Sport & Health

It’s Been Awhile

By FireWire

Story No. 13

Sitting at a table on a rooftop bar in Stockholm, Sweden with five women he does not know, a man ponders his situation.

She left me. I should have expected it I guess. You can’t keep a woman hanging on forever. But it was less than a year; not really forever. And now I don’t have a job. That’s the trouble with contracts. No need to fire anyone and pay them severance, just don’t renew their contract. No need for explanations either.

He feels a nudge from one of the women sitting beside him. “Why so glum?” she asks.

“I have a lot on my mind,” he says.

“Like what?” she asks.

Very attractive woman. I’ll put the ball in her court. “I’m going back home to the States tomorrow.”

“Oh,” she says and turns to the woman beside her.

The man stands up, leaves the bar, and goes home.

A woman is sitting in a restaurant in San Jose, California, with one of her best friends. The woman is explaining what happened to her recent boyfriend, Derek.

“For the first seven months, I thought he might be Mr. Right, then he started getting on my nerves. I won’t trouble you with the details, Jane, but the bottom line is he wasn’t Mr. Right, so I left him. It’s as simple as that.”

“Karen, aren’t you ever going to be satisfied? You’ve been married twice. Both times to intelligent, good-looking men and both times you walked in less than two years. You always have your choice of men. As for Derek, he meant nothing to you at all, really. Just another man. You use your God-given face and figure to seduce, and when you get bored, you close the door and leave.”

Karen looks at her friend with astonishment. “Why this sudden outburst, Jane? What did I say wrong? I don’t understand?”

Jane is silent for several seconds. “I apologize, but I really like Derek. He is well mannered, considerate, and interesting—not at all like your average, run-of-the-mill, good-looking, super-rich guy. He tried hard to make you happy.”

Karen shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t think you should stay with a guy you don’t love.”

“The talk on the street is that, deep down you have a heart no man can ever touch. A heart made of stone.”

“That’s absolutely not true”

“Then, what is the truth?”

“I don’t want to discuss it,” Karen says.

“OK”

They stare at their menus in silence until Karen says, “You only know me from my first marriage. Before that, there was another guy.”

“Oh?”

“His name was Jeff. I met him my senior year in college. He had transferred in from another college. I liked him right off and tried to use what you described as my “God-given face and figure” to raise his interest in me, but that didn’t work, so we just stayed friends until one afternoon he asked me to go to the park with him. After that afternoon, we were inseparable. He was my first love as a mature woman so to speak. I was addicted to him.”

“What happened to him?”

“This is the part I don’t like to talk about because I made a bad decision that haunts me to this day.”

“That’s all right. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Jane says.

Karen looks down at her menu. After several seconds, she says, “We graduated, and I assumed he would get a job, and we would marry although we had never talked about marriage. When I put the question to him, he said he was going into the Army. He said he had enlisted to go to officer school. In three years, he would be out of the Army and ready to look for a job, but not now. Unfortunately, this was not the way I saw the future. I told him I expected to marry a 9-to-5 type of guy who would support me. I told him I felt betrayed by his going into the Army and not discussing it with me first. I don’t know what else I said I was so upset and hurt. After I finished my tirade, he looked at me for a few minutes and then walked out the door. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

“And you haven’t gotten over him?”

“It’s been eight years, but I still carry his memory and what could have been. It’s not fair to ask a man to compete with a memory, I know, but I can’t help myself. Jeff’s memory keeps intruding into thoughts. I keep waiting for him . . . to return.”

“What else could you have done? He didn’t give you a choice.”

“I could have said ‘I’ll come with you.’ Oh how much I wish I had said those words.”

Jane shakes her head. “But you didn’t. So it’s time to forget him. Why don’t you tell Derek you’ve had a change of heart?”

The man returns back home to San Jose, California, from Sweden and makes the decision to go into business for himself, but it’s not clear to him what kind of business he should pursue. He has been working in Europe and Scandinavia, has many contacts there, and thinks an import-export business might be the way to go since it doesn’t take much in the way of cash to get started. He begins to look for a niche market. He is reading The Mercury newspaper one morning when a small, three-line want ad catches his eye. “Wanted MBA with accounting and computer experience to act as a temporary, part-time CFO. Call (408) 920-5000 x25.”

The man figures a part-time job would not interfere with his research for an import-export market, and he could use the extra cash, so he calls the number. He gets a recording asking him to briefly state his education and work experience.

The next day, he gets a telephone call about his want ad response. A man named Don Shoe invites him to interview for the job. Mr. Shoe turns out to be a management recruiter who specializes in supplying temporary, part-time controllers to companies who don’t have a Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Shoe explains that, for the most part, these are companies in financial trouble where the Chief Financial Officer has been blamed for the financial trouble and fired. He tells the man for this particular job he will have to keep the company’s finances in order while the President decides what to do.

After a discussion of the man’s background, Mr. Shoe is satisfied the man can perform as a temporary Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Shoe says the pay is on an hourly basis. The hourly rate is substantial, and the man accepts the job. Mr. Shoe says the man will start at a Silicon Valley company the following Monday.

There is something on the man’s mind. A woman. A woman he dated years ago who keeps entering his mind. A woman who said he had no future and rejected him. A woman who married six months later to some rich guy. He had always wondered if she had planned it that way all along.

The job turns out to out to take twelve hours a day, six days a week—eight hours a day interacting with the staff and four hours a day after the staff leaves plus twelve on Saturday making sure all the pieces fit together. The President of the company rarely talks to him. All the President seems to care about are the financial reports that the man has managed to get out on time so far. When Sunday comes, he sleeps late, goes to the local coffee shop, reads the paper, and goes back home to watch sports on TV. The import-export company research is on hold for the moment.

Two Sundays into the job, the man is reading The Mercury newspaper economics section and sees a Stanford University professor has made a breakthrough in a specialized area of mathematics. He doesn’t understand what the professor has done, but he knows the professor’s name. He decides to set the record straight and let Karen and her family know he had made something of himself after all.

He calls Stanford on Monday and gets the professor’s office number. The professor finally answers his phone on Wednesday.

“Hi Bernie, this is Jeff Lang. Do you remember me? I used to date your sister.”

“Of course, I remember you Jeff. How are you doing?”

“Fine. I read about your discovery in Sunday’s Mercury. Congratulations.”

“Thanks Jeff. We’ll see if it leads to anything. What have you been doing? The last I heard, you had joined the Army.”

“That’s right. I got out of the Army, got an MBA from Wharton, then worked in Italy, Switzerland, and Sweden. I just got back to the States a month or so ago.”

“How about that. Why don’t you and your wife come over to the house one night for dinner? Sandra and I would like to hear about your travels. You remember Sandra don’t you? She and I were dating when you were dating Karen.”

Jeff hadn’t expected to be asked over for dinner. He instinctively wants to avoid anything that might lead to contact with Karen and her husband.

“Of course I remember Sandra. I’m still single, so it will just be me. Unfortunately, I’m on the road now and will be for the next few weeks. As soon as I get back I’ll call and set up a time.”

When Bernie gets home that night, he calls Karen.

“I got a call from our college years today,” Bernie says

“Our college years?”

“Yes, our college years.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Karen asks.

“Jeff Lang.”

“What did he say?”

“He had read a report of my statistical algorithm research and congratulated me. I could tell he was impressed.”

“Did you get his number?”

“No. The call came in through the campus switchboard. You shouldn’t have written him off as you did. After he got out of the Army, he went to Penn’s Wharton School for an MBA. Wharton is one of the best business schools around and extremely difficult to get into. After he got his MBA, he worked in Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy. He returned to the States about a month ago and is looking for a job.”

“Did he say where he was living?”

“No. I invited him to dinner, but he said he was traveling and would get back to me.”

“Is he married?”

“No.”

Three Sundays into the job and Jeff is sitting in the coffee shop.

I don’t know how long this job is going to last, but I have to get back into working out again, and the only time available is before work or after work. Eight or nine at night is too late, so it’s before work. If I get into the gym at six, I can be at the office by eight.

He joins a gym that afternoon.

The next morning, he is in the gym working out.

Pretty big place. Quite a few people. Probably like me, getting a workout before work.

Jeff strikes up a conversation with the man working out on the machine next to him.

“This is my first time coming here. Is it always this crowded?”

“Yea. But it’s a lot busier around four, when people start getting off work. A lot of high school kids also come in at that time to socialize.”

Jeff nods and goes back to his workout.

A few mornings later at the gym, he sees the man again.

“Have you been here in the afternoon,” the man asks.

“No. Not yet.”

“You should, just to take a look at the high school girls strutting around in their skin tight clothes.” He chuckles. “But the star of the show isn’t one of those teen queens. No sir. It’s a good-looking, young woman who doesn’t wear skintight clothes. She doesn’t need to. It’s no use trying to talk to her though. She will just smile and say she’s in a hurry to finish her work out.”

“I’ll try to make it in one afternoon to see the sights,” Jeff says.

Four Mondays into the job, a man comes into Jeff’s office and says he is the new Chief Financial Officer. Jeff logs out of his computer and the new Chief Financial Officer escorts him out of the building. When he returns home, Jeff receives a call from Mr. Shoe saying he has another job for him starting Wednesday. Jeff declines the job saying he is going to start his own business.

The following afternoon, Jeff is on a treadmill at the gym.

The pay was great, but the hours were lousy. No personal time. I see high school girls. I see young women. I see attractive, young women. However, I don’t see an outstanding, attractive, young woman.

Jeff finishes his workout. As he walks out, he passes a woman coming in. He stops suddenly, but the woman continues towards the gym.

She didn’t recognize me. It must be the beard.

He turns around immediately and follows her in. He holds the door open for her.

“Thank you,” she says.

He looks at her left hand. No ring. I’ll give it my best shot and hope she doesn’t feel the same as before. That’s all I can do.

He stands beside her at the check-in desk.

“Hi Karen.”

She looks at him. Then turns and faces him.

“It’s been awhile,” Jeff says.

“Yes, it has been awhile,” she says.

She pauses.

“But I still remember exactly how you taste.”

https://firewire-connects.com

https://firewire-fiction.com

is a registered trademark of FireWire.