Calling Home by Michael Cadnum

He’s a very brilliant guy. He probably—” Mr. Lindner nodded to me as he passed. I lowered my voice. “He probably hates teaching high school students. He probably would rather be in some school out in the middle of a green field, where there is moss and ivy on the walls, and people actually speak Latin to each other, even over breakfast.”
    â€œHe’s just overcompensating because he’s black. He wants to prove to everybody how perfect he is.”
    â€œSo what? Everybody has reasons for being what they are. What difference does that make?”
    I passed a trash can that was overflowing and I picked up an empty milk carton. This, I thought to myself, is Mr. Lindner’s head. I squeezed it hard and crushed it in an instant, only it was much too easy; I wanted something much harder to crush that I could imagine was Mr. Lindner’s head. A spot of milk shimmered on the back of my hand and I licked it off, thinking how little all the people in the world knew about me, and how appalled they would be if they knew how much contempt I had for them. I kicked a hole in the wall a little bit bigger, and then kicked a new hole. My shoe got stuck in the plaster, as if the building were trying to hang on to me while someone ran for the police.
    Angela linked her arm with mine like she was proud to be seen with a destructive person, and I took her outside. We strolled along Lake Boulevard, and I kicked the empty Coke cans out of our way, one of them spinning into the center of the street where a pickup truck squashed it flat.
    â€œThey’re coming back tonight,” she said, tossing her hair and leaning her head on my shoulder. “I wish the plane would crash.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t say that.”
    â€œWhy not? Saying it won’t make it happen.”
    â€œIt’s a bad wish. Bad wishes might not make things happen, but they’re bad anyway. You ought to watch what you say. It’s just a policy a person ought to adopt.”
    Her arm was still linked to mine, but it was a dead thing; the affection wasn’t in it, and I could tell that she was going to take it away if I said anything else critical about her.
    I continued, “You’re awfully careless about things you say. Calling people names, wishing them dead.”
    â€œFuck you.” Her arm was gone.
    â€œThat’s very mature. Very articulate. You should be on talk shows.”
    â€œYou’re a prick, you know that?” She was, as they say, beautiful when she was angry, but also vacant, like being mad sucked up all of her natural vivacity and made her stupid.
    She flounced away, and the way she flounced said, “Catch up with me and apologize so we can get something to eat,” but I let her flounce diminish to a regular walk and didn’t even make a move to catch up with her. I saw something in Angela then that I didn’t want to see. I saw that the thing that would keep her from amounting to anything as a person was that she was too perfect. I don’t mean too admirable; I mean too perfect, the way a goldfish is perfect.
    Lake Boulevard was thick with a sudden herd of AC Transit buses, delivery trucks, and Cadillacs. The sun was tarnished; an ugly haze was over the sky, a kind of smog that no one gets excited about because it probably isn’t that bad for a person’s health, it only makes things look ugly and boring and cheap.
    I walked up the steps to the school very slowly, like my body was thickening into a robot even as I reached the top step, and there, looking like a runaway from his own funeral, stood Mr. Tyler. I turned to face Tyler as I passed, and eyed him up and down just to teach him something, but to my surprise, he did not flinch. He smiled in a way that made me queasy and said, “Just the man I was looking for.”
    Whenever a stinker like Mr. Tyler calls you a man or “mister,” you’re about to be had. “What for?” I said,