Dog Bless You (2 page)

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Mike said. “I wish I could keep you
on, because there’s a lot more that you could contribute. But once Babson gets
his mind set there’s no changing it.”

Crap. I thought that Babson liked me and would keep me around.
I said, “I appreciate the opportunity you gave me. Do you know how long—”

He interrupted me. “Sorry, I’ve got a call on the other
line. We’ll talk again this afternoon after I get back.”

The cell phone went dead against my ear. Crap and
double crap. I was losing my job. And that was going to screw up my life twelve
ways to Tuesday.

Since returning to Stewart’s Crossing from California,
I had begun to rebuild my life—adopting Rochester, worming my way into the
Eastern administration, even meeting a woman I had begun to care about a lot.
But I had little financial cushion; between paying restitution to California
for my crimes, and my basic household expenses, I was skating on the financial
edge.

My life was coming back together. But would one loss
lead to another, and another, the way I’d lost my wife, my job and my freedom
in the past?

When Elysia came back with Rochester’s pills and a copy
of the bland diet Dr. Horz had promised, she found me sitting on the floor with
my dog’s head in my lap as I stroked his soft, golden fur. I didn’t know what I
was going to do without a job, but I knew that whatever happened to me I was
determined to take care of him.

Once we were finished at the vet’s, I drove Rochester
to the campus with the windows up and the air conditioner on. He sat on his
haunches next to me, already looking better. I hoped I’d be able to bounce back
as quickly as he had.

Two years before, I’d had a very different life in Silicon
Valley. My wife was a successful software marketing executive and I had a job writing
instruction manuals and developing web-based training, which involved a bit of
programming and a lot of Internet expertise. We owned a big house in the
suburbs and we were trying to have a baby.

Mary had suffered a miscarriage a year before, and then
went on a spending spree with our credit cards as a form of retail therapy. I
picked up as many freelance writing assignments as I could to pay off the
resulting charges. By the time she got pregnant for the second time I’d wiped
out all the debt and felt like I could breathe.

Then she miscarried again. I had developed some basic
skills as a computer hacker through my tech jobs, and I got the idea to hack
into the three major credit bureaus and block Mary’s credit cards. I thought I
was looking out for both of us.

I got caught, and though I hadn’t done any real damage,
the credit bureaus wanted to make an example of me, and I was sentenced to two
years. While I was in prison Mary divorced me and my father died, leaving me
the townhouse in Stewart’s Crossing, only about a mile from the ranch-style
house where I’d grown up. After a year, the state’s rules on prison
overcrowding offered me the opportunity to swap my last year inside for two
years’ parole, and I took the deal.

My mother had passed away soon after Mary and I moved
to California, so by the time I was released from the California Men’s Colony
in San Luis Obispo, I was an orphan, with no wife, no job, and no family other
than a bunch of cousins. I petitioned the parole board in California for
permission to return to Stewart’s Crossing, and once it was granted I was
assigned Santiago Santos as my parole officer. He was an amateur boxer with a
sociology degree, and through a series of unannounced home visits he kept track
of everything I was doing to rebuild my life.

My parole was due to end in September, and I had been
looking forward to regaining my freedom. But Santos was determined to ensure I
wouldn’t be tempted to do anything that might send me back to prison. He
worried that if I didn’t have a solid income I’d be tempted to return to
hacking – this time for profit. Suppose he saw this job loss as a setback he
needed to monitor further? And if he did, would he be able to convince a judge
to extend my parole?

I had some advantages I hadn’t had when I first
returned to town. I had reconnected with an old high school acquaintance who
became my best friend. I met my neighbors and got to know a lot of employees at
Eastern. And I met Liliana Weinstock. At forty-five, it was silly to think of Lili
as my girlfriend, but the English language hasn’t caught up to twenty-first
century mating practices yet.

But how long would that network hang together if I was
unemployed and running low on money? Clouds gathered overhead as we drove up to
Leighville along the River Road, and by the time we reached the college the sky
was gray and gloomy. I had to park at the outer edge of the parking lot and
then hustle Rochester out of the car before it began to pour.

He was still moving slowly as I shepherded him past the
deep pools of water at the edge of the parking lot and the marshy patches of
lawn between there and Fields Hall, the 19
^th
-century gothic mansion
that had been converted to college offices. We passed a young female student
reading on one of the wrought-iron benches, seemingly oblivious to the coming
storm. Her T-shirt read “Girls Just Want to Have Funds.”

Boys, too, I thought. My first-floor office was small,
tucked away in a corner of the building that had once been part of the formal
dining room, but it had French doors looking out at the garden, and I left Rochester
there with a chew bone and a plea not to get sick on anything. I was worried
that Dr. Horz hadn’t been able to diagnose him more specifically and I hated
having to leave him alone, even for what I was sure would be a very quick exit
interview with President Babson. At least when I finished with that I could
clean out my office and then take Rochester home.

Fields Hall was a warren of small offices carved out of
larger rooms, and I had to navigate past a copier in the middle of the narrow
hallway to get to the small alcove where Babson’s secretary sat.

She waved me into his office, where the great man was
finishing a phone call. He was tall and rawboned, an urbane, well-dressed John
Wayne. But instead of being taciturn he bubbled over with enthusiasm, no matter
what the subject or his knowledge of it. He had deep green eyes and dark curly
hair that he styled with the kind of greasy kid stuff I had abandoned when I
reached puberty.

“Steve, come on in,” he said, waving me to a spindle-backed
chair embellished with the Eastern College logo, across from his desk.

I sat down and he said, “You grew up in this area. Ever
heard of Friar Lake?”

That threw me for a loop. I was expecting some kind of
termination speech, to end with me and Rochester being escorted out of the
building by security guards. Sure, Eastern had a human resources department,
but Babson was such a micro-manager I was sure he liked to handle hiring and
firing himself.

My brain was a jumble. “It sounds familiar, but I can’t
quite place it.”

“About a hundred years ago, the Benedictine Order built
a monastery on about twenty acres of land a mile inland from the Delaware
River. The building overlooks a lake, and down by the water’s edge they built a
cabin for the use of mendicant friars. Eventually the local people started
calling the area Friar Lake.”

“Mendicant friars?” Those weren’t covered in my dozen
years in Sunday School at Har Sinai Temple in Trenton, or in the three years of
weekday afternoons I spent studying Hebrew in preparation for my bar mitzvah.

“Both monks and friars are men devoted to religious
service,” Babson said. “The difference is that monks live in cloisters, while
friars perform service to the sick and needy out in the community. When friars get
old and sick themselves, they need a place to go. The Benedictines hosted them
in a cottage down by the lake.”

I still wasn’t sure where this was all going. I wasn’t
a friar; I wasn’t even Christian. Was he trying to say that these monks and
friars ran some kind of halfway house? I appreciated the thought, but even
though I was a convicted felon on parole, I could still manage for myself.

Babson was still talking. “The monastery closed about
two years ago, and the remaining monks and friars moved to another one in
western Pennsylvania. I guess even the church has to cut costs where it can.”

My impatience got the best of me. I was worried about
Rochester back in my office, and about my own need to get started on a search
for a new job. “This is interesting, but…”

“Of course. I’ll cut to the chase. Eastern is buying
the property from the Benedictine Order, and I want to develop it as a
conference center where our faculty can teach executive education courses.”

“And?” I was still confused, and getting irritated.

“And I want you to run it. Didn’t Mike tell you?”

So I wasn’t out of a job, just getting transferred? That
was amazing. My head was filled with a jumble of relief and confusion. “All
Mike told me was that the News Bureau was taking over the responsibility for
press relations for the campaign, and I was out of a job.”

Babson frowned. “I’m sorry, Steve. I thought he would
have mentioned it, but I guess he didn’t want to steal my thunder. I just
signed the paperwork transfer on Friday, and I talked to Mike on Saturday about
giving you the job. He said he was sorry to lose you but he was certain you’d
do a bang-up job.”

I was glad Mike and Babson were so certain. I knew
nothing about executive education or running a conference center. But I would
do whatever I had to in order to keep body and soul together – mine and
Rochester’s.

Babson pushed a report encased in a plastic folder
across the desk to me. “This is the feasibility study I commissioned. Start
thinking about the kinds of programs we could offer up at Friar Lake. Talk to
the faculty, see what ideas they have. We need to put on programs that adults
and corporate learners can use—and that they’ll pay for.”

Put together a whole continuing education program while
setting up a brand-new conference facility. That was John Babson for you. It
was a lot to process at once.

“When you’ve had a chance to get your feet wet, set up
a meeting and we’ll go over your ideas. Oh, and you’ll want to talk to Elaine
in HR about your new status. You might as well stay in your office for the time
being, at least until Physical Plant starts the renovation work at the abbey.
You’ll want to be out there by then.”

I picked up the report. “Why me?” I asked. “I don’t
know anything about construction or running a conference center, or developing
programs.”

He leaned forward. “What is it that we brag our
students really learn here at Eastern?” he asked.

The twists in this conversation were as confusing as
some of the back roads leading from the Delaware into the countryside, but I
struggled to keep up. “We teach our students how to learn,” I said, and I felt
like I was reciting something from a brochure I might have written. “How to
read and assimilate information, how to communicate what they’ve learned, and
how to use those skills to survive and prosper in the work world.”

“Absolutely. I chose you for this position because you
know Eastern College and what we stand for – not only as a graduate but as a
member of our adjunct faculty. And between the campaign launch and your help
with Joe Dagorian’s murder, I’ve seen how well you can multi-task.”

I thought Babson would be finished, but he was in a
reflective mood. For the next ten minutes or so, he lectured me on Eastern’s
history and his plans for its future. I couldn’t pay much attention because my
brain was so muddled.

I dimly understood that I was being given a great
opportunity. This was a permanent position—which in academia often means for
the rest of your working life. That was a big relief—I’d gone from unemployed
to long-term employed in the span of a few minutes. But it was frightening at
the same time. In addition to my lack of background, this was a huge project
with high visibility. Why hadn’t I heard about it before?

I realized that I had – there had been a line item at
the last Board of Trustees meeting about the property. But I’d been so busy
with my own job I’d paid it little notice.

“I’m proud of you, Steve,” Babson said, and I snapped
back to attention. “You’ve made some bad decisions in the past, but you’ve paid
the price, and you’ve managed to bounce back. I have every confidence in you.”

I realized that what Babson was telling me was that he
knew I’d been in prison—and despite that, he believed in me. I gulped, stood up
and shook his hand. “Thank you for the opportunity, and for believing in me.” I
held up the report in its plastic folder. “I’m looking forward to reading this
and getting up to speed.”

As I turned to walk out, he already had the phone in
his hand, ready to move on. I needed to do that, too-- but I was in a daze. It
wasn’t a surprise that John Babson knew I’d been in prison; he knew almost
everything that went on at Eastern, from the leaky faucet in the women’s room
at Blair Hall to the birthdays of each of the members of the Board of Trustees.
He could switch easily from a conversation about college investments to one
about a student’s lack of progress in a math class.

But he had never mentioned it, and I was embarrassed
that he had felt the need to bring it up in our meeting. It did make his faith
in me that much more dramatic. I wasn’t just an alumnus with a skill set that
happened to fit in at the college. I was a project, like the female sophomore
who wanted to spend the summer in Tanzania teaching personal hygiene to young
girls. Babson had championed her cause, introducing her to wealthy sponsors and
even helping her fine-tune her project proposal.

There were dozens more like her—students who wanted to
create individualized majors, faculty members with innovative teaching
techniques that needed funding, athletes who wanted to compete internationally.
If Babson believed in you, he put himself behind you and pushed.

He had also been known to take strong action when
disappointed. Students transferred, staff members terminated, faculty members
encouraged to pursue their careers elsewhere.  It was up to me to take the
pressure and prove to him – and myself—that I could succeed.