One morning, I’m sucking down coffees in my kindergarten classroom when two men in suits stroll in. 

“Nice room you got here,” one says. He looks like Steve Buscemi and has a similar kind of menace, a kind not backed up by physical size.

The other one, no bigger, picks up a kid’s art project from the Share Table, smirks at it, then lets it plop back down. “Yeah, nice room,” he says, mockingly.  

You don’t see men in suits in an elementary school unless it’s a dad dropping someone off.

“Can I help you?” I ask. 

“Actually, we’re here to help you,” the Buscemi-adjacent one says. 

The other one holds my gaze. He’s more of a Michael Cera. “We hear you like to help people out, get them what they need. You’re a helper boy.”

I don’t respond. They glance at each other. 

Buscemi: “Thing is, that could get you into a lot of trouble. Not with us, mind you, but with certain people.”

Cera: “We just want to make you aware. So you can avoid problems.”

“So now I’m aware,” I say, still holding his gaze. 

They look at each other. “Yeah, I don’t think you’re taking this serious,” Buscemi says. “I’ll make it clear for you: it’s best you should focus on your Play-Doh and crayons, leave other stuff to the grown-ups.”

“Yeah, like District stuff,” ersatz Michael Cera says. “Psycho-logical evaluations and the like.”

Things become clear. The district is always behind on evaluations, months behind, which is against the law. I had recently advised a parent: “Email the school district that you’re looking forward to seeing the results of your child’s psychological tests in the next ninety days.” When the district knows you know the law, you move to the top of the list. Squeaky wheel rule.

“We’d hate for anything to happen to your classroom,” Cera says, picking up the giraffe puppet from the puppet theater. “These are awfully nice puppets. Bet you paid a pretty penny for them.” 

Actually, I got them from Germany. They’re handmade. That’s the kind of thing I do for my kids. 

“And this painting easel,” Buscemi says, resting a hand on it. “Be a shame if it happened to break.” 

The easel is pricey because it’s double-sided, facilitating a lot of student activity for such a small footprint.

“I think we got his attention now,” Cera says, looking smug. He takes a student pencil from a supply caddy and makes as if to snap it in two. But a kindergarten pencil is a thick pencil, and he underestimates the amount of oomph needed. He struggles with the pencil, then lets up with a wince, rubbing his aching fingers.

“Let me get you an ice pack,” I say.

“Don’t get smart!” he says, still rubbing his fingers. 

Really I wasn’t. It was instinct—it’s just what I do when I see an owie. 

Buscemi pats a bulge under his jacket and says, “Listen, pal, if we have to come back here, it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

“You’re going to shoot me for helping parents get their kids tested?” 

“Shoot you?” Buscemi says, shocked. “We’re not animals!” He reaches into his jacket and removes a cellphone from its holster. “Nah. What we do, see, is we make an anonymous phone call to the district, tell them we saw you manhandle a kid. As you know, per district policy…”

“…I’m automatically placed on leave pending the outcome of an investigation,” I say. He’s got me. 

“And those take months,” he says. “Years, sometimes. You’ll be shuffling papers in a windowless room downtown eight hours a day, a room full of teachers—teachers with unsatisfactory evaluations, incompetent and ineffective teachers, the worst of the worst.” 

Every teacher has heard about this room. It sounds like a nightmare.

“Alright, alright,” I say.

Cera: “Now you’re listening to reason.”

“I knew you were alright,” Buscemi says. He pulls an envelope out of his jacket pocket and hands it to me. “A little something for your classroom fund. So you remember who your friends are.” 

I take the envelope. It feels thick. I think: if those are twenties in there, it’s enough for that new terrarium I wanted. The kids can finally have dart frogs.

Cera is still eying the pencils in the supply caddy. He really wants to be their master.

Buscemi pulls a Nerf bat from the Outdoor Activities bin, gives it a test swing. “Now can you point us to Room 14? There’s a Mrs. Winkleman we need to pay a visit.”

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K. A. Polzin is a writer and cartoonist whose stories have appeared in Subtropics, Wigleaf, EVENT, Natural Bridge, and elsewhere, and whose short humor has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Polzin’s work was selected for Best Small Fictions 2023 and the Fractured Lit Anthology 3, and shortlisted for the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction.