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His carpool driver announced himself with a rat-a-tat-tat of his knuckles on the doorframe. When Perry looked up Ray threw up the Vulcan V in greeting with one hand, the other being tied up with his briefcase and a stack of student papers and his car keys being in his teeth. While Perry watched he spit them out, caught them with his free hand, wiped them off shamelessly on his khakis and then tossed them up in the air with a jangle to catch them again. "Live long and prosper," he said. "Hey there, Paddington Perr. You ready to roll?"

He was wearing a shirt about the same color as his blue Miata and a tie patterned with Barrel-o'-Monkeys. When Perry had come to Meadowview High School for the first time Ray had been wearing a tie that was white and covered in red hearts, like cartoon boxers. They'd had a meeting to welcome the newest faculty member, complete with coffee and donuts; over the course of the meeting the English teacher had proceeded to string donuts on his boxer tie while the principal stared, and at several points referred to Perry as "the Lily of the Westerman" and "How the Westerman Was Won." From that point on, for a short while, he was unsure whether Ray Gordon was mocking him. He seemed to be mocking a lot of people. He had a kind of manner that either seemed like he had a special interest in you or he was pulling a fast one on you and would embarrass you if you fell for it. For a while Perry had been reluctant to fall for it.

But he wore him down. Eventually, either Ray was a really persistent mocker or he really did like Perry Westerman -- because he showed up at his office door pretty much all the damn time, chattered his head off, asked him about his classes, told him about his own classes, warned him about certain students, raved about others, and otherwise made it pretty clear that, well, he'd be damned, but Ray Gordon actually liked him. It took them that long to discover they lived in the same neighborhood. It didn't take them long after that to start carpooling.

"Or I can hang out here while you finish grading," Ray suggested. "Like your stalker. Your lovelorn stalker. Hey, do you mind if we stop at DD's on the way back? I've got a hankering."

"Crullers. 'Crullers,' he says," said Ray with a melodramatic sigh as he heaved his (much less organized) stack of papers under his arm and moved aside so Perry could leave his office. "You know, real men don't eat crullers, Westerman. You know what they eat? They eat waffle breakfast sandwiches. Waffle breakfast sandwiches are like having sex with a tractor trailer in a parking lot."

They walked side by side down the faculty hallway and hit the stairs in short order. They were both on the second floor, which as they reasoned was the optimal floor for the perfect zenith of lessened-student-traffic and minimal-stair-climbing. They had then high-fived after this revelation. Theirs was a burgeoning relationship comprised of much high-fiving. "You have much yet to learn in the halls of Meadowview, grasshopper," Ray said and clapped him on the shoulder, inadvertently also hitting him with the keys. "But that's all right. You'll never reach the end of the road when you're traveling with me."

Mr. Gordon cut a distinctly nerdier figure than Dr. Westerman, but people had gotten used to them walking together now; Ray waved to a group and tossed what appeared to be an incredibly white version of the 'wesside' gesture to the janitor, who laughed. "You know, I never thank my lucky stars enough for you, Wes," he commented. "Before I had you I always walked to my car with Fran, from Photography, and man does Fran talk. You think I talk. You haven't met Fran. But now," they opened the double-doors, "now I've got you under my spell, and your soul is aaaall mine for the taking. Just ask Billjo."

At least Ray was a good driver. He didn't seem like the kind of person who ought to be a good driver, being impulsive, distractable, and full of bad ideas, but when he got behind the wheel of a car his propensity for distraction was abruptly curtailed. The 1996 Miata was, as far as Perry knew, the closest thing to a family member he had in Destiny City, aside from a Japanese sister-in-law staying with him. If nothing else he had an eye for it and for the passenger(s) in it that branded him, for Perry Westerman, a pretty decent guy as well as a pretty cool guy.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Sometimes when I'm on the road with one of my other friends," he was saying, "and there's no other cars around, like, at night, I like making the car dance." He mimed swerving the wheel back and forth. "Especially if I've got music on. Lord Al-mighty does he freak out. Sight for sore eyes, Westward Ho. Sight for sore eyes."

The DD's wasn't too far away. That was one of the nice things about big cities, though DC had Chicago beat for DD's. "Not that I'd ever do that to you," said Ray, and winked at Perry in the rearview mirror.

They pulled into the parking lot. "On account of you don't freak out," concluded Ray. "You in a drive-thru or walk-in kinda mood? I gotta say, I'm not liking that drive-thru line." He eyed it. It was about four cars long. Patience, thy name was not Raymond Gordon.

Something about that made Ray laugh, but instead of explaining he looked at Perry, shook his head, and pulled into a parking space. He leaned over to squint into one of the side mirrors and, finding the car was slightly crooked in the space, backed it out again to correct it. He was one of those people.

"C'mon," he said, shifted the car to P and turned off the ignition. He seemed like the kind of person who ought to have fuzzy dice hanging from his rearview mirror, but he didn't, just a pair of prescription sunglasses that he put on when it was particularly sunny out. Apparently he deemed it particularly sunny out, as he picked his spectacles off with two fingers, slid them into the breast pocket of his shirt, took the sunglasses off the lanyard they were hanging on and put those on. The lanyard was patterned red-and-white and read, MEADOWVIEW '07, GOIN' TO HEAVEN.

They got out and locked the doors and then strolled inside, joining the fairly sparse crowd of people at a suburban Dunkin Donuts at this time of day. There were a couple of Meadowview students not yet changed out of their uniforms, but no one either of them recognized.

They got in line. Ray tipped the shades back on his forehead. "You picking this one up?" he asked, glancing at Perry. That had been their custom with respect to McCafe and Starbucks so far, since Ray did all the driving between the two of them; still, Ray usually asked.

Ray grinned like a thief making off with a painting at 'Bank of the Westerman,' then abruptly sadfaced. This wasn't the same as 'making a face that was sad.' It was more like 'making a face that was sadde.' "Mercy me," he said, "what-ever shall I do," and lined up in front of Perry, letting his sunglasses fall back onto his nose before he tried to read the menu. The pair of chattery Meadowview students chattered at one another for a little while before placing their orders, which was not really something either of them could criticize, having held up several drive-thru windows by doing exactly the same thing.

Ray stepped up to the counter first. The cashier finished punching something into the register before looking up at Ray. "Medium coffee," he said, "and one Waffle Breakfast Sandwich --"

"We don't carry Waffle Breakfast Sandwiches any more," said the cashier.

"You what."

"We -- don't carry Waffle Breakfast Sandwiches any more at this location," repeated the cashier, "sir."

"You what."

The cashier looked nervous, and glanced at the guy manning the espresso machine, who wasn't paying attention and didn't seem to care anyway; afloat and alone, he looked back at his customer with a look of trepidation. "Um, I think it's Dunkin Donuts-wide, actually --"

"Noooo!" cried out Ray to the heavens in Darth Vader-ish anguish, which earned them the stares of most of the people in the DD's, and fell to his knees with his hands up in the air, which earned them the stares of the rest of the people in the DD's, including the espresso guy. Some of them were starting to look at Perry with suspicion.

Ray opened one eye, then the other, from where they'd been scrunched-up in fake grief. If there was someone embarrassed in this store it was probably not him. In fact, if there was someone who was the opposite of embarrassed in this store -- like, anti-embarrassed, a sort of antimatter of embarrassed -- it was probably him. A man who was willing to tell his boss that he could take the last Oreo in the box but he could never take his freee-dom probably had a different embarrassment threshold to the rest of the population.

"You make a salient point," he said. Then he unfolded, stood up, and put both his hands on the counter with his sunglasses on his nose. "Hi. We want a box of crullers, two iced coffees, one with cream and one with sugar, and two raspberry jelly-stuffed."