Chapter 62: The Bishop and the Professors

September 1, 1988, Chicago, Illinois

Deacon Peter ushered Jeri and me into Archbishop ALYPY's modest office promptly at 10:00am. I walked over to him and held out my hands properly.

"Vladyka, bless!" I requested.

He made the sign of the cross over my upturned palms, and I kissed his hand.

"The Lord bless you, Stephen."

"Your Grace, this is Jeri Lundgren, one of our programmers."

"Bless you, Jeri," he said.

"Good morning," she said quietly.

I could tell she was nervous, but we'd talked everything through on the drive from Hyde Park. Jeri had been raised Lutheran, but had only attended church on Christmas and Easter. This was completely foreign to her, and I could see how being greeted by a man wearing all black robes, including a black «клобук», the traditional head covering of a monk, was unsettling.

"Peter, please bring them some coffee or tea."

"Tea, please," I said.

"Tea," Jeri said.

"For me as well," the bishop said.

Deacon Peter left to prepare the tea, and we were invited to sit on a small couch, while the bishop sat in a large, sturdy chair, covered with velvet fabric.

"Stephen, you are not Orthodox. Why greet me as you did?"

"As a sign of respect, Vladyka. Is it not proper to greet a bishop in that way?"

He smiled, "It is, though it's not common that someone who is not a catechumen or who has not been baptized Orthodox would do so. But Father Basil tells me you are not common!"

"He has his reasons for saying that," I said.

"Yes, he does. I'm well aware of the impediments that prevent you from accepting baptism into the Church. But that is for another day. Please, tell me what you can do to help us with our membership lists and how you can help us track our giving and finances. But first, here is Peter with our tea!"

The deacon, who was wearing a cassock, poured four cups and sat down in a wooden chair next to the bishop.

"Father Basil described what Your Grace is looking for," I said, "and I believe we are able to make use of programs that we use to track union membership and dues, along with some parts of our medical software that keeps track of family relationships to create what you are looking for. Jeri will explain what our plan is."

Jeri's hands shook as she took a folder from the small satchel that she carried. She handed a few sheets of paper to the bishop. She described the new system in a soft, tentative voice and explained how it would work and how it would help them. As I watched, I understood why Dave had asked me to bring her. The bishop was equally soft-spoken, and responded well to her nervous, but calm, explanations. As they talked, she became more at ease and in the end, she was carrying on what I would have considered a normal conversation.

"I believe this will work for us," the bishop said at the end of her presentation. "Please work out the details with Deacon Peter, but do remember we are not rich, like some other churches."

I nodded, "Father Basil and I discussed that. I was surprised when I found out that he held another job besides being a priest."

"It's common amongst our clergy. Our congregations tend to be poor or middle class, unlike the Greeks, or to a lesser extent, some Arab parishes."

"I promise this will be affordable," I said.

"Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Jeri. Do you have a more formal name?"

She hesitated, then said, "Geraldine, but I don't like it. Please, just call me Jeri."

"As you wish," the bishop said.

I stifled a laugh, recalling The Princess Bride.

I asked for and received a blessing, and then Deacon Peter led us from the office. I told him that we'd have a formal proposal to him in a week or so, and then Jeri and I shook hands with him and headed back to the office in Hyde Park.

"How'd it go?" Dave asked, coming into my office when he saw me walk in.

"Just fine. Jeri did a great job. She and the bishop really hit it off."

Dave smiled, "Russian bishops tend to be very quiet, calm, and unassuming. Let's just say your style doesn't match up as well as Jeri's does."

"She was fantastic," I said. "If we could see that kind of behavior in general, I think she'd be even more valuable than she is. And I'm not trying to diminish her contribution."

"One step at a time. Working with you, and going on a visit like this, are all part of my plan!"

I nodded, "I put the right guy in charge."

"I need you to interview someone next Tuesday. Are you available all day?"

"Yes. A programmer?"

"For the consulting side. When I said I had more work that we could do, that was even after asking you to move over to that side, at least temporarily. I'll need you back on the legal software for version 4.0 because most likely it's going to be Windows-based. We'll do 3.5 as our next 'feature' update so that we can call the Windows version 4.0."

"Do you have a résumé?" I asked.

"I'll get it to you today. He graduated from UofI two years ago, and comes with Beth's recommendation. He really hated what he was doing working on software for a small company down in Springfield. He was kind of like Chris at Belarus — office manager and programmer. He talked to Beth, and she put him in touch with me. Adding him will let us catch up on some of the backlog, and let Jeri work full time on the software for ROCOR."

"Did you talk to Penny?" I asked. "She's not going to be happy about this."

Dave smiled, "She'll get over it. By May, you'll be back full-time on the legal or medical software, and she'll be out of school for the Summer. You two don't work on much together right now. And it's not like I'm taking her out of your office."

"I'd suggest that would be a bad idea," I said soberly.

"I like my balls right where they are, and so does Julia!" Dave nodded, equally soberly.

Cindi came to the door and asked me to let her know when we were done.

"I'm finished with him," Dave said. "He's all yours."

"If only!" Cindi laughed.

"If I recall correctly, he offered, and you waited too long!" Dave said.

"I got enough crap from you when we were dating! Get!" Cindi laughed, pointing a thumb over her shoulder.

Dave and I both laughed, and he left. Cindi sat down and shoved a stack of papers at me.

"I'm not doing day-to-day operations. You know that."

"Julia felt you needed to sign off on this stuff."

"What do you have for me?"

"Well, first, Cynthia just finished her Master's degree in Summer school. I'm hiring her full-time. You need to sign off. I'm assuming you don't have a problem with her, or you would have said something."

"No. No problem," I said.

She tapped the top page, and I scribbled my initials next to the offer amount and then signed the form.

"Next, now that I have three sales people, I'm going to divide the country into three regions, split roughly at Denver and Pittsburgh. Cynthia is going to take the Western Region and is going to move to Los Angeles. She'll work out of the same office as Barbara. Kayla will take the Central Region. Mario will have the Eastern Region."

"And you?" I asked.

"I'm going to focus on large firms that have multiple offices, plus I have all the presentations I do for Bar Association and AMA meetings, and I have to manage the crew. Elyse and I drew up a new compensation package because I won't be earning the same kind of commissions as I did before."

"If Julia and Elyse signed off on this, then I'm OK with it," I said.

"Good. You need to sign the reorganization memo, and then the new compensation sheet for me."

I scanned them and signed, though I tapped the compensation sheet with my pen.

"Is this enough?" I asked.

"The commissions I do get will be huge, and not capped like they are for the others," she smiled.

"OK. That makes sense," I said, and pushed the papers to her.

"I need you to interview a new support tech to work with Zeke. He can't keep up, especially with the travel he has to do. Are you in next week?"

"All week, as of right now, but check with Dave, because he's moving me into consulting for the time being. Will this person be based in Chicago? And do you have a résumé for me to review beforehand?"

"I'll get you the résumé in a minute. For now, the position would be based in Chicago. I thought about putting it in California, but we don't have enough business out west for that to make sense, and six-hour cross-country flights are silly. Being based in Chicago means it's less than four hours anywhere. Well, unless we make the sale in Hawaiߴi that I'm working on."

"Dibs on the install!" I chuckled.

"I think Zeke deserves it as a reward for his hard work," Cindi said.

"I might be talked into relaxing a certain rule to convince you otherwise!" I teased.

"Don't tempt me!" she laughed. "But we both know Chris would never, ever allow something like that! And you'd never relax that rule."

"No, I wouldn't, but I did have to say it!"

"Of course you did! I have one more thing. The user group meeting on the 16th."

"What about it?"

"You're giving the keynote," she said.

"Oh HELL no! We talked about me not being the front man for the company a couple of years ago when that law firm out in Cicero had a fit about my 'lifestyle'."

"We talked this through at the management meeting last week. We all agree you're the best one to do it."

I chuckled, "The guy who isn't in the room gets the shitty job, is that it?"

"Nice!" she said with a grin. "But the company needs a face, and it has to be you. Your sister isn't technical, so we can't have the CEO do it. The same goes for Joyce as Chairman. It needs to be you. And honestly, you've been in front of customers enough and we haven't seen a repeat of that bullshit. There are people who expect you to do this, like Dante Puccini, Frank Volstead, and Ben Jackson. Ben specifically asked me if you were speaking and I told him 'yes'."

"What do you want me to say?" I asked.

"Funny you should ask," she said with a sly smile. "The next sheet is an outline. I can't write a speech for you, but I put the main points we need you to hit. I would like to read your remarks before you make them."

I smirked, "Afraid I'm going to go off on a libertarian rant? Or propose lowering the age of consent? Or talk about nude saunas?"

"The thought did cross our minds," Cindi said with a wry smile.

"OK. Fine."

"You'll give the keynote on Friday morning and then host the dinner."

"I like how you snuck that last one in, Mrs. Eggert!"

"You hired me for a reason! Can you get me your remarks by the 12th?"

"I can do that. Fifteen minutes, no more. You start losing people after twelve or so."

"That's fine. Dave, Alonzo, Julia, Elyse, and I will all speak, and yes, we'll all keep it short. The morning session is everyone together. The afternoon is broken up by product to get some feedback."

"How many people are coming to this?" I asked.

"About 70 from just under 50 firms. And it's a good mix of people from Gerald Brown, to Ben Jackson, to a couple of doctors you probably don't know yet. There is one other thing."

"OK, Mrs. Columbo, what?" I chuckled.

Peter Falk had made the 'just one more thing' a trademark of the TV detective Columbo, one of the few shows I watched during High School.

"Ben Jackson proposed that the users run the group, and we simply sponsor it. He's going to propose leading it."

"Interesting. Why?"

"He and a couple of other firms talked about making the user group independent so it could advise us. In other words, they want to make sure it's to their benefit at least as much as it is to ours. I get what he's after, and I think it makes some sense. I don't have a problem with it; my goal was to get the users to talk to each other and provide input. The only thing we need to do is make sure that the doctors and construction guys don't get sidelined by the lawyers."

"So we'd do all the arrangements, but they would dictate the content?"

"Yes. They'll tell us what topics they want to hear about, and even provide some guest speakers on how the software is used, that kind of thing. I actually did something like that, because your friend Ben van Hoek is going to speak about how the software has helped their firm."

"Yeah, after facilitating it being stolen!" I complained.

"You never did tell me what happened," she said.

"Because I can't. The NDA didn't have an expiration date."

"OK. I think that's all I have. Did you see the most recent pipeline report?"

"Yes. Dave's kicking your ass with the consulting side of the business!"

"Hey, asshole, the pipeline report shows 12.2% growth year-over-year for the main software packages!"

"And 380% growth year-over-year for consulting!"

"Yeah, so he's bringing in $480 instead of $100. Yippee!" she teased. "It's easy when your number for the previous year is so low!"

"In all seriousness, I was happy with the numbers," I said. "The consulting numbers really blew me away. It'll be something like 15% of our overall revenue for this year, and that's really only for half the year. From the way Dave tells it, we'll have that kind of growth next year as well."

"I think he's right," Cindi said. "He's lining up quite a few PRIME customers to have their software moved to the IBM RT, or in some cases, Advanced Revelation on the PC. I wish we still had Tom Dodds here."

"Dave actually fed him some of the work we couldn't get to right away. Charlie has been booked almost full time on stuff like that, and Debbie is putting in overtime to try to keep up."

"We're back in growth mode again," Cindi said. "At some point, Elyse is going to need a full-time accounting clerk."

"She mentioned that a few weeks ago. But it's a non-revenue position, so she's going to wait a few more months. I'm guessing she'll hold out until January."

"OK. That's all I have for now."

She and Dave brought me the résumés and Dave also provided a list of consulting work that he had for me. I looked it over and realized that I was going to have a serious problem finding enough time to work with Jeri and deal with all of these customers. Nine hours a day in the office just wasn't going to be enough.

I skipped going home for lunch and had Kimmy order me a sandwich so that I could finish up some changes to the legal software that I'd been working on. I finished just in time to meet Jess at the ER and walk her home. Carol was at the house when we arrived because Francesca had spent the day with Jesse. We had a brief chat, and then she left with her daughter.

"Did you see the news about the plane crash in Dallas?" Elyse asked after dinner.

"Most everyone survived," I said. "Which is more than I can say for those people at Ramstein."

"That was crazy! They updated the death toll today to seventy-five, with more than three hundred injured. CNN showed some amateur video from the air show. It's sick. Three jets collided and one of them crashed right into the crowd."

"I was afraid that was going to happen when Bobby Allison wrecked last year at Talladega. It would have killed way more than seventy-fives. It would have been NASCAR's 'Le Mans'. Do they know what caused the crash in Dallas?"

"No details yet," Elyse said, "though there are reports that the tail struck the runway, and then they hit some kind of antenna. At least one witness said than an engine was on fire, so maybe they lost power and that caused the pilot to lose control. I'm sure we'll hear, eventually. We always do. Like that crash in California last December. Now that was nuts!"

"It's kind of hard not to crash when some whack job shoots the pilot and co-pilot dead during the flight and then pushes the yoke forward to dive into the ground!" I said. "Did they ever find out how he got the gun on board?"

"He used un-revoked credentials from Southwest to bypass security with his .44 magnum."

"Brilliant," I sighed. "I heard he killed his former supervisor before killing the pilot and co-pilot."

"And a stewardess, apparently."