Chapter 3

"Tommy, why don't you ever talk about your grandparents?"

Beth and I were sitting on one of the benches outside the main building just before lunch was over on Monday.

"Well, there isn't much to tell. I never knew either of my grandfathers—they both died before I was born—so did my dad's mom. My mom's mother I barely remember as a little old lady in a nursing home. She died when I was about seven or eight. Maybe that's why I enjoyed it so much when your grandparents were here this summer.

"Joan and Hank are really special people and they seemed almost like they were treating me as one of their grandkids."

"Tommy, they both said they'd be proud to have you as their grandson," Beth said quietly, then realized what that implied. "Oh, Tommy, I didn't ... I wasn't ... I didn't mean ... oh, shit. I think I just put my foot in it." She was looking at me as if she was waiting for me to jump up and run.

"I know what you were trying to say, but you know, being officially one of their grandkids doesn't sound like such a bad thing either," I replied, taking one of her hands in mine. "But don't you think we should wait until we're out of school first?"

"Oh, Tommy," she said as she threw her arms around my neck. "What did I ever do to deserve a guy like you?" I saw the glint of a tear in her eye.

"Well, as I remember, you conned me out of a ride," I kidded her.

"Oh, you goof!" Just then the bell rang and it was back to class.

After school we walked over to the theatre building for the first rehearsal. Greg and Cindy were already there, talking to Steve Watkins. Mr. Franks came in and looked at all of us standing around. "Okay, grab seats everybody."

After we were sitting down he looked at us. "Well, enjoy your last minutes of freedom, because from now on I'm going to make you think you're in a slave pit."

"Ooh, sounds kinky!" Greg quipped.

"You think so, Mr. Kendall? Good, because the only part I didn't cast is waiting just for you!" Greg looked like he got hit by a bus as Cindy almost rolled out of her seat laughing.

"Yeahbut, I can't sing!"

"No singing required. YOU are going to be our narrator!" Mr. Franks looked like he was enjoying this entirely too much.

"B-But I've got to run lights!"

"I've already considered that. Since a musical revue doesn't require much in the way of lighting, I think Mr. Randahl can handle it. Besides, I've heard he's got a couple of new recruits to help him out."

It was true, two freshmen, Phil and Bob, had caught me at lunch one day and asked if there was anything they could do with lighting. Looks like they'd get their wish.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with going over schedules, finding out who was going to sing which songs and all the other details that go with a show.

Beth and I were driving home when I remembered our conversation at lunch. "Beth, you never talk about your paternal grandparents. What about your dad's folks?"

"Oh ... well, we just don't talk about them much. Dad's father was a doctor and wanted him to be a doctor, too, but Dad was always a gadget freak and wanted to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I guess there was a big fight and Dad moved out and worked his way through school on his own. Even after he and Mom were married and successful enough to start their own business his dad wouldn't speak to them. Mom said Grandma is pretty quiet and won't fight him."

I heard a quiet sniffle. "I've never even seen them."

We drove in silence for a while, then Beth sat up. "Enough of that.

"Tommy, I hope you don't think I was hinting this morning. I mean when we were talking about Grandma Joan and Grandpa Hank, I didn't mean ... well, about making you an official grandkid, I mean..."

I pulled over and took her hand. "Beth, breathe. I know you weren't hinting. And like I said this morning, I'd be proud to be one of Joan's and Hank's grandkids. After all, their current one is pretty nice." Beth just put her head on my shoulder and after a few seconds I realized she was crying.

"Damn it, Tommy, just when I think you're going to get mad at me you turn all noble. What am I going to do with you?" She sat up and wiped her eyes. "Do you know you're the only guy who's ever made me cry?"

What could I say to that? I just moved over and kissed my princess.

After school I met Jim Moore at his office. The buildings we'd photographed turned out to be warehouses for the distribution company he worked for.

"Hello, Tommy. What have you got for me?"

"Well, you asked for samples to show the different standard print sizes so I brought some along."

I opened my portfolio, took out most of the prints and laid them on his desk. "I'm not sure what you're going to use the pictures for, so I brought everything from five-by-sevens to a sixteen-by-twenty."

Jim started going through the prints, arranging them by size. "My boss is thinking of framing one or two of them and hanging them in our reception area so probably the larger sizes would work the best."

I reached back into the portfolio and took out prints from some shots I'd taken at Beth's folk's shop showing the framed pictures and how we'd hung them in their office. "Something like this?"

"That's it exactly! How big are those?"

"These are sixteen-by-twenties. With the matting they're more like twenty-four-by-thirty or so."

"Would you mind if I took these in to show my boss?"

"No, go ahead."

I spent a few minutes thumbing through magazines and product fliers for machine tools. I wondered if Jim's company supplied the Joneses with anything.

Jim came back. "Tommy, do you have a few minutes? I'd like to show you around and maybe pick your brain for some ideas for pictures of the rest of our operation."

We spent some time walking around the warehouse, its huge interior filled with row after row of floor-to-ceiling racks full of machine parts and supplies. While we walked I asked Jim about the business and what made them stand out from other companies. As we talked, I pointed out some things that struck me as interesting, including the bar coding on each box or part and the scanners each lift operator carried. In place of the usual forklifts, the ones they used had a platform. The operator rode on the platform rather than on the back of the machine like a normal forklift.

Each operator had a small laptop with a pick list of what had been ordered and map of the warehouse loaded on it. The operators would follow the map and scan each piece as they took it off the shelf. This would update the list in the computer and point out the next item's location. Jim was very proud of the operation and spent some time talking about how much time it saved and how much more accurate it was over the old manual system they'd used before.

"My boss was thinking some pictures in here would look good on the wall, too," he said as we walked back to the office.

"Jim, how about advertising and the company web site? You seem pretty proud of your system, maybe using some of the pictures to get the word out would work." I was being a little sneaky here—I'd looked at the company's web site and it was not much more than a list of the companies they represented.

Jim looked at me. "Tommy, that's a good idea. It turns out our web site was put together by a guy who used to work here and was just to get something out on the web. Nobody here has any idea how to change it or anything. Do you know of anybody that does stuff like that?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," I said as I pulled out a business card for my two friends from school. "Give Jim or Dan a call and they can probably help you out."

We talked for a few more minutes and as I was getting ready to leave, I remembered the last print I still had with me. I reached in my portfolio and pulled out a print of Jim's plane. "I almost forgot, this is a sample of an eleven-by-fourteen."

I handed him the photo and it took a second before he realized it was his plane. "Wow! Is this my plane? I've never seen a picture of it this big. This is beautiful!

"Tommy, how much do I owe you for this?"

"No charge. Let's just call it payment for the detour I talked you into," I replied.

"Tommy, are you sure? I mean I didn't expect anything like this."

"I'm sure. Like I said, it's payment for your favor the other day."

"Well, I'm not going to argue. Thanks, thanks a lot." I could see Jim thinking about where he was going to hang the picture of his baby.

Before I left we set up a schedule of when I could come back and take some more pictures.

I was sitting at my desk that night when my brother walked in.

"Can I bother you, Tommy?"

"Sure, what's up?"

"Well, I was talking to one of the girls at school today and she asked me if I even knew what love meant and I couldn't think of an answer. What do you think it is?"

Leave it to a little brother to ask the tough ones.

"Oh, boy, why don't you ask me something simple—like how to cure cancer or something?

"Kevin, people have been trying to define love forever, but I remember one definition that I read in one of Dad's old books. I can't remember the exact quote, but it was something like love is when you can't be happy unless the other person is."

Kevin looked at me like I was joking. "That's all? Are you kidding me? That doesn't make any sense."

"That's what I thought when I first read it until I talked to Dad about it.

"For instance, when you and Gail were together did you ever skip an action movie you really wanted to see because you knew she wanted to see the latest chick-flick?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Did it make you feel good when you gave in?"

"Well, yeah, it did. So you mean love means always doing what the other person wants?"

"No ... at least I don't think so. It's more an attitude, I guess. You just feel better when the other person's happy."

He considered that for a while. "Well that seems pretty easy."

"Kev, you really should talk to Dad about this. I'm afraid I'm just confusing things, but if you think it's easy think about this—what if the person you love would be better off with somebody else? Would you be willing to let her go with no hard feelings?"

My brother sat there for a long time before he got up. When he got to the door he turned and looked at me. "Could you?"

Like I said: leave it to a little brother to ask the tough ones.

Tuesday afternoon we were in the theatre as the cast started going over their songs. The show starts with the upbeat Comedy Tonight. I can't think of another Sondheim number that would be better to set the tone for the evening. The entire cast had a ball with the song most people would recognize as coming from A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.

Beth's first solo was I Remember. It's sung by a girl raised in a department store who's trying to recall things like trees and sky but can only refer to them in terms of what's in the store. So sky is "blue as ink" while trees are "bare as coat racks" and "spread like broken umbrellas."

Cindy had one of the toughest numbers, The Boy From... It was written as a parody of the song The Girl From Ipanema except the boy is from "Tacarembo La Tumbe Del Fuego Santa Malipas Zatatecas La Junta Del Sol Y Cruz." The first time Cindy tried the song I thought she was going to bite her tongue off just trying to get through it.

While the cast was on stage, I sat in the light booth doodling on a pad trying to figure out how to make an adapter for my tripod. I wanted to make some kind of mount where I could use my camera close to the ground. I'd filled half a dozen pages and still couldn't figure out the best way to do it. I thought using conduit to extend the center column out to the side was what I was looking for, but couldn't quite come up with a way to attach it to the tripod itself.

"You going to build a bridge?" Guess who had snuck up behind me?

"Don't do that!"

"Do what?" My lady asked with a grin. As if she didn't know. "So what ARE you going to build?"

I explained what I was trying to do and, as usual, Beth had the answer.

"Tommy, why use steel conduit? Wouldn't aluminum work better? And why not use two horizontal pieces, sort of a parallelogram?" She grabbed my pencil and started drawing as she spoke. As her drawing took shape, I could visualize what she was thinking.

"Well, I like your idea, but I don't have any way to weld aluminum, that's why I was planning on using the conduit. Besides, I can get that at Home Depot, I'd have to order aluminum."

"Welding aluminum isn't a problem, just use a MIG welder."

"Oh, sure, and where will I find one of those?"

"How about in our garage right behind the Healey?"

"You have a MIG welding machine?"

"Well, I don't ... but Dad does." My princess has this little smirk she saves just for occasions like this. I should probably resent it, but somehow I just couldn't.

"That's great, but I'd still have to order the aluminum."

The smirk hadn't gone anywhere. "You've never been to any of the surplus metal yards along the river, have you? Are we going to have fun on Saturday!"

"You mean all those places north of downtown? I thought they just handled old scrap steel."

"Well, some do, but there's at least one that handles all sorts of aluminum. They're only open until noon on Saturdays, though."

"Noon Saturday, huh? I suppose that means I'll have to get up early when I could be sleeping in."

"Well ... you could sleep in longer if you stayed with me Friday night." Now THAT was an idea! Now all I had to do was get through the next three days.

When Beth and I grabbed our usual seats in the lunch room Wednesday, I noticed Joey and Gracie were sitting together. Beth elbowed me in the ribs. "Cut that out!" That's when I realized I was humming Matchmaker, Matchmaker.

"What? It's true, just look!" Sitting there were Greg and Cindy; Joey and Gracie; and Shelly Thomas and Chris Hanson with their two band-buddies—four couples we were responsible for.

Responsible for? Now there was a philosophical question—were we responsible for couples we'd introduced? Like the idea of being responsible for someone who's life you saved? Kind of scary, that. Especially when I saw some of the looks passing between the "girls" and "boys" ends of our tables. Was this contagious?

"Cut it out!" Beth hissed in my ear. "We're not responsible for all of them! Just us." Spooky how she does that.

I had stopped at my locker before going to the theatre when Jason Williamson and two of his buddies walked up. "You just don't know your place, do you?" Jason said as his two companions pushed me back against my locker.

"My place? Which place would that be?" I responded.

"If you don't know, we'll just have to teach you," he replied as he buried his fist in my gut.

"Mr. Randahl, you again? You cause more trouble than anyone else in this school."

As I tried to catch my breath, I looked up to see Adams wearing his patented "more in sorrow than in anger" look. Somehow this was going to turn out to be my fault ... again.

"But Mr. Adams, I..." I gasped out.

"Did I ask you to speak? Mr. Williamson, I can handle this from here. Thank you.

"As for you, it's time to visit the office ... again."

Why me? I mean, how had I screwed up my karma enough to deserve this?

Adams led me into his office and closed the door. "Mr. Randahl, for a change you're not in trouble."

"What? Then why am I here? They started it!" Dammit, Tommy, you know that old excuse doesn't work!

Adams sighed. "Unfortunately, Mr. Randahl, you've managed to earn the enmity of the son of a very rich and powerful family. I know Jason and his associates were responsible for what happened, but if I brought him down here his father would show up with a high-priced attorney and nothing would be accomplished. All I could do was get you out of there. I'm sorry, but that's the way things work sometimes. You spend enough time with Miss Jones, surely you know how those with money are."

Those with money? Well, yeah, Beth's parents were pretty well off, but I'd never seen them try to use their money as a club or to assume they were better than anyone else. Obviously, not everyone with money acted the same way. Something to remember.

"Where were you, Tommy?" Beth asked when I finally got to the theatre.

"Well, I was in Mr. Adams' office."

"How did that happen? Were you kissing somebody else," she said with a grin.

I explained the meeting with Jason and his goons.

"That lousy, stuck-up son of a bitch! What does he think he's doing? If he thinks this is going to break us up, I'll ... I'll ... oh, I don't know what I'll do, but if he ever tries to talk to me again, he'll be singing soprano by the time I'm done!" I'd never seen Beth so worked up before and, frankly, it scared the shit out of me.

"Beth, Beth, settle down! He's just blowing hot air. He's not going to do anything to me. I'll just have to keep my eye out for him."

"Tommy, you don't know what he's like. I've heard his whole family is nasty and vindictive. Don't mess with him!"

"Okay, okay, I'll stay out of his way. I don't know what else I can do."

"Just make sure of that. I want you around for a long, long time!"

I was almost ready to leave for school Friday morning when I remembered Beth's invitation to spend the night. I ran back to my room and threw a change of socks, a clean t-shirt, and underwear into a gym bag and got back downstairs just as Mom came out of the kitchen.

"Planning on staying somewhere tonight?" she asked.

"Um, yeah. Beth asked if I'd like to stay over there tonight. She's going to take me down to the scrap yard tomorrow."

"Trading you in already?" Mom said with a big grin.

"What? No," I said as I realized what I'd said. "She's taking me down there to get some aluminum for a project I'm working on."