Devlin's Defiance: Book Two of the Devlin Quatrology by Jake Devlin Page A

of ice cream in his mouth, slowly
swallowed it and rinsed with some water from his cooler. Then he
applied sunscreen to his forehead and nose and some SPF 45 lip balm
to his lips and a scab that he'd discovered on his left ear, pulled a
small spiral notebook and pen from his bag, lay back on his lounge
and began jotting some notes. One read “Mix in the banal with
the bizarre,” and another was “Maybe change POV for new
ideas/twists?” And then “Too much violence? Hmm.”
    About 9:30, Louise, an
art professor at a local university, showed up, accompanied by two
men, one tall, lanky and bearded, the other short, portly and
clean-shaven. She set down her bag, flipped open a beach chair about
15 feet from Gordy's lounge and draped a towel across it. Then she
came over with her companions.
    “ Hi, Gordy.”
    “ Hey, Doc. How
ya doin' on this fine morning?”
    “ Great, thanks.
Gordy, these are two colleagues of mine, Dr. Steven Spectrochianski,
chairman of the political science department, and Dr. Bruce
Patrikopoulos, chairman of the economics department. I gave them
your book and they've read it, wanted to meet you. Okay if they stay
and talk with you while I run?”
    “ Sure, Doc.
Still keeping track of your points?”
    Louise, laughing, said,
“Oh, yeah, sure, Gordy. 700 so far.”
    “ Cool; just 300
to go.”
    “ Right. Have a
nice chat, guys. See you in an hour or so, Gordy.” And off
she ran.
    “ Sorry, guys.
Your names again? Just first names, okay?”
    “ Steven.”
    “ Bruce.”
    Stifling a chuckle as
they shook hands, Gordy said, “Thanks; my memory isn't too good
with names. So what can I do for you?”
    “ Well,”
Bruce began, “Louise gave us each copies of your book and we
read it, and we'd like to talk with you about using it in our
classes.”
    “ But,”
Steven added, “we'd like you to cut out all the fluff outside
of the policies that your dictator sets out, focus just on those.”
    “ Well, you two do
get right to the point, don't you?”
    “ We don't have a
lot of time. I've got a class to teach at 10:30, and Bruce has one
at 11:00.”
    “ Okay.”
    “ We've gone
through the book and marked the parts we'd like to keep in, and a few
edits within those parts, like getting rid of the audience commentary
in Chapter 5 and some of the press conference questions.”
Steve held out a copy of the book to Gordy, who began thumbing
through it.
    “ So what you want
is basically just the Donne parts?”
    “ Exactly.”
    “ Hmm. That's the
part most readers have trouble with.”
    “ I can understand
that. It's probably too much economics and policy.”
    “ So you like his
policies?”
    “ I didn't say
that,” Bruce, the economics professor, replied, “but
they're outside the box enough to trigger some critical thinking and
debate among the students.”
    “ And that's what
college is about, after all, wouldn't you agree?” Steven asked.
    “ I guess so,”
Gordy nodded, distracted, still leafing through the book.
    “ So what do you
think?” Bruce asked.
    “ Well, I'd have
to talk it over with the – uh, with some people, but it sounds
interesting.”
    “ Good. We've
also put some notes and ideas for discussion and debate on those
papers in the back there.”
    Gordy looked at those
briefly, then studied them more closely. “'What might be some
intended and/or unintended consequences of a Sovereign Wealth Fund?'
Would Donne's tax and regulatory policies actually achieve his goal
of ten percent GDP growth within eight years?' 'What
advantages/disadvantages are there for a dictatorship versus a
democracy? And how would you define (in depth) democracy?' You guys
have put a lot of thought into this, haven't you?”
    “ And a lot of
argument and debate,” Steve said, as Bruce nodded. “But
we've got to run. We taped our business cards on the inside front
cover, and we'd appreciate it if you'd give us a call and we can
maybe get together and go through it all in some