“It really is…” I stopped. Why did it matter what she thought? “I’m actually not interested in your opinion of my hair,” I said, but she was already gone. As I returned to my office, I thought of ducks and how water just rolled off them. There was no reason to care about Victoria and her lunchroom pals.
The next thing was to use the information I’d just gotten about roofers to set up an appointment at the practice facility where the Junior Woodsmen played, and I was lucky that the estimator had time to meet with me the following day. I wasn’t doing anything else—as far as I was aware, no one actually paid attention to whether I was in the office or not. So, the next morning, I put on my boots and brought along the largeflashlight and the whistle I’d purchased the night before. I was hoping to scare off the Affenpinscher mice with both of those.
Before I’d left the stadium at five on the dot the previous evening, I had also gotten a parking pass from the security office, not from Victoria but from another woman who had kept her mouth shut about my hair. I used it to drive into the front parking area at the Woodsmen practice facility, the nice lot that was paved, and Ed met me at the front door just like he had before.
“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” he said, but he seemed happy about it. “My maintenance requests usually go into the circular file.”
“I went a different way with this request, not through the same channels,” I explained. We watched as the guard at the entrance allowed a red pickup to pull in, and the roofing guy got out.
He did regular work at Woodsmen Stadium and also had questions. “I always deal with Surani in Stadium Affairs,” he told me. “Do you know her?”
“Uh, no.” But I had heard of her, because she was in charge of the department that dealt with the physical plant. “Ed, can you show him around?”
It was obviously Ed’s pleasure to do so. He was overjoyed that someone was taking an interest in the decaying building. “Cate, do you want to wait for us?” He glanced up at the grey sky, which had opened on my way out here. A heavy rain had begun to fall. “You could go to my office.”
“I’ll be in the lobby on the Woodsmen side,” I said. I probably didn’t have to be here at all but I didn’t have much else to do. “I’ll wait to hear what the verdict is.”
They went off together and I checked a chair for evidence of rodents and then carefully seated myself when I didn’t see anything awful. I had brought a hard copy of my report and I worked on prioritizing the items on it. The players really did need a nicer locker room, with at least some of the amenities that the real Woodsmen team had in theirs. Last fall, the head of security had taken all new employees on a Woodsmen Stadium tour and I had been very impressed. Their locker room, gym, and training rooms had been nicer than the places where I’d lived before. Nicer than the place I had now, too, except that they had to share and I didn’t.
It was boring here, sitting in this chair, just like it was boring sitting in my desk chair in the Office of Special Projects. Mr. Gowan and I were the only people in our department but there were several other cubicles besides mine, just in case we took on any actual projects and needed more employees. Maybe it made him feel more important but in my opinion, it looked empty and deserted. This lobby felt the same way.
Then I saw a silver/brown SUV/car pull up to the security shack. I stood without thinking and walked towards it. When I opened the front door, I could also hear the driver arguing.
“Come on, man. Are you serious? The season is over,” Ronan was telling the guard. “You can let me in now. I’m not technically a Junior Woodsmen until next year.”
“That just means you’re part of the general public,” the other guy answered. “I’m still not opening the gate.”
“Hey,” I called. I opened my umbrella and walked out into the rain. “Hey! He’s with me. Is that allowed?”
The security guard looked my way. He seemed to be about my age, maybe younger than my twenty-two years, and he also seemed to be wavering.
“You know what? It’s ok,” Ronan told him. “I don’t want you to get into trouble. I’ll go park in the back.”
“It’s three miles away,” I pointed out.
“Sure is. Want a ride?” he asked me.
I didn’t need to go anywhere but I went right over and got into his car, or whatever it was. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m off today and Eddie called and asked me to swing by to look at his leaf blower. He said to come to the front of the building but I guess he forgot to let them know to let me in. He also said it was urgent.” He glanced over at me. “I couldn’t figure out why he would urgently need his leaf blower fixed.”
It made no sense, but I was glad that the machine had broken. “I’m here because I got a guy to come out to inspect the roof,” I said. “He and Ed should be walking around up there right now.”
“You’re really going to try to get this project going?” he asked, and he smiled at me. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“No matter what I do, it will never be as nice as Woodsmen Stadium. They have amenities that I couldn’t believe, like a hugedining room for the players. They cater amazing meals every day.”
“We used to get brown bag lunches,” he reminisced. “We did up until the big mice got bad and Eddie disallowed any food in the building. It would be better if we had a refrigerator that worked, since we could keep stuff in there. I don’t think that rodents can claw open fridge doors.”
We both shivered. “Woodsmen get to park in the front, too,” I said. “They get all kinds of perks.”
“Yeah, they sure do.”
He’d sounded complacent, and I looked over at him. “Doesn’t that make you angry?”
“Angry? No. They’re great players and most of them work hard to stay that way. They don’t want to be sent down to us. Do you think I should be jealous and upset?”
I thought he should do something about his situation, and I gave him a parallel example to help him to understand. “I had an experience that’s similar to what you’re going through now. When I was in tenth grade, I realized that I was in the wrong science class.”
