Read Online Dog Bless You by Neil S. Plakcy - Free Book Online Page B

him between
my own bites, trying to pull my head together. My dad had never been the type
to complain, but I knew there had been situations where he’d been transferred
from one department to another. My mom had a cancer scare when I was a little
kid—that surely must have freaked him out.
    There must have been times when he worried that he
wasn’t doing the right thing, or doing a good enough job. He’d never betrayed
that insecurity to me, but that was what men of his generation did. They just
got on with the task at hand. Could I do the same thing myself?
    I liked working at Eastern, and I really liked the
security of having a regular paycheck. Babson had shown faith in me, and I had
learned since my return from prison that not everyone would – and that I needed
to repay that faith. So I was going to take the job he offered at Friar Lake,
even if I worried that I couldn’t handle it.
    I finished my lunch and walked Rochester back to my
office, then called Elaine in HR. “President Babson told me to let you know
he’s reassigning me.”
    “Hold on, I think I saw an email about that.”
    She typed, and then groaned, which wasn’t a good sign.
“You’re going to be the first employee of a new cost center,” she said. “We
don’t even have the job posted yet. I just got the forms from the president’s
office this morning. But that’s typical. You’ll have to wait until the job is
posted, and then fill out an application. As soon as I have it in the system,
I’ll email you. He’s indicated that the position is open until filled—so if you
apply right away, then we can railroad through the paperwork and close the
position. If you wait too long and we get a raft of applicants, we’ll have to
go through a formal interview and hiring procedure.”
    “I thought this was just an internal transfer,” I said.
    “Well, it is, and it isn’t. Because the position is new
we have to jump through some extra hoops, and ensure that we’re abiding by all
the relevant hiring laws.”
    When I hung up from Elaine, I was more confused than
ever. Did I really have this job? Babson ran Eastern as his private fiefdom,
moving people around at will. But I knew Elaine had to make sure all the right
procedures were followed.
    What if the pool was opened to all candidates, and
someone more qualified applied? That wouldn’t be hard, since I had none of the
skills the position was going to require. And if I had to fill out a whole new
set of forms, that would involve disclosing once again that I had a felony
conviction on my record. Suppose Elaine or someone else in HR raised a fuss,
and Babson decided I wasn’t worth the trouble? I’d be back on the street.
     
     

Design Sense
    I struggled to push those doubts aside and focus on the
task at hand. If there was a chance I had to fight for the job, I was going to
do my best to entrench myself. I began by making a list of everything I had to
do. Coordinate with Joe. Hire a designer to source all the interior finishes. Develop
programming. Create a publicity campaign for the center. Write an operating
budget. Hire support staff.
    I also needed to tell President Babson about the body
that we had found out at Friar Lake but I wanted to wait until we had more
information. If the body could be connected to the monks, then it was nothing
to do with Eastern. Though at that point I couldn’t figure out how the college
could be connected to the dead body at all.
    I began to sketch out a timeline and realized that I
needed to find an interior designer. I didn’t know anyone like that. But then I
remembered Mark Figueroa, an antique dealer in Stewart’s Crossing. I often ran
into him at The Chocolate Ear café in the center of town, and at some point
he’d told me his college degree was in visual merchandising, and that he’d
worked as an interior designer in New York before opening his store. Maybe he
could help me out, or at least direct me to someone who could.
    I stood up.