Chapter 5. Young man's game

“...so, here Biden is, saying we’ve always been there for the oil, and that our troops are there for oil...”

Hey, don’t blame me, chuckles Jones, i voted for Kodos, the scraped undercarriage of the Citroën long forgotten. Social change is a young man’s game, thinks Jefferson Jones, left that a long time ago.

Jones eases himself out of the car. He notices a couple spaces away to his left in the beaten behemoth pickup. Still arguing? No, not arguing. Singing, no: rapping. Screaming at the tops of their lungs to the music – pure atonal joie de musique.

Jefferson Jones had nearly forgotten what that was like.

“Now, we didn't fight the war for oil. We don't have their oil. We have reserves offshore. We didn’t fight the war for oil. We don’t have their oil –”

If a talk radio host speaks and no one is listening, does he still sound off? Jones kills the radio and emerges squinting into daylight, bass from the pickup throbbing around him.

••••••

INT. HENNINGS THEATRE BUILDING – DAY

Jefferson Jones enters, looking tired though it’s not even ten o’clock, looking 55 though he’s 45 without a single gray hair or wrinkle when wearing a straight face. He is unwittingly sloppily dressed, about which department secretary Tammy Simoni will soon acidly comment.

Switch to:

Jones’ POV. A left turn, another left, a third he takes, passing through labyrinthine hallways of ... empty space, really. So much of theatre is empty space: Rehearsal space, dressing rooms, backstage area, the green room. Jones rounds the final corridor into the stunted hall at the very back of Hennings, whereupon he sees Tammy. She is dusting the office door opposite Jones’.

JONES (V.O.)

When did the theatre script switch to cinema? Ah well, it’s Tammy anyway. She makes for crummy dialogue in any genre.

•••••

Jefferson Jones used to try and imagine her as a Christina Hendricks-on-Madmen type, pure bombshell sexuality repressed beneath the social uniform. After all, Tammy tied herself down tauter than a bedspring.

The conservative clothes.

The hair clamped back severely.

The glasses, of course.

And the preference to completely cover up neck to toe in all but the stickiest-humid of Maryland days.

The package adds up to everything fantastic about women in uniform: the creation of a critical mass of sexual energy barely held in check by fit-to-bursting all-too-flimsy clothes.

But Jefferson Jones hasn’t lusted, flirted, joked like that, hustled, insinuated, sought dalliance, pursued, perused or put forth signals in five years with Heather. Even if he were attracted, the old romantic reflexes are flaccid. Tammy may be an animal in bed, but Jones keeps out of reach.

And, oh, the dialogue. Brutal.

“Hello, Professor Jones.”

“Still on the ‘professor’ thing, Tammy?”

“What? Oh, yes. That’s my thing, well, one my things. I have lots of things. That I’m on. Anyway, how was your summer?”

“Tammy, I was in here last week. Twice. And the workshop was two weeks ago.”

“Yes. Yes. Still.”

“My summer was fine. Uneventful.”

“And that’s good. These days. Right?”

“I’m going to go into my office now and I’ll probably close the door behind me.”

“Oh. Oh. Yes. You’re busy. Last minute preparations, I suppose.”

“Yes. Last minute preparations.”

“Can’t wait to see your production in the spring, Professor.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t do anything i wouldn’t do,” calls Tammy as Jefferson Jones has just about managed to disappear.

“Sorry?”

“I said, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’”

“Yes, I know. And it sounds like useful advice, something I might even use. Except just what do you imagine I’d that you wouldn’t?”

She’s taken aback, falling back verbally. “Um. I don’t know. Pray?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“You could be Jewish...?”

•••••

Last-minute preparations? His mental ramblings could be called that, but Jefferson Jones hardly ever devotes time to actual lesson planning anymore. So “semester-eve ruminations,” is maybe more appropriate. Or “idle paper-shuffling.”

Dully his eyes see without registering the list of names, Abeson, Ainge, Allen, he’s looking for what, Campton, Collier, Davison, for that special name maybe to leap off the page and declare itself a once in a lifetime talent, Lawson, Monday, Muru, to nuture. Muru, Helena. To bring along, to nuture. Muru.

•••••

“It was this young girl whom I, after carefully considering all those qualities which are wont to attract lovers, determined to unite with myself in the bonds of love, and indeed the thing seemed to me very easy to be done...”

•••••

It would be fucking nice, thinks Jefferson Jones, nice to justify this job to myself. Please may just one of these ... students have a germ of talent, please. Wait a minute, who am i asking?

Now. Absinthe. Ah, come on, you’re going to start hitting that shit already? It’s what, 10:30? You can’t start until noon. You set yourself that limit years ago. ‘Course, you’ve broken it a few times since then, but that’s not the point. Don’t do it. But hey, i’m going to start at noon today, anyway, so what am i going to do? Go home and immediately open a bottle? Yeah, like Heather’s going to let that happen. So i’ll have some now, a little, a tiny bit, now, and not have anymore today. Yeah, that’s what you’ll do. That and maybe a beer tonight. Or at dinner. A couple. Fill the flask. Duck pond.

Jefferson Jones fills the flask from the bottle in the bottom desk drawer – his personal inside joke to himself – without spilling a drop.

Still got it, he thinks.