Monday night was slower. It wasn’t slow, just it wasn’t busy. Bill and Jimmy G did their setup gingerly. They were getting used to each other and were starting to move in complementary ways. Bill was beginning to sense what Jimmy was going to do and went around him doing what needed to be done while Jimmy was doing what he was doing.
They found, and it was no big surprise, if they put their minds to it they could do the entire setup, soup to nuts, in less than an hour. They found they could start late and be done early or start early and be done really early. Or they could start on time and work quickly and efficiently and still be done early.
Today, Bill’s second Monday, the beginning of his second week, they started a bit late and ended a bit early. By quarter-past-four, their work all done, they found themselves sitting with Kalista sipping espresso and just plain resting doing nothing. Jimmy was quite pleased with the whole deal. This meant he didn’t have to do anything for at least an hour, maybe two. They would have an easy and leisurely dinner. The banquet chef would bring it over and Kalista, as she did every day, would provide the salad, always a wonderful, genuine Greek salad.
They sat, Bill, Jimmy G and Kalista. Kalista was all set up. She was always set up and ready on time. Jimmy G and Bill smoked a cigarette. Bill closed his eyes and rested.
Sometimes, in idle times, Bill relived the days that changed his life. He did not mean to, did not want to. Sometimes, when he was busy doing nothing, he drifted there and while he did not always linger there, he went through the two main ones. He did not like being there and did not like going there. But sometimes he simply couldn’t help himself.
The first one was wholly out of his control. In some regard he was merely a spectator. But in reality he was a participant. He was not an actor, and if he was, he was only a minor actor, one of the characters who react to things happening to them. He was not a causal actor in the slightest. So there was nothing he could have done. There was, actually and altogether, nothing to have been done except maybe by the doctor who dropped the ball, made an error that turned out to be a fatal error.
And so it goes.
The second, if only he’d said no, if only he’d insisted that he and his professor go as planned over to the student union where they could sit in a café and discusses his poetry.
There were so many if-onlys, but then what good did what-if thinking do anyway?
What if he’d fought it through? Didn’t plead guilty?
What if that first change-his-life day hadn’t happened?
He could go on forever this way.
He preferred, when he drifted here, to get to the here-and-now. In the here-and-now he was something he’d never dreamed he would be, doing something he never wanted to do, something that until the day Robert showed up in Bailey’s office, he’d never, ever conceptualized he’d be doing. He would have been, could have been, should have been…
For punctuation, while he sat there, just after he lit a second cigarette, up the ramp came Rosie and Edelgarde in their uniforms, red today with white lace and white leggings. Jo Ann walked ahead. Rosie and Edelgarde walked together, side-by-side, behind her. Rosie and Edelgarde both winked at Bill as they passed him by.
