Chapter 12, Part Three. My bike route to 700 Front Street; Supervisor: Nth degree of Helen, replaced by a Lauren Bacall (More)

(Continued)

look-alike, who designates me co-supe; over the hill to North Beach; non-functioning air-conditioning; and a “career” change which sends me back up to the  Fund on Laurel Heights.

 

I’m happy that there are literally no steep hills from Glen Park to 700 Front St.  My route goes from Arlington Street, north to Randall, cut over to San Jose Ave. Mission to 14^th St., down 14^th to Folsom,  East on Folsom to Spear, left on Spear, X Market to Davis & Washington, cut through Golden Gateway Towers, then  on to Front past Golden Gateway Park and a vast parking lot.  The garage attendant at 700 said I could leave my bike there, but the fumes were so bad I opted to lock up my bike to a pole outside.

Indoor Atrium

It's a three story building.  Our office was up one flight; the view was to the south overlooking the parking lot. This was way before the buildup of this area.  The stairs overlooked the center atrium and the cafeteria.  The smell of pancakes, eggs, maple syrup, fresh muffins and bagels; and coffee made me want another breakfast (I eat something at home), as it was, I never got to work early enough to linger over breakfast in the atrium, anyway, beneath salon palms, ficus trees, and giant ferns.

 Our automobile liability coverage department was on the south side of the building where, in the winter, the sun blazed from sunrise to sunset.  Transparent, sun-blocking window coverings were no help.  We suffered and sweated as co-workers on the North side shivered.  We complained.  Building engineers, wearing woven canvas belts hung with gauges, flashlights, screwdrivers, wrenches, etc., ran tests, and made some adjustments to the thermostat, all to no avail.  The head engineer said that no one ever complained before (I wondered what sort of business used occupy that floor. )  So, we sat at our desks with our backs to the windows and sweated.  We’d invent reasons to go to the North side, or to the bathroom, or sneak down to the atrium for an iced tea or a soda, taking care that none of the bosses saw us.  We had 45 minutes for lunch, enough time for me to walk across the street to what looked like a dead end which actually turned right, past a light-manufacturing business, then emptied on to Bay.  But I continued straight ahead, up and over the hills, and a set of stairs, ending up on Vallejo and Montgomery.  Then I’d walk down to Café Trieste for a latte, take it to Washington Square Park, sit on a bench and people watch. I’d make it back to work in time, refreshed and invigorated.

CafeTrieste, North Beach

 

My first immediate supervisor was like Helen.  (Helen and Norma stayed on the hill, transferring to other departments.  They lived in Marin and did not want to commute across the city to the waterfront. ) She was a heavily-made up Filipina in her mid-forties, with jet black hair; and critiqued everything I did, finding errors where I was certain there were none.  She looked over my work, shook her head and said, “It’s still wrong.  Do it again.”  So I would- two or three times -coming up with the same results, until she finally said, “Okay, fine.”  I chalked up these trials to those undergone by novice Zen monks whom I’d been reading about who wish to practice under a master.  The master has them wait outside the monastery gates in the Himalayan snow for a year or longer before letting them in, and once inside, make them move by hand a pile of heavy stones from one side of a compound to the other, then order the stones moved back; repeating this directive several times, sometimes for days on end until they just gave up, died, or were accepted.  Me?  I just zoned out until she approved my work.   I sat directly in front of her.  One day she startled me by rattling some papers, again saying, “This needs to be done over!”  Not too Zen-like, my anger had built up internally so that when I turned to confront her, I twisted my back and heard a snap.  So for the rest of the day.  I walked around painfully catty-wumpus.  Co-workers gave me weird looks.  I called a chiropractor friend that evening; he came by, grabbed hold of my ankles, lifted my feet and literally snapped my spine like a flag.  I heard a “pop” and the crick was gone.  He took me to dinner so I could walk around and see that whatever he did worked.

A few days later, my  boss  left the company, mysteriously, and Ken, our department head- a handsome, young, sweet-tempered guy- introduced us to her replacement.  When I saw her, I did a double take. She looked like an older, weathered, Lauren Bacall; her face bore evidence of hard-living.  She was ash blonde, tall, and willowy, calm, and soft spoken.  When I think of her as I write this, she looked more like today’s Charlotte Rampling.  I don’t remember her name, so I’ll call her Laura.  She wore muted greys and browns: calf-length, straight skirts with long-sleeve cashmere sweaters, and dressy black flats.  (One could never imagine her in heels.)   Laura and I resonated.  Turned out, she had a Ph. D. in literature, lived up on the Marin coast, near Bodega Bay.  Her husband was an automobile mechanic who owned his own garage.  They dove for abalone on weekends.

Bodega Bay

Abalone divers and their kids.

  She confessed that her East Coast parents were dead set against her marrying “down” and moving to California.  She drank.  We all knew it- vodka on her breath first thing in the morning.  Still, she made it to work every day, on time (unlike me); never took a sick day as long as I was there; and oversaw our work.  Compliments outnumbered complaints.  When she went on vacation, she had me take over.  Not officially, she never got permission from anyone (which I did not know).


My staff consisted of Peter, a 6 foot, 300 pound, dark-haired guy who sat in the front row.   He brought a ham radio to work, only played it on breaks, and spoke fluent Japanese, or so he claimed.  He told me that “okey-dokey” in Japanese translated to “big clock."  Was he putting me on?  What did I know?  The others were Ivy,  a tall, spindly, young pregnant mother who kept falling asleep at her desk, and Bob, a sharp blonde guy- fast, accurate and funny; and a sweet girl  (I don’t recall her name), who bragged that she drove a yellow, black-striped Chevy Impala.  Heads of other departments advised me to talk to Ken about Ivy.  People couldn’t help but notice her as she sat in the front row, two desks away from Peter.  I did, but Ken asked me if she did her work and was she accurate, and did she show up in time.  He laughed when I said, “Well, she’s at her desk working when I come in.”  Still he did not like Peter bringing his ham radio in, so I told him him to leave it home.  He picked it up and stormed out, objecting loudly.  But he was back at his desk in the morning, sans radio.  Ken left on disability one day, and not too long after, he died of pneumonia.  This was the late 1970s.  Looking back, I wondered: could his death have been a harbinger of AIDS?  It was so sudden.

A friend at work, Bonnie, was a computer systems analyst, testing software programs to do routine jobs.  “Accountants and raters will be out of work,” she prophesied.  Bonnie was creative and artistic.  She had revamped a black leather jacket by replacing the sleeves with faux-fur.  She touched up boring, dress-for-success suits and dresses with arty yet tasteful appliques, and added unique collars, cuffs and plackets.  Turns out, she performed as a stilt walker with a group from Oakland  women who donned long, colorful, winged gowns.  She invited me to a fair on the Lake Merritt grounds in which she performed with her group.

Bonnie stilt dancing at Lake Merritt in Oakland

 One day she told me that there was an opening for a systems analyst trainee in the Laurel Hill office (from where I’d left about a year ago).  The job was analyzing and testing  accounting and rating software programs.  She encouraged me to apply because, she said, “In five years, you’ll be out of a job.  Systems analyst can work anywhere, not just in insurance companies.”  It turned out that Wes hadn’t quit the Fund to work for an insurance broker, but also had changed careers to become a systems analyst trainee as well.  He and I would be in the same department- again.

Next up: Chapter 12, Part Four: Out of the frying pan, into the fire.   A full-of-himself, despicable- yet paradoxical- boss, paired with an ineffectual superior.  I find a soul-mate.  We test software at our satellite office at Lucas Green, in Marin.  The Laurel Hill office relocates to Marin and I leave the Fund for good.  I see through Mr. Despicable and Mr. Ineffectual's dissembling when discussing the terms of my severance pay.  Besides that money I've saved enough so that- along with unemployment insurance- allowed me to promote my mask and movement shows- while I looked for work.

CHAPTER 12, Part Two.

Helen returns along with Legionnaire’s disease.  I cure Norma’s spying.  Assassinations: attempted and completed.  The move to Front Street (1974), Ford was in; Ford pardons Nixon.

A Bicentennial Parade

I  was still with C, the boat-builder in 1976 when the US celebrated its Bicentennial.  The previous years saw Nixon resign due to Watergate, Saigon fall, and Gates founds Microsoft.  And the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project is a success. While two women- Sara Jane Moore and Lynnette "Squeaky" Fromme- tried to assassinate Ford within a 17 day time period.  Fromme had been a member of the Manson Family. We got a new president: Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia.

Levar Burton as Kunta Kinte

One day at work, someone came up to me and said, “Wasn’t that the best!?  Lifting that baby up to the sun?”  I asked her what she was talking about “’Roots’.  Oh, my God!  You mean you don’t watch ‘Roots’?”
“Is it on TV, because I don’t watch TV.”
“Oh, you should.  This show is the greatest.”  I got to know everything about it just from overhearing conversations-  Kunta Kinte and all that.  Seemed everyone in the office was talking about it, except me.

.
During Helen’s absence, Norma stepped up her surveillance.  She would call us up to her desk and ask: " Where were you between 2:22 and 3:05?  She threatened to dock us for the times we weren't at our desks.  I had a way of disappearing under her radar when I had to go to another floor to check some detail on an account.  It was none of her business where we went, especially when we had to use the bathroom, as long as we got our work done and were at our desk by the end of the day.  Since the underwriters were across the room, she could see us.  One day, I had to go to the claims department on another floor to get a name spelled correctly on a claims slip.  When I got back, I walked behind Norma’s desk and happened to glance down at her calendar to see my name written on it in pencil and the time: 1:40 – 2:18 when I’d been down in claims.  I expected her to call me to her desk and berate me, so I stood in front of everyone, in the middle of the floor, and said,
    “Norma”- She looked up, perplexed.  I went on- “I know you keep track of everyone’s time." She glared at me.  "I saw my name and some times written on your calendar, so I’ll tell you where I was.  I was in the bathroom, but I had to go number 2 which takes longer than number 1.  So by the time I finished, washed and dried my hands and came back, I was probably gone at least fifteen minutes.”
 Absolute silence.  Some gasps.  I looked at no one, just returned to my desk and continued with the account with the claim.  Of course I hadn’t gone to the bathroom.  I just wanted to make a point.  Norma did nothing, said nothing for the rest of the day.  The next morning, she caught my eye and gave me a half-smile.  A few days passed and I noticed that she no longer detailed our times away from our desks and never bothered me again, in fact, she would snicker whenever our paths crossed.  Good sport, I thought.  Wes spoke of my “bravery. “  Some co-workers looked at me with big eyes and open mouths, but said nothing.  Others thanked me.  Verna said, “Huh!  I never expected you to do something like that!”  She didn’t know me like she thought she did.

Helen returned on crutches in a lemon-yellow outfit: top and slacks.  She actually looked better than she had before the accident-- well-rested and glowing.  Norma went back to being her lackey.  Helen instituted changes; one being that we were to move to where the property department was; they were relocating to another floor.  Goodbye Verna.  A slightly built, timid woman in her forties all but panicked about the move.  She ended up sitting right behind me and kept complaining about it, saying that she hated change.  It made her feel insecure.  She then recounted to me in a whispery, weak, trembling voice all the moves she’s made in her life.  I asked her how she coped.
    “Well, I had to get used to it,” she said.
    “You’ll get used to this, too,” I said, “There’ll be many more changes for you.”
    “Don’t say that!”
    “It’s true, you’ll just have to accept it.”   She started to cry, then went off to the bathroom.  Eventually, she recovered and took the move in stride- until the next one.

Since Helen came back, Fireman’s Fund had an American Red Cross mobile clinic come to immunize its employees against Legionnaires’ disease.  In Philadelphia, 221 people got the illness and 34 died.   I didn’t want a shot because of the people back East who did, got really sick, and almost died.  Then, a few months later, it was swine flu.  President Ford told EVERYONE to get shots, but again, a few people died from the shots, so, again,  I opted out.  I have never gotten a flu shot, but I actually signed up last year at the local Walgreen’s but when I showed up, they’d run out.  I never went back.

 About this time, women’s “elephant” pants (slacks with extra wide legs) were the rage.  I made myself a pair of blue and white, windowpane plaid pants that I wore with a calf-length, red cardigan over Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and boots. The T-shirt was my not so subtle statement about the company's "Micky Mouse" procedures and unnecessary regulations.  Why can’t “they” just leave us alone and let us do our work?  Lots of co-workers complimented me on my pants, but none said "Boo" about my shirt.
 
Linda, a  petite, curvy, curly-haired,blonde secretary worked on our floor, sashaying around with her hands on her hips in tight skirts, 6-inch heels, and low necked angora sweaters.  One day she complained that her 18 inch waist had gained a quarter inch!  A good-looking Latino dude- I'll call him "Rodrigo"  who had great hair- was the assistant to the dorky guy who ran the supply department.  Soon it became apparent that Rodrigo and Linda were seeing each other despite that she was married.  They flaunted their relationship, walking around holding hands at lunch break.  She was let go and rumor had it that she was pregnant with his baby.  He quit.  Less than a year later Linda came in to show off her baby.  Helen, Norma, and the older women co-worker were appalled at her audacity.  Others gathered around oohing and ahhhing over the beautiful olive-skinned infant with curly, light brown hair.  Turns out, she’d gotten a divorce; she and Rodrigo were making marriage plains.  And, despite her pregnancy, Linda bragged that after the baby was born her waist had gone back to eighteen inches in just a week.

 As for me, after my year without a man and music, living in the A-frame cottage up the hill from my previous digs, I decided to focus on exactly who I wanted in my life so made a list of attributes.  One really hot day, wearing a tank top and shorts, I rode my bike to an art festival in Civic Center Plaza. After locking it up, I walked around, checking out the booths.  As I passed one, I heard a deep voice sprech-singing, “Little girl, you’re so small, ain’t you got no clothes at all?”  I stopped, turned and saw a muscular older guy in a black leather vest, selling wrot-iron candelabras, wall sconces, sculptures, and other gee-gaws.  A sign on the table indicated that he was the craftsman.  He told me his name. “Is that ‘Bo’,” I asked, “as in Bo Diddley, or Beauregard.”  Turned out the latter. I got to know him and found that he fit everything on my list.  But I’d left off one really important attribute (for me, anyway): dance.  I wanted someone who could dance.  He didn’t, couldn’t and wasn’t happy when I signed us up for a ballroom class.  He housed his horses in a makeshift stable in an industrial park on the San Mateo county border.  Beau performed horse-shows, and believed himself to be Buffalo Bill’s reincarnation.  He auditioned women for his assistant and wanted me to be his Rodeo clown.  I said thanks, but no.

Beau Hickory and Temmigen

 
On my vacation, I went on a week-long mime seminar taught by Maximillien Decroux, in Boulder, CO.   I had packed my bike on Amtrak to Denver where I got off, and pedaled on to Boulder, camping out in the foothills and riding each morning to class in town.   Before I left, Beau  had helped me and my sons move to a flat in Glen Park where I ended up living for twenty-five years.  We were evicted in 2003 under an owner-move-in law.  Then he left me for his newly-hired assistant.  No one had ever dumped me.  I was always the dumper.  Took me a while to recover.

One morning Helen called a meeting- her idea of a meeting.  She stood in front of our desks and asked for our undivided attention.  “We,” she began, “are relocating to a new building on Front Street, on the Embarcadero over the weekend.  So, on Friday, pack up all the things in and on your desk.  You can pick up boxes in the supply room.  Mark your name on them with black Magic Markers, which will be available in the supply department.  These must be returned.  You will report to 700 Front Street (Now the KGO TV building) on Monday by 8, so you can unpack and be ready to work by 8:30.  We are fortunate," she added, "because we will have access to the cafeteria off the atrium which opens at 6 for breakfast.” 
“How cool is that!” someone said.  The timid woman who panicked at the idea of moves quit.

Around that same time, November 28, 1978,  San Francisco Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot to death by disgruntled ex-supervisor Dan White in their City Hall offices.  The City was in chaos.  Supervisor Diane Feinstein made the tearful announcement.  She took over as mayor. No one had a very happy holiday season that year.   Dan White was convicted, sentenced, served a few months, then committed suicide in his garage.

Assassin Dan White

Headline from The San Francisco Chronicle.

Chapter 12, Part Three:  700 Front Street, proximity to North Beach.  I'm appointed assistant supervisor to a woman who made Helen and Norma look like sweetie-pies, until an alcoholic Lauren Bacall look-alike signed on..  Air-conditioning hell.  I make a career change to systems analyst with the Fund and I'm back on Laurel Heights. 

Chapter 12, Part One: Fireman's Fund, Patton Helen, Nazi Norma, and I am blamed for a devastating accident.

GLUE, Chapter 12, Part One

Fireman’s Fund:  I deal with female bosses. Helen, intractable, unreasonable, racist, gets both legs broken in a car accident on New Year’s Eve, and is off for six month; another, Nazi Norma (I think was her name sans Nazi), kept track of our time by the minute on her desk calendar.  And a man, unforgettable Wes Schultz, with whom I’d work with again years later, and who died of AIDS in 1987.

Fireman’s Fund was located on top of a hill in the Laurel Hill neighborhood below Pacific Heights, on California and Presidio, across the city from the Financial District and downtown.  My 45 minute bike ride (after pushing my bike up steep Bronte Street in Bernal Heights to Yarbo which was flat) took me down Yarbo where I made a right to Cortland, down Cortland to Mission, segued on to Valencia, Valencia to Market, cross Market to McAllister, then to Fillmore (or Webster), to Pine, up Pine (pushing up the final hill) to Presidio, left on California to the Fireman Fund parking lot where I locked up my bike.  Since I hadn’t had an insurance job in months, I was relegated to the position of rater/coder in the automobile insurance department.  The underwriters sat across the expansive room from us.  They brought us sheets and sheets of commercial vehicle fleet listings; we then wrote in the codes for each vehicle, everything from 18-wheel semis to a company president’s Mercedes.

Our desks were lined up three-deep, and four across.  Helen, a tall, short-haired, middle-age blonde, sat at the opposite end of my row.  She wore slacks and cotton sport shirts or sweaters with smarmy designs- kittens, puppies, hearts- on the front.  She chain-smoked, reeked of nicotine, and, was a nitpicker.  She seemed always to be on my case for the simplest thing, like using white-out to correct a code instead of erasing it.  I used a pen, where everyone else, a pencil.  When I used a pencil, she complained it wasn’t’ dark enough.  She ragged on everyone, mostly women, until they were in tears.  One co-worker, I’ll call her Rosa, had gorgeous, thick black hair.  She’d comb it out at her desk, first thing, which took maybe a minute.  This infuriated Helen.  One day, Helen was at my desk, emanating nicotine fumes while pointing out a minor issue when she looked up and saw Rosa combing out her hair.  She said,

               “I’m going to can her slutty ass for grooming herself on company time.  All that filthy hair.  She should do that in the john before coming on to the floor.  But all the women of her race comb out their lice in public.”  Rosa heard her, got up from her desk, grabbed her purse, and walked out.  I figured she’d quit, but the next morning, there she was, combing her gorgeous hair.  I wondered if Helen could feel the daggers Rosa’s eyes were throwing into her.  Norma sat in the back row.  We could feel her eyes drilling into our skull.   Short and frumpy, she was probably as old as Helen, wore cotton smocks, calf-length skirts, flats, and Supp-hose.  She was Helen’s silent enforcer until Helen's accident.

Across the aisle were Wes, an easy-going guy in his late 20s.  Wes had thinning light-brown hair, was tall and lanky, and looked sort of like William Hurt; and a beautiful young Asian woman (who could pass for Lucy Liu).   They entered the codes we gave them into primitive (compared to today’s), dedicated computers, pre-loaded with software programs, which then computed the rates and premiums from these codes and spat out the finished product on noisy dot-matrix printers, producing endless streams of paper that folded automatically on the floor.     One morning on one of my first days there I heard “Lucy” shout “Fuck!” and slam down the phone.  Wes said, “Go down again?”  Accessing a program required calling the server on a phone attached to a modem: dial-up.   Wes and Lucy had to be rapid keystrokers as the connection kept dropping, the screens went blank after maybe five minutes, and they’d have to start over.  It seemed they were constantly on the phone. The computers took ages to reboot.  While waiting, Lucy would pick up her desk phone and dial.  I could tell it was a private call.   Her boyfriend lived in Honolulu.  The company realized this only when a bean-counter scrutinized the abnormally high phone bill.  Lucy was warned.    Helen and Norma, not really understanding exactly what they did with the computers except for the end results, left them alone.

One day, Wes came over to my desk, a cigarette between his fingers.  He took a drag, exhaled into my face as he asked me about a code on a schedule I’d given him. “Wes,” I said, waving away the smoke, “I’d appreciate it if you’d get rid of that cigarette and, please, from now on please don’t smoke when you’re talking to me.”   He looked startled, his face red, he went back to his desk, put out his smoke, came back and said,

      “I am so, so sorry.  It’ll never happen again. Now, can I show you what I think you did wrong?”  From then on, we were friends.

During the months I was off work, inspired by an art-deco designed flyer I saw at the unemployment office, I started mime classes- not Marcel Marceau style, but Decroux.  And later, between other jobs, I promoted performances dealing with the history of mime at colleges and high schools in the Bay Area and Northern California.  I did all my own press work, developed and maintained useful contacts in the educational field for future shows.   This experience weighed heavily in my landing my final job in 1984 at an international commercial insurance and investment brokerage.  While at Fireman’s Fund I did street mime and presentations in my spare time.  A co-worker, Peter Gomez, assisted me and performed in one of my shows.  The Fund threw a Hallowe'en party.  Peter and I wore white-face.

Peter and I in white face.

Our petite, brusque Asian department head whose name I don't recall, wore lots of make up, her hair in a dark perm. At the party, she gamely posed with me for a shot.

Our Department Head and I in costume.

  One day, I heard her call Peter over to her desk.

      “Peter,” she said, “Look.  Don’t crumple your waste paper and toss it in the basket, leave the paper flat.  It leaves room for more.  Your basket doesn’t get full so fast.”

       “No, it won’t, Miss.  Watch,” Grinning gleefully, Peter noisily dragged over a basket, crumpled up several sheets of paper and tossed them in.  “You just do this.”  Standing on one leg, he stomped the paper down into the basket.  “See,” he said, “lots of room.”  Miss ______  tsked and looked away.  Others had stopped working to watch, snickering.  Peter, short, dark, with thick black hair, was gay.  His partner, who also worked at the Fund in the actuarial department, was about Peter’s height, fair-skinned, with curly, light brown hair and wore thick-lensed glasses.  They were careful not to be seen together.

Sitting in the front row meant that co-workers constantly crossed in front of me.  Engrossed in my work, I was startled one day to hear, “You’re a witch, aren’t you?”  I looked up and saw a big, blowsy woman with dyed, bright red hair, hand on thrust out hip.  This was Verna, from the property department.  She wore ankle-length, tight-fitting skirts and low-cut blouses and reminded me of a barmaid in a 19^th Century novel.

      “What make you say that?” I asked.

      “Oh, I just know.  I read people.”  From then on, she never failed to stop by my desk and give me knowing smirks and winks.  I didn't bother contesting her take on me. Let her have her fantasies.  Passing by one day, she looked down at a hand-written memo I was drafting. 

       “Hmmmm, you have a depressive personality.  Most”-

        “-Oh, my God, Verna, don’t you have work to do?”  She didn’t miss a beat.

       -“witches do.  I can tell because your handwriting slants down to the right.”  She laughed and flounced off, “Don’t be so defensive.”  

She intrigued me in the way that a scientist is intrigued by unusual specie that suddenly appears in a study.  She wasn’t the usual business career or homemaker type woman one sees in white collar jobs.  I commented on this to her once and she said, “Well, neither are you, being a witch and an artist.”  She confided in me that her former boss at a small peninsula agency had laid her off then touted her for a job at the Fund.   Unlike me, she was totally open about her personal life, too, telling me she lived in a pricey area on the peninsula, a gated community, with her Japanese husband, who, she complained, preferred prostitutes and porn over sex with her.  She was loud, and in-your-face, which made me and others uncomfortable.  As for my personal life, I had broken up with the boat builder and for the first time in my life, I had no man waiting in the wings so to speak.  I decided on an experiment to discover who I really was as an independent woman.  I would go a year not only without a man, but also, without music of any genre (unless I heard it in passing), as music triggers emotions and and memories.  My sons no longer lived at home so I didn't have restrict their music playing.   The experiment left me feel light and free.


Christmas and New Year’s holidays came and went, but Helen wasn’t at her desk when we returned to work.  She’s always came in at least a half-hour before anyone else and rarely took a day off.  Norma called us together. 

                “I’m sorry to bring you this bad news, but on New Year’s Eve, as Helen got out of her car, a drunk driver sideswiped her as she was standing next to the open door.  Both her legs were shattered.  She may be on disability for at least six months.” Instead of feeling sad or upset, I was relieved.  Later that day, Verna stopped by my desk.  
      “You did that, didn’t you?” she said.

       “What?”

       “Cast a spell.”

       “Yeah, sure.”

       “Don’t deny it.  Well, I don’t blame you for not wanting people to know,” she snickered and walked away.   I mean, I hated Helen for being persnickety and racist, but wouldn’t have wished an accident like the one she suffered on anyone.  I was just glad to have some relief from her overbearing attitude for a few months.  No temp was hired to replace her so all her work fell to Norma, which changed her from a kind of tyrannical house-mother into a gestapo.

Chapter 12, Part Two: Helen returns to the Fund, along with swine flu.  I discover Norma spying on me and cure her of it.  After a year  and some soul-searching, I start a new relationship.  My department is moves across town to Front Street on the Embarcadero.   Peter and Wes quit.  I don't see Wes for several years.