Not This Time
11
Manon
WORK WAS A HASSLE. My class schedule forced me to leave Emily at the college daycare center while I was in class. I didn’t want her to be in daycare while I worked, too. But we were just coming into the prime listing/selling season. I needed an inventory if I was going to make money this spring and summer. I made phone calls with Emily sitting on my lap. I did neighborhood research with Emily on my back. I pulled comps and did market research with Emily asleep in her stroller beside me. And I made cold calls in the neighborhood with Emily in a chest carrier to keep her warm.
“Oh! Well, we have been trying to decide if it will be a good market this spring. We were thinking of moving to a bigger place. My wife is pregnant. Is that a baby?”
“Yes. This is little Emily. She’s learning to sell real estate. You can’t start too young.”
“Well, come in. Honey! There’s an agent from that real estate company here. The one who sent us a postcard.”
“Good timing! Bring her in and let’s talk!” the wife said from the kitchen. They introduced themselves. I already knew they were Robyn and Donald Silverman. I did research before I did cold calls. She offered me coffee or tea and I accepted tea. I’d never acquired a taste for coffee, even though I drank one occasionally.
“This really is good timing. We were just sitting at the dinner table discussing whether or not this was going to be a good time to sell,” Donald said.
“But really, it wasn’t much of a conversation when you’ve got two little ones to take care of. You know how it is with children,” Robyn said. “But you have such a little angel.”
“She’s usually pretty content to just cuddle and nap about this time. You’re expecting again?”
“Yes. You know men. They talk about chastity belts for women, but I might have to get a padlock for his zipper. Every time I walk by… You just wait. You’ll see what I mean before long. Men only give you two months before they want sex again!”
“Robyn! You’ll scare her. Let’s talk real estate,” Donald said, rolling his eyes. Nonetheless, I noticed his hand was on her thigh, around her shoulders, or under her butt the entire time we talked. I sort of thought she was handling him just as much.
It was cool. It gave me a strange sense of hope that there were relationships between men and women where the two were really into each other, like Lily and I were.
We didn’t sign a contract, but I was pretty confident that we would. Robyn was a little surprised at how young I was. But I showed them my sales record for the past six months and they were pretty impressed. I’d visited my two listed clients the first of December to find out the level of urgency they had for the sale. Both were fine with taking a three-month break, so we suspended the listings until March. The Silvermans’ house would be a perfect addition when I did my spring promotion. I had the campaign all planned and Gordon was on board with it. I knew he was egging on his other agents to get listings, but no one seemed to have the drive to get a listing. And without inventory, you were at the mercy of other agents. Like me.
“Your paper shows a unique perspective,” the note from Professor Sutton said. “Unfortunately, Massenet had quite a different opinion of the opera. Still. He’s dead. I’m giving you an ‘A’ for this and encourage you to keep developing your views. Opera critics seldom reflect what the composer intended.”
Music Appreciation was another of those classes that had two hundred people in it. A liberal arts education had to include certain introductory classes that were simply required. Most of the arts classes—Music Appreciation, Art Appreciation, and Intro to Theatre—were overfilled auditoriums that had three lectures a week. We’d already gone through the part of the course where Professor Sutton played excerpts from famous classical pieces and had us identify them. Then he brushed through some theory and finally he was on to his obvious passion, opera.
My class requirement included two papers of which I’d submitted the first and received my grade with a sigh of relief. But I was concerned that we were coming up to the spring opera and everyone was required to put in fifteen hours of work on the set, costumes, props, or production. That included anything from helping dress the singers to pulling the curtain. I was sitting outside Professor Sutton’s office waiting for an appointment to discuss my problem with fifteen hours of ‘community service.’ I had a baby, damn it!
And already I was running late to daycare because he was running late with his office hours.
His door opened and a boy came out of the office. Okay. Young man. He was a male of the species. He was kind of cute in a gangly, long-haired, scraggly kind of way, but lately, every boy I saw seemed kind of cute. He flopped down on a chair and Dr. Sutton’s secretary rolled her eyes.
“Didn’t go well?” she asked.
“Not terrible, but… Hey,” he said turning to me. “You’re next. Just try to put him in a good mood before I have to go back in, okay?” I looked at him a little strangely. “I’m Bruce Wayne, technical director. And no, I am no relation to Batfuckingman. Better go in. Sorry he’s not in a better mood.” I looked at the secretary. She nodded her head toward the open door and I stepped up to it.
“Come in. Come in! I don’t bite. I’m impressed with your paper on Manon. I’m actually anxious to hear what you have to say about it after you see the production.”
“I can’t believe you actually read and remember my paper. There are at least two hundred people in that class,” I said.
“Yes, and it’s only one class. Fortunately, Music Theory and Tenor Voice do not have as many students. Bartleby only gave me the top ten papers to review. He graded the others.”
“Bartleby?” I said. Doctor Vern Sutton had a presence that overflowed his office. I realized I hadn’t closed the door.
“Sit, girl! Sit, sit, sit! Let’s have a little chat. It will distract me from Batman’s problems.” He motioned me to the chair and I sank into it. “Bartleby is what we all call Tom Davis, the TA in Music Appreciation. He has to read the papers. We call him Bartleby after Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. Are you familiar with it? Of course, you aren’t. All anyone knows of Melville is Moldy Dick. Three years ago, when Bartleby was a senior, he played the lead in Libby Locke’s delightful operetta, Bartleby the Scrivener, an adaptation of Melville’s short story. When I asked him this year if he’d like to be my TA, he completely deadpanned and said, ‘I’d rather not.’ But he is and I’m delighted that he referred your paper to me. Now, where were we?”
“Well, Dr. Sutton, it’s about the requirement of fifteen hours of work on the production. I am afraid I have to request a hardship deferment. In addition to school, I have a full-time job and I am a single parent of a three-month-old. I can barely keep up with my studies and if I don’t work, I don’t eat,” I said.
“Oh!” he gasped, clutching his heart. “I wish Libby were here to write your story. But it’s too early. We need to see you in twenty years. Batman!” he sang out.
There was a scramble in the office and the technical director appeared in the doorway.
“Yes, Vern?”
“All is forgiven. Here’s your model. Do it exactly as you have designed it. I’ll approve the extra budget. But DON’T GO OVER IT! I can actually see where Lescaut sings ‘Don’t hold me back’ to Guillot. And yes, you may take the door from the office of the old church.”
“Really?” Bruce asked.
“Absolutely. However, you are to take our new opera critic, here, and work out a fulfillment to her practicum requirement at her convenience. Mark that, Batman. At her convenience. If you have to sit with her and explain the position of the doorway at midnight while her baby cries in her arms, you will do it. Whatever is necessary, Batman. Everyone in my class fulfills their requirement. And in May, we will waltz!”
“Um… Thank you, Vern. We’ll make it the best ever. As long as Cindy can get the costumes done, we’ll get everything else.”
“Your MFA depends on it. I’m only channeling Wendell.”
“Yessir. Can we talk for a minute?” Bruce said, turning to me. “I can walk whatever direction you are going.” He snatched up the model that was sitting on Doctor Sutton’s desk.
“Do you have to take it?” Sutton complained. “I’m blocking here.”
“Of course. I have the blueprints,” Bruce sighed. He set the model back down and we left the office. He ushered me out of the office and closed the door behind him. The secretary stifled a laugh. He held up his hands and she didn’t say anything.
“If I may walk with you—whatever direction you are going—I’ll explain what just happened.”
“I’m headed to the daycare center to pick up my daughter,” I said.
“Oh. You’re married.” He sounded disappointed. We walked out of the music building and I pulled my coat snugly around me. It was supposed to be spring, but there wasn’t a leaf on the trees yet.
“I’m a single mother. That’s the origin of my problem with doing fifteen hours.”
“Don’t worry about it. What time did you get to his office?”
“One-fifteen.”
“That’s forty-five minutes on the clock so far. If you can stretch our walk out for fifteen minutes, that will make your first hour done.”
“Are you all like this? I thought he was only like this on stage when he had an audience.”
“He’s the fastest wit I’ve ever met, including when he took me along to the Prairie Home Companion. He and Garrison Keillor went to school together here.”
“So, what I was telling him, and the direction we are walking, is that I have a baby to take care of and I’m on my way to pick her up—late—at the student daycare center. Without the daycare center, I don’t know what I’d have done. I’d be carrying her to class. And because I’m a single parent, I have to work full time, too. Fortunately, a lot of my work is evenings and weekends, but I can’t just stick my baby in childcare for an extra fifteen hours a semester!” I guess I was getting kind of passionate.
“Don’t worry. There are two hundred students who all have to put in fifteen hours. That’s 3,000 hours of ‘volunteer’ time. Of course, lots of them got their time in on the winter show. Cindy and I have to deal with this every term. We’ll figure out how to get your hours in and you won’t even know you volunteered.”
“Thank you, Bruce. I promise not to call you Batman.”
“Thank you. Is this where you pick up your child?”
“Yes. Thank you for walking me this far.”
“Can I… May I see her?” He sounded so wistful. And he was nice. I shrugged.
“Sure.”
The thing about picking up a three-month-old from daycare is that there isn’t that happy running and chanting of “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” that I see parents with older kids get. I just identified myself and went in to pick up my baby from her crib. I gathered her diaper bag and other things and smooched her on the head. Her little hands started clutching at my breast immediately.
“Um… Excuse me, but I think I need to feed her,” I said.
“Oh, go ahead. I don’t mind. She’s so cute,” he bubbled.
“Yeah, but… well… um… I need…”
“Oh!” he gasped. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll… I’ll kind of wait in the lobby. No. That’s creepy. I’ll… Would you give me your name and phone number so I can call to arrange your lab work?”
“Is that what they call it, or is this a pick-up line?”
“It’s the best I could do,” he said, holding his clipboard out to me. I quickly wrote my name and my office number down. I didn’t have a home phone. I didn’t need one.
“Thanks. I’ll… I’ll call. I’ll make sure you get your credits.”
We held the first open houses for the spring sales season on the fourteenth and fifteenth of March. It was still cold, but we had no new rain or snow. The hardest part was getting people to put on little booties before they entered the house. We had six open on Saturday and four on Sunday. That was my inventory of six. Not every agent who wanted to host an open could do it on Saturday, so we held some of the properties a second day as well. Lily drove me from house to house so I could check up on the events. I only stayed about twenty minutes at each one, but that kept me busy for the afternoon. Lily loved walking around the houses with Emily while I chatted with the agent on duty.
We got a surprise at the last house. I was talking to the agent about the day’s traffic when Bruce walked in. I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to him, so it took me a minute to recognize him. I mean his face. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to his face. He was wearing slacks and a nice dress shirt instead of painted jeans and a t-shirt. You just don’t expect to see a person from college when you are at your business. He actually had to remind me of his name.
“Oh! Hi! Are you in the market for a new home? Come in.”
“Thanks. I’m not really. You don’t get that privilege in grad school. Too expensive. I called your number and they told me you were here. I didn’t know you had an office. And a secretary.”
“It’s all shared. I only use it for phone calls and paperwork. Um… this isn’t the best place to talk. Shelly, are you all right here?”
“Yes. In fact, there’s another buyer coming up the walk. Be sure to make lots of oohs and aahs as you walk out talking about buying this,” she said. I laughed. We grabbed our coats and headed out.
“Lily, this is Bruce. He’s the tech director on the show I’m supposed to volunteer at. He tracked me down from the office.”
“Mmm. Okay,” Lily said. She looked him up and down then cocked an eyebrow at me. “Why don’t I take the baby girl home for her nap. You fed her just before this stop and she’s been nodding off the whole time we’ve been here. Two minutes in her car seat and she’ll be out cold.” She leaned in toward me and whispered. “He’s cute. Take your time. I can give her one of the bottles if you’re late.”
“Lily,” I hissed. She grinned.
“I was going to suggest a cup of coffee or an early dinner if you’d like,” Bruce said. “That way we can talk over schedule and timing to get your hours in. I was going to do it all by phone, but you gave me an office number, and it’s a little cold to do it out here.”
“Why don’t you go to Annie’s. You haven’t had a burger in ages,” Lily suggested as she opened the car door so I could strap Emily into her seat and kiss her.
“That would be great,” Bruce said. He turned to Lily. “I know she’s a young mom, but you look way too young to be a grandma. Are you sisters?”
“No, we’re roommates. I’m just tagging along for childcare and chauffeur duty today.”
“You’re welcome to join us. I think the baby is really cute. How old is she?”
“Eleven and a half weeks,” I said. “Lily, are you sure this is okay?”
“I’m sure. Go have fun and swing by the office when you are done to see if there are any offers. I know you were planning to.”
“I couldn’t impose on Bruce like that,” I said. “This is a business meeting.”
“Uh-huh. Have her home by midnight, Bruce.”
Lily gave me a hug and jumped in the car. I turned to Bruce.
“Don’t mind her. She’s teasing. I think. Does the time we’re talking count toward my hours? Maybe if you kept me out till midnight, I’d be done.”
“Oh. Well, um… I think Vern would object to that. I already counted your meeting with him and our walk to daycare. I do have to file a timesheet for all the volunteers and what they worked on.”
“I was kidding,” I said as he opened the door of an old red Fiat. I slid in and he ran around to get into the driver’s side and start it up. “Is this safe in Minnesota?”
“Front wheel drive. It’s very dependable and safe,” he answered. “We’ll talk business, but I’m pretty hungry. I came straight from the shop. Is Annie’s okay?” Straight from the shop? Hmm. After a shower and change of clothes. I knew he didn’t work in the shop dressed like that.
“Sure. Or the Riverside. It’s cheaper.” I also ate there four times a week so I was hoping he’d choose Annie’s.
He did.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
