“Maybe.”
Lucius stood as well and clapped him on the back. “Don't worry about the maybes. They're pretty much all that life is made up of.”
“I prefer things be a little more concrete.”
“You're a scientist. You like things to be neat, quantifiable, and reproducible.
That's not how people work.”
“Except for the reproducible part.”
Lucius nodded, chuckling. “True. Well, I expect you're tired of my sage advice by now. I've got my own bleeding to stop back at my office.” He turned
to go, then paused. “See you tomorrow?”
Peter turned. “I'll be here.”
“Oh, and Brenda asked if you squared away things with Nitrovex for that field trip?”
Peter dropped his head back, stared at the ceiling. He'd almost forgotten about that one. “Yes, if there's any money left to put gas in the bus.”
“I'll help you car pool if it comes to that.”
Lucius pushed open the locker room door and was gone.
Peter was alone. The locker room was big, boomy, and empty. The only
sound was the steady drip from one of the faucets in the shower room. It plunked, rhythmically. Something told him it was all somehow symbolic, but he
couldn't put his finger on it. Kate might be able to give him some metaphorical
hints, but she was in Chicago.
He stood, grabbed his papers, slung his workout bag over his shoulder. The
Dixon School brochure was still in his office, and it was time to take some action. There was an early out on Friday. Maybe he could get a substitute for the
morning and set up an interview at Dixon that afternoon.
Maybe it was time for him to move on. As much as he loved this town, he
wasn't going anywhere. Maybe this was the opportunity he needed. Maybe it was
where he was supposed to be. In Chicago. Where Kate lived.
He pushed through the locker room door.
Yup, Lucius was right. That was a lot of maybes.
* * *
Great, Kate thought, examining the fresh gouge in her driver's side door as she closed it. Another ding in my car. No note, of course.
She hoisted her purse and made her way to the elevator of the downtown Chicago parking garage under Garman's offices, dodging a drooling slick of some nameless liquid someone had dumped out of their car door.
She went through her mental checklist. It was Wednesday, which meant a
meeting with her whole group on project updates, policy changes, and blah blah
blah. Then she had to sign off on the Hampstead deal that Milly had been working on while she was working on Nitrovex. Then another meeting, this one
with human resources to go over a new sexual harassment policy she needed to make sure she followed—like that was an issue for her—but they had to tell her
face to face by law or something.
She sighed as the elevator doors opened to Garman's offices. She'd done more design work in one day with her face painting at the carnival than she'd done here in months. But, like Danni said, that was the price of moving up. The joys
of management.
Management. Such a limp, hopeless word. Implying that the highest thing you could achieve was to just to manage, to just get by.
Is that what she was doing here? Getting by?
She'd reached her office, nodding to another co-worker passing her down the
hall as she pushed open the door. The neat, utilitarian space was the same as always, except today it was filled with the gloom of the softly raining morning.
She flipped on the overhead lights, and they brightened the room, but harshly.
