Chapter 58

Terry looked across the table at Dan and said, “You got yourself a huge tax write-off, yesterday. You also managed to get some very good advertising for Parker’s Perfect Pizza.”

“That’s not why I did it,” Dan said with a frown.

Realizing that she should have known that he’d react that way, Terry said, “I know.”

“So why did you mention all of that other stuff?” Dan asked.

She answered, “The point is that the tax laws lessen on the impact that your generosity cost you. Take advantage of it, so that you can give more in the future.”

“Okay,” Dan said feeling a little better about it.

“I’ve been working with Mr. Harrison on revising your original business plan. That man is very smart. You did a very wise thing taking his advice,” Terry said. She had learned more the past few weeks than she had in three years of college. This wasn’t book learning, this was real life experience.

“He’s very happy to make me more ambitious than I am,” Dan said with a grin.

Not believing Dan for a minute, Terry laughed at his comment. He was always saying things like that.

She said, “I wouldn’t say that. He’s just doing the best that he can to help you grow your business to its full potential.”

Nodding his head, Dan knew that it was pointless to argue the issue with her. She and Mr. Harrison saw business in the same way. Their idea was to grow as much as possible. They viewed success in terms of revenue, growth, and market share. He measured it in terms of delivering a pizza to a kid on their birthday and seeing his their eyes light up at finding a candle stuck in the middle.

He said, “Let me see what you’ve got so far.”

Terry whipped out a tastefully bound report and handed it over to him. Proud of her work, she said, “If you’ll read this, you’ll see the entire plan in full.”

Dan frowned at the idea of having to read the full report. He said, “Tell me what it says.”

Surprised that he didn’t want to read it, Terry said, “Well, it’s all rather complicated.”

“I’m sure it is. We’ll just go through it one step at a time,” Dan said with a smile.

“Okay,” Terry said. She picked up her copy of the document and looked at it. There was a lot of material to cover. She glanced over at the clock thinking that they’d be there the whole afternoon.

She asked, “Are you sure that you wouldn’t rather read it?”

“Positive,” Dan answered.

When she delivered the final draft, he would ask her to e-mail it to him, so that he could use the text-to-speech program to listen to it.

For the next four hours, Terry was grilled about every aspect of the modified business plan. She ended up rewording parts of the document, scratching out entire sections of the document, and making tons of notes in the margins about things that hadn’t been covered. The kinds of questions that Dan asked had her head spinning. He had concerns about every declarative sentence that she made. It was unreal!

They had just finished the section of the document dealing with the activities that were necessary to take the pizzeria to the next level. Dan had torn that section to shreds pointing out hole after hole in her strategy. He had been nice about each question and little suggestion, but to her it was like he was pounding nails through her brain.

She said, “There are some options here on how to finance the growth.”

Dan held up a hand and said, “We’ll cover that the next time we meet. I’d like you to revisit those areas where I had some questions. Talking about funding things when we’re not really sure what we are funding, doesn’t make sense to me.”

“You’re right,” Terry said.

She was so tired that she didn’t think she’d be able to drive back to Tom’s house. Final exams at college only lasted two hours and covered the material of a single course. This discussion had lasted four hours and had covered material from every class that she had ever taken in business as well as some classes that she hadn’t had, yet!

“We are off to a great start. I figure that we’ll have most of it done by the end of the summer,” Dan said looking down at the Terry’s marked up plan with pleasure. It had taken him a lot longer than that to put together his original plans.

Terry had thought that the plans had been perfect. She suspected that she would have gotten an A on it in her class. She looked down at the mess that had once been her perfect report. She wanted to cry. Mr. Harrison had warned her that Dan would question everything, but she hadn’t quite believed him, and had been confident that she’d be able to handle every question he asked. She hadn’t been able to deal with a single question. It was frightening and disheartening.

Weakly, she echoed, “End of the summer.”

“Hey, it took me more than a year to put together my first business plan. Seven weeks is nothing,” Dan said with a smile.

“Seven weeks is nothing,” Terry said. She thought about the fact that he’d had one course in accounting, and one in business. Those courses had been taken in a community college, no less. Looking down at her paper, she knew that his comments were absolutely correct. He had asked all the right questions and the answers hadn’t been in the plan.

“Are you okay?” Dan asked looking at her with concern.

“Sure. I’m just a little tired,” Terry answered. She wasn’t going to admit that her ego had just taken a brutal beating.

“We’ll talk next week?” Dan asked.

Looking down at the notes she had made, she numbly nodded her head while thinking about all of the work ahead of her. It was a slim hope that one week would be enough time to fix all the problems that he had identified.

She answered, “Sure next week will be fine.”

“Good,” Dan said sitting back to relax. He had enjoyed the session. Terry had really impressed him. Smiling, he asked, “Would you like a pizza?”

“Not today,” Terry answered. All she wanted to do was to get out of there and have a nice long cry.

“Okay,” Dan said.

Rising from the table, he handed her a slip of paper.

Looking down at the paper, she asked, “What is this?”

“Your paycheck,” Dan answered, “I’ve got to get to work. This has really been fun.”

Terry stared at Dan as he headed up to the cash register. She was dead tired, and he was ready to work another six hours. It was unreal!

Captain Dawson bent over the paperwork trying to establish how much the fire had cost the department. There was overtime that had to be paid, materials had been used, and equipment damaged. The bills were mounting and he was trying to get a good estimate to deliver to the Chief later that week. The accountants would go over the bills and generate a detailed report. He just had to get the receipts organized for them.

The fire had been a major mess. The building was old and had survived based on grandfather clauses in the building codes. The stairwells had lights, but they had failed shortly after the fire had started. There hadn’t been an automated sprinkling system that might have slowed the spread of the fire. There had been hoses located throughout the building but they were half rotten and leaked.

The only bright spot in the entire mess had been the CERT teams. They had really come through and justified all of the expense in training and equipping them. Captain Dawson couldn’t believe how much money Eric had spent making sure that everyone had water, and cold water at that. Dan Parker had provided a bright spot for men hot and tired from fighting the fire. The Salvation Army had shown up with bologna sandwiches, but the men had lined up for pizza.

He had already written a memo to the Chief suggesting that the two men be rewarded for their effort and dedication. They had gone well beyond the call of duty. As far as he knew, the Chief had forwarded the memo to the mayor. He figured that would be the end of it.

“Captain Dawson?”

Captain Dawson looked up at Ernie, surprised to see him there. Half afraid of the answer, he asked, “Ernie, what are you doing here?”

“Dan said you were in charge of CERT,” Ernie answered.

“That’s right,” Captain Dawson said.

“I’d like to join up,” Ernie said.

Nothing had impressed him more than the stories that he had heard about Dan at the great fire. Diana had talked how he was doing a thousand things there. It was incredible to him to hear about how hard he had worked with no expectation of getting anything in return. There was something noble about it. He liked the idea of that. He wanted to do something noble.

“Oh,” Captain Dawson said at a loss for words.

He felt like the world had just suddenly stopped spinning on its axis. He stared at Ernie thinking that he had never expected that kind of change in the young man. He wondered what Dan had done to Ernie.

“So what do I have to do to join up?” Ernie asked.

He bit his lower lip waiting for an answer. He hoped that his criminal record wouldn’t prevent him from joining.

Captain Dawson answered, “I’ll call you when we are ready to put another team together. You’ll have to go through the training program.”

“I’m taking First Aid courses from the Red Cross,” Ernie said.

“That’s good, Ernie,” Captain Dawson said, “The CERT training covers additional material. You’ll have to wait for us to put together another team.”

“When will that be?” Ernie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Call me when you do know,” Ernie said.

“Right.”

Ernie left the station hoping that Captain Dawson had taken his offer seriously. It felt a little strange leaving the station without being in trouble. He headed home to enjoy the rest of his day off. It was time to work on his goals. He had one now: to do something noble.

Lieutenant McGregor stuck his head in Captain Dawson’s office and asked, “What did Ernie do now?”

Laughing, Captain Dawson answered, “He volunteered to join our next CERT team.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Not at all,” Captain Dawson replied.

“What are you going to do?”

Shrugging his shoulders, he answered, “I’ll invite him to join the next team we start.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Not at all,” Captain Dawson replied.

He thought it would be good for Ernie to take a little pride in his community.

With each sunrise, the calendar progressed from one day to the next. July turned into August. The weather got hotter. Although it was hard to notice, the days were getting shorter. For Dan, running the business had fallen into a consistent pattern of activity. He was able to take much more time off from cooking to deal with other business related issues.

Kevin was slowly getting used to the responsibilities of being an assistant manager. Sandra was planning on going to school in the evenings to get a business degree hoping that it would get Dan to think about promoting her. Ernie was settling into his job as cook and looking around for more to do.

Dan’s work at the computer was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. He pulled it out and glanced down at the caller id. He opened the phone and said, “Hello, Betty.”

“Hello, Dan,” Betty replied.

“What’s up?” Dan asked trying to sound upbeat.

There was a long silence before Betty answered, “Pat wants to talk to you, tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there. What time?” Dan said without question. He made it over to Pat and Betty’s apartment twice a week. Each visit, Pat had looked worse than the visit before. If Pat wanted him to visit he would be there.

“At two o’clock,” Betty answered.

“Okay. How’s she doing?” Dan asked.

“She’s not doing well,” Betty said fighting back the tears.

“How bad is it?” Dan asked. He knew it couldn’t be good if Pat was asking him to visit rather than waiting for him to drop by.

“Pretty bad,” Betty answered.

“I can come over now,” Dan said.

Betty said, “She wants to see you tomorrow at two.”

“All right,” Dan said. He’d make arrangements for Kevin to take care of the store. He said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“No, she wants to talk to you alone. Just let your self in the apartment. I’ll leave the door unlocked for you,” Betty said.