Читать книгу Last Dance - David Russell W. - Страница 10

The courthouse in downtown Vancouver is a stunning display of 1970s architecture. Glass on its western side, concrete on all the others, the building is touted as a tourist draw, with its multi-levelled walkways and roaring waterfalls cascading past office windows, a distraction more than attraction to much of the staff inside, I’m told. The courtyards are designed to be an oasis of calm amid the rush and roar of upscale capitalism on adjacent Robson Street. On a warm Monday afternoon, after school had let out for the day, Tim, Sara, Nate, and I stood at the court clerk’s office, filing the papers that would form the basis of our suit against the school. My hastily organized extra-curricular field trip had failed to arouse suspicion amongst the school’s administration, and if word had gotten out about what my law class was planning, it had remained blessedly quiet.

My last-minute sojourn to the courts had also required a good deal of last-minute deal wrangling and favour cashing with what few friends I still had in the legal system. My saving grace was that I had spent the bulk of my legal career working for Legal Aid, unlike the high-priced, Mercedes-driving, four-hundred-dollar-an-hour-billing defence counsel few defendants could afford. I tried to keep my convertible Saab hidden from view whenever I arrived at court so I wouldn’t look too successful. Truth was, I had purchased it largely through the unearned earnings of my ex-wife. My smile, charm, and most importantly, my close relationship with Detective Andrea Pearson still carried some clout in the comparatively close-knit legal community, and I had managed to get a commitment to an expedited hearing should it be warranted due to the time-sensitive nature of our case: graduation was only a few weeks away.

“That’s it?” Sara asked as we turned away from the counter.

“That’s it.”

“What happens now?” Nathan asked with his usual unrestrained enthusiasm. It made me want to “shhhh” him.

“We wait. Once the papers have been served on the school’s administration, they’ll have a shortened period to make a defense claim. Following that, we try to find resolution, or we end up in front of a judge.”

“Shit, this is unreal!” Nathan exclaimed. “When will that happen?”

“Just as soon as we hire a process server to deliver the papers.”

“Can’t you just deliver it to the school?” Nathan demanded.

“I can, but I think I’m going to be in enough shit, if you pardon the expression, when Mr. Owen realizes what’s going on. Having me serve notice on my employers probably won’t help matters much.” Tim had nearly flinched when I noted the predicament I was putting myself into, and I wanted to assure him that it would be okay. Of course, I didn’t really know that it would be, but adults lie about Santa Claus too. “But it’ll be fine. We’re only doing what’s right here, and there’s nothing they can do to any of us.”

“Are you sure?” Tim asked.

“Absolutely.” There’s no Easter Bunny either.

“In that case, let’s save our money,” Sara blurted out as she reached forward and snatched the statement of claim from my hands. “I’ll do it.”

“Sara,” I told her, “this really isn’t necessary.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m looking forward to this.” With that she headed through the automatic doors into the bright spring sunshine, conversation ended.

“Man, she can be pushy. It makes her kinda hot, don’t you think?” Nathan asked, elbowing me conspiratorially. Tim answered before I could protest the direction of the conversation.

“Yeah. If I wasn’t gay, I’d be camped out on her doorstep.” He feigned his best lisp. “Hey, Mr. Patrick. You could stand to be a bit more pushy, you know.” Both Tim and Nathan headed out the door after their friend. I could see but thankfully not hear Nathan as his head tilted back and he roared with laughter.

I run several kilometres most days through my Kitsilano neighbourhood, enjoying the quiet of the pre-rush hour west side of the sleeping city. That’s my spin on it. For years I had suffered a chronic inability to sleep like a normal person, that is, more than about two or three hours at a stretch. Running was one of the many activities that had been prescribed by various specialists, quacks, and well-meaning friends to help me get some sleep and subtract several of the years my insomnia had added to my appearance. Running killed the hours between waking and working and kept me in terrific shape. That was my spin on it. My mother, my ex-wife, and my best friend all agreed I was too skinny. There’s no pleasing some people.

Still, even the muggy morning air couldn’t erase the simple pleasure I received every morning as I pounded the pathway from the westernmost limits of Spanish Banks down to Jericho and saw the city across English Bay, resting, though never really sleeping. The few fellow runners were up and about at this ungodly hour didn’t seem surprised by the smile that involuntarily crossed my lips at the end of each early morning run as I rounded the corner at MacDonald and began the final stretch towards home, down Cornwall Avenue. My pace had been strong, and I was tempted to add another three-mile loop circuit to my run for the extra endorphin kick, but I recognized I was just avoiding facing the administrative music that would surely be blaring when I arrived at school.

I dwelt as long as possible in the shower, hoping the hot water would compensate for my usual lack of sleep, knowing it never had before. I flipped on the television to one of the city’s morning news programs to keep me company while I got dressed. I had gotten as far as boxer briefs and shirt and was debating which tie I should wear when I noticed a familiar voice coming from the television. It took a few seconds to place it, but once I did, my heart skipped a beat.

Racing into the living room, knocking my uncovered right knee into the doorjamb and letting loose with an expletive, I stared with disbelief at the television screen. On the lower right hand side of the screen was the back of a reporter’s head, while in the centre of the frame, complete with CityTV microphone prominently placed in front of her, was none other than Sara.

She was busy explaining to the reporter, who I noted was broadcasting live in front of my place of employment, that as soon as the school’s administration arrived she would be serving the vice-principal with a lawsuit brought by her law class and — wait for it — her law teacher, Mr. Winston Patrick, in support of the civil rights denied one of the school’s students. The fact that she was incredibly articulate for an eighteen-year-old in discussing the Charter issues at stake should have pleased me, but it only added to the dull, thumping pain growing in my chest. The phone rang, convincing me I wasn’t dreaming, and I picked it up to hear Andrea. She was doing her best, I could tell, to keep the laughter out of her voice, but it was there right alongside the “I told you so” she was also masking.

“Are you seeing this?” she asked.

“Holy shit. I can’t believe she’s on the news.”

“How the hell do kids know how to arrange press conferences? Did you teach them that?”

“I don’t even know how to do that.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said dryly. “They usually find you. What are you gonna do?”

“Call in sick?”

“Chicken.”

“There’s no shame in cowardice.”

“Yes there is. Do you need any help?”

“Are you planning to arrange an armed escort for me as I sign in at the office?”

“I could loan you a Kevlar vest.”

“Wouldn’t go with what I’m wearing today.”

I could hear Andrea’s sigh travel the nine blocks between her apartment and mine. “I guess you’re going to need drinks after work.”

“Oh yeah.”

“My tour ends at five. I’ll pick you up at your place. You’re not going to want to be driving.”

“You got that right.”

“Jesus Suffering H. Christ!” Bill Owen was apparently aware of the press conference that had transpired in front of the school.

“Good morning,” I replied dryly. I had arrived as the television news truck was pulling away from the no-parking zone its driver had been choosing to ignore. I also knew that by the end of the day, the rest of the TV and radio stations and print media would have left messages at the school, ensuring not only the wrath of my immediate supervisors but also of the school’s secretarial staff, which, from a practical standpoint, was worse.

“What in the hell have you done?” I sensed Bill did not want to discuss the educational merits of having my law students attempt to correct a wrong. First thing in the morning, I’m on my game. Nothing gets by me.

“Technically, I didn’t really do much except give my students a ride to the courthouse to file papers.”

“And invited the media to use guerrilla journalism to attack me as I arrived at school.”

“I must have missed that part of the broadcast while I was in my car.”

“It wasn’t pretty.”

“I can imagine.” Right away I knew I had said the wrong thing; that’s how perceptive I can be.

“Patrick! I am in no mood for any of your smart-assed comments. You had no right inviting the press to the school. The district has protocols for things like that.”

“Hold on, Bill. I may have helped the kids get the lawsuit rolling, but I had nothing to do with inviting the cameras. The kids obviously undertook that one all on their own.”

“Why the hell would they do that?” I knew his question was rhetorical, but I have a habit of stating the obvious when the only outcome is likely to inflame a given situation.

“To make you look bad.” The vice-principal was beginning to shake, and for a brief moment I did actually worry that he might have a heart attack and drop at my feet on the school’s doorstep. “Just calm down, Bill. They’re angry. They’re kids, and you’ve put their backs against the prom wall. They needed to make a statement, and they’ve done it. They might have done it a little more publicly than I would have liked, but they’ve done it. Now we sit down and try to hammer out our differences.”

“You think it will be that easy?” he demanded. “We’ve just been broadcast all over the breakfast show. This won’t simply roll up and go away.”

“It’s CityTV,” I tried to tell him. “It’s unlikely anyone was watching.”

“Except all the kids in this neighbourhood and their parents.”

“Yeah, well, except them.” From the corner of my eye I saw Sara approaching from the interior of the building. She was wearing a huge smile and had both Tim and Nathan in tow. If she sensed the fury steaming from the vice-principal, she either didn’t show it or didn’t care. I kind of hoped it was the latter. I shook my head at her, hoping to avoid a confrontation out in the open. If Sara noticed my not too subtle signal, she again either didn’t show it or didn’t care.

“Good morning, Mr. Patrick,” she said, smiling coyly. That she did not address the vice-principal was obvious and deliberate. The girl had chutzpah. Before I could reply, Bill let loose with the tirade that had been building since he had arrived on scene.

“Just what in the hell did you think you were doing, young lady?” I have yet to meet any teenager who doesn’t think the term “young lady” sounds anything but condescending.

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Owen. Is there something you wanted to speak to me about?” Sara’s pleasantness was not only phony, it was also kind of funny. I smothered the smirk bubbling up, especially given the smirks already on Tim and Nathan’s faces. Bill was near explosion, and I felt I should intervene to protect my student from his rage, but she seemed to be holding her own just fine.

“Don’t be a smartass with me, Sara. You had no right to invite the media to the goddamned school today.” Sara did not seem at all intimidated by the hulk of the admonishing administrator in front of her, which I had to admire; despite my bravado, people his size kind of intimidated me. Maybe I am too skinny.

“I’m not sure that I like your tone, Mr. Owen,” Sara replied calmly.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not you like my tone. You’re in deep sh —”

“Mr. Owen,” I interjected. By now a small crowd of students had gathered to witness the altercation, and its members seemed particularly pleased that Owen appeared to be losing the bout. Now I was feeling a need to protect the best interests not only of my student but also of the school. “If Sara is not comfortable with the tone of the conversation, profanity is not likely to make the situation any better.” Bill, suddenly aware again of my presence, appeared lost as to whom he was angrier with. I tried to defuse the growing melee. “Perhaps we would be better served by going inside and discussing this calmly and in private.”

“Good idea,” Bill replied. “You and I will go inside. Sara, you’ll stay out here for the time being. You’re suspended.”

A slight but ever so brief chink appeared in Sara’s emotional armour before she caught herself and held firm. “On what grounds?” she demanded.

“On the grounds that you held an unauthorized press conference at school,” he replied tersely, self-satisfaction creeping into his voice.

“In front of the school,” she corrected.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re still suspended.” A quiet fell over our little group. Sara made her move first.

“And what section of the School Act gives you jurisdiction over the city-owned sidewalk?” For the second time that morning I suppressed a giggle at her audacity. She was at least as prepared as Bill for verbal sparring, not that that was saying much.

“Sara, have you ever heard the expression ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’? Taking one high school law class does not make you a lawyer.” He said the last word with such contempt that I thought he might choke on his own vitriol. Good counterattack, though: he’d managed to hit both of us with one shot.

“So is a little authority.” Her previously pleasant demeanour was gone and she was starting to adopt a similar tone. Nathan and Tim were no longer laughing. Instead they, along with the slowly surging crowd of adolescents, were smiling silently in outright awe at their classmate.

“You are seriously pushing your luck, young lady.” Bill’s voice had lowered to a growl, and I was beginning to wonder if he was capable of becoming violent against a student, a female one at that.

“And does the School Act also give you the authority to unilaterally quash the constitutionally protected guarantee of free speech?” A small cheer went up from the throng of students. Bill’s head snapped to face them as though just now becoming aware of their presence.

“We’re done here,” he finally muttered then addressed the crowd. “Let’s go everyone. The bell’s going to ring any minute. I don’t want to see anyone late for class.” The crowd dispersed immediately. Bill, at least, looked satisfied that some people were still afraid of him. He turned to face me and invited me to join him. “Come on, Mr. Patrick. I’d like to speak with you before class begins.” We turned to head into the school, but he stopped and quietly addressed Sara. “No. Not you. You’re suspended until further notice. You’re to leave the school grounds immediately. We’ll be in touch to arrange the conditions under which you can return.”

“You can’t do that,” Sara protested quietly. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Section eighty-five, subsection three.”

“What?”

“You asked what section of the School Act gave me the authority to send you home. It’s eighty-five, three. Come any further onto school property, and I will consider you a trespasser and have you forcibly removed, possibly expelled.” A slight smile turned up the corner of his lips.

“You are making a mistake. This is not over.” Even I thought Sara sounded like she was starting to lose faith.

“So sue me,” Bill Owen replied before walking through the school door.

“Mr. Patrick!” Nathan suddenly blurted, stepping forward to join us. “Can he do that?”

“I don’t know,” I had to admit. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Do something!” Nathan demanded.

“No, don’t,” Sara instructed me firmly. “This isn’t about you. I’ll take care of it.” Tim had joined our dispirited group.

“Sara,” he asked her worriedly. “What are you going to do?”

Sara smiled. “You’ll see.” Without another word she walked towards students straggling in from the parking lot.

“This is unbelievable. Have you ever seen anything like this?” Cassandra Beaumont taught next door to me, and the two of us, like nearly every other adult in the building, were staring outside at the swelling mob of students congregating anywhere on the school property except inside in their classes. In less time than I would have thought possible, Sara had convinced a sizable part of the population to stand outside with her in protest of what she deemed an unreasonable suspension. Not only had arriving students elected to support this fiery grade twelve student on an impromptu picket line, many students who had already entered the building and their classes had, as word spread, gotten up and abandoned their studies in favour of student solidarity.

“No, I haven’t. Of course, given that this is my first year teaching, my frame of reference isn’t very big.”

Cassandra nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s my tenth, and I haven’t either. Every year there’s some little grassroots movement to start a student walkout, but most often it turns out to be a few burnouts who would have been smoking pot in the cemetery across the street anyway.” Sir John A. Macdonald High School is located, a bit morbidly, directly across the street from Vancouver’s largest public final resting place. It is known as a great place to drink, smoke pot, and party. “What do you think they’ll do?”

“Admin? I’m surprised they’re not up here yelling at me.”

“Yeah. You do seem to have a way of getting under their skin.” From below I could hear a steady bass thump as one of the students moved his car close to the crowd to showcase his auto’s audio abilities. Thankfully, most of the school’s neighbours wouldn’t be complaining, not in this lifetime, anyway. Their protest anthem was no “Dust in the Wind,” but Eminem had more ‘F’ words.

“Whatever they do, they’d better do it quickly.” Two floors below, on the sidewalk directly in front of the school’s main entrance, two television news vans had pulled up, greeted by Sara, who was still on her cell phone, no doubt gathering more press to cover her rally.

“God, she’s good,” I said, shaking my head in amazement. Sara seemed to have the know-how of a PR agent. Across the street, a Vancouver Sun newspaper car arrived, taking in the growing crowd of students beginning to spill out onto Fraser Street to disrupt the tail end of the morning’s rush hour traffic. Just ahead of the front entrance of the school stood the three administrators, and they didn’t have to turn around and look up for me to feel their anger.

It took a little less than half an hour of press coverage and chanting students before the school’s beleaguered principal, Don McFadden, slowly approached the ten or twelve students forming the command centre around Sara, who by that time, by my count, had given at least half a dozen interviews. If she hadn’t already had a date for the graduation dinner and dance, she would be in high demand after today’s performance. McFadden appeared not to make any pretense of bravado, standing with his head bowed slightly and talking quietly to her. After a couple of minutes, I saw her offer her hand to the principal, who reluctantly shook it in front of the entire student body and the Lower Mainland’s assembled media. Sara broke ranks from her friends and approached the sidewalk, where a gaggle of reporters quickly surrounded her. Like a seasoned pro, Sara spoke to the media scrum without taking questions, then turned to the crowd of classmates and announced loudly enough for me to hear even from the third floor, “Let’s go to school!”

It was probably the only time the school would ever experience a cheer from a group of teenagers as they made their way towards the building.

Because both our social lives had little activity, particularly on a weeknight, Andrea had decided she was coming to my house for dinner. I was not to do any cooking — she wanted it to be a good meal — but I would be responsible for having food on the premises. But in honour of no occasion I could readily think of, I opted to order in pasta rather than pizza. Even non-romantic female friends need to be wined and dined on occasion.

“I ran a check on your student,” she told me as she sucked down a lasagna noodle with less daintiness than I would have thought possible, “to see if he had any priors. He doesn’t.”

“He just turned eighteen. Any criminal activity as a young offender wouldn’t show up on background check.” She looked at me as though I were an idiot for assuming things like sealed records were actually sealed for her.

“Right. What was I thinking?” She shrugged. She was used to me forgetting how powerful she deemed herself to be.

“Anyway. It was his locker that was victimized. Why look for criminal activity from him?”

“Cuz if he was arrested for something, I would be able to see who was arrested with him, what types of people he hung with, and look for any patterns of vandal-like behaviour from his peers.”

“Who you’re assuming have turned on him.”

“Because he’s turned different from the rest of us.” There was a certain logic to this I had not thought of, which is why she’s the VPD’s star detective and I’m the principal’s pain-in-the-ass teacher. As I opened my mouth to reassert my dignity, Andy suddenly raised a hand, palm forward, to shush me. Her head was cocked with her left ear towards the entrance hallway. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

“I heard you whisper ‘Did you hear that.’”

She glanced at me for a fraction of a second, just long enough to remind me I was not to make jokes when she was in police mode. She was probably just showing off. Or paranoid.

“That hissing sound,” she whispered again, though I recognized she wasn’t really talking to me any more. She slipped off the stool she was occupying on the kitchen side of my pass-through and walked silently to the edge of the hallway, slowly poking her head around the corner. I crept around towards her from the dining room side of the wall and strained to hear whatever was sending her into combat mode. As I approached, she raised her fist, pointed to her eyes, then to the front door, just like I’d seen Kiefer Sutherland do on 24. It was television re-run season already, but as I recalled it, she was indicating that she alone was going to check what was going on behind my apartment’s front door. A sudden burst of manhood grabbed me, and I opted to seize the moment. I quickly marched past Andrea towards the door. At that same moment, I became aware of footsteps running down the exterior hallway away from my apartment. Quickly throwing open the door, I was in time to see the backs of two teenagers as they rounded the corner at the far end of the hallway and went into the emergency exit stairwell.

Without thinking, I bolted down the hallway after them, pulling open the stairwell door just in time to hear the emergency exit door two floors down crash open, allowing the two runners to flee into the night. I halted my pursuit, knowing not only that they’d be long gone by the time I reached the ground floor, but also that I’d look like an idiot standing there looking up and down the back laneway, trying to determine in which direction my prey had escaped. I’d learned that from 24 too. By the time I returned to my own end of the hallway, Andrea had pulled my door further open and was examining the outside. It had been spray-painted with the word “fagit,” a reference to what I assumed the vandals were indicating as my own sexual preference.

“Now do you believe this is a police issue?” she scolded me. “This is a personal attack on you.”

“I’m not terribly worried,” I replied with more calm than I actually felt. “We’re not exactly dealing with master criminals here.”

“How do you know?”

“Look at their spelling. How clever a plot could these two concoct against me?”

“They managed to find your home,” she insisted.

“I’m in the phone book. Even my dumbest students could pull that off.”

Andrea gave me a scathing look. “What? You’re still listed? Why the hell are you listed when you’re a high school teacher?”

“I’m a friendly guy.”

“That seems to be what they’re implying.”

The thing about teenagers, I told Andrea repeatedly throughout the rest of the evening, was that despite how much they claim to value secrecy, they are notoriously poor secret keepers. I had been trying to convince her that using taxpayer resources to involve the VPD in the investigation of the misspelled graffiti on my door was, in fact, unnecessary. I figured sooner or later word would get out about the “attack,” as Andrea was calling it, students would start posting similar messages all over the school, and all we’d have to do is wait for the correctly incorrectly spelled one to appear, and voilà: there would be the culprits.

She wasn’t amused.

I continued to appear flip while the official police work was done and until Andrea finally decided I was in no imminent danger and went home. Then I lay in bed for several hours contemplating just how seriously I should take this implied threat and how far I should continue to push for Tim Morgan’s boyfriend to be included in our school’s graduation dinner and dance. When it became clear that sleep was going to elude me altogether, I finally abandoned the bedroom and decided to do my weekend’s long run in the middle of a weeknight instead.

Generally, I tried to run about twenty kilometres on a Sunday afternoon or evening, but I needed something to do that would not only kill the dark hours but also prevent me from purchasing anything late-night television had to offer. For someone who cooks infrequently, I owned a disproportionately large number of devices designed to save me time dicing, slicing, and chopping. I also had a chainsaw, a bit extreme for the kitchen and of no value to an apartment dweller. As with all power tools, I was also terrified of the thing, so it languished in the storage locker in the apartment’s basement.

It was a few hours before sunrise, but the lights of the downtown core across False Creek seemed determined to turn night into day. I generally avoided running in the West End of downtown Vancouver, because even on Sunday afternoons the amount of traffic made street-based exercises perilous. Still, it was a weeknight, so I threw caution to the wind and headed over the Burrard Street Bridge and into Vancouver’s unique mixed business and urban core. Rather than turning west after crossing the bridge, as I would normally do on those kamikaze occasions when I chose to run along the famed sea wall, I followed Burrard Street north all the way to the opposite shoreline of Coal Harbour and Canada Place. Making a quick loop around the posh Waterfront Centre Hotel and back up to Hastings Street, I headed west until I could turn onto Georgia and into Stanley Park.

There are those who believed running in Stanley Park in the middle of the night was inviting death, or at least, a severe mugging, but the reality was much gentler. Though it had long been held that the massive urban forest was home to any number of the city’s increasing population of homeless people — especially as the weather got warmer and sleeping out of doors was less unbearable than in the wet winter months — my experience told me that if it were true, the park at night was used primarily as a spot for sleeping. The begging and squeegying normally associated with the city’s downcast was generally reserved for the daylight hours and in the more populated areas. How much success could you have as a panhandler if you hung out in the middle of the forest? Squirrels aren’t known for carrying wads of cash.

Not unexpectedly, I was not only unaccosted by my fellow man, I ran the entire length of the park through to English Bay without seeing so much as another soul, kindred or otherwise. By the time my feet pounded the Burrard Bridge pavement back to Kitsilano, the late spring rain was pounding in November storm-like fashion. You have to be from Vancouver to understand the subtle differences in the type of rain that falls on you for what seems like fifty of the calendar’s fifty-two weeks.

By the time I got home, there was still plenty of middle of the night morning remaining before my presence was required at my workplace. After drawing out my shower as long as possible and reading both of the daily papers, I finally made the trip to school, arriving in the staff parking lot moments before six, early even by my standards. It hadn’t really occurred to me that I might not be able to get into the building. I found the doors to the school locked. I couldn’t help but take a little offence that I was willing to give of my own time to come in and prepare a stellar set of lessons for the day and couldn’t even access the school. My sleepless night was already making me cranky.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and the spring temperature took the crispness out of the air, leaving it feeling muggy. After one last futile attempt at pulling on the locked door — as though persistence might magically cause it to unlock itself — I turned my back on the building, leaning against the door to stand underneath the roof’s overhang and avoid the misty precipitation. There was little view to take in besides the sopping wet playing field where first period students would soon cover their expensive running shoes in mud. It was odd seeing the school so peaceful, devoid of the pulse had when students were around.

Scanning across the field, something at the far end caught my eye. The sun, such as it was, was shedding enough light that I could see a large dark mark obscuring the white paint down one side of the soccer goal posts. Curiosity and locked-out boredom got the better of me, and I walked a few steps towards the field. I only needed to narrow the distance a few feet before I could tell that the dark mark was in fact an object rather than a simple smear of a vandal’s paintbrush. I continued to walk onto the gravel running track that circles the field, figuring I could at least report the debris on the field to the school’s administration. After my role in inciting the demonstrations led by Sara, I figured scoring a few brownie points with the principal might not be such a bad idea. Another few feet passed, and the image was becoming clearer. I picked up the pace and stepped off of the track and onto the wet field as the alarm began to sound in my head. I could feel my heart rate accelerate as I broke into a jog then a full run. “Shit,” I said aloud. There was a person slumped forward, tied to the goal post.

Tim.