Teacher's Threat

by Diane Vallere

  I smiled. “Not yet. Do you know if Dean Wallace is around? I need to talk to him about one of my courses.”

  “Are you still on the Radical Business Strategy kick?” he asked. He scooped tiny mounds of tobacco into his pipe and then packed the tobacco with the back of his little spoon. “I’ve gone ten rounds with Gallagher. We shared a classroom wall, and it got so bad, I had mine soundproofed.” He leaned forward and said, conspiratorially, “I’ve heard the lectures. Why anyone would want to study that material is beyond me.” He fluttered his hand in the air.

  Before I had a chance to reply, the door at the back of the business office opened, and Barbara entered. Today she wore a yellow shirtdress. I pictured her shopping for the school year, finding a style that worked, and buying it in bulk.

  “Hello, Barbara,” Ansel said. He turned to me. “Good-bye, Eliza.” He made a slight bow toward us both and waved his pipe in the air and then exited through the door at the back of the office.

  “He hasn’t cast you as a character?” I asked.

  “I put a stop to that nonsense immediately. He can call me Barbara like the rest of the school does.” She shook her head at the memory and sorted a stack of mail into cubbies that were mounted on the wall. When she finished, she turned to me. “Now, what can I help you with today?”

  “Dean Wallace said Radical Business Strategy class might be canceled, and I wanted to find out what other courses are in the eight a.m. slot.”

  “None, I imagine, but you’re in luck. It’s too late for the college to add a new course to the curriculum, so Radical Business Strategy remains a viable option.”

  I was oddly pleased. “Will it return to the original time?”

  “No. There was no one available to teach it. The dean is stepping in to fill the spot, but the only available time on his schedule is at night.” She glanced at her calendar. “We’ve already had one withdrawal, but the dean was able to fill the spot from the waitlist.”

  This was the second time information regarding my class appeared to have been disseminated to the class without my knowledge. “Is there a distro list or an email chain where I can get these updates? It seems if I don’t stop by this desk and ask about my classes, I’d be perpetually in the dark.”

  She tipped her face down and peered at me over her reading glasses. “You did update your student profile to include this course, didn’t you?”

  “I forgot,” I admitted. “I met with Professor Gallagher on Monday. He signed off on my paperwork and told me to be in class on Tuesday.”

  “Update your student profile. All updates and course materials are sent through the portal.”

  I thanked her and left the building.

  Somewhere buried in my bag was an orientation packet. Late enrollment had meant jumping into the deep end to get caught up, and that meant things like orientation could wait until later, or so I’d thought. Now I wondered what else I’d missed.

  I spent the next couple hours in the library updating my profile and downloading coursework. I saved it all to a flash drive so I could read it more thoroughly when I got home. Already I could tell it was going to be another late night.

  By the time seven o’clock rolled around, my full day of catch-up coursework had left me glazed over. It was one thing to balance a budget for your own business but another to spend hours working through business scenarios in a textbook. I would have killed for a decorating class in the middle of it all just to cleanse my palette for learning.

  My blood sugar was low, and I had just enough time for a candy bar. I left the classroom with the others and bought a Payday, this being business school and all. The hallway was empty, so I tore into it and ate like no one was watching, wiped my mouth, and headed back.

  The classroom door was open, and Faye was in the hallway with a student who hadn’t been in class before. He wore a Van Doren T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, an outfit that made him blend in with just about everybody on campus.

  But he didn’t blend in. He stood out like a sore thumb. Because despite his attempt to look like everybody else, there was no way to hide his identity from me.

  The new student was Tex.

  11

  Tex spotted me a moment after I spotted him. To his credit, he lost all interest in Faye. He excused himself, but instead of coming over to me, he went inside the classroom and sat down at a desk in the back. Aside from our initial eye contact, he pretended not to notice me.

  “He’s cute, right?” Faye said, joining me by the door. “That’s the good thing about night classes. Older men.”

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “New student. His name is Rex. Rexford Allen. Sounds wealthy, don’t you think? Old Dallas money. He said he’s poised to take over the family business. Tuna, I think. Maybe it was herring. Something fishy.”

  She was right about that!

  Hugo entered the classroom. “Good evening, students. Please take your seats. We’re about to get started.” He turned to Faye and me. Faye’s thumbs were busy tapping away on her phone screen. “Faye, no cell phones in class.”

  “Sorry, Dean Wallace,” Faye said. Dean looked at me, and I smiled.

  “Madison, I’m happy to see you made it. Did you update your student profile?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, good. Barbara said there was a problem with it.” He paused and looked across the room at Tex. “Mr. Allen, did Barbara advise you to complete your student profile?”

  Tex had the good sense to look confused.

  “After class, meet with Ms. Night. She can tell you what you’ve missed.”

  Tex shifted his attention from the dean to me for a fraction of a second. I considered sticking out my tongue and crossing my eyes, but, showing great restraint, I did not.

  Being creatures of habit, my classmates chose the same seats they’d occupied previously. I forgot the one class session I’d attended had been two weeks into the semester for them; I was as much of a newbie as Tex. The last remaining seat was the one in the front row, directly in the line of fire of the dean. With no other options, I claimed it.

  Faye had ignored the instruction of the dean and fixed her attention on her phone. She scrolled slowly, seeming not to notice class was about to start.

  Hugo stood next to the desk. “Before we get into the coursework, I have an announcement. Van Doren is saddened by the passing of Professor Gallagher. The college will suspend classes on Monday in his honor. There is no formal memorial, but if anyone chooses to plan one, please leave the information with Barbara at the admissions desk.” He stopped talking and studied the faces of the students in class. “Would anyone like to talk about what happened? Does anybody have anything they’d like to say about Professor Gallagher?”

  I hadn’t expected the dean to talk about the deceased professor, but it made good sense for the college to approach the subject head-on. Still, I got the feeling it was an act for our benefit. The caring dean, stepping in to oversee the stressed-out business students left behind by their loyal leader?

  “He was a fraud,” Eric muttered. The attention shifted to him, and he looked at the dean. “He tells us to take risks, and then he cops out by committing suicide.”

  “He didn’t kill himself,” Faye protested. “Someone tampered with his car.”

  The color drained from Eric’s face. He sat in the middle of the room, in the sightline between Tex and me. I looked past him to Tex, who caught my eye. His gaze was cold and unemotional. It was his cop face, the unreadable one, but if I had to guess, I’d say it communicated something about him telling me to drop this class and me not doing so.

  I twisted around to face Faye. “Where did you hear that?”

  “It’s all over the local news,” she said. She held up her phone, but the screen had gone into sleep mode and was dark.

  “No phones in class,” Hugo repeated.

  “I just wanted to show Madison the news story.”

  “Faye, I’m not going to tell you again. Madison
is capable of looking it up when we’re done.”

  Faye put her phone away and looked at me apologetically. “It’s all over the news,” she said again.

  “I still say he’s a fraud,” Eric said. (We seemed to have been caught in a loop of people repeating themselves.) “What business did Gallagher run? Why are we supposed to pay attention to what he teaches when he doesn’t have any success of his own?” He scowled. “Madison, you didn’t believe anything he said about you, did you?”

  I hadn’t expected to be called out so specifically, and I froze.

  The dean answered in my place. “Thank you, Eric, for bringing the discussion back to business. I checked the notes from your last class, and it seems you had a heated discussion about Madison Night’s unique business situation. Madison, why don’t you recap for us? We have at least two people here who missed class, and speaking as one of them, I’d love a summary.” He smiled broadly.

  I hadn’t thought it possible to be less comfortable than I’d been a moment ago, but I was. I cleared my throat and thought about where to start.

  “Come up here,” Hugo said. He motioned to the floor next to the desk.

  I didn’t want to stand at the front of the class and talk about my business, not now, not ever. But I was the only person in the class properly informed about my situation, and if I left it to anyone else to recap the last class’s discussion, the facts would get twisted. This was a point of pride, a chance to correct the record.

  I walked to the front of the room and looked out at the students. Tex leaned back in his chair and watched me. I hadn’t told him Mad for Mod had been under fire in my course, and now he was going to hear it here.

  “Start with a quick summary about your business and your circumstances,” Hugo said. “I’ll interject with questions.”

  I nodded at him. “I’m Madison, and I run Mad for Mod, a boutique decorating business specializing in mid-century modern design. I’m a sole proprietor, and I recently lost my inventory in a legal battle. I have an empty showroom on Greenville Avenue and a decorating license and not much more.”

  “How long have you been in business?” the dean asked.

  “Ten years,” I said.

  “How long have you turned a profit?”

  “Ten years.”

  “Where did you get the start-up capital when you first launched?”

  I’d described my business strategy enough times recently to summarize it quickly for the class finishing up with the dumpster-diving aspect of my business. “At first, I found items along the side of the road and either refinished them myself or hired a handyman to do the work.”

  “Low overhead. Good,” the dean said.

  “But not sustainable,” Eric said. “She can’t predict what people are going to throw out.”

  “Madison?” Hugo asked. “Care to respond?”

  “He’s right. I needed more inventory fast. I started reading the obituaries to identify women of a certain age, and I made offers to the next of kin to buy out the estate.”

  I’ve found my method for acquiring mid-century inventory elicited one of two responses in people: impressed by my outside-the-box thinking, or the more popular response: distaste for my opportunistic methods. In this case, two-thirds of the course went with the first, which made sense, this being Radical Business Strategy and all. It appeared I’d found my people.

  Among the third of the class that didn’t approve was Faye. I could see the disgust on her face. Her eyes were glossy, and she wiped at one—a tear?—and then balled up her fists and tucked them under her arms as if she were cold.

  Nothing got past Hugo. “Faye, what do you think about Madison’s methods?”

  “It’s disrespectful,” she said. “Profiting from a family’s loss.”

  “But I paid them. They profited. And by making an offer and arranging to take it all, I solved one of the biggest problems that falls onto the shoulders of adult children: what to do with Mom and Dad’s stuff.”

  “People should honor the deceased, not talk about them in transactions.” Blotches of red appeared on Faye’s face, neck, and collarbone. She felt strongly about her opinion, and in the past, strong reactions to my methods usually indicated a person who had recently lost a loved one.

  “If you can remove your emotions and think about it as a business transaction, you might see it differently,” I said.

  Faye stood up quickly and grabbed her things. “This makes me sick,” she said and then ran out.

  12

  I stared at the door after Faye left. I already knew people tended to disapprove of my methods, but to have a business student leave class after hearing them made me think twice. Was it possible potential clients were avoiding me because they didn’t like the way I conducted business? Was my renegade thinking that off-putting?

  The vacuum of silence that Faye’s exit created was ended by Hugo. “Well,” he said. “Radical business does create strong reactions.” A few students laughed.

  I stood awkwardly at the front of the class, unsure whether I were to remain where I was or if my time in the spotlight was over. The dean answered that question too. “Now that we know Madison’s past, let’s talk about her future. Where does she go from here?”

  “Take time off and go to business school,” called out a Mexican student in the back row, breaking the tension. The class laughed, Hugo among them. “Thank you, Octavio. I think Madison figured that step out already. Anybody else?”

  “Declare bankruptcy, get out of her debts, and start a new company,” a woman by the windows said.

  “Go work for a big design firm,” Eric contributed. It was the same suggestion he’d made in the previous discussion, and he was sticking to his guns.

  Other suggestions followed, versions of what had already been said: start over, sell off, give up. The class had heard Gallagher’s response, but none repeated it.

  “And you, Madison? I imagine of everybody in this class, you’ve spent the most time thinking about this question. Do you agree with your classmates? Or do you have other ideas?”

  I hadn’t told anybody about my new ideas, but if not now, then when? I was surrounded by students interested in business planning. It was like facing a council of elders, except younger than me.

  “I’m going to expand. Open a second studio. Take out a loan against my house and invest in inventory.” I looked out at the expression of my peers, searching for support or approval.

  “It’ll never work,” Tex said.

  Tex. Said.

  His was the one voice I hadn’t expected to hear during class, and hearing it now, the lone critic of my plans, was like a punch to the gut. “Why not?” I asked. “I built the company once. I can do it again, and if I double down now, it’ll take half as long to get back to where I was.”

  “That’s just it,” he said. “You built the company. Yourself. It was manageable for one woman then, but you’re ten years older than you were, and you can’t be in two places at once. If you open a second studio, you’re going to have to hire a staff, and that’s going to eat into your profits. You’ll have to train them to do business the way you want and trust them to represent you to clients.”

  I felt hot and prickly, and it had nothing to do with menopause. “And what business are you in, Rex?”

  He held my stare. It felt like there was nobody else in the room. He hadn’t thought this part out, and I backed him into a corner.

  “Madison, it isn’t a requirement that students in this class are business owners,” Hugo said at the same time Tex said, “Hats.”

  Both the dean and I turned to Tex. “Hats?” I repeated.

  “Stetsons. Cowboy hats.” He nodded at the dean.

  Stetsons? I couldn’t believe it. “Rex Stetson” was Rock Hudson’s alter ego in Pillow Talk! The nerve of Tex using a Doris Day movie as part of his undercover operation.

  “Well, that sounds interesting,” Hugo said. His accent crept in a bit more than usual. He turned back to me.
“You can sit down, Madison. I think we’ve spent enough time on you.”

  For the rest of the class, we touched upon risk assessment and projecting reward and had another heated discussion about forecasting, adjusted forecasts, and the reasons to change course mid-stream. I filled my notebook with pages of information and almost forgot about Tex in the back of the room. I guess there was a benefit to sitting in the front row after all.

  As the clock neared eight thirty, the dean asked if there were any questions before we ended for the night. Eric held his hand up. “Professor Gallagher told us his book was assigned reading for this course. Do we still have to read it? And if not, will the bookstore give us credit for the return?”

  “Which book was this?” Dean glanced down at the course lecture and spread the papers across the desk.

  “Rad Rage,” Eric said.

  “It’s about how anger fuels radical thinking,” said Octavio. “He was right about it too. He used Madison as an example. She got mad when he told us about how her business failed, and she came up with bigger ideas than she started with. Right, Mad?”

  He was right, and Gallagher had been right too. All of my ideas for expansion came after I got good and mad. My anger had been my fuel. “I haven’t read his book yet, but you’re right about my response.”

  Hugo’s lips tightened. When he spoke, it was in a strained voice. “Professor Gallagher didn’t clear his required reading through my office, so I’m going to have to get back to you,” the dean said. He wrote something down. “On that note, let’s call it a night.” He turned to me and, in a lower voice, said, “Madison, can you stay behind for a few minutes?”

  I nodded. Tex’s explanation would have to wait.

  The other classmates packed up their things and left. I was slow putting my books into my backpack. When I stood up and turned around, I saw Eric and Tex walking out together engrossed in conversation. Perhaps Tex dodged a bullet too.