THURSDAY TELEGRAMS

By Timothy Lee Olson

Bill Nelson is a disengaged principal of a suburban high school and a bored husband stuck in a stale marriage.  He is jolted out  of his complacent life when a young teacher, Penny Spindrift, dies in a fire in her portable classroom. Unable to fathom how such a horrific event could happen at his school, Bill begins a life changing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Brewer Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9780996464222

Book preview

Chapter One

Thursday, April 7

Bill rubbed the sleep from his eyes, blinked, rolled from his back to his left side and looked at the illuminated clock. 5:00 am. He yawned, reached out with his right hand, and switched off the alarm set for 5:20 am. Returning to his back, he folded his hands behind his head and let his mind drift. Ah, another twenty minutes to snooze. Bill imagined Heather leaving his office yesterday, her fetching bottom gently swaying side to side. He wondered why his sex life had been reduced to sex fantasies of women other than his wife. He sighed, made a half turn to his right and groped for his wife’s more available soft flesh. Rather than touching Brenda, he found cold sheets. Not surprised, he returned to his left side and grimaced as he felt an all too familiar pain move from his back down into his butt. Throwing the covers back, he slowly lowered his feet to the floor, put a palm on each side of his bottom and pushed himself to his feet. Glancing at the mirror over Brenda’s dressing table, he saw a man in his forties, fairly fit, perhaps a bit soft around the middle. A pleasant looking man, Bill believed that most women found him attractive. Apparently his wife did not. To be fair, he didn’t find her desireable. He and Brenda hadn’t made love in two months. Maybe three months? How long had it been between then and the time before that? He shuffled into the bathroom, pissed, splashed some cold water on his face and squeezed a dab of toothpaste onto his toothbrush. While he brushed his teeth, Brenda called from the kitchen, Bill, your breakfast is nearly ready. He knew what to expect; coffee, a boiled egg, toast, and a glass of orange juice.

After spitting into the sink, he answered, Be there in a minute.

While he gulped the orange juice, Brenda asked, Will you be home for dinner?

I think so. Don’t know of anything scheduled this evening.

That would be nice.

Bill caught the sarcastic inflection in the way she said nice. Evening commitments were one of the benefits of his job. After I check the schedule, I’ll give you a call if something has come up. He could only hope.

---

Turning into the faculty parking lot, Bill passed by the reserved spaces for administrative parking and eased his two-year-old Volvo into the principal’s slot close to his office. Rather than entering through the main entrance to Bayview High School, he used his key to enter through a side door directly into his office. After glancing at his spanking clean desktop, he draped his sport coat over his chair, rolled up his sleeves with cuffs turned inward and stepped into the school’s entrance foyer to greet teachers as they hustled through the office, picking up messages, daily school bulletins, and miscellaneous paper that cluttered up their boxes. Bill smiled, wished each teacher a good day much like a checker in a super market. He enjoyed this time before the first bell rang; it made him feel in touch with the staff. Most staff members returned his smile with a Good morning, Bill, and hustled off to the copy machine in the faculty work area or to open their classrooms before first period. With seconds remaining until the five minute warning bell, Bill turned to greet his secretary, Louise, and bumped into a teacher as she backed up from her box, her hands filled with pages of paper, a few spilling out of her hands and fluttering to the floor. Momentarily at a loss for her name, Bill bent over and retrieved a message that had fallen at his feet, Good morning. Only five minutes until first period.

She retrieved two messages that had fallen to the carpet and said, Yes, I know. I’ve got to run.

Have a good day, Bill called after her and watched her lope down the hall, a tall, thin, blond pony-tailed teacher dressed in faded jeans with a plaid flannel shirt flopping from side to side. He checked her box. Yes, Penny Spindrift. Of course, Penny Spindrift. This wasn’t the first time he’d noticed her coming in at the last minute.

Shortly after the tardy bell rang, Bill strolled down the hall to his office. Passing Vice-principal Cassie Crenshaw’s office, he turned his head to take in Cassie, standing on tip-toes, hanging up her coat in the closet, her tight skirt stretching above the knees. After a quick glance over his shoulder, he took in a slow breath while his eyes travelled down Cassie’s curvy, toned legs ending in petite feet with the heels of her pumps slightly raised above the carpet. Oh god, those legs, oh god. As she turned towards her desk, he rapidly departed into his office. He straightened the lumbar roll at the rear of his chair, sat comfortably if a bit rigidly behind the principal’s desk, and picked up the daily scanner Louise kept updated for him. He checked for any appointment that might need his immediate attention, took note of the levy planning committee to be held at 9:00am this morning at the central office, an appointment with Vice-principal Andy Anderson about some changes in teachers’ room assignments for next year, and a meeting with a social studies teacher considering retirement. Nothing unusual. A typical day, every hour scheduled until mid-afternoon. Glancing out the window, he found the April morning turning from grey to an unexpected blue and sunny sky. Could he get away soon enough for a round of golf? Might loosen up his back. Only that intermittent but chronic pain and the lack of an active sex life kept him from being content, nearly complacent. His mind drifted back to Cassie hanging up her coat. Those are great legs—her husband was a lucky man. Am I getting bored with it all, job and wife? Putting his schedule aside, he opened the levy folder Louise had placed in the right hand corner of his otherwise clean desk top and began preparing for the meeting.

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At 9:22am with thirty minutes still left in second period, Penny Spindrift, a sophomore English teacher in her early-thirties, stood staring at a two inch by two inch square in her plan book. The square which was intended to summarize the plan for the period contained one word – Telegrams. Standing next to her, Tilli, her petite, brunette student helper, held a stack of five by seven inch sheets of paper in her left hand, the telegrams the tenth grade students had written for each other. Tilli always read the telegrams, and unfortunately today they had been brief and not sparked any class discussion. Tilli shrugged her shoulders in Penny’s direction, That’s it for today. What else are we going to do? Penny Spindrift, known affectionately to several of her students as Spinny, had nothing else planned, and anxiously considered what she could do to fill the last half of second period. No filler from a recent weekend Education in Action conference immediately filled that void, but from deep in the shadows of her imagination an idea emerged that brought a smile to Penny’s thin, compressed lips.

While the plan for implementing the idea percolated, she experienced an uncontrollable desire to scratch the itch between her fourth and fifth toes. Damn that fungus, won’t I ever get rid of it? She left her position behind the podium in the front center of the room and sat down in her plastic swivel chair directly behind her oak desk. Tilli dropped the telegrams on Penny’s desk and returned to her seat while other students fidgeted, some buzzing audibly with neighbors. Penny turned the chair to the left, took off her left shoe, and vigorously scratched between her toes with her left index finger. Without putting her shoe back on her foot, Penny turned her chair back to the desk, picked up a stack of assignment sheets from a corner of the cluttered desktop, and returned to the center of the room. She faced her increasingly restless sophomores, seated in two u-formation rows which left an open center corridor. She leaned back on her heels, lifted onto her toes and waved her two hands, palms facing out towards her students. She wanted their attention.

Ms. Spindrift, Missy said from her seat near the front where she waited hopefully (unlike the others) for the expected seat assignment that she wished to finish before the end of the period. Missy had baseball practice in the afternoon, and most certainly didn’t want any homework that evening.

Missy, are you waiting for an assignment? Penny responded in a high-pitched strained but melodic voice. She divided the sheets into three sections and vigorously tore each pile into lengthwise strips before proceeding to tear the paper slivers into tiny, tiny bits which she calmly showered over the students’ heads as confetti at a parade.

Nancy, who couldn’t follow plainly-stated directions any more than her excess weight could be contained in her too tight jeans, squinted through her thick glasses at one of the larger pieces of paper that landed on her desk. She pressed her hands into the table in front of her. Ms. Spindrift, I can’t read this!

Not waiting for Penny to respond, Sam, about to bolt out of the room for a smoke, settled back down to enjoy the entertainment. He grinned at Nancy, I know what this is. This is one of Spinny’s strange description assignments. Like when she had us walk around the track and observe the way we breathe. Sam had used that occasion to sprint behind a hedge and smoke a cigarette. Although Penny had not reported Sam’s absence to the office, he had missed the assignment and had to make it up. Spinny had given him one of his few A’s for his description of inhaling and exhaling a cigarette. That’s why he remembered it. Now, Sam inhaled deeply and vigorously exhaled the sour residue of a cigarette smoked between first and second period on the students in front of him.

EEEEEEuuuugh, said Nancy, who sat in front of him.

Shhhhh! went Ms. Spindrift, with an enthusiasm and authority seldom seen except when she was waxing on about one of her fill in the time lessons which she called spindrifts, and which often caused her curriculum-bound colleagues to comment on in the lunchroom: Did you hear what that Penny Spindrift had her students do yesterday? Pardon me, but what did that have to do with teaching English?

Penny grabbed a foot long, chalk clogged foam eraser from the chalkboard tray and swept her desk clean of texts, referrals, attendance sheets, announcements, tardy slips, library slips, and assorted read and unread student papers. The contents of the desk top fell with a variety of thudding sounds and fluttered about the room like unformed paper airplanes in the swirling, spreading-breath choking chalk fog. Several students seated near her desk began to cough.

Obie, a rotund adolescent with crisscrossing and watery eyes, raised his hand. Grasping the eraser in the center and waving it like a baton out in front of her, Ms. Spindrift moved through the fog to stand directly in front of him. Obie slowly pulled his hand down, leaned over his desk and whisked his pudgy fingers through his long hair attempting to slough off bits of paper. Yes Obie?

Obie lifted his head to squint at Spinny, but barely managed to stifle a cough. Please Ms. Spindrift, please stop this. I’ve got asthma.

Gus, whose thoughts rolled out of his mouth like M&M’s from a machine, cheered her from the back of the room. "All right, Spinny. All Right! Penny gave Gus an appreciative smile. Stepping directly in front of Obie’s desk, she changed her grip on the eraser from the middle to one end; with it, she swept Obie’s desk clean of his next period’s history text, notebook and pencil. Ms. Spindrift! Obie lurched from behind his desk to retrieve his text and spread eagled himself against the wall, away from the swirling chalk dust. Heedless of Obie’s complaints, Penny continued on to the next desk and the next and the next. Several confounded students grabbed their class materials and stuffed them into their knapsacks. Several muddled students watched in awe while Penny’s relentless foam scythe grimly reaped their desktops of the remaining pens, lipsticks, gum wrappers, Pee-Chees, and half-finished assignments into the center of the room between the rows of desks. A smile spreading across his face, Marvin, the class cut-up seated in the row next to the wall, reached across his desk and jerked Tilli’s chair, Hey, is she losing it?"

Tilli turned from watching Spinny to face Marvin in the row behind her, I just don’t know, Marvin, I just don’t know.

Too bad Danny’s absent. He’s already convinced that Spinny’s on dope half the time.

Yeah, Marvin. Danny ought to know. He’s probably out having a joint right now. He’d freak out if he were here.

The desk tops now emptied, Penny vigorously attacked the walls, grabbing posters, clock, student writing samples, daily bulletins, and added these to the pile. Wanda, a happy, bouncy girl willing to try any of Penny’s unusual assignments, thought that Sam had intuited correctly what her teacher was doing. She asked, Ms. Spindrift, would you like some help?

Why yes, Wanda, would you add the books on the book shelves to the pile?

"Ms. Spinny, do you mean our Adventures in Literature?" Not waiting for an answer, several boys (who had not opened the book all year) pitched in to help empty shelves not only of the anthology, but of twenty-year-old novels, fifteen-year-old grammar texts, a variety of teachers’ texts, and boxes and boxes of mimeographed short stories and poems.

While the boys hurled the texts over the heads of other students, Ms. Spinny moved to the exit door kitty corner from her desk. After surveying the bare walls, the empty desktops, and the mountain of materials in the center of the room, she picked up the waste basket, marched to the pile, lifted the basket high over her head and tipped it upside down. Candy wrappers, pop cans, broken pencils, and crumpled paper showered down. Ms. Spindrift stood beside the heap, the overhead fluorescent lights illuminating her paleness.

The awed students held their breaths. Ingrid, a slender, pretty girl seated in the back of the room next to Sam, noticed Penny’s trembling fingers. She whispered to Sam, I don’t like this. I think something’s gone wrong with her.

His eyes rolling back into his head, Sam said, Naw, she’s OK. We’re going to have to write about this. Wait and see. Remember the time you had to write about dried dog poop out on the football field?

Yuck, how could I forget? But, what do you know. You ducked out for a smoke. Hey look Sam, her hands; they’re shaking.

Come on now, haven’t you heard? Spinny’s trying to quit smoking.

Yeah, or maybe she had too much coffee.

Tom, who sat towards the front and whose parents had called a counselor to request that Tom not be required to participate in an activity called The Hot Seat (where a student had to sit in the front of the room and answer questions from the class) barked back at Sam, Well, I’m not going to help pick it up.

Gus snickered, Yeah, you wouldn’t pick up the dog poop, either.

Penny navigated through the debris to the rear door. As she passed Ingrid’s desk, Penny whispered to herself. God, what am I doing?

Ingrid, half out of her seat, briefly tugged at Penny’s flannel shirt, Spinny, what are you doing?

Penny patted Ingrid on the shoulder and turned in Tom’s direction, Tom, you certainly don’t have to pick up anything. None of you have to help. You are all excused.

While the sophomores quickly gathered their personal belongings together, some pawing through the pile in the middle of the floor searching for a text or folder, Penny leaned over Sam, whose Levi’s jacket had a slight square bulge in the left breast pocket and asked, Do you have a match?

Sure do Ms. Spindrift. Sam answered, smiling like a conspiring comrade. He reached efficiently into the upper pocket of his jeans jacket, pulled out a match book and palmed it to her. Keep ‘em. I’ve got more. Need a cigarette? Without waiting for an answer he sprinted out the door, followed by the rest of the class. They resembled a disorderly grade school class dismissed for recess.

Ingrid lingered behind the others and tentatively touched Penny’s dangling hand as she walked toward the center of the room, Would you like me to stay and help clean up?

Thank you Ingrid for offering, but no, this is my mess.

Obie still flattened against the wall, blurted, Ms. Spindrift, it’s still ten minutes before the bell!

Are you worried about getting caught out of class without a permission slip?

What if Vice-principal Wassman catches me? Penny shook her head. Poor picked-on Obie. He’s the one who would get caught. Penny could barely tolerate him and the kids taunted him.

Obie, just leave me alone. Get out of my classroom. Wassman won’t see you way up here.

Lew, having retrieved his next period’s text from the pile, sneered, as he sprinted for the door, Obie, what bell? We never hear the bell out here in the portable!

As the door hissed and clunked shut behind Obie, Penny scanned the bedlam of Portable Seven, her teaching station for the past five years. A messy montage of her teaching life took center stage, framed by tables knocked askew and chairs knocked over, legs sticking in all directions. She pulled the flag from its wall standard and poked it upright into the middle of the mound. She returned to the front of the room and from the tunnel beneath her desk, she pulled out her overstuffed expandable briefcase containing weeks of assignments needing recording. Taking one set of papers at a time, she removed the rubber band that held the individual papers together and spread them on the mound. She thumbed through the pages of the year’s plan book and placed it squarely on top of the pile. Then she rummaged through her briefcase for the clean, new folder holding the grading sheets for the third quarter due that afternoon. Not one of the A, B, C, D, or F bubbles had been filled with the dense black lead mark of a number two pencil. She said to the empty portable, I can’t do this anymore.

Digging even deeper into her briefcase, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes. The first two matches fell away from her fidgety fingers without lighting; the third match lit. After lighting the cigarette, Spinny inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs, wondered why she had ever tried to quit smoking. She shook the lit match. Hearing the door begin to open, she discarded the match and stubbed the cigarette out in her palm. Danny Ness stood watching her from the doorway.

---

With five minutes remaining in second period, Rhoda Carrithers turned abruptly toward the windows, joining her second period math class already watching Penny Spindrift’s students sprinting over the lip of the low hill separating the main building from the athletic fields and Penny’s portable. Several students immediately closed their texts, put the assignment sheets into their Pee Chees and prepared to be the first ones out the door. Looking up at the clock above the door, Rhoda stamped her foot, Class, the bell hasn’t rung. We still have five minutes. Pay attention. I’ll expect you to have finished the following problems prior to class tomorrow. Slumping back in their seats, the students hastily noted the problems in their class planners while looking enviously as Penny’s students continued down the slope and into the building. After finishing the assignment, Rhoda returned to her desk, picked up a pencil, quickly scribbled a sticky note, and pasted it in her plan book to remind her to make an appointment to see Bill Nelson after school. This wasn’t the first time Rhoda had gone into see Bill to complain about other teachers not following the rules. In one of the previous meetings, Rhoda had come into his office to complain about Bev Severson, whose students were making too much noise in the room next to hers. Rhoda respectfully addressed Bill as Mr. Nelson and had never caught on that Bill put up with her because she was a source of information regarding the gossip circulating in the building. During their last meeting, she had an increased sense of familiarity, feeling complimented when Mr. Nelson had surprised her, Rhoda, just call me Bill. She did that in private, but seldom in public and never in a faculty meeting. Under her breath she rehearsed, Bill, can’t something be done about Penny letting her students out early? I try to keep my students on task but sometimes they don’t get their homework assignment, especially when they see her students running across the field from that portable. Maybe he would listen and take action. Weren’t administrators paid to do something?

While Rhoda was distracted thinking about her conversation with Bill, her students were sprinting for the door even before the bell. She was about to order them back to their seats when turning to her right, she saw an ascending smoke funnel spread into the sky from east of the athletic fields. Rhoda dashed for the phone on the wall, Connect me to Sid, hurry.

Sid here.

There’s smoke; smoke up on the athletic field.

Sid Otis, head custodian, assured Rhoda that a simple explanation for the smoke was most likely, but promised to check on it right away. He’d get back to her. He stepped outside his office in the gymnasium to see an increasing and spreading black cloud. Rushing back to his office, he pressed the evacuation alarm, called 911, and checked the clock. Oh, fuck. The student body was beginning the fifteen minute morning break between second and third periods. Students were already in the halls. The alarm rang shrilly throughout the building. Teachers on the east side of the building, seeing the smoke, made futile attempts to direct their students to designated areas. Faculty and administrative staff, headed for the faculty room for a morning cup of coffee, were confused as to what to do. No practice for this. Without a clue as to how to control the students surging for the upper field, teachers and administrators attempted to herd the confused students away from the building and to the north and south of the fire, but the effort had little effect. Faculty, staff and students milled about in the cafeteria, in the halls, and on the upper field to watch Portable Seven exploding like a torch.

---

Vice-principal Ned Wassman screamed at the students to get back, used his upper body strength to force students out of the way to make a corridor for the firemen and their hoses. He shouted to Andy, Where the hell is Bill?

Out of the building.

Could have guessed that.

Andy dashed about like an Australian Sheepdog, attempting to herd the students away from the fire. He sprinted along the line of students nearest to the fire trying to push them back across the field. Students rushing onto the field from the building, gaped at the now visible flames boiling out of the center of the portable. They crowded the students closer to the fire. Pressed, students panicked, feeling the heat from the flames. They pushed and shoved, knocking each other down trying to move back from the flames. Further away from the fire, milling student looked for friends, spread rumors about who may have been in the portable. Andy, his back burning, yelled, Get back. It’s dangerous here.

Ignoring Vice-principal Andy, several of the closest, confused, and horrified students were from Spinny’s second period. Tilli elbowed Marvin, Have you seen Spinny?

Nope, have you?

Where is she? Ingrid was close to tears.

How the fuck should I know?

She must be here somewhere.

Yeah, she must be.

Tilli, with images of the paper pile in the middle of the portable filling her mind, navigated her way through the milling students. Where was Spinny?

Faculty members, without classes to monitor during the morning break, either huddled in groups or attempted to corral the students, helping Ned keep a corridor open for the firemen now on the scene. The firemen’s powerful hoses gushed water onto the collapsing portable and rapidly controlled the fire while hissing, steaming, sputtering flames continued to consume the building. Within minutes, all that remained of Portable Seven were two smoking, charred corner posts and a black pile of ash.

Ned caught up with Andy, Have you seen Spindrift?

No, you’d think she’d be around. It’s her portable.

It figures. She’s probably in the john having a smoke.

God, this is awful.

---

At 10:45am, Ned and Andy huddled up. Andy asked, Should we have an early dismissal?

I see no reason here for an early dismissal.

Shouldn’t we consult with Bill? He should be here any minute. He’s on his way.

Not enough time. We need to make a decision before lunch.

Five minutes before first lunch, only minutes after the students had dispersed from the upper field to return to third period classes, Andy posted signs on the office staff’s bulletin board, in the faculty room, and placed a notice in each teacher’s box.

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FACULTY MEETING

AFTER SCHOOL TODAY, APRIL 7, 2:50pm

MULTIPURPOSE ROOM.

ATTENDANCE REQUIRED!

NO EXCUSES - EXCEPT FOR COACHING ASSIGNMENTS.

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Shortly after 1:00pm, a confused Bill Nelson, his lower back brace pulled tight, sat sideways to his polished, empty desk and jerked out the third drawer of a blue five drawer file cabinet. Leaning forward, his back angled slightly from the waist, he kept his head up to allow him to see through his brand new trifocals the mid-distance required to read the identification labels on the folders which held district policies. The fingers of his right hand methodically traveled through the folders while he scanned the tabs. His mind raced ahead of his fingers. Having often sifted through the contents of these drawers, his memory anticipated the titles before his fingers exposed them. He pulled out the folder for fire drills. Where was the policy for this? What happens when the fire occurs and the students aren’t in class? He couldn’t think of anything to cover what happened today. What would he say to the faculty? Where was Penny Spindrift? What if she hadn’t gotten out? Damn, no one had seen her. All the students had been accounted for except two. And what if one or both of those two students had been in there? What could he possibly say to the parents? No, it’s impossible for someone not to get out of a portable. But they hadn’t shown up for third period, nor had Penny sent in an absence card on them in second period. He pictured the portable. It had only one exit.

Bill dialed Vice-principal Ned Wassman, Ned, Bill here.

What can I do for you?

Do you know the names of the absent students in Penny’s class? Have you heard anything about Penny?

Penny? I don’t have a clue, but I could make a good guess. She has to know what happened, probably hiding out. She’ll show up. The students are Danny Ness and Susan Franks – a couple of losers. I’m not worried about Danny, not yet. As for Susan Franks, I caught her smoking and she’s suspended for three days. Andy told me that Penny often makes mistakes in taking attendance. My guess is that Danny wasn’t in second period. We’ll talk to some students from that class.

Did the attendance runner notice anything?

I talked to her. She doesn‘t know Danny, and Penny didn’t give her any attendance cards. Just the usual bedlam in that room.

Bedlam?

Bill, you ought to get out of that office of yours.

Thanks Ned, I didn’t need that. Have you called Danny’s mother?

Yes, she said he left for school when she went to work. My guess is he never got here. She figures the same.

Did you tell her about the fire?

Before I could say anything, she said something about being tired of our bothering her at work about Danny. Then she hung up. You want to call her?

Bill paused, Not yet, maybe he’ll show up after lunch.

That’s a bit of a risk, Bill. She ought to be informed. But do as you think best.

Bill thought about what Ned had said. Maybe no one was in the portable when it exploded. But why had no one had seen Penny? He’d gathered that Penny was a flake but would she just panic and take off? If only I hadn’t exchanged Brick for her five years ago. But shit, I was tired of Brick always mouthing off at faculty meetings. Only last spring I had to take Brick back in order to get rid of Prentice, too many parents complaining about her. Manny sure got the best of me on that trade. When it comes time for staffing this spring, Manny owes me one. Bill squirmed in his chair, his back paining him inches above the tightly cinched lower back brace he kept in his closet and wore on tense days. He stood up, pressed his hands down the small of his back. Only two hours until the faculty meeting. He pulled out the district policy on teacher behavior. Addendum A of Section C stated that teachers were not to leave the building during work hours without notifying the head office. He knew it was often ignored. Dammit, where is Penny? Bedlam in her room?

---

At 2:45 pm, five minutes before the scheduled time, Heather Householder, freshman counselor, together with the rest of the staff, walked in early for the staff meeting in the school’s multipurpose-room, located directly across from the main offices. Teachers usually dribbled into the room five to ten minutes late, taking their seats in small cliques, naturally formed by department, coaching assignment, or in a few cases, by friendship. Most teachers selected seats in the rear of the room for a quick exit; some chose the front rows because they had chosen to sit there from the time they were in kindergarten; a few, to heckle Bill, selected seats right under his nose. Bill, organized and efficient, was usually early for faculty meetings; but not this afternoon. The buzzing and gossiping teachers crowded into the room. Ignoring usual patterns, they filled the front rows. Upset, not wanting to join in the gossip, Heather chose a seat toward the middle of the room, and avoided sitting next to any of the staff she knew well. She watched Bill, back straight as a washboard, walk down the aisle a few minutes late. After climbing the two steps to the stage, he paced back and forth a minute or two along the lip of the stage. Reaching the center, he pulled the podium at the back of the stage to the front. He stepped behind it. At 3:00 pm he attempted to call the meeting to order regardless of the hubbub of conversations and