Gary stepped out of the elevator on the top floor of the Millennial Hotel to the restaurant that slowly spins at one revolution an hour in order to change the panoramic window view of St. Louis. The Hotel was near the riverfront but not quite on it and was about 30 stories tall and, as he stood in the lobby of the restaurant, he was looking through the windows to see the Gateway Arch. There was a short line of people on his right-hand side at a coat check closet and he walked to join it. He didn’t recognize anyone in line as he shrugged off the overcoat he was wearing but he smiled and nodded to them. He handed the coat to the young lady who was politely smiling at him and she handed him a tag with the number 40 on it. He smiled to himself as he took it from her because it was the number 40 he wore on his football jersey. Number 40. He chose it because it was a biblical number – a sign of completion. Forty days and forty nights. He had read somewhere that it was a special number, so he selected it for that reason.
He turned from the line and straightened the dark blue suit coat on his shoulders. He wore it open to reveal the starched white shirt beneath it. He had decided not to wear a tie, but he had one neatly folded in the inside pocket of the jacket. He wore the matching pants to the jacket and pulled from the right pocket, the name tag that had been given to him when he checked in at the table located inside the entrance of the hotel. He looked at it again. The name tag displayed his senior picture with his name below it in jet black letters. The picture itself was a seventeen-year-old version of him. The hair was much darker and parted on the side. It was long. as it was the style then, a little over the collar. It drove his father mad as he preferred the crew cut of his youth. Gary’s face in the picture was sporting a small smile. As they all did for Senior picture day, he was wearing a tie and a jacket. It was a black and white photo so you couldn’t tell the colors of the clothing, but Gary knew that the tie was red and the jacket a light tan. He also knew that he wore shorts that day because it was a hot July day when the picture was taken. He peeled the back off of the tag and pushed his picture on the left pocket of the jacket.
“Gary? Gary Jackson?”
Gary turned toward the voice and he saw a tall, thin man with arms outstretched toward him, His hair was dark, neatly trimmed. He, too, was wearing a blue jacket with no tie and Gary definitely recognized him. It was Nick Smith, Smitty, one of the DB Gang. The DB stood for defensive backs and the gang had a limited number of members of the football team.
“Smitty,” Gary took a step forward and the two of them embraced in a hug. “So, how ya been?”
“Great. Great. I am a supervisor at McDonnell Douglas,” Nick began to tell Gary about his personal history when a tall, pretty blonde woman stopped next to him. “Oh, Gary, this is my wife Melanie. Melanie, this is Gary Jackson. We played football together.”
“Hello,” Melanie hurriedly pulled the strap of her purse over her shoulder and offered her hand to him. He shook her hand and she stepped closer to her husband, obviously uncomfortable to be placed in a situation where she was meeting people for the first time. “Let’s go in and get a drink, honey.”
“Okay, Mel. Gary, we will have to catch up later.”
Gary watched the couple enter the restaurant and he decided to follow them. He walked to the right inside the doorway and paused to see how the restaurant was laid out for the reunion. Ordinarily, the tables were evenly spaced throughout the dining area. They mainly seated four people per table but there were a few, tucked along the perimeter, that seated only two. For large parties, during normal hours, tables would simply be pushed together to accommodate the size of the group. Tonight the tables were situated in a semi-circle and, instead of the white tablecloths that usually covered them, they were covered in alternating black and gold ones, the school colors. The circle of tables surrounded a stage and dance floor. The restaurant’s two bars were along the sides and the entrance to the kitchen entrance was to his left. He had never been in the place until now and he did not know what to expect.
He surveyed the people inside and spied a group of men, holding bottles of Bud Light, gathered in a corner next to the bar on the right. He recognized them as former football teammates and made a mental note to check in with them later. He moved his eyes slowly toward the stage front and paused on a group of women, sporting different colors of dress. They shrieked when another woman joined them. Gary shook his head as he continued his visual journey of the growing crowd. The graduation class of 1973 was the largest of the state’s history, over 600 students. He wondered how many would be showing up tonight and how many he would know or even remember. He saw Smitty and his wife walking from the bar on his left to sit at a table.
Gary saw her then, Janet, sitting alone at a table in the middle of the clutter of tables. She had curled her hair since he saw her that morning and she wasn’t looking his way. It looked like she was observing those around her, like he had been doing. Her hands were folded in front of her and a wine glass sat in front of them- revealing a dark liquid inside of it. He walked toward her, weaving in and around tables, and stopped behind her right shoulder.
“Hi,” Gary said, and she turned toward his voice. She stood to face him and smiled. He smiled back.
“Hi Gary. Do you want to have a seat?”
“Sure. Please sit,” he responded and moved to sit on her left. “How are the boys doing?”
“Oh, they are fine. They asked me about you on the car ride home,” she explained as she sat down.
“Really, and what did you say?” Gary asked as he sat and turned toward her.
“A boy I grew up with. So you look well,” she raised her glass to her mouth and sipped from it. “Tell me what has happened to you since you left me.”
Gary looked at her a moment before beginning to respond because he wasn’t sure how to. ‘Since you left me’ threw him a curve. He didn’t expect those words to be coming from her. He had a totally different viewpoint of the way things were when the last time they were together the summer she went to college.
“Let me start,” she interrupted his thoughts. “I went to college, as you knew, to Truman, and got a degree in Business Administration. I know, pretty generic, huh? I now work at, you guessed it, McDonnell Douglas, in procurement. I am a buyer there. But before that, I met a guy named Sam Jones and became Janet Jones. Don’t laugh!”
Gary stopped laughing but continued to grin at her.
“I know, Janet Jones, JJ – that’s what he called me. JJ,” she stopped, her eyes averting to the table and she raised the wine glass to take another sip before she continued. “I had the boys and we divorced, and changed my name back to Janet Saunders, about a year and a half ago, I guess. He found someone new and I got a job. So you are all caught up with me/” She turned in her chair to directly face Gary with her wine glass in her hand on the table. Without speaking, he knew it was now his turn to catch up.
“Well, I never married. I don’t have any kids. You know, I stayed here, in St. Louis, and went to college at U.M.S.L. My degree is elementary education, but I teach adults, coincidentally, in procurement, at in Wisconsin,” Gary paused waiting for the obvious question from her. She complied.
“Wisconsin? How did you end up teaching adults in Wisconsin?” Janet once again raised her wine glass and sipped another time.
“My brother, Chris, went to school up there and met someone who is now my sister-in-law, Angie. He started working, in procurement, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He told me of an instructor job there. I applied, got an interview, and was hired. I did teach second grade a few years at Larimore, but the money was better in Wisconsin,” Gary explained and was interrupted again.
“Larimore? You taught at our old grade school? Really?” Janet asked him excitedly. “Did you teach with any of our teachers?”
“I did. Several of them,” he told her. “That was really weird.”
“How was it weird?” she inquired edging closer to him.
“It was funny working alongside them and talking shop with them. There were a lot of “I remember you” stories. Oh, and stories about my siblings, too. But the hardest thing was getting used to calling them by name. I was so used to calling them, Mrs. Barrett, not Mary,” he laughed, and Janet joined him.
He took a moment then to look around the room as it was beginning to fill with familiar faces. There was Dan Masters, the team’s quarterback joining the ever-growing members of the football team over by the bar. Gary played Khoury League baseball with Dan, too. Dan’s dad, Clyde, was the manager of the team that was sponsored by Ozella’s Italian Restaurant, and he was probably Gary’s biggest influence in the importance of intensity and staying focused on a project. The man was also very patient with the team. They were a pretty good team, too, winning several championships and because of that, Gary’s love of baseball. Ozella’s would give them an end of season family pizza party banquet and they would have an award ceremony, too.
A loud explosion of laughter turned his attention to the corner opposite the football players. He recognized the group of people from the neighborhood, his and Janet’s neighborhood. There was Allison Masters, Harold Garner, Jim O’Brien, and Ron Lumberjack, who was on the football team, too. Robert Carrico was joining them, and it was the cause of the laughter. He probably should go see them. Instead, Gary returned his gaze to Janet.
“You saved me, you know,” he said to her.
She stopped smiling at him then before she spoke. “You never told about that. Why had it happened? Can you tell me now? I think I deserve to know.”
He searched her eyes, the quiet green eyes, wondering what she would think if she knew the whole story. He smiled at her when he decided to tell her everything.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed with her and rose from his chair. “Let me get a beer and you another glass of wine.
To be continued…
My First Stories 