A Lady in Waiting 5

Her mind was spinning. Nothing in her official duties kept Becky from using her office computer to peruse the links Rod had offered. His writing was like a magnet for her eyes. She found herself still reading when the lights went off in the hallway. The rumbling in her stomach brought to her awareness that she had stayed past dinner time and would have to eat something from the snackbar out by the gate. Tasty, but the only reason anyone ate their junk food was because the nearest off-base eatery was a long walk. On second thought, she needed the walk.
Becky wasn’t just torn. This was inner turmoil, a cognitive dissonance. She was intelligent enough to recognize that much. As she made her way down the stairs in the company of just a few who had lingered that evening, she was very glad to see Sam from Finance. He was a big time lover of literature and she was hoping to get his help on this stuff.
Sam was ancient, but had never bothered to retire. His vast experience with number crunching had made him too valuable, and he was one of the few people who actually wanted to stay at the installation. He owned a house on the economy and had married a local widow, and willingly worked as a host nation hire. Still, Sam’s true genius was his hobby, English literature. Not just fiction, but almost all academic fields. Sam was like a librarian who had read all the books in the library and wanted more. Becky knew she could trust his judgment on some things.
She summarized what she could remember and asked if he had ever heard of Rod. Oddly, Sam mentioned hunting Rod down online when he first saw the contract paperwork. While he didn’t share so much of Becky’s interest in the material, he recognized it readily enough.
“A part of me worries just a little this guy might be a charismatic cult leader, but he doesn’t fit any of the official profiles for that sort of thing,” she said.
“No, no. I don’t believe so, Becky. He’s just very different. There are plenty who agree with him, enough that he lists others as references on site. But the key is that he professes no interest in controlling anything and refuses to organize what he does in the typical sense. It’s entirely voluntary, so anyone who isn’t internally driven won’t much care for his work.”
Becky was silent a moment. “That just raises more questions about why it draws me. It can’t be he’s such a great writing talent. You’ve shown me better stuff than that.”
Sam smiled, “Then perhaps you are a good prospect for what he teaches. That, or you are thoroughly enamored with him.” He chuckled at that.
“If I am, I’m hardly the only one, Sam. The flirts seem gaga over him, but he scarcely talks to them. It’s as if he’s completely uninterested in them. I’m not even in their class. All I did was my job, so why would he be so open with me and so closed to them?”
Sam seemed thoughtful for a moment. “If his writing has any meaning at all, I would suggest he measures everything from an entirely alien frame of reference. That man-hungry bunch aren’t even on his radar, but you may be in his eyes a rare treasure. Even if it’s not romantic in any ordinary sense, I’d say your self-presentation makes more sense to him than theirs. That might explain why you find his writing so fascinating; you are his kind of gal.”
She slowed, and then stopped just inside the opening, staring at the ground as Sam stepped into a waiting car at the curb right outside the gate. The damp pavement offered no new insights to her puzzle.