Today was a long day. I went first to Pamela, who was feeling despondent about the thought of going back to school tomorrow. Her supervisor Christine took her side immediately and is working hard to get her assigned to a new school, but nothing has been finalized yet, and even if it is, Pamela will still likely have to finish out the semester. Another five weeks of this seems to her to be more than she can bear.
Morgan was scarcely less gloomy. She has begun to sense something off about Brooke, and while she is going to see her in less than a week when Brooke comes to Philadelphia, she can’t help but worry. I am not sure whether it is better for her to know about Brooke’s temptation, or if it is something that should be allowed to fade into the background. I am inclined to the latter, at least as long as nothing comes of it, and it hasn’t, nor do I believe it will. Of course I will still watch them.
Added to this, Shannon has been in a foul mood because of a bad grade she received on a paper she was proud of. She believes the professor is being unjust to her and is very angry. I confess, I believe the grade was deserved, but she is ignoring anything I try to tell her to that effect. It has been all I can do to keep her from taking this antagonism out on Mark.
With all this, and Inca’s reporting that Mary cried herself to sleep last night, and Lauren having to overhear a long argument between Jonathan and his mother this afternoon, it was a pleasure and relief to join Myrtle and Jaquinn in an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation.
“Am I supposed to tell them when I’m coming to audition?” Myrtle asked, squinting at the application for Jacob’s Pillow’s dance program on her laptop screen. “Or does the competition count as my audition?”
“I’d put a couple of different dates and give them an option,” Jaquinn said. He was sitting across from her at the kitchen table, looking at his own laptop. Both of them were smiling as if they didn’t remember that they were, and their auras flared with purpose and joy. “Here, what do you think of this one?”
He spun the computer around to show her, and I could see that he was looking at apartments.
She squinted at it. “Is that really the rent? There must be something wrong with the place.”
Jaquinn turned the computer back to look at the screen with a frown. “Maybe rent is just cheaper down there.”
“Well, we could afford more together, especially if I get a job down there.”
“Whoa, you’re not getting a job! I told you, my job is in the bag, I’ve got us.”
She eyed him over both computers. “You just want to be my sugar daddy is what that is.”
He grinned. “Wouldn’t mind it.”
She shook her head and pressed her hands to her face. “I can’t think about jobs yet, I gotta finish this! So I got the resume and the fucking artist statement—you’re gonna read over that for me, right?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, distracted by a listing of a small house less than ten miles from the Pillow facilities.
Myrtle reached over and flicked the computer screen so that it wobbled on its hinge. “Quit looking at places, it’s way too soon! We won’t be moving for almost a year.”
“But it’s fun,” he moaned, but he exited from that site and pulled up a sheet of text, filled with little red and green lines under words. “Jesus, Murry, you didn’t even run spell check.”
“That’s what I got you for,” she said, looking through pictures now. “Damn, I think I’m gonna have to get new pictures done. They want full-body if I can get it and I don’t have any good ones.”
“I might could get Anton to come out and take a few shots for you. He’s good, you’ve seen his stuff in the paper.”
This was the nature of the exchange for the length of my visit: busy and excited. They were like one mind, moving quickly toward a single purpose. It was balm to my worried mind.
They have crossed a barrier, I think, and I begin to wonder if they will need me any longer. I will be sorry to lose them, but glad to have the time to devote more energy to my other charges. It will not happen immediately, of course, and I will need to speak to Danit, but I think the time has come for these two to go forward on their own. They are stronger than ever and moving into a new future side by side. What more could a Cupid ask for?