohibits the use of profanity while performing your assignment." The two exchanged nods while Harry watched and clenched his fists. Frost didn't remind Mills of anyone. His shoulders, however, made Mills think about sliced bread. Harry also remembered how it took months of purposely charming, "Good morning, Mr. Frost," before he could get the man to cast a glance and mumble his name.
Harry momentarily thought about lighting a cigarette and exhaling a big cloud all over the place. But that was against district policy, too. And Harry hadn't smoked in 15 years.
The cop took out a wrinkled handkerchief and wiped away the sheen on his clean scalp. Mills figured the cop was balding and chose to resolve the inevitable with a razor. Mills himself preferred to deal with aging by growing his thin gray hair into a ponytail that draped down his back. It went well with his salty beard. Frost had a cul de sac of what was once dark but now graying curls. Frost ran marathons and married a tycoon's daughter, so he didn't give a shit about how old he looked.
The cop sighed. "I don't know if anything's gonna come of this." He copied onto his little notepad info from Mills's drivers license. He closed his notepad and jammed it into the breast pocket of his tight uniform. Then he pulled the dog-eared pad out again because he forgot Mills's phone number. Mills noticed the cop was wearing a bullet proof vest. Harry wondered whether the cop was truly an incompetent dimwit or if it was a Columbo-like ruse to trick condescending, asshole teachers into making outlandish statements that would eventually screw them in court.

BY DAVID BLOCKER 6/4/11

Frost gave the workers comp referral to Mills, and Harry drove down to the clinic. Harry looked across the waiting room at the oil refinery worker covered in grunge, his arm wrapped in an oily rag. After an hour wait, the ample-breasted Latina nurse let Harry inside and escorted him to a tiny examination room where she left him alone again. After another hour wait the young Indonesian doctor entered. He gave Harry's gut a cursory glance before slipping on a disposable plastic glove and poking it with his index finger. He said he didn't see anything wrong. Harry sat silently while the doctor scribbled down on Frost's form that Mills could return to work immediately. It was 6 o'clock at night. The silence became awkward.
"So a student accidentally hit you in the hall?" Harry wondered if the doctor's smile was actually a sneer.
Harry furrowed his brow and shook his head. "No. A kid . . . "
Just then the door cracked open and the nurse with her big, beautiful brown eyes inserted her head. She cupped her hand around her moist, red-lipsticked lips and whispered something into the doctor's ear. "Oh, ho! Heh, heh," the doctor chuckled with a devilish grin. The nurse's head disappeared and the doctor gathered himself, clearing his throat with an overly serious demeanor. "So, uh. Where were we? Yes." He continued scribbling with great flair.
He was a 30-something and spoke with a surfer drawl more common to coastal, blue-eyed, blond flakes. Like the ones he grew up with on Palos Verdes Peninsula before graduating from UCLA medical school. Harry figured the BMW parked out front with the Darwin-fish-with-legs magnet and Heal the Bay bumper sticker was his. He noted how all the other cars were old pieces of shit. Not mine though, Harry thought. Perhaps it was worthwhile being a teacher after all. Then he thought about how he wouldn't be done paying it off for another three years.
Poking the dashboard ignition button, Harry wondered what exactly the nurse had whispered. It's been a while since a gal talked like that to Harry. Whenever his wife called him from her mother's, all she did was complain about aches, pains and neurosis. To hell with all that, Harry vowed. He wanted to live. Walk miles in the sunshine. Swim in the ocean. Catch waves. It didn't matter whether he'd stand up and hang ten. He was satisfied with his Boogie Board. Summer vacation was a month away. The start to this story was tomorrow morning.
He gazed into the falling-but-still-strong sun highlighting all the dust and grime on his windshield. On the other side of a large vacant lot, silhouettes of tiny cars inched both ways on the 405.
Then Harry Mills turned south on Avalon before making a left on Sepulveda. He was going to take the surface streets home. It was better than staring at red tail lights and billboards tempting him with pictures of ice cold beer and fine whiskeys. It had been four years, six months, five days, 18 hours and 14 minutes since he had a drink. And he wasn't about to start now.