Chapter Three - Time To Go To Work

Jenna and Steve were, upon arrival, ushered into the cavernous lecture hall at Gomer High, and they were promptly segregated by the brass of the school. Jenna was rather well known among the faculty and there were a few on staff who had bounced her on their knees when she was a little girl and her grandfather was the mayor. Steve was the latest in a series of people who would hit the High Schools each year, telling kids that if they wanted to make more money, than they needed to stay in school. He was living proof of that, he thought, he stayed the course, went to UNO, spent over three hundred thousand dollars on his education, and was now in gainful employment. He wanted each of those kids to join him at the table of the productive. He had attended career day each year since he graduated from College, but on as a spectator, generally because he liked the change of scenery and the interruption it brought to his workweek. There were two of these a year. This was not his first as a special guest, but of course, this was the first with Jenna.
The morning itself was quite dull; but Steve found a chance to shine at the presentation in a manner unexpected, for there would be cameras at Career Day. God help anyone who would attempt to get between a camera and Steve Samuels. He set up his cardboard backdrop to the small table allotted him, replete with G.C.C.[1] pencils and balloons to hand out. Jenna had quite the spread too, even with the University’s dumb slogan in red and black framing her person from its perch on the wall. “You know UNO!”. That was precisely the problem, felt Jenna, and she wanted to put a little life into the idea of getting educated; in that, she and Steve had a common link he hadn’t seen before. She was good with her facts and figures, and Steve, would, from time to time wander over to listen to her talk with the kids[2]. Listening to her for a moment made him believe what she was saying, and indeed – for a heartbeat – see himself in that great world she was creating for the kids.
Steve, Jenna, and the couple dozen other presenters spent most of the afternoon making their respective pitches to the faculty, the public access “reporter” who was there, teachers, and several interested parents. He was pleased with his performance.
Steve had cancelled his day’s classes in the hope that the simple manning of a booth in a gymnasium a few paces away from Jenna would turn into coffee, lunch, or a walk around the block, a sojourn to the cinema, drinks at a trendy club, a quick jog, hot dogs in the park, or a power lunch, in which they would detail their plans for the future. None of that was likely to happen. But they did banter with each other.

“Ah, Jenna, now wasn’t that something to tell your kids about?”
“Most certainly, Steve, and for that, we will keep our sense!”
“Yes, we will. I must admire the way you handled the critique of UNO’s music program, leveled at you by that washed-up High School band director, Mr. Leviathan”
“Well, it is easy to do when the target is so large and well-illuminated!”
“To be sure, to be sure, but Jenna, I do indeed hang my hat on your skills, for you made that spiritual recluse look forward to the Bronx Cheer you so gracefully inserted his way.”
“Steve, it is the Irish in me. We are born diplomats”.

Steve and Jenna were on fire. She regaled the students in attendance with her stories of traveling to Greece during her first year of College courtesy of the Anthopoulos Foundation For Women in Maths and Sciences. She hung onto them tightly by offering to help them fill out their applications for free money and plane tickets. They listened to every word she spoke of the time the Dave Matthews Band came to UNO on Earth Day, meeting with the Student Senate over organic, fair-trade coffee. Cool Academia.
Steve told a story about the time he let class out early because he couldn’t get a VCR to start properly.
He may have been a touch starstruck by Jenna.
As Steve and Jenna waited for the public access cameraman to finish filming their respective displays, they visited with another presenter from Career Day, a man Steve knew from G.C.C. as the liaison between UNO and Porto for the purposes of Air Force R.O.T.C. His name was Major Boz Drummond, and his role at Gomer was seen by Steve to be almost ceremonial. He was at GCC a couple times a month to introduce the kids to the program, in the hopes that they might join up. It was a tough sell, and Drummond knew it. Drummond once talked to Steve’s course, about the history of the Air Force, and asked the students to keep in touch with him. They never did.
Steve and Drummond both knew that the real action was not at Gomer Community College – it was at UNO. Each day, across the courtyard from Jenna’s office, young men and women would exercise in the morning, run around the track in their blue sweats, study military history, and prepare themselves for a life in service to the country. This is what Drummond had done, right out of UNO. He had recently come back to Ohio, to help do what had been done for him as a 19 year old. Steve noticed a familiarity that Drummond used with Jenna that Steve himself wouldn’t. It unnerved him to a slight extent, because of his own affection for her. But, he knew that the two of them saw each other often at work. Jenna’s family was well-known enough in Gomer, it made sense for an Air Force Officer to want to get in the good graces of her. But, Steve was convinced, that Boz Drummond was secretly pining for Jenna; after all, which reasonable man wouldn’t be?
Although Steve in fact had every reason to trust Drummond, or at least, to feel that the Major was harmless, his own suspicious angels told him to think otherwise, and Steve obeyed. He was familiar with Drummond’s work; there had been a branch of the Civil Air Patrol at Gomer Community College which Drummond kept his eye on, but as far as Steve knew, this was just a group of kids who hung around with a retired Air Force Reserve Sergeant Phil Fee, who had lost his job at Gomer Industries during the farm crisis. Steve also knew this Sergeant was mad, because in the seven years he had been managing the Gomer Civil Air Patrol’s Weather Emergency Network, out of the 45+ high schoolers who attended, only three of them joined the military- and each one went to the Army National Guard, a veritable slap in the face to the Sergeant’s Holy Mother Air Force. The kids couldn’t be blamed for this. Rather, it was Fee’s approach, it was as if he had a real affection for hardship, and that turned the students away. Drummond came back to put a human face on the Air Force, and to show these patriotic youngsters that Uncle Sam was back in business.. Steve liked the idea, for he was a patriot too, and he had briefly wanted to become a pilot. The Air Force had a want for personnel, and if Steve Samuels could help fix it, then he was ready to report for duty.
But “gosh,” Steve thought, “am I going to have compete with this officer for Jenna’s affection?”
Oh yes, he would. He certainly would.
But, for this day, however, Jenna and Steve were joined at the hip in that auditorium. They had both succeeded. Each in their own way. Jenna, for her silken diplomacy toward the youth of the nation, Steve, because he was able to stand next to her. But now, close to eleven o’clock, it was time to depart.
“Jenna; thank you for the ride home and I hope you have a good time at your Tai-Chi class tonight; I didn’t know you did that sort of thing”.
“Oh yes, it’s very relaxing, after these hectic days”.
“I can imagine. I do something like that, too”.
“You do? Some sort of East-Asian physical ritual?”
“No….actually drinking. But it serves the same purpose for me”.
“Ah, of course”.
“Well –“
“Yes.”
“OK, then, you have a good night”
“You too Steve”.
“Be careful around those Tai Chi guys, don’t let them push you around” said Steve.
“Damn dork” thought Steve.
“Well, they’re pretty tame”.
“OK, goodnight”
“Night Steve”.
“We should talk on the phone soon”.
“Yea…see you”.

Steve dismounted the car, walked up to his front door, and turned around. He was not impressed by his own swallowing of the words to her as their morning ended, but that was his way. He turned around; convinced he’d see her looking back at him. Instead, he saw the tail-lights of her Peugeot, as she turned the corner; likely heading back to work.
And back to work, would Steve now go, after attending once again to Zephyr’s needs. How could he let down his best friend, his partner, his little brown colleague, his equal? He couldn’t. So he made himself late getting back to work; much to Zephyr’s delight. Steve stayed home for a bit longer than customary, making himself a luncheon, and splitting it with his dog.
Steve arrived at GCC to see Herring leaving – always a good sign. He sat at his desk to prepare tomorrow’s notes (a mere formality, as he knew the legend of Elliot Ness as well as he knew the narration of Christ’s birth.) He remembered the bitter shot of watching his old professors come to class with yellowed notes, recent only as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he always wondered how these professors could call themselves such. He was a stickler to new ideas, and he knew full well there weren’t any original thoughts in thirty-year old mimeographed crap, resurrected once a year, so that their patrons could keep their jobs. Steve decided on day one that he would perform each task from scratch. He did know that history couldn’t change; but he felt he could cut through the layers and blow off the dust, and perhaps add a life to a Coolidge, a Morgenthau, or a Namath. He wrote his notes for class – his script- each day; and when done, he would place those notes in a file cabinet, in case any students had questions. Then, once the year was done, he threw them away. He did that each year. To an outside observer, or indeed someone qualified to teach, this was a terrific waste of time. But, it was Steve’s way, or the high-way. And, he had only been there two years.
He prepared fully, delivering a new lesson on an old topic. Such was history. He started by talking of prohibition, and the role of the FBI. He was asked a few questions, making up the answers to them as he went. He had, from time to time, come to the point where he would speak in terms fresh to any historian[3], to gauge the work he needed to do in class.
“Now”, Steve thought, “my day is done. A full morning with Jenna, a light lunch, and the day shall end by playing fetch with my four-legged friend. Yes… completely satisfying”.
Steve had already forgotten that he was not satisfied with his own demeanor toward Jenna. He reasonably could have remembered that he was perpetually somewhere between the grace of a drunken sumo wrestler, and one who may guess another’s weight for cash at a carnival. Steve was however, used to, and quite comfortable with his own revisions. And that familiarity showed him that it was all in all a good day. It was time therefore time for him to go home.
He gathered his belongings, stuffed his briefcase full of random junk and books from Herring’s shelves, which he knew he would never return (but he wanted to read them so badly.) Walking out, to his car, he noticed a little bird being fed by its mother; he saw a small plane in the distance dusting crops. He watched some of his students collect themselves while waiting for the bus, and in the distance, he saw a tan Peugeot. A Peugeot that he knew, he’d been in, earlier that day.
For a moment, Steve had the hope that she was indeed looking for him. But that would not be reasonable; for she had his cell phone number, and could have just called. Who then? For what purpose would she be literally footsteps away, in his backyard, yet in figure, across the river, and far away?“Could it be that she is here to see Drummond?” muttered Steve, under his breath. His drive home was not very good.



[1] Gomer Community College, of course.
[2] Blame this on both a sincerely beguiling level of attention to his own task, coupled with genuine interest in her.
[3] In his own mind, of course.