PART I - THE MAN NOT THERE

Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who was not there
I saw him there again today
Oh my, I wish he'd go away

         “Can everyone in the back of the room hear me? Can you hear me back there?” There was a nod of heads. It was another huge turnout for her seminar. The motel had already moved the meeting out of a room that held forty people. By last count eighty-two attorneys, accountants, paralegal and other professionals had signed up to hear Julie Thorpe talk about Estate Planning After The New Law. On Monday and Tuesday she had given the same lecture in Montvale in northern New Jersey; now she was in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, near Valley Forge.

         The attendees were seated behind long tables that ran perpendicular to the side of the room. Each table held pitchers of water, empty glasses and bowls of hard candies. She couldn’t see any empty seats, or seats not marked taken, but still newcomers were streaming into the room, each holding a large red notebook given out by the sponsor, NCLES. Julie was paid by NCLES, which stood for National Continuing Legal Education Seminars. When she wasn’t collecting a fee for talking, Julie was a partner in the firm Haskin, Pritchett and Thorpe in Stamford, Connecticut.

         The crowd at the coffee table in the back was breaking up and moving forward and the general noise level was subsiding. Julie paused a moment before greeting the group.

         “Good morning, everyone. Let me introduce myself. I'm Julie Thorpe and I will be with you the next two days. We will discuss Estate Planning in light of the tax law passed last year by Congress. I follow our excellent workbook, but not every chapter is discussed. I welcome questions from the group, but please raise your hand. We will take a fifteen minute break at 9:45 and break for lunch at 11:45.”

         Julie’s voice was low and authoritative, but it also had a friendly conversational tone to it. She held her audience’s attention easily. She was also quick on her feet at fielding questions and making comments that brought laughter. This was her first year working with NCLES. An NCLES staff member heard her talk to a group of professionals in Meriden and had practically hired her on the spot.

         Julie was of average height, with dark blonde hair cut fairly short, and in her mid-forties. She was not thin, and life on the road only helped her put on pounds. She favored dresses that were loose and did not emphasize her stomach, where most of her weight was deposited. She did not wear glasses for reading or when she spoke, but was nearsighted and in large rooms could not make out the people in the back.

         During the first part of the talk, Julie had learned to size up her audience. She hoped there would be several people to provide a dialogue, people with deep knowledge who might add to the discussion, but she was aware that there was a fine line between such a group and an argumentative class. She dreaded those sessions in which one person thought he or she knew it all, and took pleasure in trying to humble the instructor. Most times the rest of the group would get to a point where they would drown out the wise guy, but dealing with such groups was difficult. Yet, at least those classes were not packed with ‘zombies,’ where comments and questions were far between.

         This seemed like a good group. When break came she was on schedule. She ran back to her room for a few seconds to freshen up and then returned eight minutes early. Several listeners with questions buttonholed her at the podium. As she responded her eye roved about the room absentmindedly. She was in the middle of an answer when she caught the glimpse of the back of a man’s head. He was balding and short and she had the feeling she knew him. A sense of disquiet fell over her. If this was the man she thought it might be, he was the last person in the world she wanted to see. She looked again but he had vanished.

         She realized her mind had been wandering. She excused herself and poured a cup of tea to relax. She answered two more questions and then noted that it was time to start again.

         “Will everyone take their seats? We’d like to finish on time and allow you time to get to the restaurants early for lunch. Thank you.”

         She stood watching the attendees filing back into their seats. Perhaps forty percent of the listeners were women, a fact that would have made her proud on most days, but today her chance sighting put her on edge. She looked for his glasses, beard and mustache and general shape but she saw no one that resembled him. She thought to herself that it must have been one of the staff of the hotel.

         She swung into her lecture again. Nothing disturbing happened until a man on the right raised a question. She answered him, looking him in the eye. She heard a rejoinder from the left and turned to see a woman with her hand raised. To that woman’s right, a post abutted in front of the table. The woman began to speak but Julie only had eyes for the blue denim shirt on the sleeve of the man who was sitting in back of the post. He must have been leaning against the wall, for if he sat upright, he could have seen her and she him.

         Her mind buzzed. ‘He always wore blue denim shirts when he wanted to dress up.’

         She realized she hadn’t taken in what the woman said. She asked her to rephrase the question. She took a long time to answer, hoping to draw the man from behind his hiding place, but he did not move. A person in front of him blocked any other view of him but the arm. She turned back to her text, but in her mind she thought that it could not be.

         ‘He was from somewhere in this area originally, but why would he be here? He could have come to the one in Albany earlier this month and heard Jerry.’

         She took a sip of her tea to calm her nerves and plunged on. In less than twenty seconds she realized she had skipped ahead two paragraphs. She modulated backward and picked up what she had missed. When the next question came, she had the person rephrase it completely while she tried to clear her mind.

         ‘Get it together, Julie!’

         She wanted to grab another look at the man, hoping to catch him out of his hiding place. She wished someone would ask a question from that side of the room, but none came, so she did the next best thing and asked a question herself.

         “How many of you are familiar with Code Section 61?”

         Her head swiveled about the room and when she turned in the direction of the mystery man, she did not see his hand in the air, but though his head was blocked, his forearm was perpendicular to the table and she could see his palm and fingers and a watchband. She knew that hand very well, not from sight but from feel.

         A little while later she announced that at lunch break, she would ask the staff if they could bring in another table so that people whose view was blocked could have a better seat where they could see the podium. She thought of saying something humorous about her looks, but thought better of it.

         At 11:30 she realized that she would never cover all the ground she wanted to complete before the break. Her mind was continually wandering back to the man behind the post. To catch up before the break for lunch, she decided to omit several paragraphs of the text. She put her watch on the podium. She hated watches. Before she began to give seminars she had only worn them as jewelry, not for function. All had changed when she began to speak in public.

         As she was winding up just before 11:45, a question came flying out of the audience, and from someone sitting quite near to the quarry. Before she began her answer, she decided to dismiss the group so that her quarry might walk to the door in front of her eyes.

         “That is a good question that deserves a detailed answer. For those not interested, I would suggest you quietly break for lunch and be back here by 12:45 so we can start early, and maybe get out early today.”

         With that she began her answer. Many got up to leave, but the mystery man hadn’t budged. She slowed her pace and saw out of the corner of her eye some movement from behind the post. His arm and hand were closing the notebook and now he seemed to be pushing away from the table. She continued her response when from somewhere on her right came an almost deafening,

         “NO, THAT CAN’T BE CORRECT.’

         Her head turned toward the voice.

         “THERE’S A REVENUE PROCEDURE GOVERNING THAT SITUATION.”

         As soon as she heard the woman’s voice, she knew she had made an error in her answer to the man on her left.

         “Thank you, you are correct.”

         She swiveled her head back to the originator of the question. To her horror, the mystery man was gone. She looked to the group heading for the door but she saw no one clad in a blue denim shirt. Her eyes went back to her interlocutor. On the way she noticed a double door in the corner that she had not seen before. ‘I bet he slipped out that door,’ she said to herself. She motioned the man who had asked the question to come up to the podium, where she apologized and explained the correct answer. The woman who had corrected her was also there. She thanked her also. They left for lunch.

         Totally frustrated, Julie considered searching restaurants including the one in the motel, but then her eyes alighted on the sign-in sheet. ‘Of course, he had to sign in to get his CLE credits. Why didn’t I think of that?’ She grabbed them and scanned through them. Many of the signatures were illegible, but each participant was to give their credential and their state. Most were attorneys and most were from Pennsylvania or New Jersey. She looked for an attorney from New York and found two, but neither had his name. She remembered that when he signed his name, the first letters of the first and last were very large. He had joked to her about being Mr. “B” “S” but she could not find a name resembling Bobby Steptoe. Could he have lied about his name? He couldn’t have. She had seen his stationery in his office at his home.

         She came to the conclusion it was all an illusion. She was relieved. She would treat herself to her favorite Chicken Caesar Salad at the restaurant where she had stopped the night before. She almost swaggered out the door of the motel, certain in her belief that Bobby Steptoe was not at this seminar. She turned toward her car, but her eye caught a glance of a white Volvo Station Wagon turning to its right as it left the motel. That was his car, she was sure of it. She could not see the license plate, but she did not need to see it. On the back window was a sticker with an “S” on it. She remembered being surprised that he was of Swedish descent, not connecting the letter to his name, Steptoe. "The decal was Barb's idea," he told her.

         Her appetite deserted her, but she went mechanically to the restaurant and ordered the Caesar salad. She picked at it, her mind many miles away. Why would he ever come here? Had he moved back to Pennsylvania? Reasoning failed her. She drove back to the seminar site. She was fifteen minutes early. Attendees were milling about the lobby and the doors to the rooms. She could see a number still eating. There were four or five people at the bar, but none looked like her pupils. She thought about having a drink to calm her nerves, but common sense told her not to have one. She made her way to the room. Several students approached the podium. She concentrated on what they were saying, keeping her head lowered so she wouldn’t see the room.

         Time came to begin again. As soon as the group quieted down, she knew she was going to have a problem with her digestive system. She always did when she was nervous. She chewed two anti-acids and began the afternoon session. Before she could begin to talk, a man handed her several messages taken down on telephone message pad. She read them to the audience. The third asked Mr. Steptoe to call his office. She looked about, but did not see him. Her mind relaxed a little, though she thought to herself that he could already be making his phone call.

         Her head cleared and she took up the lesson with more confidence than she had before lunch. She was encouraged when one of her jokes brought loud laughter from the audience. After thirty minutes her fright had fled from her mind. She could feel that she had her listeners’ attention. Often after lunch people were sleepy, but the liveliness of her presentation was drawing them along. Their eyes were following her. Several people asked questions. Her answers were ‘right on the money’. This was how a seminar was supposed to be.

         A ten-minute interplay between herself and three of her listeners kept the ball rolling. She was pleasantly surprised when she saw her watch that in twenty minutes the afternoon break would come. She had learned that her listeners would grow restless as any planned interruption neared, and she had learned to expect students to get up and leave during the last hour. She had attended many seminars herself and remembered the desire to beat the crowd.

         Noises from outside the room were infrequent. There was one other meeting being held at the motel that day, but it was in another wing. She had only looked at her watch because the noise of the staff wheeling in a cart full of soda cans and ice had disturbed the mood that held the audience. The staff had put the cart in place and departed. The noise turned white again; the hum of the air conditioner provided counterpoint to the sound of her voice.

         ‘Is that my heart beating?’ A thumping sound came into her head. She realized it was coming from out in the hall and getting nearer. She launched into a new thought and then stopped abruptly. Walking in the door in his steel-toed boots was Bobby Steptoe.

         “I’m very sorry, ma’am. I was caught on a long phone call. Please go on.”

         His beard was gone, but his mustache was still the bushy, unkempt mess it had been when she looked up into his face before. His brown eyes were soft and limpid; she could never remember him expressing anger through them, though she had certainly given him justification to do so. He walked toward his seat behind the post.

         “There are seats where you will be able to see better available now.”

         “Thanks, but I need to put my head down for a little while. Please get back to the lecture.”

         ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ she thought. She remembered Bogart in the film they watched one night. ‘Of all the gin joints in the world, she has to come into this one.’ Her stomach told her things had changed and break could not come soon enough. She peeked at her watch again. ‘Eight minutes!’ She tried to pick up the topic, and when words failed her, she fell back on asking her audience a question. The discussion that ensued took the group to break time.

         Julie excused herself from the listeners intent on buttonholing her at the podium with questions. She made a gesture of holding her stomach and dashing off, no matter how embarrassing this might be. In her case, she knew it was no gesture. She made it to her room and sought relief both over and on the toilet. How would she ever make it through the rest of the afternoon, and what about tomorrow?

         She washed her face and brushed her teeth and swigged some of the liquid antacid she kept in her suitcase. She headed back to the seminar, turning the corner to the hall that led to the meeting room. She bumped into him. She started to apologize, but he stopped her.

         “Now, don’t worry. I am not going to bite you. We could have dinner together for ‘old time sake’ as they say.”

         ‘She looks like a deer that has been caught in the headlights,’he thought.

         ‘Oh god, anything to get out of this, please, dinner? Just stop harassing me.’

         “Dinner would be nice. Here or at a restaurant? Are you staying here?”

         “Oh yes, but I think we can find a nicer place to eat than this. There are a number within a few miles. Remember I used to live near here. Now, you get back in there and smoke the rest of this seminar. You are not being the Julie I knew who would never panic.”

         “That Julie never met a ghost. I just lost what little lunch I ate.”

         “You'll be fine. Just ignore the elephant in the room. We will have a lovely dinner and maybe we can find a way to make up for past sins.”

         “That’s what I am worried about.”

         “You needn’t. We will talk about it.”

         He walked off into the Men’s room. She went into the meeting room. There were only two minutes left in the break, but she spent more than that trying to answer the questions of those gathered around her. She invited those who did not have a chance to talk to her after the day was done.

         The confrontation had cleared her head. Eating dinner with Bobby might be like having an appointment for an Upper G.I., but at least he had not been angry. She resumed her lecture and soon was back to the Julie that she was before he had stomped into the room. At one point he even offered a filler that helped bridge a difficult question. She almost smiled at him in thanks.

         She made a perfunctory announcement about everyone signing the sheet to receive their credit for their afternoon attendance, and she reminded them to fill in the evaluation of the course and the lecturer. She almost cringed as she said that line, wondering if any in the audience could imagine her feelings.

         The last thirty minutes was always a stream of people getting up to leave early, which often took away from the talk. She had learned to make this part more of a question and answer session and today was no exception. When 4:30 came, she finished up her answer, thanked her audience and told them she would see them tomorrow.

         A member of the motel staff handed her a message. “7:00 OK? I am in #121. Call if this is not good.”

END OF PART I
TO: "Part II - ALABASTER DREAMS"