Read Online Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z. Z. Packer - Free Book Online Page B

“Thought you said you’d seen some tough times.” He began to walk the perimeter of the school and she followed.
    “They mill around whenever they want, they won’t shut up, they—they couldn’t care less about—I mean, when you’re teaching, don’t you ever see a—light in their eyes?”
    The Baltimore Public School System ran a series of Vaseline-smeared camera shots of students eagerly raising their hands to answer questions, students traipsing through fields to release butterflies into the wild, smiling students clad in black graduation robes, a teary-eyed teacher, beaming from the front row. In each of these shots, the camera zooms in on one student, until their eyes are the size of fists on the television screen, with a twinkling star of light flashing through each retina.
    “A light?” Bonza covered his mouth with his hand, then doubled over in an exaggerated bow, and when he finally came up, his hair flew back like that of a Labrador flicking off the waters of a mountain stream.
    “Ohhh boy.” Bonza shook his head.
    Lynnea felt her eyes narrow on him. “What’s so funny?”
    He regarded the burning ash, turning serious. “Maybe,” he said,“you became a teacher for all the wrong reasons, hon. Maybe you just don’t care enough about them.”
    “Listen,” Lynnea said. “I care. It’s the students who don’t care.”
    “All right. So they don’t care. Whaddya do?”
    She knew this was one of his little tests. She stuttered, but didn’t answer. He snapped his fingers to signal she was out of time and smiled his disapproval. She’d expected him to come up with one of his handy one-liners about teaching— teachers don’t teach, they coach; dilemmas aren’t solved, they’re managed —but all he said was:
    “Robert the Cop quit teaching.”
    Lynnea looked at him. “Doesn’t surprise me,” she said.
    “Yeah. He’s a cop down in his blood.” Bonza seemed to lament this, and she could see why: during Robert the Cop’s role-play as teacher that summer, all the adults pretending to be students in his class pulled the same antics they’d pulled in other role-plays. But Robert the Cop never lost his composure. He gave them all detention, goose-stepping to each pretend student, pounding his fist on their desks for quiet. He ended by telling them they were all sorry motherfuckers, said they’d all amount to nothing, zero, zilch, nada, if they didn’t respect authority.
    Before he began teaching school, Robert took night shifts so he could attend his classes during the day. After his turn at role-play teaching, he drove to a black part of town called Hollander Ridge and parked his unmarked Mazda at an intersection where the traffic lights never worked.
    “Yep. I nabbed ’em,” he admitted the day after he’d given the tickets. “I needed to get my quota.” He’d handed out eleven speeding tickets and three vagrancy charges. Fourteen in all. “Payback.”
    Lynnea knew it was revenge on the fourteen pretend studentswho’d given him hell in role-play, and she somehow felt complicit, as though she’d had the power to stop him but didn’t.
    “It’s better that he quit.” Bonza leaned toward her, his black hair battered by the wind. “Robert didn’t have the heart for it. Not like you, hon.”
    The wind jerked the four trees of the schoolyard until it gathered a shower of dead leaves to carry away; it swung open the flaps of Lynnea’s cheap green jacket so hard the lapels hit her face. She could see Bonza’s eyes scanning the school steps: no students. He threw his cigarette to the concrete, snuffed it out with his shoe, then grabbed her, kissing her with full, sloppy thrusts of tongue, his mustache scrubbing her face with its bristles. Lynnea pushed him away and gasped for air, trying to wipe away the saliva ringing her mouth, only to find both hands locked solidly in Bonza’s.
    “C’mon. Let’s blow this joint.”
    “Joint? I’m sure you have to get back home to your