“Levine hates you,” Graham told Neal.

“I know.”

This wasn’t exactly news to Neal. He knew Levine hated him and he was tired of it. Really tired of it.

“He figures you got a free ride. Fancy private school. Ivy League. Now graduass school. All paid for. Doesn’t think you’re worth it.”

“He’s probably right.”

“Probably.”

“I don’t want his job, Dad.”

That was the problem, Neal thought. Levine knew that Neal was being groomed. Neal knew it; Graham knew it. The Man was paying for his master’s degree, for the upscale clothing, for the speech teacher who had taken away Neal’s street dialect. But groomed for what? Neal didn’t want to run Friends. He wanted to be an English professor. Honest to God.

“I know. You want to teach poetry to fags.”

Well, not exactly. Eighteenth-century English novels… Fielding, Richardson, Smollett.

“How many times do I have to say it?” Neal asked. He had told Ed. He had told everybody. He had written The Man. Don’t put me through any more college, because I’m not going to stay with you forever. It was all right, they said. “Work for us when you can, part-time, case by case. No strings attached.” Then they jerk you out of classes two weeks before finals. You don’t get to be an English professor by flunking your graduate English seminars. Even getting a B could be death.

“Maybe if you hadn’t pronged his wife,” Graham said.

The train was pulling into the grimy Providence suburbs.

“She wasn’t his wife then,” Neal said. He’d been over this ground so many times. “Christ, I introduced them.”

“Maybe Ed just figures you got everything he should have had. First.” Neal shrugged. Maybe that was true. But he hadn’t asked for any of it.