The Flex of the Thumb

by James Bennett

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t bring any shoes or anything. I just got this urge to drive up here all of a sudden. I get these like vibes sometimes.”

  “You said that once. But it would be easy for me to get some equipment out of the gym.”

  “No thanks. I guess I’m out of here.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” said Radulski. “I’ll call you.”

  “Don’t bother. Every phone call goes through my old man’s answering machine.” Then Vano drove back home.

  Reggie Rose was president of Entrada College. Since he had held this position a little less than one year, he was still largely unclear about the duties of a college CEO.

  Reggie was anal-retentive in the extreme when it came to his disposition; he liked his things well dusted and systematically placed. He owned a large range of state-of-the-art electronic pleasure gadgetry. He owned a high-tech IBM computer, a Sony VCR, and a great deal of digital stereo equipment which could be operated comfortably by a remote unit. His video tapes, CDs, and computer programs were alphabetized in custom-made oak racks.

  He kept all his goodies dust free with his own feather duster. Fastidiousness was a way of life for Reggie Rose, who could spend an entire day cleaning tapes and records, dusting his mouse pad, labeling, and filing. He shampooed his dark brown hair daily, and wore it parted straight down the center of his scalp. His eyeglasses had hexagonal lenses and wire earpieces.

  He had never been married, but there were two women in his life. The first was his secretary, Mrs. Askew. Reggie Rose did not like her; he found her officious. The second was his housekeeper, Bertie Kerfoot. She was a slob, and if there was one thing President Rose could not abide, it was a slob.

  On this particular morning, Reggie had to deal with the disagreeable elements of both of these women.

  He came down to the kitchen for breakfast.

  Bertie Kerfoot was a terrible cook. For breakfast, she served him six stale Ritz crackers on a plate with a sprig of dead parsley, and a warm bottle of Dr. Pepper. While he munched dispiritedly, Bertie leaned against the kitchen counter, smoked a cigarette and stared at him.

  “These crackers are pretty stale,” President Rose observed.

  “We need to finish them off before they get real stale,” responded Bertie Kerfoot. “There’s plenty left if you want more.”

  Reggie declined. Then he complained that this was not a very good breakfast. Bertie said what she always said: “What do you expect from me? Perfect?”

  This cavalier attitude toward cuisine was particularly repulsive to Reggie. He cherished good food. He loved to entertain friends at the finest restaurants in town. Sometimes, he liked to cook along with Julia Childs. Reggie could prepare steak au poivre, cassoulet, and beefbourginon.

  Whenever Bertie cooked for him, she usually prepared milk toast, dried beef gravy on Saltine crackers, a can of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti-os, frozen pizza rolls, or Spam lite.

  While Reggie munched on his powdery Ritz cracker, his mind stubbornly tracked itself into the despondency of returning home late in the evenings from tedious meetings. He liked to relax in his den by turning on the late news. But just as soon as he did, here would come Bertie, shuffling in to join him. She always wore an old faded housecoat which kept falling open, and a hairnet; she had a can of Budweiser in one hand and a cigarette dangling from her lips. It wasn’t pretty.

  Then she would collapse on the couch. Her cigarette ash fell on the carpet, she belched repeatedly, she smacked her lips a lot. Loud. Then, after her custom, she would begin nagging Reggie to change channels so she could watch A Current Affair.

  It was all ruinous to the tranquility of the late news, so Reggie rarely stayed up until the conclusion of the program. He would have given Bertie notice, but she went with the house. The house was furnished for the president, but so was the housekeeper.

  Sometimes Reggie Rose dreamed that Bertie Kerfoot might drown in the bathtub, and then he could hire Mary Thorne to come and live with him and be his housekeeper. If he thought about this idea for very long, Reggie became very enthusiastic. Mary Thorne was indeed a munchkin.

  “Or maybe it’s a liebchen,” Reggie said aloud. “Maybe that’s the word I want.”

  “Are you speaking to me?” asked Bertie Kerfoot, with smoke streaming from her nostrils. Bertie was very skilled at smoking a cigarette all the way down without once removing it from her lips.

  “Never mind,” said Reggie. He pushed away from the breakfast table and headed for the office.

  Where the officious Mrs. Askew confronted him. She told him that the college was in desperate straits. It was, in fact, about to go under.

  “Oh yeah?” challenged Reggie Rose. “Says who?”

  “Says the board of trustees,” answered Mrs. Askew quickly. She dropped a thick book on his desk. “Here is their report.”

  Reggie looked at the report. It was bound in a dark blue, semi-hard cover. He decided that it looked real boring and would not be any fun to read.

  It would be fun deciding where to place it, however. He glanced around his opulent office. There were leather-bound books in floor-to-ceiling bookcases. He had a beautiful walnut desk and a slate coffee table. On the wall facing his desk, an expensive wood carving with letters in high relief spelled out the only principle of administrative leadership which Reggie Rose understood:

  TO LEAD IS TO DELEGATE

  Reggie decided the slate coffee table would be the best permanent home for the trustees’ report.

  “You want me to summarize the report for you?” asked Mrs. Askew crisply.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and do that? I sure wouldn’t want to read it.”

  Mrs. Askew was accustomed to this. Putting on her glasses, she began reading from her notepad: “The college’s financial picture is very bleak. Endowments are exhausted, and no new revenues are being generated. Interest on investments is used up. Costs are being met from the principal. The General Revenue fund is depleted. If the college doesn’t generate substantial new sources of revenue within the calendar year, we will have no choice but to close our doors.”

  “This sounds real serious,” Reggie had to admit. He slumped in his chair. If the school had to close down, then he would be out of a job. If that was so, he would have no income. He had a Mercedes-Benz, a Trinitron big-screen television set, a 30-foot boat, and an annual membership in an exclusive Palm Springs country club. It took money to have such things.

  “There’s more,” said Mrs. Askew.

  “There’s more?”

  Mrs. Askew continued by pointing out, “The college is scheduled to lose its accreditation. The Western Association will not renew our accreditation unless certain aspects of our operation are improved immediately.”

  These observations provoked Reggie into a feisty mode: “Such as? What’s wrong with this college, I’d like to know.”

  “Such as the physical facilities, the curriculum, and the faculty.”

  “And what’s wrong with them?”

  “The physical facilities are overcrowded and outdated,” informed Mrs. Askew. “The curriculum is archaic and limited. The faculty is undistinguished.” She took off her glasses, looked up from her notepad, and said, “In a word, we are just about kaput.”

  “Kaput?”

  “Kaput. Done for. Out of time.”

  Reggie slumped back in his chair again. This really was very serious and discouraging. He wished Mrs. Askew would leave now, but she simply sat there staring at him expectantly, wagging her crossed leg and popping her gum. Her glasses had rhinestones in the frames. But she didn’t seem inclined to leave. Reggie finally said meekly, “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, we can’t do much of anything without money, can we?”

  “Yes, that’s so. The money is important, very important. How can we get some?”

  Mrs. Askew sat up straighter; she was now enjoying this conversation a great deal. She had a healthy appetite for power, and this was power. She said, “
Fund raising is a complex and difficult procedure which takes time, energy, and resourcefulness. Financial resources such as endowment have to be carefully cultivated and nurtured over time. It takes individual giving, public monies, and corporate gifts to build the financial undergirding needed to sustain an institution of higher learning.”

  Hearing this, Reggie was even more discouraged. “That sure sounds like a lot of work,” he said with a pout.

  “It is a lot of work,” the secretary confirmed. “A great deal of work.”

  President Rose was glum. This was very serious stuff. The college was indeed in a desperate position. Then he asked, “Did the trustees say anything in their report about our mainframe computer? That’s the gem of my leadership. Did they see fit to mention that?”

  “Nary a word,” replied Mrs. Askew. She followed this terse observation by informing him that a man was waiting to see him.

  His visitor turned out to be Rip Radulski, baseball coach. As soon as Radulski introduced himself, Reggie said, “Baseball coach? Where?”

  “Right here,” answered Radulski. “Here at Entrada.”

  “You mean our college has a baseball team?”

  “Of course,” said Radulski, suddenly uneasy. He was here to lobby for funding to rehabilitate the baseball field, but it was plain there was a great deal of groundwork to be laid.

  Reggie stood up from his chair in order to stand near his coffee table. He folded his arms across his chest and studied the windblown face of Rip Radulski, stippled with reddish blotches and purplish textures. Plenty of razor nicks. After Reggie assumed a pensive visage, from the corner of his eye he spied the trustees’ report. “Please excuse me for just a moment,” he said to the baseball coach.

  He walked briskly to Mrs. Askew’s office. “Tell me something,” he said. “Is there anything in the trustees’ report about the baseball team?”

  “Nary a word,” replied Mrs. Askew, without looking up from her keyboard.

  Reggie went back to Radulski. “There’s not a word in the trustees’ report about the baseball team,” he said.

  “That’s a disgrace, then,” said Radulski. “A California college is not supposed to have a baseball team that’s ignored.”

  President Rose, who had grown up in Vermont, found this to be a perplexing remark.

  Radulski went on to say he needed funds to bring the Entrada baseball faciltiy up to snuff. “What does up to snuff mean?” Reggie asked him.

  “We need to have the field reworked and resodded. The stadium needs to be sandblasted, and we need new bleachers built along the left field line. It would give us more seating and more symmetry.”

  The idea of more symmetry was always appealing to Reggie Rose, wherever he found it. But he said to Radulski, “Is our current seating capacity inadequate?”

  Radulski hesitated. Under normal circumstances, he would not have been reluctant to tell a lie, but these were not normal circumstances. For the first thing, he was stone cold sober, and for the second, this was the college president. On the other hand, telling the whole truth about Entrada baseball crowds would sabotage his cause. He said, “It will be, if Vano Lucas comes to Entrada.”

  “Who?”

  “Vano Lucas.”

  Reggie wondered if this was a name with which he should be familiar. He decided to take a risk: “And who is Vano Lucas, if I may be so bold?”

  “He’s the greatest pitcher alive. He’s Bob Feller and Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan rolled into one.”

  Reggie wondered who these people were. He said, “How much money are we talking about for this stadium upgrading?”

  “Not much,” answered Radulski. “Maybe two or three million.”

  “Two or three million??” Reggie stood up immediately to begin pacing. He pounded his right fist into his left palm, several times. He said to Radulski, “Are you at all familiar with the trustees’ report? Do you realize the economic crisis Entrada College is facing?”

  Rip Radulski was uncomfortable wearing this suit and tie. He had not taken a drink in nearly 24 hours. He followed a sudden inspiration by saying, “Actually, you could think of the two million as seed money.”

  Still pacing and pounding his palm, Reggie said, “Seed money?”

  “Right. If Vano Lucas comes, we can sell at least ten thousand seats for every home game. At least the games he pitches. That’s even after we inflate the ticket prices. Not to mention the big-time guarantees we could get for every game on the road.”

  Reggie didn’t know baseball pitchers from the breeding habits of sea anemones, but this sounded like revenue. It got his attention. “Go on,” he said to the coach.

  The trace of enthusiasm in Reggie’s tone gave Radulski added confidence. He continued, “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. That’s the pocket change. If Vano Lucas pitches for us, we’ll be on national TV. Not only cable networks like SportsChannel and ESPN, but even regular networks like CBS.”

  President Rose resumed his seat. His interest was peaking because this coach was talking about lots of national exposure and lots of money. He said, “And this fellow, this what’s his name?”

  “Vano Lucas.”

  “This Vano Lucas wants to come to Entrada?”

  “I’ll put it to you this way,” answered Radulski. “Entrada is the only college he’s visited. We happen to be his mother’s alma mater. He hasn’t even visited UCLA or Southern Cal, and he doesn’t plan to. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.” Delivering this lobbying effort without the telling of even one outright lie gave the coach a sense of pride.

  Reggie Rose stood up again. He had heard of UCLA and Southern Cal; maybe this coach was on to something. “If you could excuse me for just a moment,” he said again.

  He went to Mrs. Askew. Have you ever heard of a person named Vano Lucas?”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.” Reggie returned to the coach. As much as he enjoyed the notion of symmetry and revenue, this entire conversation about baseball pitchers and a refurbished stadium was giving him a headache. He was short with Radulski: “Thank you for coming. I’ll take all of this under advisement.”

  With that, he dismissed the coach. Then took two Advil with a tall glass of water. While giving his temples a vigorous massage, he asked himself a pointed question: could it be so easy? A baseball pitcher enrolls at Entrada and brings with him millions of dollars in television revenue? Could it be so easy?

  He made himself a note to speak with this coach again later, then turned his attention to the academic side of things. After all, according to Mrs. Askew, Entrada’s curriculum deficiencies were at least as alarming as the revenue situation. Reggie decided he would put the academic dean to work. “After all,” he said aloud, “To lead is to delegate.”

  But when he reached the office of the academic dean, he found it empty. He charged on Mrs. Askew. “There’s no one in the academic dean’s office and all his things are cleared out,” he declared.

  “Naturally,” answered the secretary. “In case you’ve forgotten, our academic dean left in May. He quit to go and live in Mexico with a 14-year-old senorita and write poetry about Quetzalcoatl.”

  “I do remember. Now I do.”

  “Some of us think he went around the bend.”

  “I said I remember.”

  “All we have now is an interim dean. Oboe Meel.”

  “Oboe Meel?” Reggie flinched.

  “Oboe is interim academic dean,” Mrs. Askew reminded him. “Don’t you remember?”

  “I remember!” Reggie began to fume. “Will you stop asking me what I remember?” He made clenched fists before he said, “And where is Oboe Meel now, if I may be so bold?”

  “He’s probably out on the quad somewhere, basking in the sun. That’s where he spends most of his time. That’s where I’d look for him if I were you.”

  Oboe was indeed basking in the sun. Reggie found him on a park bench on the quad with two maintenance men, Billy Byrd and Sydney Gibbs. The mos
t extraordinary event in Sydney’s life had occurred two years earlier, when he had become the object of Mary Thorne’s heat. In one week, they made love three times. For this, Sydney had achieved, in addition to the ecstasy of the experience itself, a considerable reputation. He had made it a point to broadcast his accomplishment wherever possible.

  The most extraordinary event in Billy Byrd’s life was winning a 56 dollar prize in the state lottery’s Instant Winner game on March 2, 1978.

  Oboe Meel’s huge bulk occupied nearly three quarters of the park bench. There was a small space near the end where Reggie could squeeze himself aboard. He informed Oboe that there was a lot of work to be done.

  Oboe Meel opened his eyes a tiny bit. His thumbs were hooked under the straps of his coveralls. He spat out an arc of tobacco juice. “It would appear that being appointed academic dean, even on an interim basis, is going to be somewhat like having a pebble in the shoe. That is to say, an ongoing source of irritation.”

  “See here, Meel,” said Reggie firmly. “There’s a lot of work to be done. I could show you in the trustees’ report.”

  Oboe opened his eyes a little wider before spitting out another tobacco arc. “We are basking here,” he reminded Reggie. “If you must come into our presence, be so kind as to pick an appropriate topic of conversation for the circumstances. Besides which, I can assure you that trustees’ reports are not real.”

  Reggie squinted against the morning sun and studied Oboe’s enormous profile. Oboe was six feet, three inches tall, and weighed 375 pounds. He wore only Oshkosh B’Gosh coveralls, custom-made to fit his huge bulk. No shirt. He usually carried a large wad of Red Man chewing tobacco in his cheek. He wore black, high-top tennis shoes, unlaced, of EEE width, and no socks.

  “Trustees’ reports are not real,” said Reggie Rose, repeating Oboe’s observation. “And what is that supposed to mean, if I may ask?”

  “It means precisely what it means. Trustees’ reports are fictions. They are unreal.”

  Reggie took a sudden spur in the direction of quarrelsome: “I can assure you that the trustees’ report is real. It has real pages and real data and a real hard cover. It also has a very discouraging prognosis.”