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following Boyle with interest. He hadn’t heard such a rumor nor did he know of the area’s reputation. Boyle’s last words startled him.
    “Vain hope, I see,” Boyle said, curling his upper lip. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you do owe the department a thesis, don’t you?”
    “I suppose.”
    “So it wasn’t entirely foolish of me to harbor the thought that this would be the long-awaited work?”
    “But we’ve always discussed my ideas beforehand.”
    “I know. I know. To what end? What was the most recent one? Ah, yes, something about the impact of a drug rehabilitation center suddenly placed in a middle-class neighborhood. What happened to it?”
    “The crime rate rose five hundred percent in four months. A month later it was closed down, reopened in Harlem. It was nothing.”
    “It might have been something. If you had chosen to do it.”
    “As a book?”
    “The Current Ideas imprint needs such books. That’s why I began it. Or have you forgotten?”
    How could anyone forget Boyle’s pet project? Noel was reminded of it in some way every week. Boyle was using it to show up the other branches of the University Press: it was becoming an obsession.
    “Would you really print something like that?” Noel asked, hoping to deflect Boyle onto his favorite topic.
    “Like what? The rehab center? Or the murder?”
    “No. I wasn’t thinking about that.”
    “Maybe you ought to, Noel. No, don’t interrupt. You realize that the social sciences are based on being right on the spot, living it, reporting it. All the great ideas in our field have come from being within a society. Look at Mirella Trent. She worked three months as a guard in a women’s prison for her book. And it turned out to be the best one we’ve done in the series. We need more of that. Not more critiques of someone else’s ideas in another grad school journal.”
    When was the last time Boyle had done fieldwork? Noel wondered resentfully. Unless that was what he called all those uptown cocktail parties. He was even more irritated by the department chairman pointing out Mirella’s book as a guide. Everyone knew what a sensational muckraking feminist tract that had been: a best-seller that had pulled the Current Ideas imprint out of a financial hole. Not to mention the decisive blow it had dealt to Noel and Mirella’s on-again, off-again two-year relationship. Boyle couldn’t be ignorant of that, either.
    “May I remind you,” Boyle was saying now, “that when I first took you on here, I had high hopes. I know you’re good in class. Students fight to get into your lectures. But I can no longer guarantee that will be enough to keep you in line for tenure.” There it was—the threat. Noel had been waiting for it.
    “You saw that young man who came out of my office before. He’s already coauthored one book. He’s bright, eager. Why shouldn’t he work here?”
    “You’ve made your point,” Noel said, standing.
    “You have to realize my position, Noel. I have to answer to a dean, a board of directors. I’m attacked on all sides.”
    “I know.” Which he did, from hearing it from Boyle so often. But he didn’t care. All he wanted was to get out of that office.
    “And you know I hate to exert pressure. It’s not my style.” Of course not, Noel thought. It doesn’t match your mirror-shine shoes or four-thousand-dollar face-lift.
    “Don’t let me go into the board meeting this term-ending with empty hands, Noel. Give me something to show for keeping you.”
    “I will,” Noel lied: anything to get out.
    Boyle seemed surprised, pleased. “Good. You must know how I detest these administrative duties,” he said, suddenly unruffled and friendly again. “Why don’t you show me something substantial soon? We’ll meet over lunch. Wouldn’t that be pleasant?”
    “I won’t let you down,” Noel said at the door. He had to force himself to shake the plump, slick hand.
    “Shit!” he said as Boyle’s door closed.