With the intern leaving who filled in to cover the Virgin
Mayor’s and the other towns in north county, you would think management would
be seeking a replacement.
Only, they’re not.
Nobody expects to get lucky twice and find a writer as good
as our previous writer was – and we know our owner won’t pay her what she’s worth
to bring her back – but somebody is better than nobody, which is what we’ve got
now.
“Perhaps in the fall,” the owner told me when I asked about
the situation, fall when the Virgin Mayor’s trial is set to take place.
I have to wonder if the owner is holding open the job with
the hope our poet might be desperate enough to return.
Is our owner that love sick?
Meanwhile, our former temporary boss has returned to his
duties, and intends to work for a few weeks before he has to undergo chemo and
radiation, which will leave him too weak.
Like me, he’s beginning to age, and recovery will take
longer.
I suspect, like the owner, he would love to see our poet
return, although she won’t likely give him the attention she did when he served
as our temporary boss.
She was lucky when she caught him when she did, when he was
doing this ghost dance as boss while our regular boss went out on her second
maternity leave.
I’m still more than a little jealous when I watched her
scurrying into his office with her pad and pen in hand, playing out her role
the same role as cub as she did with me – only he loved the attention, and she
read his need to serve as mentor well enough to be able to use him to trickle
up, while he still had power.
No, “use” is the wrong word.
She’s a survivor. This is what she needs to do, something I
didn’t fully understand a year ago when I became something of a cuckold, condemned
to witness a kind of lovemaking I couldn’t participate in.
Fortunately for him, he refused to believe her next move to
the owner (something I only suspect happened, one more scratched out appointment
in the date book she uses for more than laundry lists).
Unfortunately, since her resignation, everything has been downhill
for our former temporary boss, partly because if my suspicions are correct, he
is aware of the cause of his cancer, and must live with the guilt of having
betrayed his wife.
And yet doesn’t regret it in the least because he’s head
over heals with our poet, even if his love is unrequited.
Fortunately, he did nothing as horrible as I did to make an
enemy of her, and he can continue to speak to her from time to time, even if he
really wants much, much more.
He’s part of the entourage of former lovers, who cling to her,
keeping track of her, vaguely hoping they might at some point in the future again
gain her affections, when in fact, she rarely if at all goes back.
I feel sorry for him, while at the same time, jealous of
him, since he has what I’ll never have, contact with her, even if it is remote.
And the price of all this is heartbreak he continues to
endure.
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