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together, actually. Because if I can’t, you know, if I somehow lose my cool in front of him or he picks up on my being stoned … I mean, that’s it. No more job. My career ruined. You know how the mind can get under the influence of grass, that paranoia.”
    â€œWait a second,” Ken said. “Didn’t she have any ID on her? Why did they need you?”
    Rodgers shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly. I never asked about that. It must have been a law, that someone who knew the victim had to inspect the body in person. All I knew was that the president wanted me there. It must have been some state law.” Rodgers sipped his wine. “I lived in this little carriage house out in the country that I rented for sixty dollars a month, utilities included. If you can imagine. A quiet place. Peaceful. About five minutes later, I heard this car pull up on the gravel. It was much too soon. You know, when someone says fifteen minutes they usually mean half an hour. That’s understood, isn’t it? I felt ambushed, really. You don’t tell someone fifteen minutes and then drive up five minutes later. I might not have been any more ready in fifteen minutes or half an hour, but at leastI would have had the chance to adjust to the idea. Wash my face, brush my teeth. Maybe it was fifteen minutes. But it didn’t feel like it.
    â€œThen I see these colored lights spinning outside my window. This car that’s pulled up is a cop car. Now I know for sure that I’m fired. The president’s going to pull up in his Rolls-Royce as I’m being led away by the cops, right? There’s a knock on the door and I freeze. Just freeze. It’s like one of those movies where you can hear the clock on the wall ticking. Tick tick tick. Except that I didn’t have a clock. Maybe a minute goes by and there’s another knock. This one louder. What choice do I have? I get up and open the door and there’s President Van Buskirk, this big fat man in a black coat. He has this very concerned look on his face, very Walter Cronkite, and he’s holding something in his hand. I swear to God for a second I thought it was a scythe. But it was just an umbrella. The cop car is behind him and it’s raining and he looks at me and I look at him. I thought he might have smelled the grass. That was my concern. For a second neither one of us moves. He’s sort of leaning in with his big Republican face, looking me over, and I’m figuring how I’m going to explain this to Connie, to my folks.
    â€œâ€˜You’ll need something more than that,’ he says finally. ‘It’s a cold one.’
    â€œSo I get myself a coat and put that on and we walk out together and get into this car with three cops already in it. State troopers. With those shiny black knee boots. All three of them sitting there, not saying a word. I get in the backseat, between a trooper and the president, and there’s two more in the front seat and I’m stoned out of my tree and we’re going to identify Mary Martin’s body. I mean, shit.”
    Ken said, “Why all the cops?”

    â€œI don’t know. I wondered about that later. Wouldn’t one have been enough? Why all three? But there they were. Not one of them said hello. The driver started the car and we drove. I was still stoned. You couldn’t have devised a worse place to put me. The troopers were looking at my clothes, jeans and some kind of leather fringe coat, and my hair. They knew what I’d been up to, I was sure of it. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you up,’ the president said. ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I was grading some papers.’ ‘On a Saturday night?’ the president said. He whistled and the cop sitting next to me let out a chuckle. There was an awkward moment there, but the president smoothed right over it. ‘I need to apologize again for this inconvenience, Alex. We’re going