Settling Old Scores: BWWM Second Chance Romance

by Sposs, Mike

  "Kevin, you look terrific too," she said. Finally, in a delayed reaction, they awkwardly embraced each other. It seemed to erase some of the tension. They rapidly settled into a friendly, catch-up conversation, and agreed to meet for coffee later that day. It was just as though nothing had happened between them four years earlier.

  At some point, Kevin just accepted that there was no future in the two of them. He simply stopped writing, and stopped dropping by her house when he was home. He just couldn't go on with the relationship as it was. They had been in a static limbo for years before the breakup. That was enough for Kevin; it was time to move on.

  It turned out she was just finishing up her doctoral degree in music. She planned to audition violin for several orchestras. She knew just about everything there was to know about classical music, rock 'n roll, jazz, and blues. Kevin knew she could talk about her musical interests for hours. He wasn't surprised by this update. She had always retreated into her music for as long as he had known her. He knew she spent hours cloistered in her room listening to music and practicing violin. Kevin used to hang out with her there. He too, was seeking refuge from his own self.

  Kevin had mixed feelings when he asked her to coffee. He thought idly about the scene in the movie Casablanca where Bogart and Bergman meet again. He thought it ironic that music was involved in that meet up too. As he thought about meeting her, he got increasingly nervous. They were safe if they kept it light. But deep down, Kevin knew he couldn't let it go like that. Like Bogart and Bergman, they had unfinished business.

  "I could use a shot of Bourbon about the size of the bottle Bogart was working on when Bergman appeared after hours in Rick's place to see him," he mumbled to himself as he went to see his adviser.

  Pat and Kevin met for coffee at a little outdoor cafe on campus. It was a sunny August late morning with mild temps, low humidity, and very faint touch of fall in the air. As she sat there with the sun shining on her, she had never looked better. The girl had been working at her passion so hard and so long. Kevin of all people knew how hard she had worked to get to this point in her life. Kevin didn't say much as she talked, he just listened to her. Occasionally, he would ask a question.

  “So you are getting a graduate degree in finance? What is the difference between a finance major and yogurt?” she asked with her wicked little grin.

  “I don’t know,” he deadpanned.

  “Yogurt contains live cultures,” she said.

  “It’s a good joke. The last time I heard it, the question was what is the difference between Iowans and yogurt,” Kevin said with a laugh.

  Pat was still living with her mom in the old neighborhood. The same bottom floor duplex that he knew from when he was her paperboy fifteen years earlier. The same one from when Kevin was home on leave, and trying to get her to have a more grown-up relationship with him. Pat did tell Kevin that her mom was pressuring her to be on her own. She also said that she needed a quiet place that wasn't cramped to study and practice. Her collection of books, records, and instruments was starting to really overflow her space. Kevin screwed up his courage and went for it.

  "See that high-rise down the street? I rent there on the top floor,” he said.

  "There are two big bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a large living room, and walk-in closet with shelves big enough to be an office. I am almost never there except to sleep. If you need some quiet place to study, practice, nap, or listen to music, I will give you a key to the place. Call it your home away from home. If you want, you can move in. It will save you about two hours of commuting time every day; we both know 8.3% more time is a big deal," he said, in a lame attempt at humor.

  She hesitated a second. "No, I'm serious Pat. I'll take you there and show it to you," Kevin said. "I always wanted a big pimped out Cadillac to drive. Outrageous cars are generally a bad investment. A pimped out apartment makes more sense. Trust me, I am almost an MBA," he added with a laugh.

  8. First Moves

  “A pimped out apartment is for attracting Co-eds; you aren't fucking kidding me that easily. I know your game," she said as they strolled down the street to Kevin's place. Then with a look of relief, she said, "God it feels good to swear. They don't go for that much in academia, you know."

  "I have sort of become a dual citizen myself. I have the vocabulary of a crusty old Chief Petty Officer. Nobody can string together the expletives like they can without repeating themselves. Then I have to clean it up when I come ashore. So far I have managed to do it," he said with a laugh.

  It really didn't look like a bachelor pad inside, because the place had been occupied by more ladies than men. As usual, Pat had her facts straight. Kevin usually would attract a female roommate during the six months every year that he was in school. The roommates he was sleeping with were always co-eds who were also going to school.

  Kevin had moved on from Pat Washington, or at least he thought he had. These coeds were witty, pretty, and driven grad students for the most part. They didn't get Kevin's lifestyle, and love for the sea. Invariably, they dumped him once they discovered he was not going to change his ways. Kevin didn't care; he just would go back and get a new girlfriend when things went south.

  He gave Pat the tour, and she was impressed. She loved the view of the river, which had plenty of Southern exposure. It was a little awkward when they finished. For a brief second, they were both aware of the other’s physical presence. Then, Kevin saw the guardedness come back over her again. Kevin tried one last time.

  "Pat, you know how I feel about you. Seeing you today has torn me apart. I won't lie about that," he said quietly.

  Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes welled up in tears. She stepped into Kevin and put her arms around him. "I thought maybe you had come to hate me," she said as she struggled to get some composure. "It took everything I had to come over to you today in the bookstore," she said. "Just hold me please, Kevin".

  Kevin was on a roller coaster ride himself. She had done this to him before. He loved her without a doubt. He also knew he couldn't have the same relationship with her that drove him crazy before they had parted ways years before. The moment passed. She took his phone number, and she agreed to consider his offer, but turned down a key.

  Kevin figured he had blown it, and really didn’t expect that anything would come of his offer. His attitude at least on the surface was one not caring. He had tried to score another female roommate, and it didn’t work out. In his less guarded moments, he would have admitted to feeling all the emotions that go with rejection. Pat had eluded him again. He couldn't get her off his mind; never had after all these years. He wondered wearily if he would.

  About two weeks after that initial encounter with Pat, Kevin got a knock on his door about 7:30 one morning. There she was, nervously standing at the door. "Come on in Pat, let me get you a cup of coffee," Kevin said.

  She came in and looked around nervously. Kevin thought she half expected that she would find him with a female companion this early in the morning. He handed her the fresh coffee and look at her directly. "There is nobody else here Pat."

  "I'm sorry, I wasn't checking up on you. Honest, I wasn't," she said.

  "Well, just so you know, there is no one else here, or in my life right now," Kevin said.

  She smiled thinly and searched Kevin's face closely. "I have a little time to kill before my first class this morning, and I thought I would take you up on your offer and study a little here. Are you OK with that?” she said.

  "You’re welcome to have coffee and stay as long as you want. I have to get to the other end of town now for a rather interesting assignment I took on," Kevin said.

  "What assignment is that?" she asked.

  "Mr. Sharpe, do you remember him?" Kevin said.

  "The Mr. Sharpe from junior high, your old neighbor, our old math teacher?" she asked.

  "He finally talked me into making an appearance at the school math club. He thought it would be great if no less than an alumnus showed up and tal
ked to the kids about how he used math every day while driving a ship," Kevin said.

  Pat smiled, her eyes lit up. "I know you can't say no to that man," she said.

  "I'm going to start out with a little speed math demonstration, and then I'm going to tie that to algebra," Kevin said.

  "So are any of the old teachers still there?" she asked.

  "I will tell you after I have been there. I usually stop by to see Mr. Sharpe at his house when I first get to town and start a fresh round of school," replied Kevin.

  "I am glad to know that you didn't part company with everyone in the old neighborhood since you left it," she said with a touch of bitterness in her voice.

  Kevin thought it was a cheap shot, but ignored it. "I have to get going here. You can take a key and lock up when you go, or just pull the locked door shut when you go.

  "I'll just pull it shut, thanks for the coffee," she said.

  As Kevin meandered across town, his thoughts alternated between Pat, and his speed math demonstration. Driving interest for math would very much help to make Mr. Sharpe's job easier. Kevin felt good that he was helping his former teacher in some small way. Could there be a tougher and more fickle crowd than junior high kids?

  Kevin was glad to see Pat this morning too. He was hoping that he would see more of her, even if she was initially just checking to see if he was with anyone. It had been a little frosty but he hoped his openness with her would help ease any suspicions she had about him. He had just left her free to snoop around his apartment all she wanted. He didn't care; as far as he was concerned, he had nothing to hide. She might find some rubbers in the nightstand. So what, he thought.

  9. The Math Club

  Kevin pulled into a parking slot at the school and went inside to the principal’s office. Mr. Sharpe was paged. Kevin started out the club talk with his speed math demo. He had the kids volunteer 10 two digit numbers, and three digit combinations. Then, he solicited a volunteer for the black board. Then, he just shouted the answers out rapid-fire without any calculations. He hoped the kids were impressed. There were several three digit multiplications right at the beginning. Kevin had planned that deliberately. As he finished up, they were still writing the digits down on the first couple of problems. He said to the group, "You can do this kind of math this fast, too."

  Then, he launched into a discussion of the various techniques he used to solve these problems. The first problem involved mentally calculating 612 squared, which is a real life area code. The second problem involved squaring another three digit number. Kevin pointed out that 612 could be split to have a 1:2 ratio just like the number 12. That the sum of the fractions 6/12 and 6/12 would be 12/12 or one. So, wouldn't it make sense that instead of 1/4/4 the components of 612 squared would be 36/144/144 assembled into 374,544. It was pretty simple stuff really; the kids got it right away.

  For the most part, they were quite impressed. Mr. Sharpe was blown away. He was a classic former marine that had learned his math old school style. There was one way, and one way only to do things. That one way didn't include the technique that Kevin was using. So, Kevin was opening him up to a new style that tied algebra and arithmetic together. He instantly got it too, and was quite enthused. Then, Kevin launched into a short description of how he used geometry, math, and trigonometry to make his living as a Second Mate. The kids loved it. You could see them just sponging up everything.

  Mr. Sharpe was exuberant afterward. "You ought to be a teacher. You really got these kids going today," he pitched Kevin.

  "I don't know if I have the patience, and besides I make a pretty good living in my current profession," Kevin said.

  "I know you are here for only four months, but would you come back here in a couple of months and pay us another visit?" he asked.

  "I will do that. I promise," Kevin said.

  Kevin told him about his math experiences after going to inner city schools. "One day, I was taking Calculus and I couldn't even spell it for Christ's sake. There were kids there from private school that had this stuff in high school. Don't ever assume public education can match what some of these kids had. So, now you know why I became a mate, and not a marine engineer," Kevin said to Mr. Sharpe.

  Then Kevin told him about the time he met a cadet mariner from the Russian Merchant Marine in Istanbul. Fortunately, the cadet spoke English, and so they visited each other’s ships. Kevin even took a movie projector over to their ship and showed them a John Wayne Western. The Russian Crew loved John Wayne, especially when he got in a fight with the bad guy and kicked his butt. He knocked the bad guy out of a wagon, then jumped down to the ground pulled the bad guy up by his lapels and continued to beat the shit out of him. The crew loved it. Male love for violence must be universal Kevin thought.

  Later, when he and the Russian talked shop, they learned they used pretty much the same textbooks for stuff like Navigation. Bowditch, The American Practical Navigator, was the textbook they both used for navigation. Stability & Trim for the Ship's Officer, was another shared text. In math, they were light years apart though. The Russian cadet studied out of an old 150 page calculus book. Kevin's was a 600 page monster book, but guess who knew their math better? The Russian, that's who. Kevin laughed as he told the story.

  "That's when I figured out that the capitalist system wasn't working so good for education, comrade. Ironically, in the capitalist system, these professors have an army of slave labor called Teaching Assistants. They have big egos too. The publishers sort of get paid by the weight of the book. The bigger, the better. So, we end up with these mine is bigger than yours books that eventually end up discouraging students from science & math," he concluded.

  The cadet did give him a book in English about Trachtenberg Speed Math, and another one about Vedic Math. The books made Kevin a believer in these techniques which were in fact what he had just shown these kids. Kevin in turn gifted him his 600 page mega book.

  "By the way Mr. Sharpe," Kevin asked as they cleaned up the boards after the meeting, "who was the blond ninth grader in the second row? She was a dead ringer for someone I used to know that lived in this neighborhood."

  "That's Marcy Greenberg. She lives with her grandmother somewhere up there off of Kansas Avenue," he said.

  As soon as he said the last name, Kevin made the instant connection. The person she was a dead ringer for was her mother Sylvia! When he heard her speak, he had one of those "Where have I heard that voice before moments?" Kevin didn't have to search his memory much to bring to mind Sylvia and the last time he saw her, or Marcy. He remembered that picture he had of them, too.

  "Holy shit, it's no wonder she looks familiar; she is a dead ringer for her mother, and even more scary she sounds like her mother too!" Kevin said.

  Kevin told Mr. Sharpe the story of his prior relationship with Sylvia and Marcy Greenberg. It ended with the burning of the grocery story they lived above.

  "You don't know the rest of the story, do you? You may have been one of the last persons to have seen her alive," Mr. Sharpe said.

  Then he proceeded to tell Kevin that Marcy's mom just about disappeared the night of the burning. No one had ever seen her since. No bodies were never found in the rubble. They sort of suspected foul play but could never prove it. The detectives nosing around in the matter after the riots concluded that Sylvia was augmenting her AFDC income by part time freelance prostitution.

  Mr. Sharpe went on to say that riots were good opportunities to settle old scores, too. He said a lot of people did just that during this eruption more than ten years earlier. He said it so knowingly that Kevin knew that they needed to have a talk. Kevin asked him if he could stop and see him when he got off work. Seeing that Kevin was upset, he agreed. He told Kevin to meet him in the break room of the AA chapter he belonged to.

  10. Marginal Costs

  As Kevin drove to classes after his math club appearance, he pondered about what he had just learned. Something didn't add up for him. He kept turning things over in his m
ind. When Kevin started in the Merchant Marine, he learned to drink hard liquor. It was very inexpensive and generally duty free. Then, he started out by trying Scotch. He didn't like the ash-tray taste it left him with. He switched to Irish whiskey. That brought out a gloom that he didn't like either. It was like “ Hello Darkness My Old Friend ” with every single shot. He discovered good-quality bourbon. He could get it in proofs in excess of 100; the taste was good, no more melancholy thoughts. It never seemed to turn him into a Wild Turkey, either. Kevin liked that line when he said it to someone.

  He carried the Bourbon habit forward into his graduate school life. Some people pray before they go to bed. Kevin wasn't about to do that; he had given up religion after he came back from Vietnam. Instead, Kevin generally had a double shot of bourbon on the rocks before going to bed. He also kept a notepad and pen handy. He was an inveterate list maker. As he mentally journalized his day, he also made notes about things he wanted to accomplish going forward.

  Kevin's reasoning was that the marginal cost of a single idea at the end of the day was zero. In MBA speak, it means that an extra idea at the end of the day was free. You would be a damn fool not to stimulate them and write them down as they occurred. That was pretty much what the routine was about. He had crafted a routine that encouraged him to take some quiet time every day, and to discipline himself to write out the better thoughts that came to him.

  After classes, Kevin went back to the apartment. Today was definitely a double shot day, to be followed up later on with a double shot nightcap. Pat was gone. He was hoping he would find her still there. So Kevin got the bourbon out and started to sip a double as he thought about his day thus far. It finally occurred to Kevin as he sat there that he was not nearly as street smart as he thought. One time, he had taken a Briggs Meyer test that amongst lots of negative things, said he was off the charts in reading people, and street smarts. He always accepted those results at face value. Now, he really wondered about the findings.