If Keyser Soze were a substitute teacher

A fantasy that brings me joy.

You know that last scene from The Usual Suspects? Kevin Spacey plays this doufy guy who’s been called in to tell a detective the story of a big crime that just went down and keeps mentioning the evil and elusive ringleader, Keyser Soze. Leaving the station, Spacey limps down the road with the simple, slack face we’ve been watching throughout the movie, and as he walks he smoothly loses the limp and transitions to the healthy, confident pace of a successful and exceedingly clever man. Meanwhile, the detective is putting the details of the story together and he realizes that the man who just limped out of his room is Keyser Soze himself. Drat!

(Look, I’m sorry if I just spoiled The Usual Suspects for you, but it came out in like 1878, so maybe you should get out more.)

Anyway, I am just picturing Kevin Spacey as a substitute teacher, in a completely fictional situation that is in no way related to real life. Let’s say, for example, Keyser agreed to a several-day assignment, and during the last day he just couldn’t take it anymore.

Hypothetically.

Why would he get to that point? I have a few ideas. Maybe  the students behave disrespectfully and don’t even care if he writes them up because they say nothing will come of it; maybe security guards who remove students from the classroom just drop them off in other classrooms so that they can entertain a fresh group of people; maybe he is repeatedly put into classrooms with no lesson plans or attendance lists;  maybe the principal walks in during one of these classes, to Keyser’s great relief, and tells him and the students that she IS going to go downstairs and get to the bottom of the situation and she IS going to be right back –  and even though the students tell Keyser, “She ain’t never coming back,” maybe he believes her. Maybe he waits.

Maybe she never comes back.

(These are just a few ideas. The internet is full of more.)

Let’s say that on the last day of the assignment he checks in at the front desk, and finds that in addition to the regular schedule, he should give up both his prep and his lunch to fill in elsewhere, and hey, it’s no big deal because he can just eat during a half-free time around 9:20 a.m. Cool, right? Except that maybe, in spite of desperately wanting to take the high road, he just can’t do it anymore. (There’s also a good chance he’s near tears at this point, but he’ll deny it if asked.) With the support of  some texts from his husband driver with the messed up face, he determines that he gave this situation his all and it’s time to cut his losses.

This is how I picture it happening: During midmorning “lunch,” he works out a squinchy face. He holds his stomach and in a raspy voice tells the secretary, “I’m so sorry, but I’m not feeling well. I can probably hold out to finish the morning, but then I need to go home.” For the next two periods he manages to look perplexed and ill. At the bell he gives a sad but brave wave to the secretary, who clucks sympathetically. (Maybe he even covers his mouth in a faux gesture of protection.) He speaks to a fellow teacher in passing and tells her, “I’d better go. You don’t want what I have.” (Yeah, the afternoon off.) And he shuffles, slowly and haltingly, down the hall.

Turning a corner, out of sight of the office, he straightens up and quickens his pace, but the squinchy face remains. And then finally, out the doors, he smiles and takes a deep breath. Hmm, what’s for lunch? Wendy’s? Sandwich from home? He knows he is leaving this building for the last time, and so he is free. He does not sing until he is in the car.

Although the real Keyser Soze got away in a shiny black Jaguar that met him some blocks away from the police station, I like to think that the character from my fantasy threw his hands in the air and whooped with joy while driving away in a minivan.