The Last King of Texas - By Rick Riordan Page 0,40

pipe bombs.

"Always nice to see a familiar face," I told him.

Gregory mumbled something. He didn't meet my eyes.

Next to him sat two guys in Nirvana T-shirts and jeans and plentiful chains clipped to their belt loops. Simon and Blake. They asked me how it was hanging. I asked them how they'd come to choose a medieval literature class and they shrugged and grinned like Class? We're in class?

The last student, in the far corner by the window, mumbled hello but didn't give a name or any other firm indication of gender. He/she looked like a Morticia Addams drag queen.

"Great." I looked at the clock. We'd managed to burn four whole minutes. "So - any questions?"

After some awkward silence and pencil fumbling, one of the grunge guys, Blake, raised his hand and asked about class hours. Would he still receive full credit for the first three months of the semester even though What's-his-name had gotten bumped off?

"Yes," I said. "Full credit, even from What's-his-name."

That emboldened the others.

Morticia asked if their essays had ever been graded. I said that most of them had been salvaged from the bomb blast and were currently on my desk. They'd be graded soon.

Marfa lowered her knitting needles and asked Brian the carpet salesman if he'd really be able to drop the course. Wasn't it too late in the semester? Brian told her she would need special permission from the dean's office, but he was pretty sure she could get it if she raised enough hell. Marfa looked at me to see if that was true.

I tried to look sympathetic. I wrote down the question on my notepad. "I'll find out. Something else?"

Simon, the second grunge boy, raised his hand and complained that Dr. Brandon had been, well, a psychopath, and was I one too?

Gregory the mail boy broke in. "I liked those stories."

Morticia groaned. "Oh, man, you're nuts. I was all like - I don't want to know how it feels to be impaled, okay?"

I wrote on my notepad, NO IMPALING. "You're talking about the Crusade narratives?"

Several heads nodded. Edie informed me that Dr. Brandon had been obsessed with violence. More heads nodded.

Sergeant Irwin, USAF, retired, raised his hand. "The Marie de France stories. We bought this whole book and only read one. Some of the others aren't quite so, well, offensive. Maybe we could read them."

Edie agreed. She wanted to know if there were some romances in the book, some without werewolves.

"I liked that one," complained Gregory.

Edie and Morticia started to argue with him.

Blake hollered, "Come on, man! It's this guy's first day and stuff."

The grumbling died down. Morticia and Gregory and Edie kept glaring at each other. Marfa was giving me the eye now, wiggling her eyebrows in time with her knitting needles.

"Great," I said again. We'd now ripped through twelve minutes. "I noticed the old syllabus was a little heavy on the gore. Maybe the Marie de France book would be a good place for a fresh start. How about the first three lais for Friday? We'll revisit Bisclavret and move to Lanval and Guigemar."

There was some general mumbled assent.

That gave me an opening to lecture a little bit about Marie de France, about the courtly love debate and the Anglo-Norman world. I kept stopping to ask if my students had heard all this before. They looked amazed. A few of them even bothered taking notes.

I was just wrapping things up when George Berton came in, dressed in his usual sixties leisure clothes and Panama hat. He held Jem by one hand and an enormously full brown paper bag in the other.

I kept lecturing about the difficulties of translating Anglo-Norman alliteration. George and Jem tiptoed around the back of the room and quietly took two desks next to Gregory. Jem waved at me, then pulled a new action figurine out of his OshKosh overalls and held it up for me to see.

George looked at me seriously and pantomimed straightening a tie. My hand started to go up to my collar, then I stopped myself. George grinned.

"Well," I concluded. "That's probably enough for the first day. We'll look at those first three lais on Friday. I'll keep the same office hours as Dr. Brandon. Anything else?"

Edie the housewife raised her hand. "I read in the newspaper yesterday - "

"About the bomb blast," I interrupted. "Thank you, but I'm fine."

"No..." She frowned, as if my assumption that she'd been interested in my welfare had confused her. "I just wanted to ask,