San Francisco (13) --- A walk across the Berkeley campus (Teaser: "Freedom Fries")

University of California, Berkeley---market stand near the entrance

So we're visiting Berkeley across the bay and in particular the campus of UCB, because our first, still unfinished novel "Freedom Fries" is partially set there, with Pamela Woods (fictional) as the dean of Berkeley Law School, John Yoo (real; the legal brain behind the Bush/Cheney waterboarding policy) on the faculty of said school, and a harebrained subplot to abduct Yoo and somehow press him to confess to evil deeds, preferably not by waterboarding. In order to execute the plan we need to know where Yoo parks his car. Zack, Leona and Liz are co-conspirators, and Justin Bieber (fictional) is the school's vice dean; the plot is set in 2009, the year (or more precisely the week) that Justin Bieber, the Canadian singer, finally breaks through.

Not the parking lot of Berkeley  Law School ...

They need to know where Yoo parks his car; else the plan would not work. He has stopped using the parking garage in the basement, and the rumor mill---a defective tool in Yoo’s case with his few friends---the rumor mill has it that he is upset by hostile bumper stickers on his Lexus and scared of water-boarding related scratches.

... but the parking lot of the physics department (you can read it, right: it says: "Parking space reserved for Nobel Laureate.") 

Zack and Leona are at Barbara’s cabin, Liz is studying Supreme Court opinions, Jim is helping her, somebody has to find out. It is fairly urgent. She collects the secret phone---Zack could call any minute now---hides it in her bag, and leaves the office. She will take up position in the lobby, where she will play the Populist Dean. The populist dean is expected of her anyhow, occasionally, and her performance is not without merit (despite mixed reviews), especially on Friday afternoons when people want to go home early, an inclination she applauds with one hand and dismisses with the other. Anyhow, there she stands, expansive as always (not always, only since twenty years), dispensing kisses, Hi’s, compliments (“you look great”), compliments (“you look great”), feedback (“we missed you at the budget meeting, where were you”), more compliments (“where did you get that tan?”), as her academic subjects are drifting toward TGI weekend.

Freedom Fries --- Chapter 4, Part I ("We didn't keep America safe")

Previously, George W. Bush has retired, and a change of heart. Events ensue, involving John Yoo, professor at Berkeley law school and author of the infamous torture memos of the Bush administration, Pamela Nachtrieb Timbers, dean of said law school, George Lukacs, who was Pamela's lover in the distant past and has invented hedge funds in the meantime, a certain President Hu, another of Pamela's (very former) lovers, and Samuel Fisher, Founder of LYNX, a TV network of fair and balanced repute (who was never Pamela's lover and possibly never will be because he's gay). Fisher isn't happy with the ratings and experiments with new people meters that measure a TV-audience's reaction by telepathic means. 

Pamela wants to get rid of Yoo, and Lukacs has promised to help. But for now, we are back at Chapel Hill, Bush's farm, where the change of heart continues. 

Laura studies the mirror next to the fridge. She had just dismissed George for getting into another tussle with the silverware. He had offered to help with the dishes, and she had turned him down again, but he had insisted this time and followed her to the kitchen and started to load the dishwasher. She persisted, he persisted. She had won, however.

Chapel Hill, G.W. Bush's  farm in Crawford, Texas

Ninety percent of Americans marry at least once, and twenty percent of all marriages are distressed at any point in time, statistically. Ours isn’t distressed, statistically, she thinks. Not at all, it’s not going downhill. Texas is flat.

What are the signs? You know what the signs are. Well, she had always corrected his malapropisms and his grammar, even during their engagement period, and Doubya had always gleefully accepted her advice — not that it made any difference, but still. Yes, she has monitored his email correspondence lately, and Doubya had, in fact, ordered a luxury edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species, and, yes, she was concerned. Not that she has any problem with evolution herself, but why Darwin now? Well, it’s only a luxury edition, perhaps it’s meant as a practical joke for the coffee table. Doubya’s grin, it could be so sweet. Darwin as a pocket book would be more serious. But he had also ordered a set of magnetic poetry for the fridge. He had always been proud of not being a poet. Leaving messages on the fridge? What kind of messages?