by Dan Dillard
*****
Matt and I went on through high school and remained close friends. After graduation, I worked for a year before I went on to college. Although the memory of Robin and the horrible events of the fall of 1981 were never far from thought, the curse of Nataliya, ghost-girl of the Russian House, became a silly idea that I chalked up to youthful drama. It sounded like one of the Hardy Boys books Danny used to read in the library. I had let it all go and chalked it up to just what it was: a weird experience followed by two tragic coincidences.
Luckily, I lost all of the baby fat that I’d carried into my mid-teens. It might have been from the cigarettes that I'd started inhaling, or the fact that I had an enormous amount of energy that I never could seem to deplete, at least until I had children of my own. Or it might have been a combination of both.
Matt and I were roommates at State College until our junior year when two very significant things happened to me. Matt dropped out of school to work for his dad at a military contracting firm. The job had moved his father to DC and he had been busy supporting the troops from an air conditioned office while they kicked ass in operation Desert Shield. When a new contract came in, Matt’s father had room to hire several people and put them in on the ground floor. Matt was hired as a technician and started out building cables and electrical assemblies before moving on to test radios and other equipment. It was where he wanted to be and Bob Chambers was proud. I was too, but I missed my friend. That was the first significant thing.
