Chapter 2

Well, I got even luckier that night.

After lunch, I headed back to the office. I had an idea for the new plotter and I wanted to play around with it. Well, I was going to put it in motion and let Rick play with it.

Jill made a deal with all of her clients. Whenever she signed someone up, part of the agreement was that she could use the site as a sales and promotion tool. This could be anything from giving someone the URL to the webpage to making a hard copy of a screenshot to display in the office. She frequently accessed her various sites on sales calls to show potential customers what she was capable of.

We were looking into setting up a booth at our town's fair this summer. Every year they had a three day celebration of the town. They called it the Summer Fair, but that's pretty misleading. There weren't any rides, no animal displays other than a few pups and kittens at the animal shelter's booth. There were some wandering clowns, a mime or two and someone usually painted kids' faces for a couple of bucks. The police department handed out checklists on what to do to combat theft. You know, window locks, take a video of all your belongings for the insurance, etch your drivers license number in the expensive stuff. There was a list of dos and don'ts for kids and they were also set up to take fingerprints and pictures in case the worst happened and one of them was kidnapped. Interested parents could take a kit home with instructions and a mailer for getting DNA samples of their children.

The local car dealers always displayed a few new cars be around the park and there was usually someone looking under a hood or sitting behind a wheel. The water company had a booth and handed out fliers about safe water. Several local churches would be represented but they didn't push their beliefs on anyone. They might have pamphlets or just Xeroxed pages telling a little about their church activities on the table for people who were interested to take, but they always did something non-religious, too. The Presbyterian church ran the face painting booth and others might have home made cookies or candy for sale or a raffle.

Businesses purchased booths to let the community know about them. They might have pictures, written information, a video display. Silverwood usually had a table with cabinet doors on it so people could rub their fingers on them or pick one up and inspect it. One company donated free wheelchairs for kids who needed them and they usually had one or two of their recipients there to talk to people.

Since it was in a park and there wouldn't be any internet access, I thought pictures of Jill's webpages would show what both of us could do. There was a handful of manufacturer provided shots for a distributor she had for a client but everything else on her sites was taken by me.

What I wanted to do was get some screenshots from most or all of her clients and arrange them in a line, twelve feet long and 44" deep. Part of that 44" would be a foot at the bottom for written material, including the name of each site owner and information about Web Pages by Jill and Jack's Pics. We could get three sheets of plywood, have the middle one parallel with the display table and the two outside angled forward. Some large hinges could hold them together and let us fold them up for transport. A couple of 2X4s for stabilization and we could put two banners from side to side. Maybe it would work out better to have printing at the bottom of the top banner and at the top of the lower one. That would give us 32" of picture, a couple of feet for written information, then another 32". That's the nice thing about having my own plotter. I could play with it without having to pay a fortune.

It would give Rick something different to do after school and I'm sure he'd get into it. I went through my files for each of her sites and selected one or two shots from each of them. I also put together a text file of all the company names and their web addresses. Everything went into a folder that I allowed to be shared over the network.

Rick came in as I was finishing up so I called him into my office and showed him what was in the file, then drew a quick sketch of what I had in mind on a piece of scratch paper. I left it up to him to play with the order and come up with some text to go in the open spaces. I also let him know that this was just so that Jill could get an idea of what it was going to look like and not to be surprised or disappointed when she wanted to change everything. It was her company, after all. It didn't matter a whole lot to me which of my pictures we used. There were a few that were exceptional and I was pretty sure she'd use them, but everything that made it to one of her web pages was good. You tend to want to display all your masterpieces in a situation like this, but if you do that, everyone else is going to expect every picture to be a masterpiece.

I told Rick that I'd be gone for an hour and a half or so and that I'd want to pick up a sample to take home for Jill.

This would be our second Valentine's Day together. Last year I went to Flowers By June and got something exotic. June had long since passed on the day to day florist work. I heard she bought out another outfit when the owner retired and promoted some of the girls I'd had wait on me before to district manager positions, one of whom was Debby, the girl who gave me Jill's blue rose. June had twins and was pregnant again the last I heard. I'd been back a half dozen times since the first time I needed a peace offering. Thankfully, none of my recent trips were for that reason. Just the usual – prom, birthday, just because. Just because is a valid reason and helps to curb that Pavlovian response of "Shit, he's giving me flowers, I wonder what he's done now."

This year was going to be a little different. Jill would have been satisfied with the picture of us in bed, but it wasn't really a Valentine's Day present as far as I was concerned. I would have given it to her immediately, no matter what time of the year I took it. No, I had something special in mind and it was the perfect occasion to give it to her.

I went to the mall and checked out three stores until I found exactly what I was looking for. I happened to look up while I was in the last one and saw my sister and Charlie walking towards me. Not wanting the world to know what I was getting Jill, I moved behind a display until they passed by.

I paid for my purchase, then headed the way they were going. I spotted them a few doors down, looking around in a gift shop. I went inside and played the "surprised to see you" game.

I got a call while talking with Charlie and excused myself. Myra wanted to see if I was available for a new client tonight. I told her I was and that I was heading back to the office. She said she'd see me there and would give me the details.

Rick was rolling up the last poster when I got back. He went on about five minutes about how neat the plotter was and all the things he planned on doing with it. I told him I eventually wanted all the pictures we had on display blown up. He could get with Myra and figure out what else to enlarge. I told her to figure out how many 24X30s we were going to need in house, then come up with an order for customer use, based on the sizes they were buying. George Silverwood was going to give me a deal on frames, provided I could let them make a few here and there. They were easy enough to slap together but they would be fill-in work, not something to slow down the big money jobs.

George's stock was a lot better quality than you would get at a frame store and I could sell frames for a little more than my customers would pay for the cheap ones and make a few bucks myself.

When I went to get the banners from Rick, he handed me four rolls instead of the two I was expecting.

"I tried a couple of things," he told me. "I've saved it all in the file but Jill can still change it if she wants."

I laughed. "Count on it."

Myra followed me home to pick up the kids. All three started telling her about the cards they filled out, then Jill got her chance.

"I guess you already know what Jack gave me."

"Jill, you know he never tells anybody anything about what he's going to give you. What is it?"

She dragged Myra down the hall to the bedroom and pointed above the headboard where she'd already hung it up. After I felt the two of them oo'd and aahed enough, I said, "I had Rick play with the plotter for a while this afternoon and I have something that may work out for our display at the fair."

I took them into the living room and picked up one of the rolls he gave me. I picked up the one Rick had put a small "1" on and unspooled it enough to figure out which side was the top.

"Myra, take this end and hold it against the wall here."

I put my index fingers in each end and ran it across the wall.

Jill went "Ooooh" when she saw what it was.

"Jill, get the box of push pins out of the top right hand drawer in my desk."

A minute later, it was tacked up and Myra was holding the end of number 2.

Soon, we had two pairs of banners up. Though set up the same, each had a unique look.

"I told him it was just so you could get an idea of what's possible," I said. "We can do any pictures from any of your sites in whatever order you want. I figure you'll want to keep the web addresses on each one for advertizing, but the other text can be whatever you want to say. We can also play around with different fonts to see what looks best."

"I like it. You know what would look cool? Take the first few words of the text and move the rest over to the left margin. Then put a few dashes at the end and put those words at the end. It would look like it was scrolling across the page."

The two of them got into it, throwing ideas back and forth so I told the kids to get their cards and anything else that needed to go home with them and we took Bozo outside to play. Myra came down a few minutes later and the four of them headed home.

Myra had gone through some major changes since that night a nervous young woman came over to interview for my first employee position. She seemed to think she was inadequate and undeserving back then and had pretty much outgrown it. I think a big part of that was her relationship with John. He brought her into his home, told her what he expected and assumed it would be done. The task was to be a mother and nanny and a homemaker, things she was already proficient at. She'd been through some tough times when it was just her and the two kids, but she flourished in John's house. She didn't have to worry about rent and utilities or putting food on the table. She just had to do. John still had someone come in a couple of times a week and take care of the cleaning, so she didn't even have to worry about that.

In the meantime, John took an honest look at himself and the way he'd treated Wanda and he got some help. He was pretty close-mouthed about it, only saying he'd done it after the fact. He could have gotten his help from a witch doctor for all we knew, but he seemed to have settled down. Myra eased from just being part of the help into being a helpmate. She had her own demons so it wasn't immediate, but she eventually ended up in his bed more often than her own. Both seemed happy with it and the kids accepted it as normal.

Both John and Myra had become deft at parrying any of Jill's subtle and not-so-subtle inquiries about their future together.

I let Bozo water a few more things, then took him upstairs. I could smell chicken soup as soon as I opened the door. There were all kinds of notes and arrows written on both banners in red pen.

Every time Jill got chicken, she'd buy a package with two whole birds at Sam's Club. She'd broil both of them at the same time, then we would eat one and the other would go in the pot. We had a big double pot. The one that went inside had holes all over the bottom and three quarters of the way up. Jill would put them together and put the chicken in the top pot. Then she'd put enough water to cover the chicken, put on the lid and cook it. It would be on high for fifteen or twenty minutes, then she'd turn it down low. She'd leave it on low overnight. In the morning, she'd turn off the heat, lift up the inside pot, stick a serving spoon or a spatula between the two, keeping the inside pot out of the water which was now broth. After it drained and cooled down, she'd take the top pot out and put it in the upside down lid, in the sink. Then she tore the chicken apart, putting the small chunks in the broth, the bones in a bowl and the skin, knuckles and other semi-edible bits were given to Bozo. Bozo would then spend five minutes licking out the pot with the holes in it, though it was more flavor than substance. It was pretty hard to entice Bozo out of the kitchen on mornings after Jill had cooked chicken.

After the chicken was all distributed, Jill went through her spices and put whatever she felt like in the pot, put it on medium heat for an hour or so, then brought down the flame. This time she'd added a cup and a half of rice an hour and a half before dinner. Sometimes it might be egg noodles, others she'd dump a bag of frozen vegetables into it. We didn't like the small peas and carrots so she'd get something with big pieces, usually a combination. Tonight's soup was the second serving, pulled out of the freezer the night before.

It always amazed me how she could come up with a dinner this good for the same or less than it would cost to go to one of the fast food places we both hated. Five bucks for the chicken, a couple of bucks for spices, rice and some Saltines and we had a meal fit for a king. Perfect for warming you up when it was cold and rainy or making you better when you were sick and just plain good the rest of the time.

My picture shoot that evening was unusual. A couple with a daughter about Laurie's age when I first met her had added a room onto their home. Evidently, it was their version of building their dream home. They all dressed up and wanted some portraits taken inside the room, highlighting different parts. It was primarily a family portrait but they also wanted to display their room. The pictures all turned out good but they seemed happiest with one with the three of them in front of the fireplace when I ran through them to them on my laptop. As I was closing the laptop, the wife asked me if I'd excuse them for a moment. She and her husband left the room and they came back in a couple of minutes, asking if I would be willing to take some more pictures, this time only of the daughter, Jenifer.

We took a dozen or so and something just didn't seem right. I asked Jenifer if she would show me her room. She looked at her parents as if to ask permission and her mother nodded and smiled. As soon as we went through the door, it was like she was another person. She relaxed and I just talked to her about the things in there while her parents watched us from the open doorway. She had an elephant lying against her pillow and I found out that was her favorite.

It didn't take much prodding to find out that she was only wearing her church clothes because her parents made her. I asked her what her favorite clothes were and she pulled out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with Big Bird on it. I'd never gotten into Sesame Street as a kid but my sister sure had. In fact she might have had a similar shirt when she was Jenifer's age.

I told her mom I wanted to try a few shots in Jenifer's room with her dressed in that outfit and left them to get her changed. When I was called back, her hair was in pigtails, instead of loose, the way it had been before. I took a couple of minutes setting up my lights, then had her sit on the bed, holding her elephant and telling me about it while I took pictures. I got "the one" when she was talking about a recent visit to the zoo and the chance for both her and her toy to see real elephants.