by Sean Boling
Chapter Nineteen: Rodrigo
“There’s this perception people have about businessmen,” he said to Dale as they sat in a deserted convention center conference room, both of them seated in the same row with a few empty chairs between them, and hundreds of empty chairs around them.
“And it’s wrong,” Dale smirked. “Right?”
“Very,” Rod nodded with his whole upper body.
They had scheduled the trip long before any controversy broke, and decided to follow through on their plans to lead a breakout session titled, “The Best of Both Worlds: Forging Strong Relationships Between Schools and Businesses”. Their spoken rationale for attending, as Rod framed it, had something to do with keeping promises because real men don’t back out on their word. But their unspoken motive, the one informing their every interaction over the weekend, swirled with curiosity as to whether anyone in the charter community had gotten wind of their situation.
As interested as they were in people’s awareness of the gossip that was sinking their charter, they grew hesitant when it came time to find out. They waited until a few minutes before the start of their presentation to dart from their hotel to the conference room, so as to avoid any mingling beforehand. When they were finished with the lecture portion of their session and it was time for discussion, some attendees lined up at the microphone in the center aisle to ask questions. Rod and Dale exchanged looks that were short of breath and silently agreed to stall until the next wave of sessions started at the top of the hour. Rod launched into an extended answer to the first question, hoping to also make it the last one. It wasn’t easy, because the presentation as a whole had already been compromised by the computer deal falling through, leaving them with much less to talk about than they had planned. So Rod couldn’t quite run out the clock, and they had to let a couple more people step up to the mic.
None of the inquisitors gave any indication that they knew what was happening in their valley. Or they did know, and were too polite or uncomfortable to say anything. To insure that the moratorium held after the presentation as well, Rod and Dale pretended to be much more preoccupied with organizing their supplies than was necessary as everyone filed for the exit to reach another session in some other room. One vaguely familiar colleague lingered for a moment, a woman with an administrator’s fashion sense who claimed to recognize them from a previous event. “The tractor guys,” as she put it. She expressed interest in talking some more about the subject, but Rod said they were hoping to catch a session in a distant wing of the convention center, and asked if she had a business card. She gave them one, got the message, and left the room.
Once it was down to the two of them, Rod and Dale took their positions amongst the vacated chairs to wait until the clamor in the corridors quieted down with the start of the next sessions, and to disguise themselves as audience members in the event any more strays came in looking for the names on the door.
“They think we’re ruthless,” Rod continued with the defense of his profession. “That we stop at nothing to make money.”
“And it’s just not true,” Dale good-naturedly goaded him.
“Well, it’s partially true,” Rod acknowledged. “But it’s not all attack, attack, damn it all, there’s money to be made. You have to keep a level head. Rita says it’s the same thing with artists. Not that she’s a great artist, but she knows some. And she laughs about the way they’re performed, attacking the canvas or the clay in a frenzy, like they’re in a fight. But most of the time they just think about what they’re doing, which isn’t very interesting to imagine. Same with business people. The good ones don’t always go all in. They think a lot. They know when to get out of a deal.”
Dale looked over to see if anyone was lurking in the doorway beyond the rows of chairs. He confirmed that the coast was clear, and sighed.
“I guess we had to have this conversation at some point,” he said.
“If I resign from the board,” Rod provided details. “Maybe you can keep your job.”
“You’re the only vote I’ve got at the next meeting.”
“But I’m the puppet master,” Rod referenced the article written by Candice. “If I’m gone, they might put their faith back in you. My resignation is worth more than my vote.”
They fell silent, and it was more quiet than Rod expected, as the noise coming in from the corridor had faded. The high ceiling seemed to rise even higher, and the empty floor seemed to sink.
“I’ve said it before,” Dale stared ahead. “The job is nothing without your contributions.”
“It’s your source of income.”
Dale shrugged and remained fixated on the same mysterious point somewhere in front of him.
Rod was about to offer some encouraging words about how much he mattered to the kids at the school, about how the job couldn’t be measured in money, when Dale turned away from the distance ahead and back toward Rod.
“Did the computer deal really fall through?” he asked. “Or did you pull the plug?”
Rod took a deep breath.
“They had some concerns,” he said. “And I didn’t do much to ease those concerns.”
Dale didn’t seem very surprised. Rod felt a need to defend himself.
“The backlash was in full force,” he explained. “I didn’t feel like fighting to save a program for a bunch of people who hated me. Even then, I still felt guilty. Until the article was published.”
Dale threw his head back and laughed.
“Yes!” he vented.
It was Rod’s turn to look over at the door.
“Which reminds me,” Dale settled down. “Have you heard back from your lawyers?”
“She never quite crossed any lines,” Rod answered while making sure nobody was drawn in by the noise. “The editors at the newspaper probably helped her with that.”
“Too bad,” Dale hunched forward and wrung his hands together. “We can always go with my plan. But I have a feeling your lawyers would advise against it.”
“Probably,” Rod grinned.
Dale leaned back.
“What about Artie?” he asked.
“We’re not pulling him this year. I can only wave so many white flags at one time.”
“But next year?”
Rod exhaled slowly.
“Rita and I have to do some research,” he said. “I know St. Bonnie’s won’t let us back in, and at this point I don’t think there’s a school in the district where Artie would feel comfortable.”
“Boarding school?”
Rod nodded slowly, as though he should have been dragging along the word “Yup”.
The lack of voices in the hall and intruders through the door convinced him they could exit the convention center unnoticed and make it to the nearest restaurant that Rod assumed was above the price range of the conference crowd. He assured Dale that lunch was on him and led the way.
They were spotted one more time along the sidewalk before reaching the safety of the “Please Wait To Be Seated” sign.
“Hey,” waved the passerby in the necktie decorated with math equations. “The tractor guys!”
They offered him tight-lipped nods in motion, but laughed over it as they steadied themselves into a booth.
“But will they remember us when we’re gone?” Dale asked.
“We?” Rod pried.
“Even if I do hold on to my job,” Dale answered. “I don’t think I’ll be back on the conference circuit anytime soon.”
Rod ordered a bottle of sparkling water for the table and asked Dale if they should order wine as well.
“Go ahead, but I don’t dare. I may not stop.”
“A glass of Sauvignon Blanc for me, then,” Rod told the server, who recited the specials before leaving.
“Getting drunk on this trip would be so conventional,” Dale said.
“It’s just one glass,” Rod pretended to be indignant.
“You can handle your liquor better than I can,” Dale backpedaled
.
They busied themselves with the menus. Rod glanced at the prices, then the surroundings, and finally his guest.
“Why did you decide to go so big when it came to LOCA?” he asked.
Dale looked up from his menu.
“What do you mean?”
“The conferences, the deals, the attention,” Rod clarified. “Why was that important?”
Dale breathed in some potential reasons before choosing one.
“I saw an opportunity.”
“For what?”
“Well…” he seemed to still be in the process of sculpting his answer. “To be a teaching consultant who actually teaches.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe you didn’t notice, Rod, but most of the people who move mountains at places like this don’t spend much time in a classroom.”
“I guess I didn’t.”
Dale seemed to grow more confident in what he had come up with.
“Read the bios on the brochures, in the programs,” he wielded his menu like a Bible. “If any of them did teach, it was for a couple of years, maybe part of a Teach For America program, just long enough to collect some anecdotes and bide their time until applying for administrator jobs. But they saw all they needed to see, apparently, and now they have all the answers.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“When I look back on the first two or three years of my career, I feel like I should write letters of apology to my students. I didn’t really feel comfortable until maybe a decade in. But that’s just me, I guess. That’s why I wasn’t meant to be a guru.”
The server arrived with the bottle of water and two glasses, and Rod’s glass of white wine. She poured the sparkling water into the glasses and asked if they were ready. Rod ordered first, while Dale refocused on the menu and tried to make a snap decision.
“That sounds good,” he gave up and went with Rod’s choice. “I’ll have the same.”
The server walked away, orders memorized, menus in tow.
Rod lifted his wine glass and raised it toward Dale.
“To the voice of experience,” he toasted.
Dale reached for his glass of water and raised it in kind. The first sip made him cough, as though he had inhaled on a cigarette.
“Forgot it was the bubbly kind,” he explained after the short fit.
“And here I thought it was about money,” Rod grinned as he put his glass of wine back on the table.
“The reason I choked?”
Rod laughed.
“The reason you wanted to make a name on the circuit.”
“Sure,” Dale shrugged. “I imagined making a little more money. At least for a while.”
“Is there something special you need the money for?”
Dale shifted a few times on the upholstered bench and made it groan.
“Nothing in particular,” he finally said.
“You sure?” Rod pressed him.
“I was trying to think of something. But I couldn’t,” Dale maintained. “I guess I just thought it would be nice.”
Rod took a sip of wine and considered whether to continue the inquiry. He didn’t believe Dale, and was sort of enjoying the hunt, but didn’t want to ruin the poor man’s farewell trip. He appeared to be withering under some self-imposed pressure.
“If anything does comes to mind,” Rod told him after a satisfied exhale from relishing the wine, “let me know.”
“I will,” Dale nodded, his expression dissolving from tense to forlorn. “I will.”
They sat in a silence that Rod thought appropriate, as Dale seemed in mourning for whatever it was he let pass. Rod let him break it.
“Come to think of it…” he said.
“Yes?” Rod encouraged him.
“That wine does look good.”
Rod smiled and gestured for a server.
He thought of wine, good wine at least, as a token of the sophistication he was always striving for, but may never reach in spite of his success. It was a reward he would give himself on occasion that flooded him with a sense of fulfillment, wherein the world could end and he would simply think of how glad he was that the meteor didn’t strike earlier in his life. But only up to a point. A few sips over the threshold and the floodwaters would run dark and moody, shrinking him instead of expanding. That was one of the best parts of the gift, how it challenged him to remember his limits, to bear in mind where he stood while making him proud to be there.
Rod had seen Dale drink a little bit during the renovation of the tractor dealership, when one of the contractors would head to the gas mart at sundown and come back with a case of whatever beer in a can was on sale. Everyone partook out of camaraderie, none more so than Dale, it seemed to Rod. The can was a prop to keep him connected to the guys on the crew, as he rarely saw Dale take a swig after the first one. The beer was typically awful, though, so Rod remembered thinking that it may have been a matter of taste.
Dale’s reaction to the wine proved otherwise. He appeared to like the white well enough, with its chilly citrus flavor, but later, when Rod ordered a bottle of red with dinner at an even pricier spot even farther from the conference crowd, Dale clearly struggled with the tannins of a Cabernet that Rod considered a rather accessible label.
But he drank it anyway, and Rod could see a similar process to his own overtake Dale, the same feelings of contentment during the first glass, the same balancing act during the second, the back of the brain calculations over how much more he could get away with. It was their respective tones of voice that proved to Rod they were both tabulating their sip countdowns. Each would creep toward aggression, then slink away from it.
Rod felt each of them wanting to blame the other for the implosion. Rod wanted to tell Dale he should have had enough spine to stand up to his fatherly protectiveness over Artie. Rod’s weakness was instinct, while Dale’s was choice.
He also suspected Dale had more on his mind than blame during the frequent moments when he would stare at the table, that there were events and faces he was seeing that were not in his field of vision, for when he swirled the wine in his glass and Rod asked him if he knew why people do that, Dale replied, “Oh, was I swirling my wine?”
Such was the nature of what was actually spoken on their last night as colleagues. They traded opportunities to hold court in areas where they felt confident. Rod made speeches about great restaurants and the career of Hugo Sanchez, his favorite soccer player. Dale riffed on great books and why the United States was reluctant to embrace soccer. He avoided anything related to education, his real area of expertise, since that would inevitably circle back to LOCA and his mysterious reasons for using it as a springboard, reasons about which he had trouble telling lies, no matter how long he looked into a glass of swirling wine that according to him, wasn’t really there.
“But what is really there?” was the kind of boozy meditation Rod indulged after sneaking down to the hotel lounge for one more glass of a more expensive vintage after they had retired to their rooms. “What is reality?”
He visualized a montage of what was real in his life, the fields worked, the cars driven, the buses ridden, the homes lived in, the men hated, the men admired, the women dated, the women he wished he’d dated, the early days with Rita, a variety of images of Lena, of Tony, of Artie, and wondered which of the stories attached to the images would be the ones he would end up telling over and over, which moments would survive the longest. And as the world currently in front of him disappeared as it had with Dale, the objects and the people and the room and everything visible through its windows vanishing under the weight of what was on his mind, he snapped back into the present with the terrible thought that such was the fate of everything and everyone.
The hotel was old, an historical landmark, and the lounge was just as old. A hundred years ago, a man sat at a table and sifted through what was clear to him while the world around him dissolved. Rod asked whomever or whatever was on duty in the universe who
that man was. He imagined his question hurtling through space, and a surprisingly soft voice from the edge of existence answered back:
“Oh, was a man sitting there wondering what matters?”
Rod decided it was time to stop. He left his glass half full, nine dollars’ worth of wine according to whomever set the price at eighteen, and concentrated with great care on his surroundings on his way upstairs, hoping no one recognized him one moment, then wishing someone would the next, and repeating the cycle until he lay down.
Rod was one of the first guests in the complimentary breakfast room the next morning. He didn’t knock on Dale’s door as he passed, preferring to spend some alone time sitting upright and sober at a table, rather than sprawled on an unmade bed with The Discovery Channel providing ambient noise.
Televisions still offered some noise, as cable news hung from the walls above the buffet and seating area. Rod sat and poured Raisin Bran from a fist-sized box into a Styrofoam bowl and decided to read the small cereal box rather than watch any of the interpretations of recent events.
“Tractor man,” said a female voice reminiscent of the one who narrates GPS directions.
He looked up and found a sharp-featured woman who carried herself as though her clothes were still on a hanger. She appeared to be waiting for an invitation to sit down.
“I guess that’s me,” Rod replied. “Thank you for saying ‘man’ instead of ‘guy’.”
“Sure. But I should have just gone with Rod Pluma. Mind if I sit down?” she tired of waiting for the invite.
“Go ahead.”
“Barb Giusti,” she introduced herself while arranging some plastic silverware around her scrambled eggs and coffee. “Vista Community Charter School.”
“Mucho gusto,” Rod shook her hand.
“Where are you headed today?” she asked.
“Home.”
“You’re checking out? There’s some great people presenting today.”
“I’m sure there are.”
“I was disappointed I couldn’t catch your session yesterday. I was conducting one of my own on effective long-term planning.”
Rod laughed.
“Are you doing it again?” he asked. “We should probably attend.”
Barb tried to laugh with him, but resorted to poking at her eggs.
“So,” she finally said. “I hear your presentation wasn’t quite up to your usual standards.”
“You mean it wasn’t as entertaining.”
“No,” she became abrupt.
Rod leaned back.
“I’m sorry we disappointed.”
“I figured there must be a reason,” she pressed on.
“Opening a business is easy. Running it is the hard part.”
Barb was having none of his aphorisms.
“I looked you both up,” she said. “Looked up your school.”
“And did you find an article from The Valley Outlook written by Candice Ingle?”
“I did.”
The memory of certain lines and words coursed through Rod as he searched Barb Giusti’s expression for a sense of how she read it, but she revealed nothing.
“And did you find any other articles about me out there in cyberspace?” he asked.
“Other articles?”
“The ones about the businesses I founded, the charities I belong to, the millions of people I help feed every day?”
“I’m sure they’re around. I just wasn’t looking for them.”
So this was to be his legacy, Rod thought. He would be the rich man who bought a school for his kid.
“It’s been a pleasure,” Rod quipped as he rose from the table.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I was curious. You were so inspiring last time.”
“I still am.”
He passed by a television bolted to rods suspended from the ceiling, the screen angled downward toward its audience. It was broadcasting a foursquare of talking heads deciding what a famous person’s body language meant in a photograph taken of them at an unflattering second of their life. Rod looked back to earth and noticed a basket of small, bruised apples that had probably been there for weeks. He resisted an urge to throw one at the show, and spent most of the drive home suppressing a variety of ways to lash out, keeping quiet instead and looking irritated, blaming it on a hangover for Dale’s sake.
“Want to switch places?” Dale asked. “I can drive if you’re not feeling well.”
“I’m okay,” Rod assured him, and eventually he produced a vision that really did make him feel better.
He imagined himself taking a chainsaw to the base of the post that held the plaque with his name on it in front of Live Oak Charter Academy, then using the post as a club to smash every window in the place. He replayed the scene on a loop, sometimes rewriting it so that he ripped the post straight from the ground, or held the post with the plaque facing him so he could see his name and the inscription as he wreaked his havoc. But he usually stuck with the original version, with a clean cut that was easy to wield with the plaque facing away from him so that his name was the first thing breaking through the glass.
“Good to see you smiling again,” Dale remarked.
“Thanks,” Rod suppressed a laugh he was certain would sound like a cackle if he let it out.