LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Leah never takes the day off,” Gail said. “Do you know when she called in?”

      “There was a voicemail message, or that’s what Mark said when he phoned me to replace her. He said the odd thing was that Leah left the voicemail early Friday night right after her shift ended saying she needed a day off, especially since he’d booked the Saturday off a month ago and so missed her message until he got in Sunday afternoon. If you ask me, she could have cleared it with him before she went home instead of leaving us short-staffed today. But no, that would have been too much trouble for our princess Leah. Anyway, Mark should have been back by now.”

      “What about Wolf?”

      “He’s studying. He has that board exam and then has to defend his thesis. He told me they have him slated in next month. Hard to believe he’s that close to a Ph.D.”

      “Dr. Wolf. Has a nice ring. It’s too bad he and Leah broke it off.”

      “He can do better.”

      Gail looked more closely at Jucinda. Was that a blush under her swarthy colouring? If she didn’t know better, she’d say Juicy had eyes for Wolf. They said the cool, detached ones often held the most secrets. Maybe Jucinda had it going on. “You don’t think much of our Leah,” she said in a neutral voice. She studied Jucinda’s face.

      “She’s a ho.”

      Gail choked on a mouthful of tea. She wiped at the hot liquid dribbling down her chin. “Excuse me?”

      Jucinda’s eyes flashed righteous anger. “I don’t respect that kind of woman. It’s hypocritical for her to be giving advice to university kids when she’s carrying on like a common whore with a married man.”

      “Wow. I didn’t know you felt that way about her. I’m not sure I’d call her a ho, myself,” said Gail. “She’s more like a free spirit.”

      “Only if free spirit is a euphemism for loose and easy. Anyhow, Wolf is better off without her.”

      Gail was close enough to Jucinda to smell the sweet coconut scent of her hair when she flipped it back from her face. In the two years they’d worked together she’d always thought of Jucinda as virginal and placid, like a shallow green pond with nary a breeze stirring. Pretty, petite, and pudding-dull. This opening into the workings of Jucinda’s brain was unprecedented and a wee bit disturbing. Just what did Jucinda know about Leah and why hadn’t Gail picked up on it? A married man?

      They finished their tea and returned to their desks. Gail talked a boy through his urge to quit calculus all the while keeping one curious eye on Jucinda, who’d opened a biology textbook. She read it while twirling a long strand of hair around and around in her fingers, every so often lifting her head to look toward the front entrance as if waiting for someone. Gail found her own head turning toward the door in unison.

      Mark Withers sauntered in as Gail hung up the phone. Jucinda glanced over at him and said hello, but her shoulders slumped and the smile didn’t stay on her face for more than a second.

      So it’s not Mark you’re waiting for. Gail looked across at their boss, the eternal beach boy dressed in his navy shirt with wide horizontal white stripes, khaki shorts, and brown loafers, worn sockless. His hair was a tousle of sun-bleached strands, cut like Robert Redford’s in that Butch Cassidy movie. You’d never know that Mark had a good ten years on the rest of them. He could have passed for early twenties.

      “Hey ladies,” he said. “You can head out, Jucinda. Nate will be here in a few minutes.”

      “Good. If Leah’s away tomorrow, maybe line up Nathan or Wolf. I have an exam in the afternoon.”

      “No problemo. She hasn’t called in so I expect her back for her shift.”

      Gail looked over his shoulder. Nate was coming through the door, carrying a large coffee and a box of doughnuts that he offered around. He and Mark were the only two married employees. He was also Mark’s polar opposite, quiet and observant, always dressed in jeans and shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’d graduated the year before and worked part-time on the help line and part-time as Professor Dino Tadesco’s teaching assistant. Gail found Nate the most attractive of the three men on staff, not that she was into men.

      She looked over at Jucinda to see if his entrance had brightened her up. She was biting into a cruller and it was hard to read her expression, but she didn’t look all aglow in Nathan’s manly presence. Gail hadn’t seriously thought Juicy would go for a married man anyway. That only left Wolf.

      Jucinda stuffed the textbook she’d been reading into her purse and made her exit. Nate sprawled out in her desk chair and immediately took a call. Mark disappeared into his cubbyhole office to do some paperwork. He shut the door as per usual. Gail blew him a kiss that he would never receive.

      Beach Boy, her pet name for Mark, had been complaining for weeks about all the forms he had to complete and the hoops he had to jump through to keep their grant. He had to defend all over again the need to have a help line when the university had face-to-face counselling available most weekdays and evenings. Even though kids needed an appointment to see a counsellor and the waiting list was getting longer by the day, the help line still had to justify its existence. Try telling a suicidal student to book an appointment, Gail thought. Go ahead and tell them to hold onto their anxiety until regular office hours that don’t include the weekends. How many kids had phoned in and told their secrets and fears only because it was safe and anonymous? The help line was open seven a.m. to eleven p.m. seven days a week, and graduate psych students fielded the calls with Mark supervising and filling in as needed on the phone. They operated close to the bone, but they all believed in what they were doing. Professor Tadesco was their biggest supporter. Gail hoped he wouldn’t get tired of the politics and toss in the towel. They’d done a lot of good work and the need was great for both walk-in counselling and the anonymous help line.

      She answered two more calls — a first-year student who’d broken up with his girlfriend and a fourth-year in teacher’s college who didn’t know if she could handle problem kids — and the shift was over. Mark would answer the phone for a couple of hours and Nate would close at eleven. They only had one person on the last two hours of the night and before lunch. They used to have full shifts but Mark made the cuts when their funding dropped the year before. So far they were barely coping with the demand.

      The front door opened and Wolf entered. He looked from Gail to Nate and back again. “I thought Leah was on tonight. I must have got it wrong.” He walked over to Gail’s desk and picked up a wizened honey doughnut on his way by. Nate had the phone to his ear and waved in Wolf’s direction.

      “Leah called in Friday night and said she needed the day off today,” Gail said. She looked into Wolf’s piercing green eyes and wondered if it was true that Leah had been sleeping around on him. She was a fool if she was, but it would explain their sudden break up. It would explain other behaviours she’d witnessed when silently observing Leah: uncharacteristic evasive responses to questions, sudden unexplained disappearances.

      “Strange,” Wolf said. “She never called to cancel our plans. We were meeting up with classmates at the campus pub after her shift today before everyone separates for good.”

      Gail tilted her head. “Maybe she got a better offer.” She lobbed the line out like a hand grenade and studied Wolf’s face, waiting for a crack in his armour. He didn’t react one way or the other. She was momentarily disappointed. “Well, time for me to head home,” she said cheerily when it was obvious he wasn’t going to play ball.

      “I’m going to talk to Mark. See you later.” He smiled and strode across the office toward Mark’s closed door. She watched him knock and disappear inside.

      Most peculiar, she thought as she gathered up her books and stuffed them into her knapsack. She looked inside Beach Boy’s office as she walked past on her way to the front door. He and Wolf were deep in conversation and didn’t notice her leaving. I wonder what that’s all about.

      Chapter

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