It was getting late and dark, and he’d gotten Professor Dave a little too tipsy on his reward for looking up the child support documents. Although it had taken the prof only five minutes to come up with the info, it took Sam five hours to sufficiently wine and dine and “catch up” the apparently overworked and under-appreciated law professor. He had poured out his guts about Gulf A&M, even his grandiose, yet unrealistic, idea of leaving it entirely. He’d also poured beer from numerous pitchers. This was considered as the price of his “retainer fee,” if Sam was serious about those research services. Dave had said as much through a lazy, beery mouth. He said other, more causal things, too, like how he felt lonely in a house full of wife and children. At that point, Sam decided it was time to head back to the campus.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Dave said, looking down, his hands shoved down deep into his coat pockets.

“Hey,” Sam said, pushing him a little. “I’m sick of it, too. That was the first thing I told you.”

“No, I mean . . .”

“Come on, Dave. Don’t start that again.”

“The dating part is the best,” Dave said. “Fuck like rabbits, everything’s great. Then it’s all downhill.”

“Dave . . .”

“I mean, I love her. And I fucking love my kids, man.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is this why you don’t drink? Because you get all maudlin like this? Or do you always feel like this?”

“I don’t know.”

Sam looked across the street to a row of college-kid restaurants. “You sure you ate enough, Dave?” Sam was beginning to wonder how effectively a loaf of bread would soak up the booze. Perhaps there was a hospital around where he could get his blood transfused. Saline solution. Ipecac.

Sam checked on his friend again, making sure he was keeping up with his pace, Gulf A&M still a few blocks away. He was walking fine. He didn’t even look intoxicated. But the things he was saying . . .

“I guess you can’t understand,” Dave said. “Because you never, at least when I knew you, you never really dated anyone.”

“I thought you said dating was the fun part.”

“It is, it is. That’s what I mean.”

Sam shrugged. “I dated a little. Just never got serious.”

“See?” Dave said it even louder. “That’s what I mean.”

“It wasn’t intentional. I had nothing against getting serious. Just getting serious with those specific women, I guess.”

Dave shook his head. “You don’t know what I mean.”

“Alright, Dave.”

They continued walking the next block in silence. They’d already been talking in circles, and so there was no point risking getting lost. Once they had turned the corner onto the old campus street, Sam could hear the familiar sounds of protest, beating drums, human voices collected in an indistinguishable wash of chanting, and above it all, someone with a bullhorn, yelling.

“They’re at it again,” Dave said, rubbing his head, wincing. “Every day, man. Day and night every day.”

“What do they want?”

Dave started chuckling. “Justice. When do they want it? Now.”

“No, I mean, what do they really want?”

“I don’t know. What did you really want when you did this sort of thing?”

“I never protested in college. Did you?”

He shrugged and said, “Yeah.”

“So what did you want?”

“I don’t know . . . Girls.”

Sam laughed. “That’s a noble cause.”

“Yep. Something to get behind.”

Dave was also the sort to get a little perverted at even the first drink. He liked to call it gregariousness, even back in his early years at George Washington, the frat years, before he’d climbed out of the bleary pit of adolescent debauchery. Before his father made him get serious and sober or get the fuck out of such an expensive college. Sam remembered the conversation. He could practically hear Mr. Blevins’ voice coming through the phone, and through the thin bedroom wall between them.

“I feel like I’m leading you astray again,” Sam said. “I come to town, see you for half a day, and already I’m worried I’ll get a call from your old man.”

“The old man’s dead.”

“Oh.” Sam held on to his arm. “Dude . . .”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Dave kept trudging along. “Maybe that’s where all this darkness is coming from.”

They walked in silence again, only the silence was just between them. Beyond their block was the glowing herd of student protestors, swirling around one of the monuments at the main entrance to the courtyard. Their chants were more distinguishable now, but Sam paid no attention. Instead, he directed his gaze to his friend next to him. From college, he really didn’t look like he’d changed. More gray hairs, but aside from that . . .

Had he changed? Definitely, he’d changed somehow, inside. And it was a change that had only happened a few days before.

He felt something at his back, then looked to see that it was Dave, reaching over, patting him.

“Hey,” Dave said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Sam nodded. “Me, too.”

They crossed over the busy Alcroix Boulevard and then stepped up onto the Gulf A&M sidewalk. The campus protest scene was much the same, the bucket drums, signs, millennial angst. Only now, they’d been joined by the riot police, the officers decked out in imposing black uniforms, covered head to toe in armor. Shields. Batons. Although they stood motionless in a big column, their very presence felt menacing.

Still, the protestors continued on. They were blocking the main entrance now.

“Are they gonna block us?” Sam asked.

Dave cursed under his breath. “Why the hell did we come through the front side?”

“Should we go around back?”

“No,” Dave said defiantly. “Fuck ’em.”

“What?”

“Let’s go through. Fucking plow through, like football.”

“Dave.”

“It’s our fucking school, too.”

“Dave, think about it . . .”

“I am.”

“A professor can’t break through the protest. They’d eat you alive.”

Sam chuckled. “What, these kids?”

“It would be career suicide.”

Dave hadn’t slowed down his pace. He was heading right for the main blockade, fists balled up at his sides. “Well, let’s just talk to them,” he said, an odd tension creeping into his voice. “Let’s start a discussion. That’s what they want, right? A dialogue?”

Sam pulled him back, directing him away. “I already told you about that.”

Dave swatted at his arm and struggled free. “Half of these kids are probably still virgins. Probably never even had a job, for fuck’s sake.”

“Like you?” Sam grabbed him again, harder, bear hugging him away from the protest. “When you were a student protestor?”

“I wasn’t a virgin,” Dave said, suddenly laughing, and breaking free again but walking away from the protest line.

“Good move, Professor.” Sam said. “Just get back to your ivory tower.”

Dave rubbed his face while letting out a groan, a sound of an anguished professor that Sam knew all too well. “I still have some more fucking papers to grade,” he said while holding his head.

Sam laughed and said, “Maybe I can help with that.”

“No. You’ve helped me enough.”

They had avoided the protest, but now there was a new barrier to cross. A gaggle of media. From independents with live-streaming smart phones, to the wires and lights of old legacy media.

“Excuse me,” Dave said to a guy holding a boom mic. The guy moved out of the way. “No, I mean, can I ask you a question?”

“How ’bout you?” Sound Guy asked. “Can we interview you?”

“No,” Sam quickly said.

“I’m just wondering,” Dave said. “What are they protesting about?”

“The refugee crisis.”

“What about it?”

Sound Guy rolled his eyes. “They’re against a bill that might block acceptance of thousands of refugees into Louisiana. You know, human rights.”

“What? Dave said, squinting. “Human rights means just anyone can come pouring in our country?”

Sound Guy looked away and held up his mic. “Go ask them,” he finally said.

“Dave, let’s go.”

Dave turned to Sam. “I’m all for helping refuges, our country has been doing that since forever. But this is a mass influx. And they go completely unvetted, from big-time terrorist countries, even!”

“Alright, keep your voice down.”

“I’m not cold-hearted, man. I’m not. You know that.”

“I know,” Sam said softly, hoping the softer tone would be infectious. “I know.”

“But you know ISIS is loving this shit.”

Living and working in D.C., Sam had heard it all, from top to bottom, from both sides of the political aisle. And as evidenced by the protesters there, the debate had spread across the country. Would “America’s identity” really change with a million or so Muslim immigrants? He wasn’t so concerned about that as he was about terrorists piggybacking on the movement, blending in and infiltrating, and then setting up sleeper cells all across the country. It wasn’t impossible. And Sam knew that the government was broken enough to let it happen.

Still, what about the rest of the ninety-nine percent of these displaced people? He’d seen the pictures all over the news about the hardships of these migrants, the starved and trampled and drowned; that picture of a floating dead toddler. It still haunted him.

“It’s a tough situation,” Sam said when they finally cleared the noise and chaos of the protestors and the media personalities scrambling around it.

“It’s fucking scary, man.”

“I know.”