Now Shawn permitted himself to be a bit more aggressive. Once she made it outside, he could easily lose sight of her. He bumped into a teenaged boy and gave the kid a little shove. The boy’s face registered surprise rather than anger: How many times had this kid been shoved by a teacher or a school board official, after all? Nowadays educators weren’t even allowed to use overly stern language with kids; physically manhandling them was out of the question. Welcome to the School of Shawn, little chump. This thought brought Shawn a moment’s worth of satisfaction, until he glanced back in Alyssa’s direction: She had apparently already exited the building.
Shawn made his way to the end of the hallway, roughly jostling aside several more kids in the process. Along the way, he noticed at least two or three girls who were—in terms of their physical attributes—far more attractive than Alyssa. If you really wanted to be technical about it, Alyssa was just average, he supposed. So why did she have such a hold on him, he wondered.
The answer, he realized, was the fact that Alyssa had so steadfastly resisted him. On more than one occasion, she had defied him, openly denied his desires. Ever since he could remember, this sort of feminine behavior had simultaneously enraged him and magnified his lust. The more a woman rebuffed him, the more he wanted to conquer her—to teach her a lesson.
And Alyssa certainly needed to be taught a lesson, didn’t she?
He pushed through the exterior door at the hallway’s end, the same one through which Alyssa had departed. He found himself on a covered sidewalk that adjoined two school buildings—an older wing and a newer wing, by the looks of them.
Out here, the flow of students had thinned to a trickle. Most of the kids had now made their way to the next period’s classroom. Luckily for him, though, Alyssa was one of the few stragglers. He saw her waifish figure striding away from him, her long, dark hair swishing to and fro along her back.
“Alyssa!” he shouted—loud enough so that she was sure to hear, but not so loud that he would attract attention from the entire campus.
She stopped and turned at the sound of her name. It took a few seconds for her to register his identity, he could tell. The little tease had never expected him to show up here, had she?
Shawn didn’t intended to waste any time. While she paused, he advanced forward. He took a moment to glance around. Now the commons area between the two buildings was completely deserted.
Oh, this was perfect. They were all alone out here. Just the two of them. No one else to meddle or get in the way.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked. “Do you recognize me?”
She looked away from him—first to one side and then down at her feet. He felt his irritation rising. Why couldn’t she at least look at him? Was he so horrible to look at? He had a lot more to offer her than any of the boys at this high school, if she would only have the good sense to recognize the facts. Stupid little uppity bitch, that’s what she was.
Finally she said: “I know who you are.” But she would still not look him in the eye.
“Well, then, why don’t you at least act like you’re glad to see me? I’m your mother’s employer, you know. I ought to at least rate a hello.”
“Hello,” she said. Then: “Sorry, but I’ve got to get to class.”
He could read the tone of dismissal in her voice. Did she think he was an idiot or some sort of a pushover?
He had gone to all this trouble of coming to this high school today. Then he had gone to the effort of finding her. He had practically chased her this far. And how did she repay his efforts? With gratitude? No. With friendliness? No.
She wasn’t even giving him the fucking time of day, was she?
It was humiliating—completely unacceptable.
“Maybe you can be a few minutes late,” he said. He started to reach out for her, knowing this was a horrible mistake, but feeling unable to help himself. She saw him moving toward her, and she cringed in response. Then a nearby door opened and two chattering girls stepped out onto the paved walkway.
The two girls saw him as he reached for Alyssa, and she shrank away from his grasp. Their conversation came to an immediate end as they apparently sensed an unfolding situation—a situation involving a fellow student and an adult man.
Shawn silently cursed the meddlesome pair. He almost told them to quit gawking, to keep moving and mind their own business. But he checked himself—realizing that even his business attire would not permit him that degree of latitude. He would have to resign himself to a tactical retreat.
“Well, Alyssa, enjoy your class. Tell your mother I said hello.”
There, he thought. That should put to rest any suspicions these two meddlers might have. He was a friend of the family—that was why he had stopped Alyssa.
As soon as he had convinced himself that he was off the hook, he seethed with another irksome realization: His desires had just been thwarted by two teenaged girls—three teenaged girls, if you counted Alyssa.
What if Tom Galloway and the other pricks from the monthly meeting could seem him now? They would all take immense delight in laughing at his defeat, wouldn’t they?
He spun on his heels and walked back toward the entranceway from which he had come. The double doors swung backward with a loud clatter when he shoved them open. He headed down the now empty hallway of the school. On either side, he could see the routine of classes resuming. Students were now facing the front of their classrooms with varying degrees of attention and boredom.
He felt his anger rising—like the other day in Detroit, when the middle-aged accountant had defied him at the intersection. And he realized now—as he had realized then—that such a surfeit of anger would have to be vented.
To his left he saw a pair of doors that were obviously restrooms. He entered the one marked “Men,” and stepped into a semi-dark space reeking of urine, bowel movements, and harsh chemical cleaners.
He also smelled cigarette smoke. He saw a male student with shoulder-length hair, clad in a tattered jeans and an army surplus jacket. The boy was furtively smoking a cigarette over a urinal, in a stance that would allow him to dispose of the burning contraband at the first sign of a teacher. Shawn had burst in so quickly and unexpectedly, though, that he was upon the boy before the young man had a chance to execute his practiced maneuver.
The boy looked up guiltily at Shawn and then down at the cigarette in his hand. This one—like the mass of students in the hallway—assumed that Shawn was either a teacher or a district administrator.
“Oh, shit,” the boy said. It would be futile to discard the cigarette now. He had just been caught red-handed.
“Get rid of that thing,” Shawn said. “And then get the fuck out of here.”
Those words seemed to shock the boy even more than the sudden appearance of an adult authority figure. In a different state of mind, Shawn would have taken a twisted delight in shocking a carefree youngster this way; but he was in no mood now for irony.
Shawn could tell that the boy was thinking about talking back. He might be smart for his age. He might have sensed that this adult’s use of the F-word identified him as an outsider, since school-affiliated adults didn’t talk like that in the presence of impressionable students.
Shawn recalled the confrontation at the intersection in Michigan—how his temper had simply snapped, and how he had let loose his fury on the accountant’s Ford Taurus. This kid had no car to destroy. And unlike the accountant, he had nowhere to run. Shawn knew all too well that he was capable of harming weaker individuals when provoked. If this aspiring hoodlum set him off, he knew that he would beat the young man to a pulp—and there would be consequences. Consequences that neither his father nor Bernie would be able to make go away.
But the boy—who was possibly a sophomore or junior (definitely not a senior)—weighed perhaps one hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. Shawn could have felled him with a single punch. Perhaps the kid was thinking: If this adult will use that word in my presence, what else would he be willing to do? How fa
r will he go?
The kid apparently decided that the risk wasn’t worth it. He uttered a barely audible curse of his own, flicked his cigarette into the urinal and walked out past Shawn, giving the mysterious and unknown adult a wide berth. Smart kid, Shawn thought, as the youth passed by in a waft of cigarette smoke.
Shawn looked around the empty restroom. He saw a metal trashcan. He saw a row of three sinks, each with a mirror above the basin.
He lifted the metal trashcan and aimed for the mirror above the middle sink. He propelled the trashcan into the glass. It shattered in a satisfying crescendo of cracking glass and raining shards. He dimly wondered if anyone would hear the racket; but right now such concerns were secondary. He would worry about consequences later.
The trashcan clanged onto the sink and then onto the floor, rolling about before finally coming to a rest. Shawn paused to admire his handiwork. He was still angry about Alyssa’s rebuff; but he felt that familiar torrent of immediate, irresistible rage subsiding. And this time the damage had been minimal and manageable. He had spent his rage on a mirror in a public high school restroom, rather than on a living, breathing person who could make subsequent trouble for him.
But that didn’t eliminate all of the risk associated with his actions. The noise had surely reverberated into the hallway and the classrooms beyond.
Shawn took a deep breath and walked over to the restroom door. Inching it open, he peered out into the hallway, scanning the area in both directions. To his relief, the clamor had not drawn any curiosity-seeking students or meddling adults. He had been lucky. But now it was time for him to leave.
On the way out, he passed by the glass-walled office of the principal, who was engaged in a telephone call. Seeing Shawn, the principal smiled and motioned for Shawn to come into the office. No doubt the man wanted to express his gratitude for Shawn’s participation in the Career Week activities.
Shawn smiled right back at him, and—without slowing his pace—pointed at his watch and shook his head apologetically. The principal nodded and gave him the thumbs up: Surely the man understood that UP&S’s vice president of operations had a lot on his plate.
Finally he reached the sunshine and open air of the school’s parking lot. He was home free now. The broken mirror would eventually be discovered, of course; but there was no way that anyone would link the damage to him. There was a small chance that the puny kid in the army surplus jacket might finger him for the crime—but no one would believe the word of a punk like that against an adult.
And not just any adult. His position at UP&S made him a pillar of the local community, after all. His company’s tax dollars went to pay these teachers’ salaries; and it was a certain bet that more than a few of this school’s students were supported by UP&S paychecks. Take that blonde girl who had sat in the front row of the American Civics classroom, for example: One of her parents might be an assembly line worker, or even an office employee who was directly beneath him on the company’s organization chart.
Walking toward the Audi, confident now that his vandalism in the restroom would not be connected to him, Shawn’s sense of irony returned. His father had ordered to give the Career Week speech; and that—by all indications—had gone rather well.
Chapter 29
It didn’t take long for Claire to get completely under Alan Ferguson’s skin. We executed a nearly perfect plan of persuasion.
Not that a tall, blonde, and beautiful woman really needs much persuasive skill to capture the attention of the average man, you might say—especially a middle-aged sad sack like Alan Ferguson.
Fair enough. But we were still operating in the minefield of the politically correct office environment of the twenty-first century. Therefore, Claire’s task was not to merely engage in a straightforward campaign of seduction. Alan Ferguson was no fool; and his suspicions would have been aroused if Claire had been too forward or blatant. The danger of overkill was ever-present.
On the other hand, she needed to dangle the bait in open view, so that Alan would take the plunge and irrevocably commit himself to his own downfall. We needed to strike a difficult balance.
Because my desk was right beside Alan’s, I was often able to observe Claire’s flirtations. These were not always easy in the open office environment. One exaggerated gesture—one ill-timed remark—and the entire office would have been gawking at the two of them, potentially scaring off our prey.
One morning Claire sauntered over from the accounting department and asked how to build a PeopleSoft query of all purchase orders over $5,000 that had been placed in the last twelve months. This was a question that I had given her; I knew that Alan was one of the company’s PeopleSoft “power users”.
To avoid being too obvious, she started by asking Lucy. “I can do it,” Lucy said. “But I’m not the best person to ask.”
“What about Craig, the new guy?”
“Aw, Craig doesn’t know very much yet,” Lucy said playfully.
“That’s right,” I said. “Craig doesn’t know jack. Go ahead and talk about me like I have no feelings.”
“The best person to ask,” Lucy went on, “Is Alan. Alan is an expert on PeopleSoft.”
Claire took a moment to seemingly contemplate this.
“It seems that Alan’s an expert on just about everything,” she finally said. She leaned against Alan’s desk. “We never know what talents Alan could be hiding, do we?”
I noted that Alan was actually blushing. I wasn’t sure if this was going to help our cause or not. When he responded to Claire, he wasn’t exactly Mr. Suave. He explained, in a flat monotone, how she could build her own PeopleSoft query. While Alan was talking, Claire leaned closer and gave him her best bedroom smile.
Alan’s voice cracked, and he became visibly nervous. It was a safe bet that a woman like Claire had never come on to him before.
“Be careful not to overdo it with Alan,” I cautioned her later that night. “He’s more perceptive than you give him credit for. One wrong move, and he’ll suspect that something’s up.”
“I think the problem is that Alan Ferguson hasn't gotten laid too many times in the past decade,” Claire said.
Actually, I couldn’t argue with this speculation. Alan had been divorced for a few years. Our investigations had yielded no evidence of any recent girlfriends. And I couldn’t imagine Alan Ferguson walking into a singles bar and scoring a one-night stand. Claire’s assessment was probably dead-on.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t bring myself to turn the pathetic state of Alan’s social life into joke fodder, either. We had a job to do for a client here, which entailed getting Alan off the UP&S payroll. That didn’t mean we had to ridicule him along the way.
“Well,” I said. “Let’s just keep up what you’re doing. I’ll see if I can’t move things along a bit myself.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Never underestimate the power of guy talk,” I said. Claire rolled her eyes at me; but I turned out to be right.
Alan and I were having lunch the next day when he asked me for advice about Claire.
He needed some prompting, of course. Alan was vocal enough when criticizing Kurt and Shawn Myers; but he was not the sort of guy who spoke openly about his own affairs. I reasoned that if I waited for Alan to broach the subject, I might wait forever.
“Seems like that new hottie in accounting has taken a shine to you,” I said.
Sometimes the only way to raise a sensitive topic is to be insensitive. And besides, it was only the two of us that day. Lucy was in a meeting that had run late through the lunchtime hour. Alan and I occupied a relatively isolated table in the UP&S cafeteria. Our conversation was private—or as private as private can be in a company cafeteria.
“You’re talking about Claire Michaels,” he said.
“No, I’m talking about Britney Spears, Mila Kunis, and Jessica Alba,” I said. “Of course I’m talking about Claire Michaels.”
Alan leaned closer, conspiratoria
lly. “Is it that noticeable?”
“Like a fire engine with all sirens blazing.”
“I’d thought that maybe I was imagining it,” Alan said. “You know—like wishful thinking.”
“I don’t think you’re imagining anything.”
This was music to Alan’s ears, I knew. Even though Claire had been making blatantly sexual overtures toward him, there was a part of him that still couldn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes and ears. He wanted a third-party corroboration.
“I guess not. And now—”
“You’re wondering what you should do about it.”
“Something like that. It’s complicated, you know.”
“I don’t see anything complicated about it. If I were you, I would have already taken her to bed.”
“A guy like you would say that.”
“A guy like me?” I asked. Alan responded with a smirk. I knew what he meant by the phrase “a guy like you.” As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never had any problem attracting female attention.
“Let’s not talk about me,” I said. “Let’s talk about you.”
“Okay, I’ll level with you. Let’s look at the facts.”
“Let’s look at the facts,” I agreed.
“Well,” Alan went on. “First there’s the age factor. I’ve probably got twenty years on Claire.”
“I don’t think the age difference is that large,” I said. “Let’s say fifteen.” I was actually speaking truthfully here. I happened to know old both of them were.
“Okay,” Alan laughed nervously. “Let’s say fifteen years, then.”
“There you go. Give yourself all the credit you’re entitled to,” I said.
“And there’s also the fact that I’m not much to look at, comparatively speaking.”
“I’d sleep with you,” I said.
“You’re a jackass,” Alan said. “Come on, Craig. Be serious here.”
“I’m only trying to lighten you up,” I said. “What you’re getting at is that Claire is a very attractive woman. And you consider yourself to be average.”
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