Goodnight Paige

Goodnight Paige

Tony Alan Grayson

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Copyright

This book is protected with Copyright © TXu 1-639-402, June 16, 2009 by Tony Alan Grayson.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, purchase an additional copy of it, and provide the purchased copy for each recipient. Please respect my years of hard work by refusing to participate in the piracy of books. My books are available online for the price of a vending machine snack. I ask for your support as I continue to craft new stories for you to enjoy. Thank you.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to those who persevere.

Prologue

Goodnight Paige is a contemporary romance novel. Forbidden Love is the subgenre. The story is principally set in Savannah, Georgia in 2001. While it is uncommon for a fiction writer to produce a bibliography, I have done so in this book, both to acknowledge the work of other writers, artists, and product owners, whose written works I consulted, and to help the reader find useful information about those details. Enjoy a story of romance! The writer is your guide.

Disclaimer

Goodnight Paige is, in its entirety, Romantic Fiction. The story opens in the Baltimore, Maryland area. Then, it shifts predominately to Savannah, Georgia. All names, characters, historical figures, businesses, products, ideas, and locations in this book support the story and are fiction in this book. If you wish to find the facts behind the fiction, refer to the bibliography and consult with local historians and librarians.

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Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Disclaimer

Part I - A Hard Life - A Good Wife

Chapter 1 - Our Family

Chapter 2 - The Engineer

Chapter 3 - Paige

Chapter 4 - The Administrator

Chapter 5 - Fun at Home

Chapter 6 - Husband and Wife

Chapter 7 - Ann

Chapter 8 - Savannah

Chapter 9 - The Unwelcome Student

Part II - True Love

Chapter 1 - The Malcolm Drake Business Symposium

Chapter 2 - Harry and Paige

Chapter 3 - A Second Chance

Chapter 4 - She is Hot; She is Cold

Chapter 5 - When You Care for Someone

Chapter 6 - Goodnight Paige

Chapter 7 - It’s a Bobcat

Chapter 8 - I Love You

Part III - A Game to be Played

Chapter 1 - The Cuddle Buddies

Chapter 2 - A Fan of the Team

Chapter 3 - Where is my Wife?

Chapter 4 - Happy Birthday

Chapter 5 - Redemption

Chapter 6 - Woo Woo

Chapter 7 - Thas Why I Like You!

Chapter 8 - The Winter Ball

Chapter 9 - A Teardrop Spilled from Heaven

Part IV - Truth and Consequences

Chapter 1 - Maximilian Fontaine

Chapter 2 - The Strawberry Girl

Chapter 3 - The Gentlemen’s Club

Chapter 4 - Club Blue Flame

Chapter 5 - That was Our Best Time

Chapter 6 - Goodnight Paige

Chapter 7 - Paths Through the Darkness

Chapter 8 - Stay With Me

Chapter 9 - I Would Give Up Everything

Chapter 10 - I Will Watch the World Go By

Chapter 11 - What We Can Have

Epilogue

Bibliography

Abbreviations

Vita

Other E-Books by Tony Alan Grayson

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Part I

A Hard Life - A Good Wife

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Chapter 1: Our Family

Moving slowly, spreading like cancer, a low rolling fog crossed into her neighborhood, an army of mist that gathered territory stealthily in the early morning darkness; the crystalline ground cloud brought cold and perhaps cruelty in its magic. The fog made no sound; no wind warned of its encroachment, yet the neighborhood lawns shimmered in its silver as moonbeams tried to penetrate it and wisps of smoky fairies seemed to dance and glide upon the heavy frost landscape. The netherworld seemed to draw sustenance from the brisk November morning twilight. It was so cold that the air could steal the breath from a human breast. Yet, no one in the neighborhood was awake to appreciate this; no foot crunched the icy grass; it was sleepy time.

Then, there was a noise. An electronic rooster crowed next to her bed, stirring two souls to life, one of whom perked her ears and stared at the alarm clock with large brown eyes. She did not like the noise, but she could not do anything about it. Faithfully, the Jack Russell Terrier watched for the hand to appear. The hand could stop the noise, if only it would appear out from under the covers.

The Jack Russell dog sensed a lump forming under the layers of bedding. It moved. Gina had been asleep in the wad of an old cotton robe, and now the sizeable lump formed under the robe with Gina wrapped inside of it. The rising lump lifted Gina up, up from her place at the foot of the bed as if she were a raft in a sea of waves rising and falling. The tiny dog strained now, braced for the coming of a second noise from the red-lettered rooster, the sound that never had failed to draw out the hand. Suddenly, it happened! The red numbers changed. The alarm clock went bleep bleep bleep bleep.

Patience is its own reward. The hand appeared, one finger extended, to make the noise go away before the hand retreated to the warmth under the covers. With the morning’s entertainment over, the Jack Russell dog nuzzled her way back under the old robe and went to sleep.

Five minutes later, the alarm clock erupted again. This time it blasted out the song Your Cheatin’ Heart (the original version) sung by Hank Williams, Sr. The wee dog awoke to the noise and lived the dream again: claxon – hand; country music – hand, and sleep disturbed every five minutes until it was 4:30 am, when mama lifted covers off her pretty head and said.

Good morning.

Sleepy time was over. Gina slipped from the warmth of her owner’s former robe. She walked gingerly across her owner's legs and into outstretched arms where she felt safe. As her children grew up, the little dog had become Paige's baby. She gathered up her little fur ball and hugged her closely. Excitedly, she whispered in Gina's ear.

Did Mama’s baby sleep well? Did she dream about the groundhog? Did you get the groundhog this time?

Paige cradled Gina so that she could scratch the dog’s belly with her fingernails. Gina howled, kicking her left hind leg like a piston engine. The scratching tickled, and she liked that. Paige put her dog down to the floor, for to tickle her any more would result in pee. She reached over to switch the alarm clock off. She had the brief thought to change to a different radio station for she did not like to wake up to country & western music. Paige stopped as she realized that she might not get up in time to go to work if she enjoyed the music. John liked country & western music. It was the only style of music that he would even attempt to dance with her. However, he enjoyed watching Paige dance to any music.

With Gina in one arm, Paige snatched up her dog’s bed waddle with her free hand and repositioned it onto the sheets, over the warmest spot in the bed, where her own body had lain. Making a nest out of the old robe, Paige lovingly placed little Gina down into that. The dog happily wagged her stubby little tail and then traded a wet snout kiss with her owner. Paige bounded out of bed. As she prepared her shower, she kept one eye on Gina’s reflection in the bedroom mirror. The Jack Russell could not stop herself from doing the circle dance, which dogs do before they lay down. Even though, wrapped up and cozy, Gina got up, circled twice, then she returned to the waddle. For some reason, the dog never wanted Paige to witness the act; she would stop the turning and dive under the robe if Paige looked. Gina seemed not to perceive that Paige spied on her by mirror reflection.

Gina closed her eyes to dream as Paige shut the bathroom door. She did not dream of her nemesis (the groundhog that lived in Paige’s backyard) but about the giant that would soon come to cast his dominion over her and her owner.

The house was frightfully cold this morning. Paige fired up an electric space heater in the bathroom just before she turned the shower knob on full hot. As the heater made a clicking sound and before steam could rise from the shower stall, Paige stared at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror, ferreting out any new gray or white eyebrows and hairs for plucking or skin blemishes to hide. When the steam appeared, she stripped to do her business fast in order to be out of the bathroom and into a wrapped head towel, big robe, and fuzzy slippers. In such a cold house, with its source of heat turned down, it was particularly beneficial to trundle off smartly downstairs while her body still retained some warmth. On the way to the kitchen, she turned up the thermostat on the oil furnace so that her two kids would be spared from the cold when they got up later, and for her husband, John, to have comfort when he got home after having worked outside all night long. As she neared the foot of her stairs, her nostrils flared happily at the scent of freshly brewed Eight O’Clock coffee in a pot.

Paige was an accountant by trade. Order was the thing that accountants require in their lives. For accountants, everything in the universe was planned, and everything had a schedule. She sat in her kitchen, and drank coffee while her hair dried. Her feet slowly froze in her fuzzy slippers as she mentally conjured morning thoughts. In her mind, she went over the details that would get the kids up, dressed, fed, and off to school, a breakfast going for a hungry man, and her dressed and out the door on time for work. All the while, the cup of coffee that she drank percolated inside of her (enabling bodily functions to stay on schedule). Being the dutiful wife, she used the downstairs toilet so that she would not stink up the one in her bedroom, even though she knew that she had to do that only because the little fan did not work in the master bathroom. John knew that, but he would not fix the fan.

Paige returned upstairs to stand in her underwear while she blow-dried her hair. The hot air revealed unwelcome gray at the roots. From the corner of her eye, she saw a little black nose attached to a fuzzy face.

We must color tonight, she told Gina. I could do your grays.

Ow whoo, her dog howled.

The dog seemed to understand. For such an old dog, Gina could hear remarkably well. Her ears perked. She swiveled toward a mysterious, yet familiar noise. Then, she turned to stare at the wall behind the headboard, the one nearest to the neighborhood street.

John drove the blue bomber home. That was what he called his beat-up old Chevy pickup truck. The engine valves needed adjusting, but they still worked (like he did), so why mess with them? The truck trundled up the street that led into the neighborhood filled with houses (that he could not possibly afford to buy). It was his cross to bear that he only got to live here because of his wife’s salary. She made more than three times the money that he earned. Paige let him keep $20 of his own salary each week. That was the other cross that he bore, to suffer a zealot’s (an accountant’s) family budget. Underlying all of that, there dwelled the wife that he loved more than his own life.

The chugging noise was the giant’s truck! Gina jumped back up onto the bed! She grabbed her waddle in her teeth and leapt off! Skillfully, the Jack Russell dog hid this evidence from the giant who had forbidden her to sleep on his bed.

John had disliked that dog from the beginning, and never would explain why. Paige put her hairdryer down. She walked over to the bed where she flipped the bedcovers several times. She knew that it was best to eject any telltale dog hairs from her bed. John avoided the dog, but Paige wielded the terrier like a weapon!

Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home! Go get Daddy! Go get him!

Gina raced downstairs ahead of Paige, who put on her thin robe this time and followed. John had just pulled the bomber into his sloping driveway and set the parking brake. As he stepped out of the cab of his truck, he saw his breath. He suffered the mind-numbing cold as he had suffered from it all night long. His was an outside job. Since his fancy neighbors were not up to appreciate the backbone of America come home after working all night, he slammed the door of his truck hard!

As he walked to his house, John could barely move. Bundled up in three layers of clothing, walking was a struggle as it was for Randy in A Christmas Story. A dark yellow stained set of zippered work overalls covered the three layers. It was difficult to discern if his overalls were one solid brown smudge, or if they were a collage of lesser brown smudges that would not wash out. He knew how he got most of them while he worked at the rail yard. John reeked of diesel fuel, yet he knew, as he stepped into the side door to his garage and onto the garage door that led to the kitchen, that no one at his house would take umbrage with him over that. Paige greeted him there with a peck on the lips. Then, she put a dog leash in his hand. The other end of the leash was attached to a dog.

Gina was another cross to bear. He escorted her down the street with as much enthusiasm as Jesus walking to Calvary. The ground was frozen. John wondered how it was that the dog's foot pads did not stick to the asphalt. The dog looked as ridiculous in her doggie sweater as he looked in his coveralls, and all the more so because both of them wore stupid matching watch caps that said Go Ravens on them.

Occasionally, Gina looked up at John while they walked. It was a mocking glance, a cheesy grin; John was sure of it! The dog seemed to say, "Don't walk so close. You make me look stupid!"

While John walked the dog, and cheated by letting her do her business without his picking that up, Paige cooked a hot breakfast for him and their two children, daughter Jill (age 13) and son Sherman (age 11), good Irish-American names for good American Catholic kids. Paige timed the kids' finishing breakfast with John’s return. The children could speak with their father for a few moments before they took their showers while he ate his breakfast and drank his coffee.

Trash morning, Paige said to John after breakfast.

Trash morning to you, dear, He replied.

No, darling, Paige said in a quieter tone, it's trash morning. Please take the trash to the curb for me.

Paige warmed more bacon, eggs, and toast for him. She served his breakfast large and hot, but only after he walked the dog and then emptied the trash that she had collected and placed in a large green bag by the kitchen door. When he got back inside, Paige had to help him wriggle out of the coveralls and the top two layers of his work clothes. The stench of his body odor overpowered the smell of diesel oil. However, she let him eat before he showered and went to bed. Paige took the oily clothes and placed them in a pile for individual washing, separate from the family’s clothes so that the oil and diesel fuel would not ruin other clothes that had to last. John had seven sets of the same style and color of overalls. He sometimes worked six nights a week; the seventh was a backup in case he had to work a seventh night, thus impacting wash day.

Paige gave Gina food and water; then, she poured herself a second cup of coffee and joined her husband at the kitchen table. With the children back upstairs, this was their time to talk, the first of two such times each day. She asked him how it had been with him out in the cold and dark, fueling locomotives as they came and went from the rail yard. Of course, there was only so much new that might have happened for him. He could give her a count of the number of locomotives or the number of coal and freight cars that any one of them hauled. He could tell her about fuel spills. There were a few off colored jokes that he had heard from some of the other rough characters on his shift. She appreciated the humor (or pretended to). At times, he was able to speak with an engineer; they usually had a good tall tale to tell about what they had seen along the tracks. Usually, John told her one of their stories, something fascinating seen through the eyes of another man.

The foreman said that the power plant will be putting in a new unit next spring, John told her. You know what that means?

She honestly did not know what it meant. She did know what it meant when John leaned back in the wooden kitchen chair, trying to put an edge on the high back of the chair into the groove between his left shoulder blade and a back muscle. He no longer could sneak up on anyone. His bone joints cracked when he moved. He was not one to complain. Still, Paige picked up on his genuine hurts. She worried for him. He was 42-years-old, with a body well into its fifties. Paige knew that her husband was condemned to live his golden years in pain and misery, mostly inside their modest house, sitting as close as possible to their oil furnace’s blazing heat.

John said more about the coal-fired power plant expanding and that it would mean more trainloads of coal coming into the rail yard each night. The foreman told him that the extra fueling would be done with worker overtime rather than by the railroad hiring new fuel men.

So, instead of working eight hours a night for five nights, you will work nine or ten? Paige asked, tuning in now that the subject involved math.

Yes, He confirmed. I might get as much as ten hours of overtime every week. John meant this to be welcome news. They both understood that there never was enough money. Paige also saw pride in her husband’s eyes, the pride of a man who saw a way to do more for his family.

It will be hard on you, His wife said with empathy. He reached over and patted her hand, ending talk and also to thank her for caring for him.

Breakfast was over. Paige kissed John on the cheek as she took his plate and coffee cup from him and put those in the dishwasher. John ambled up the stairs. While he took his shower, Paige stared at the thin wedding ring on her left hand. She had not put her contacts in, so she could not clearly see the ring without adjusting its distance from her eyes. The contacts would not make the tiny ring or its single speck of a diamond chip look any larger. Still, the ring meant something to Paige. It meant more than a reminder that she had married a poor man.

Hearing a noise, Paige shifted her gaze from her ring to a corner of the floor where the only heat register pitifully tried to warm the entire kitchen. It was especially difficult to do that while a splayed terrier covered it! Gina knew when Mama noticed her. It was a thing that Paige most adored, the way the tiny fuzz face would cock to one side and stare back at her. Gina's fur was mostly white as was nearly all of the rest of her body. She had tan fur on her left ear and matching tan around the right eye, plus the tiniest, almost imperceptible tuft of tan at the base of her stubby tail. Both ears drooped forward with anticipation.

You were about money too.

Paige married John when she was twenty-six-years-old. Six months later, just after Jill was born, she bought Gina, who was no mere mutt, but rather a breeding quality Jack Russell terrier. A product of 19th century English nobility, the terrier was bred to be white so that it would not resemble a red fox. As the noblemen rode horses and chased baying hounds on the hunt, the fox would often not cooperate with the tradition and would instead hide in its burrow. Named for the Reverend John Russell, the terrier trailed the hounds, spotted foxes on the run and sniffed out foxes in their burrows. A Jack Russell Terrier was bred to enter a burrow to flush a fox out!

Gina had nearly all of the attributes that made her a hunter. Twelve inches tall, she would hurl her fifteen pound body at anything resembling a fox: Jill’s stuffed animals, Sherman’s catcher’s mitt, a former pair of Paige’s animal slippers, and John’s "bullshit cap".

John’s cap was dark brown in color. It featured the backside of a bull that sat atop the bill over a single tuft of bull sign. The word bullshit was printed above the back half of the bull. The cap read bullsh ever since Gina snatched it off John’s head while he watched a football game on the television one day. She bit the cap and ran with it all over the house. Paige and the kids nearly died laughing as John chased Gina (John was no English nobleman). Gina made a kill on the cap, and she refused to release it. John leaned back in his chair to watch the game. He put his cap back on his head while the dog that was attached to it lay on the headrest next to his ear! Since that day, the cap became his signal to Paige that he suffered injustice in his home. He put it on when he fought with his wife about money problems. Gina still eyed it warily when she saw it. She stalked it as her fox that had gotten away.

The family struggled financially. Partly, that was self-induced by Paige. She was a merciless tightwad who would not yield a dime of saving for the kids' college funds for any unplanned expense. Woe be to John if he should squander a dime for any reason. Gina was the exception. Because the dog had a documented pedigree, she was Paige's perpetual sin of financial indiscretion. Thus, John also wielded Gina like a weapon when he pointed out to his wife the never-ending cost of feeding, health care, and grooming of the animal while both of them worked part-time jobs plus their regular jobs. Her part-time job was a typical one for an accountant. She worked for the IRS. She answered the telephone calls of irate taxpayers.

Sir, please! I would not be able to sit down if I put the 1040 up there!

The cost of the dog was a symptom of an enduring problem between John and Paige, and neither of them dared to relieve the incident that addressed the underlying problem. It happened after Paige simultaneously included John in the decision to purchase Gina after she had already decided to buy her. She was certain that he would agree with her that the Jack Russell dog belonged in their family. He went to the pet shop with Paige, who held six-month-old Jill in her arms.

Paige, Jill is an infant, John protested. She does not need a dog.

I need one, Paige defied him. The dog is mine.

"Why that dog? He continued. Why should we spend the money when the pound has free dogs?"

To have her way, Paige said the hurtful thing that became the underlying problem between them, I am the primary breadwinner in this family. The decision is mine! The wound to John's pride cut deep, and it was permanent.

Paige kissed her children as they came downstairs to get their shoes and coats on before running out to the school bus stop. She shared motherly advice. Habitually, both of them ran out the door as fast as possible during advice giving. Paige watched them go, parting a set of sheers that screened the living room window, a mother’s last peek at her children. Thanksgiving and Christmas would soon arrive, and school let out for her to spend time with her kids in this thirty-ninth year of her life. They would be grown and gone soon, gone like something else already nearly was.

It was a trait of the women of her maternal ancestry to get menopause early in life. The change in her body had begun. One morning, as Paige watched her children board the big, yellow dog, their name for the school bus, she realized a truth.

I can have no more babies. The unhappy thought stayed with her. Only by snapping her mind back to her routine did she keep from crying about it. She quickly dressed and washed down her medication with a small glass of orange juice. With a shaky voice, she called a cheery goodbye up to where John slept and would not hear her.

The garage door lifted. Paige carefully backed her gold 2000 Buick Century out into the street. As she drove the short distance to where she worked, Paige recognized a couple out for their morning walk, tooted her horn and waved at them. The man waved back. It was so neat to live and work in a small town, although it was not so small that she knew everyone. Paige had read that the local citizenry had now passed 30,000. The place was growing mostly because it was a bedroom community within a thirty minute drive from Baltimore, and its businesses that hired the small private accounting firm where Paige worked. The man who owned the firm was Mr. Collins. He inherited his family's business.

Mr. Collins was an extraordinarily affable man and from good Catholic stock. He attended the same Catholic Church where Paige worshipped with her family. Even in college, Mr. Collins knew that he would take over the family business, so he took note of his church family (candidate employees). He hired Paige. Paige lived in town because the railroad hired John. He worked at the central railway hub just outside of town. Mr. Collins was a witness at Jill’s christening.

The company was purposely small, with about twenty-five accountants rounded out by a handful of general office workers. Mr. Collins Senior still worked occasionally (he had nowhere else to go), but it was his son who now brought in new clients as larger companies set up their businesses between the little town and Baltimore.

Jill was two-years-old when an accountant at the firm retired, creating the opening that Paige was invited to fill. The job was a Godsend: better salary and healthcare plus the most stable source of work that she ever had up to then. After five years of her working there, she and John could afford their first house. Their house was the smallest three-bedroom cracker box in the neighborhood. She was grateful and so loyal to Mr. Collins, yet she was oblivious to the man's never-ending challenge to keep all of his accountants employed.

As she drove up to the company’s brick building, Paige spied three female coworkers as they carried their breakfasts in Hardees bags. Paige honked her horn at them, smiled and waved. With their hands filled with coffee, juice and breakfast biscuits, they could only look at Paige. She parked her car and walked in by the back entrance. Immediately, she felt welcome as half-a-dozen men greeted her. With relish, she dived into chatty conversation with them. One man helped her wriggle out of her coat. He hung Paige's coat on a cloak peg for her. Another praised her for having such a talented son; Sherman made an impressive catch at the peewee football game last Saturday and Paige relived the proud moment in her coworker’s description. A third man brought Paige her coffee from the break room, just the way she liked it: one cream/two sugars.

Paige continued to talk to men as she walked past several women who were at their desks working. At her desk (a cheery place filled with framed family photographs, several vibrant plants, and various knickknacks that meant something to her) she flicked on her computer and fished out file folders from a desk drawer. Men continued to hover about Paige, the ones that had greeted her and other men newly arrived at work. One man sat on the edge of Paige’s desk; four jockeyed for the position on the right side and in the front; two blocked the coveted left side, which was where she tended to face. This was an intriguing office dynamic, and a familiar one. Men shared their stories with Paige. They told jokes while all the while they complimented her. One of them was an amateur comedian and intensely loud with his laugh. Another man habitually sat on the nearby edge of a female coworker’s desk with his back toward her. The woman tried to do her work while that man vied for Paige’s attention.

The conversation was lively. For such a small town, there was so much to talk about, and talk they did, for more than an hour. Paige was fascinated to no end how any one of the men would start talking about something in particular, and it would lead to a story to which all of them would contribute. As one story finished, another man would begin a new story. On and on it went. A quiet man kept his eyes on Paige’s coffee cup. As soon as it was empty, he snatched it up and went off to refill it, returning with the perfect concoction: one cream/two sugars. This was the same man who had originally brought her coffee.

When Paige told a story, men’s faces lit up like Catholic urchins gathered to relive the story of Jesus. She told such delightful stories, and when she ran out of current events, she retold stories. Several of the women at desks near Paige silently mouthed the words of the oft-told tales while the men’s faces basked in the glow of fond memory.

From his office, Mr. Collins saw the morning ritual unfold. Each of his six male and nineteen female accountants had a desk. The twenty-five desks were grouped in five rows of five that faced his desk and the desks of the office help (all of which were placed in a way that let the occupants look back at the twenty-five accountants). Mr. Collins’ desk was the center of the three glass-separated desks. He could draw sets of blinds if he wanted privacy.

He watched the goings on out there, noting that several of the women were upset, especially the younger ones. Most of the older women busily worked and paid no heed to the socializing in the center of the room where Paige’s desk was. Mr. Collins had pondered this matter for some time. He knew that Paige was thirty-nine years old; half of the rest of his female staff were younger than she and several of the younger ones were prettier. Paige (a mother of two and nearing middle age) had picked up extra pounds since she had started to work here thirteen years ago. Still, all of his male workers gravitated to her as if she were a bitch in heat. It was a perennial problem. One of the other women suddenly looked up from her work and caught Mr. Collins’ eye. Silently she mouthed to him: Do something about this! Please!

He did; he closed the blinds. This office disruption had been going on so long, yet work still got done. Paige, the men that hovered about her, and the annoyed women all got their work done. He did not believe that moving her to a different desk would accomplish any change to the disruption, for the office space was too small. Since Mr. Collins was not acquiring substantial new work, he did not need to push his accountants to work more efficiently. He had no overly ambitious accountant out there, and all of them were fairly paid, well enough so that they could raise their families and raise their heads in the little town.

He did what he had been doing: he put the matter aside. However, when he returned to the office after lunch this day, he found an unlabeled, sealed envelope in his in-basket. Inside the envelope, a one-page petition succinctly communicated the collective wish of eighteen of his female accountants to speak with him at eight o’clock tonight, at the office. They did not say about what, but since he had nineteen female accountants on the payroll, there was little mystery about whom they intended to speak. He opened his blinds just a crack. Mr. Collins caught the eye of the woman who had silently mouthed to him earlier that day. To her, he nodded his agreement to meet.

Purposely, he arrived fifteen minutes late that night, hoping that the delay might cause his female employees to get cold feet and back down. No dice; they were all there. Worse still, he found out that he was not dealing with a single-minded ringleader backed by timid folded-arm followers. Most were royally pissed off about how he had not kept the bees away from the office rose.

You know, He quipped after listening to twenty minutes of their venting, fundamentally, it is wrong to talk her down without giving her a chance to defend herself.

We have talked with her, Mr. Collins, One of them blurted, individually, and groups of us have told her that her behavior is disruptive. She does not get it.

She does not believe she is doing anything wrong, Another woman added.

Well, you know that is true that the men go to her, Mr. Collins observed. I see that myself. Perhaps you want me to discipline the men. Perhaps you want me to have the men share their attentions with the rest of you? The women did not want that. Momentarily, they were at a loss for what to say. Then, the group parted as one in back stepped up. She was one of the older women, a stalwart employee who had been hired before Paige or even before young Mr. Collins came aboard to work for his father.

Mr. Collins, This woman said in a measured tone, this is not a trivial matter that we raise. It is a festering office disruption that is ruinous to our health and happiness. I know that your father would have done something for our sake, if not for the interest of the company. That hurt and he hoped that he sent no body signal that it had. Suddenly, he realized that he and all of them were literally standing in a face off, a clear indicator of high stress in these women. Each of them had worked a full day, had rushed home to feed their families dinner, and then had come back here with conviction. He asked them to sit down - and to calm down.

Paige lives in this town, He reminded them. She has a family too, one that depends on her income. She has worked here for thirteen years. Do you want me to fire Paige? He told that they could not remain anonymous if he had to be the bad guy.

You may not know, sir, One of them said, that she has been the subject of scandal. He did know about it. The town was small enough for such things to be known. He would not admit that he knew; he hoped that Paige’s alleged infidelity would not be mentioned.

Everyone makes mistakes, Was what Mr. Collins said in reply.

She never has repented for her mistakes, A bolder voice offered. Accountants are human; we make mistakes, but we also catch and correct them. It then occurred to Mr. Collins that he had no more control of this meeting than he did of the office matter that preceded it. He believed that his father would be disappointed in him.

OK, He said in an attempt to compromise. I’ve heard you. I will do something about this, but I need some time and my decision about what to do will not be subject to question by you. I value all of you as my employees and as citizens of this town, but I do not want ever to be summoned by you to another meeting like this. Goodnight ladies. He remained at the office long after the women left, to ponder his options. This situation had disrupted his routine, so he rummaged through the day’s mail; he usually read it after lunch. In the stack of mail, he found a possible solution to his problem.

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Chapter 2: The Engineer

The past two weeks had been grueling, with no deal to show for it. Harry had gotten cooperation between this company and his employer. He wanted to go home to Sandra and Paul. Harry was a mechanical engineer – and damn proud of it. It had been no small thing for him to cram five years of brain-crushing math into four years of college. All of his friends went to the same school to party. Many years ago, just after college, Harry got picked up by a leading textile mill machine company, enabling him to both pursue his love of tinkering and to make a decent living not too far from his home state. But, the trade of mechanical engineering turned out to be like studying in college: dog hard work. The company could not grow if it did not stand behind the products that it had already sold (fabric looms). Product support was the job of the youngest mechanical engineers for it required stamina as well as skill. If the manager of a textile mill called the company to say that a loom was broken, the company sent an engineer to fix it. The engineer remained for as long as it took to fix it.

The looms could not sit idle long without a serious impact to the output of the textile company. Since the entire textile industry operated on a razor thin profit margin, a dysfunctional loom was a cause for a manager to put an entire production line of employees on immediate unpaid furlough. That was difficult for mill workers, poor people who lived paycheck to paycheck. The engineer had to deal with heartsick people. He had to shoulder the task of finding why the loom failed, and repair it. Far from home, the engineer had to disassemble substantial portions of the mechanical workings of the loom just to search for a damaged part. Once the damage was assessed, the engineer ordered the part (with an overnight delivery). Quite often, once he made the repair, the engineer found residual damage. Sometimes, he determined that the stronger replacement part would break the loom again once it was restarted. Engineers (like Harry) stayed, sorted out the puzzle pieces, and solved the problem while people around them tore their hair out!

Dedication mattered. Many times Harry worked until sheer exhaustion drove him to sleep, sprawled out onto the loom with tools in hand. After an hour or so of sleep, he awoke to move the tools again. Nearby loom shift managers noticed a competent engineer. Harry’s company enjoyed a sterling reputation by Harry's dedication and the dedication of his brother engineers.

Harry counted himself lucky to have survived those early years with the company. He thought that he was blessed to have moved up to be a consulting engineer, a status that he acquired in his mid-thirties. As a consulting engineer, he had a good salary, an office, and he was part of the brain trust of the company. Now, younger engineers sought his advice, especially from the field, when it was they who tackled the daunting repairs on the looms. For the first time, Harry had a social life. He met a secretary at work: Sandra. A long courtship convinced the two of them that they were compatible; they married. They did not have kids right away. She was five years younger than Harry and wanted to have a lovely house and other things before having a baby. Harry understood that, and he worked hard for Sandra to