Apostolic appetites abundantly appeased.

As I met Keith for lunch yesterday before girding my extremities with the shackles of work in the OIS, I happened to notice a small sign on the register/ordering counter. This sign, in smallish letters and with demonstrative pictures, showed the Penn Station's

LENTEN SPECIALS.

Yes. Lent: a season of deep, moving spirtuality for the devout Catholic/Christian. Lent: a season of self-denial, proving through action that one can be close to the Lord through penance. Lent: obviously not a time when people can eat anything even remotely tasty. As I looked over their Lenten Specials (as the hordes of ravenous coeds permitted), I noticed that they were, essentially, punishment on bread. Oh! Gave up cheese and meat for Lent? Then tell me something: why the blue eff would you go to Penn Station for lunch? [Penn Station: an "East Coast" style sub place, famous because they, like Quiznos, toast the bread, for those of you who aren't corn livin'].

Today: more OIS fun. And by "fun" I mean "something akin to watching pale white worm-like parasites burrow out of your skin." Let me set the stage:

The Office of International Services, perched high in Franklin Hall. At the Front Desk, Domonic Potorti toils alone, utterly bereft of aid while his trainee unexpectedly takes an obnoxiously loud call from his 'rents in Pakistan in the hallway; it's in Urdu.

It's about 1:30, and a stately African visiting scholar glides into the office and signs in. The white hair at his temples gleams in the maddening flourescent light that makes me want to kill again. Let me rephrase: makes me NEED to kill again. Anyway, he sits quietly and when called glides back to the desk with a tiny piece of scrap paper in his hand.

Me: Hello! What can I do to help you today?
Stately African Visiting Scholar: Hello. I am a Fulbright scholar.
Me: I see.
SAVS: I was told that someone from my country will be coming on another Fulbright.
Me: Yay!
SAVS: Who is he?
Me: {forehead wrinkles slightly} Say again?
SAVS: Well, I don't know who he is, but I thought you might.
Me: Well sir, that's a violation of privacy rights for me to tell you his name without his permission.
SAVS: But the IIE (the Fulbright Award people) told me he was coming!
Me: Well, uh, maybe you could contact them and they could tell you.
SAVS: Can you call them for me?

At this point, five more people have come in to sign in and wait, patiently, for their turns with me. When they heard him ask if I could call IIE for him, which, uh, there's really no way I was gonna anyway, they all braced themselves for the unimaginable. One young lady, who surely was there merely to pick up a document, produced from her Hello Kitty pencil-bag a tiny engraved flask that she began to suckle upon with vigor. A young gentleman took out his Bic lighter and played that game wherein you make a wee cup with your hand and fill it with fumes from the lighter by depressing the switch without sweeping the wheel; once "filled" with the fumes, you then make a flame and when you open your hand a tiny fireball erupts forth.

[Domonic lost nearly all of his... knuckle, yes, knuckle... hair playing this game once]

The horror continued.

SAVS: I don't know why you won't tell me who he is or where he is. I want to help him.
Me: Sir, maybe you don't understand. If I give you information about him, I am breaking the law.
SAVS: OK then. Can you tell me where he is going to live?
Me: No.

{agitation!}

SAVS: Can you tell me his department? [scowls at the scrap of paper]
Me: No.
SAVS: Where is the Education Building?
Me: {grabs campus map} Is he going to be in Education?
SAVS: I am not going to tell you that.

{!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!}

Me: Fine. {uses highlighter to point to Education Building} You need to go here.
SAVS: Which bus do I take?

At this point, the young East Asian woman who'd been pickling her liver reached for a smaller vial, one with a greyish liquid and a tiny Hello Kitty skull and crossbones emblazoned upon it.

SAVS: Also: does your office coordinate to pick him up from Indianapolis Airport? Can you go get him when he comes?

This goes on for nearly twenty minutes. Mere nanoseconds before the patient, albeit drunken, East Asian took her own life, the Stately African Visiting Scholar determined that he'd get nowhere. That, and I was warming up my taser under the desk; a quick whiff of ozone was all he needed to get the hint. He left in swirl of robes and cologne, and I helped our young female Asian with her [blessedly] ordinary problem and sent her staggering home. That left one bright-eyed Asian man for me to help. He looked familiar. Sooooo familiar.

[tiny hairs on back of neck hackle]

Hello, he said. My grandfather passed away and I need to go home to Korea.

Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss. Let's get you ready to go. Can I see your documents?

{shuffle shuffle shuffle}

Well, it looks like we need to get you a new travel document. Can you wait a few minutes while one of our advisors fixes it up for you?

He leaves to go move his car. In the meantime, I take the form he's filled out and I take it to an advisor, flipping through the copies of the passport information as I do so. I stop dead in my tracks.

His...wife...is... [FLASHBACK!]

His wife was the woman who had, this summer, basically accused me, personally, of doing everything short of knife-raping Congolese orphans. In between near hysterical weeping, flailing like a newborn giraffe coming off opium and pursing her lips so hard that they nearly caused sparks, she explained to me that I was inept, incompetent, and that I, singularly, had made it so that she couldn't get what she needed done accomplished. When I summoned the Senior Associate Director, she called him a liar. Finally I called upon the Dean himself to deal with her; with tact and grace befitting his position, he talked to her for a good half hour before she loped out of the office, broken and chastised, casting one last dagger-filled glance over her shoulder at me as she did so. Even in photocopy, her visage made my bowels roil ominously.

Now I know why she didn't come: she knew I'd cut her, and cut her real bad.

Today, in the musty depths of a Vatican storeroom filled with fingerbones, skulls and vials of congealed blood from hundreds of little-known saints, the Catholic Church pulled the file of Saint Jude, scribbled a few notes on the inside of the manila envelope, and refiled it.

Yet another miracle attibuted to his penchant for lost causes.

I got a 92 on my French exam.

Sigh.

I remain, as ever,

Dom