“Why do you think he would do that intentionally?”
“ ‘Why,’ Mister Phillips? I’m not sure why. It was obvious to me that he had not been paying attention to the lesson at the time. Perhaps he wanted to deflect my attention from that, perhaps he wanted to draw the attention of the other children, I don’t know. I do know that he made up a silly answer and the end result was that he disrupted the class.”
Eight-year-olds don’t plan these things out, he thought. No matter. The decisions are based on actions and results, not intentions. She insists the action was Billy’s and the result was disruption. Work with it, Jack. You can’t fight it.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Billy’s homework is always perfect,” she said, “your influence is clear there. It’s early in the year yet, but I have no fears about his test scores either. Watch how he acts with others his age. See if he goes out of his way to become the center of attention. If you see that, point it out to him. I’ll try to do the same here. Maybe that will help.”
For some reason you don’t sound at all hopeful, thought Phillips. “Center of attention” indeed. He’s eight years old; you are the center of the whole universe at that age. He stifled an urge to say, just wait until you have children of your own, and chalked her observation up to her own youth. Still, there was something going on here that puzzled him. He wouldn’t find the answer here, not today.
“Thank you. I’ll do that. Would it be useful, do you think, if we got together again in, say, two weeks?”
She seemed surprised at that, then smiled. Pretty. “Of course, Mister Phillips. I’d welcome that.” She rose; he did as well. “Just book it into my schedule at your convenience.”
She led him to the door, opened it, then held out her hand. “Thank you for stopping by, Mister Phillips. I sincerely hope we can do something about this.”
“Thank you for your time, Miss Barstow.” He shook her hand briefly, hiding his bewilderment behind his best social smile, and left the room. This woman is utterly sincere, he thought, and completely convinced that Billy presented a potentially serious problem. Maybe Jim was right. Maybe I am just paranoid.
He was halfway down the stairs when a voice called from the landing. “Jack Phillips, you old coot. I haven’t seen you for ages.”
Jack turned, looked up the stairs and grinned. “Sue Waters. It’s good to see you. And it can’t possibly have been more than a century.” She had been Billy’s first-grade teacher; more than that, an old friend to him and Kathy. He felt a little guilty that he hadn’t stayed in touch.
He waited while she came down the stairs to join him. She and Jack were about the same age. If Barstow looked like a postulant, Waters looked like a mother superior in full sail. The teacher’s uniform completely suited her bearing.
“What are you doing here, Jack? Sneaking books into the library?”
“There’s an idea. No, I had an interview with Miss Barstow, Billy’s new teacher.”
“Ah.” She dropped the subject abruptly. “Come on, I’ll let you buy me a cup of coffee to make up for your neglect. Here. You can carry my books.”
Jack signed out with the guard, Waters swiped her ID through the employee station, and they were out the door and headed for the deli two blocks up the street. She kept the subjects to inconsequential catch-up as they walked.
They ordered at the counter, cheesecake and coffee, and she led the way to the rearmost booth where she took the bench facing the door. “OK, Jack. Something’s eating you; I can see it in your face. Spill it.”
He told the story in a low voice. He included the analogy of the bad chips and the inspector, his suspicions of Farlini, and his bafflement at Barstow’s sincerity.
“Farlini, eh?” she said when he was finished. “Now there’s a bad one. ‘Farlini’s Far Flung Enterprises.’ His humble name for his little empire, ‘Triple-F E.’ I pronounce it ‘FEH.’ High-priced tchatchkes as tasteful as the name. His business is one thing, Jack, but I agree with you that personally the guy’s got some kind of problem. I wouldn’t be surprised if Junior did turn out to be the same kind of sociopath, but I haven’t heard of him pulling the wings off of flies. Not yet. You might well be right about the donations, but you’re just dead wrong about Barstow being bought.”
Jack played with his cheesecake, uncertain where to start. “OK, Sue. I guess I’m thick. Run them by me one at a time, slowly. How am I right about the donations?”
“I said maybe. Farlini is certainly the kind of guy that would like the attention that big donations can buy and he’s got the kind of mind that would assume that he’s buying influence with them. He’s not stupid, though. In his circles, large single donations aren’t done unless there’s no possible question of quid pro quo.”
“What circles are those?”
“Two circles, really: Party and church. They go together. Now Farlini, he’s a neo-fundamentalist, not a cryptofundo. His allegiance to the Party is based on self-interest. It’s solid and it’s real. His allegiance to the church, well, that’s just something he has to do to stay in good with the Party.
“You’ll see political donations to the exact legal limit in his name, but no more. The Party won’t allow it because it exposes the candidate; on the other hand, he’ll give to every candidate for the Party influence it buys.
“His donations to the church are probably up to the tithe, but no more. Money past tithe doesn’t buy much extra church influence—crypto rules say it’s prideful—so there’s no return for him there. He’s into the church thing for the sake of the Party, not the other way around. Big named gifts to outfits like the ACLJ buy him recognition in both Party and church without so much risk, so he probably ponies up to the same level as the rest of the boys at the country club.
“But the school? The unwritten crypto rules say school gifts should be a third of tithe. He’d follow that. Corporate endowments are allowed, sure, but at bottom we’re a charter school—private administration with public regulation. He can go anonymous or corporate on the printed annual report but he’s still going to be listed as the donor on the report to the State and that could embarrass the Party someday. He’d never do that. Understand, it’s not law that stops him. It’s the crypto rules against the appearance of individual influence peddling.”
Jack snorted. “Influence peddling? It’s an elementary school, for Pete’s sake!”
“Hey. It’s your theory, not mine. I’m just telling you what the parameters are.”
Jack shrugged at her comment. “If he’s so worried about what the cryptos think, why does he have his kid in a Trad school? What not just put Junior in a Community Standards school?”
“Because he’s neo, not crypto.” She could see from his face that this didn’t answer anything, so she went on. “Think of one of the new Islamic states. The cryptos are the crazies that run the country. The neos are the rich families that fund it, sitting behind their compound walls with satellite dishes and whiskey. They despise each other but they need each other, too.
‘The crypto and neo-fundos are the same way. Cryptos tolerate the neos because they fund the movement and will toe the Party line the cryptos set, but they think the neos are hypocrites. Similarly, the neos think the cryptos are fanatics, but as long as the cryptos let them keep their compounds, so long as all the cryptos ask for is money and votes, then the neos will stay loyal.
“Farlini Junior is only nine. If he went to a CS school, they’d have him singing hosannas in six months and reporting on Bill Senior’s home life in a year. Farlini doesn’t care whether his kid learns Creationism or spontaneous generation in school—it has nothing to do with tchatchkes—but he doesn’t want a true believer under his roof any more than those rich Islamic families do. That’s why they send their kids to Swiss boarding schools. The way Farlini sees it, a Trad school gets Junior into the right high school and college, an Open won’t and a CS is personally too dangerous. So Junior stays at Franklin.”