In honor of my 800th view, the next installment of EV (from pages 20-21) appears below.
As always, I would welcome comments.
She girds her
loins with strength
and makes her
arms strong.
She perceives
that her merchandise is profitable
Proverbs 31:17,
18 (RSV)
Once they were
airborne, Maggie was struck with the notion that God was punishing
her for being too talkative over her life. Lately it didn’t matter
whether she was on a commuter plane or a 747 or even this little
two-seater, she wound up beside the nut who wanted to talk - about
himself.
“So what did Paul
say about me in his recommendation?”
“Truthfully, it
wasn’t exactly a recommendation. He just mentioned you is all.”
“Well then, what
did he mention
about me?”
“Your name, Marc.
He mentioned your name and nothing else.” And
like a fool,
she thought, I
took a word from a near stranger as some sort of sign.
“Doesn’t matter, though,” Maggie continued, stretching and
yawning. “I had you pegged inside two minutes.”
“Oh really? Do
tell."
"Well, you’re
cocky and you’re lazy without the build or the looks to go with
it.” She started to apologize for her bluntness, but decided he
didn’t deserve it. "That means you come from money. Money
that’s obviously slipped away one way or another. How am I doing so
far?”
He glanced over at
her with surprise and annoyance, but he admitted, “Not bad.”
“At your tender
age, it’s not likely you’ve already lost it in bad investments,
so my guess is that mummy and daddy disowned us over, oh, let’s
see, what was it? Maybe they had to foot the bill for one too many
fights at the old frat house? Got a girl in trouble, maybe - a girl
they didn’t want to welcome into the family? Or did they just get
tired of bailing you out of jail, replacing your smashed up sports
cars-”
“Okay, yeah,
you’re pretty close, close enough. You’re good at this.”
Maggie shrugged.
“You’ve got ‘college drop-out’ written all over you.” It
crossed her mind that he might have lost his money through an
expensive drug habit, and maybe he was paying it off by delivering
the stuff he used. She’d read somewhere that one in five people in
Colombia was involved in the cocaine trade, at least indirectly. She
decided she didn’t want to know where Marc fit into those numbers,
and was glad when he changed the subject.
"Well then,”
he said, “I'd have to say you have ‘graduate school’ written
all over you."
Grudgingly, Maggie
nodded. “Not bad for a guy who normally thinks with his nether
regions. As I was saying before, I got licensed as a physician's
assistant, and then got a degree in business...”
Marc started wagging
his head to the rhythm of her voice as she ticked off her list. “Did
I ask you for your résumé?”
“ ...I had a
couple of summer internships for various agencies. One was in
Ecuador, running a lab for the VISA program and…”
“I don’t
remember
asking for your résumé -”
“…then I got
this sales position with Worthington Pharmaceuticals. I logged three
thousand miles for sales calls last year, and the profit margin for
my division went up twelve percent. My goal was to be head of sales
before I was forty.”
“Gee, and I
thought we had nothing in common. I myself handle pharmaceutical
sales of a sort.” He delivered another grin. “Non-prescription
strength."
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