Throughout this all, an enormous black man with a shaved head, a silver nose ring, and studded earrings locked a hard stare on Hammermeister, like a heat-seeking missile. At last he said, “Hey! I’d like to get something off my chest. You called us all in here for a meeting, and nothing will change or get done as we all know. You have the secretary call me up to come to a fucking meeting at two-thirty in the afternoon when I work graveyard. Doesn’t anybody have any consideration? I need to come in and hear all of this Mickey Mouse piss and moan. The Nigger of the Narcissus! Watch your mouth, Duffy! I don’t even want to hear you thinkin’ ‘nigger.’ You don’t have the right, motherfucker! I’m the one’s paid dues.” Roused to a fury, the large custodian wheeled on Hammermeister and stuck a finger in his face. “How would you like it if I called you up and told you you had to come to work at three in the morning? Three in the morning, because that’s what this is for me, goddammit! Plus, I’m sick tonight. Call me a sub. You done fucked up my circadian clock! I don’t know when it will come back to normal, I’m still fucked over from fucking daylight savings back in May or whenever the fuck! Foolin’ with Mother fucking Nature. God! Great God! Goddammit, son of a bitch!” With that, Centrick Cline kicked a metal folding chair out of his way and stormed out of the room.

Mike, the head custodian, got up, ostentatiously glanced at his watch, and said, “There’s a volleyball setup in the gym. Let’s go. We’re already two hours behind. Lord, we got to boogie, folks, or we’re going to be here awl night long.”

Hammermeister watched the custodians file out of the conference room. He looked down at the untouched pizzas, sixty dollars’ worth leaking warm grease onto the limp cardboard containers. He picked up a piece smothered with sausage, pineapple, olives, and onions and ate it in four bites. It was his first meal of the day.

All the screaming had caused Rider, the senior vice-principal, to pop his head in the door and catch Hammermeister in a state of panic—catch him in a situation over which he had no control. An abominable scene. Janitors…Dr. White had been right. They defied the usual…well, hell, they were out of control. He would call them in one by one. Isolate them. Break them down. Turn them into lapdogs.