Each Day

"You too, sir," Vince said.

Chapter 8

St. Elizabeth Parish Water & Sewage hired Vince after their telephone interview. after Burt Yates' glowing referral. He was also hired on at the University of Louisiana at DeGarde, to teach a post-graduate course in irrigation systems.

St. Elizabeth's Trauma Center didn't seem to know about Vince's failure with North Lake Hospital's drainage; Vince was given the job of designing that system as the hospital's expansion.

Joe Gaudet was a good man to work for, and the man also had a modified Fat Boy, a low rider, one year older than Vince's fat boy lowrider. Brian Breaux, Vince's immediate supervisor was a quiet, thoughtful man; Vince could see quite a bit of sorrow behind the man's eyes. Vince didn't ask Brian what his story was. And Brian didn't ask Vince what his story was.

The Dead End was a bar that had ice cold beer and some of the most delicious plate lunches Vince had ever tasted. The girls that swiveled and gyrated on the small stage were stunning, true beauties as well.

At night, Sweet Peas served soul food that made Vince groan with contentment as he struggled to finish the delicious food. He'd jokingly asked the very large woman if the cook was available. The woman fixed him with a stare, then smiled.

"They both single girls; from what I understand? You marry one, got to take the other one too," she said.

"Oh. Well, Momma, I don't think I'm man enough take them both," Vince said.

"Know that's right," the woman chuckled and greeted a new arrival.

Vince had removed his wedding ring the night before Stephanie's wedding. It actually hurt; Leslie not noticing that he was not wearing his band. Now it was sitting in a dresser drawer, tucked out of sight. It was not readily visible, but even as it sat underneath the sweaters in a drawer, Vince thought about that ring.

Apparently, he and Leslie were still married. He had not left any forwarding address when he had left Colfax, Missouri. But he had not made any attempts to hide his whereabouts either.

Vincent Davis wondered, from time to time, why he had not been man enough to woo Leslie away from Darren James. Darren James had lied to Leslie, cheated on her constantly, spent most of her money, then shirked all responsibilities to her and to their children.

Yet, Leslie had spent nearly four thousand dollars to track the man down. Then, when the man slithered back into town, Leslie seemed to want to spend every moment she could with the sleazy sociopath. She seemed to resent Vince's intrusion, certainly did not appreciate Vince's opinion of Darren James.

Belly full from the stuffed pork chops, Vince paid his bill, left a tip, then returned to his one bedroom apartment.

Vince's dad had once remarked, when he was living as a roughneck, going from oil field to oil field, he'd been able to pack his entire apartment in thirty minutes or less when he had to move to the next job. Looking around at his meager belongings, Vince wondered if it would take him that long to pack.

"Maybe if I stopped to make a sandwich," Vince thought and turned on the small light that hung over the small dining room table.

He graded the thesis one of his students had turned in.

"Uh huh, Monica, and you do that, you'll have your water table polluted with the fun-off," Vince thought and circled the offending paragraph. "We can't just look at where the water comes from. We have to look at where that water's going to go."

He found several other glaring problems with the girl's proposal and circled them as well. Then, using his red pen, he wrote down each problem he'd encountered and why he would not accept nor approve her thesis.

Vince knew Monica Proust would loudly, angrily protest, try to argue her position. Vince also knew he would point out that a thesis such as this was the place for her to present her case, argue her position. Then she'd take her complaint to Dean Melancon. If that doddering old fart actually grew a backbone, Monica would go to Dean Simms.

But Ms. Monica Proust would not rewrite her thesis, would not accept Vince's critiques of her work. The young lady seemed to do everything she could to make herself extremely unattractive, in appearance as well as personality.

"Fucking snowflakes," Vince said aloud. "What happens when you put kids in 'time out' rather than warming their ass. Oh, and you showed up today? Oh, well, let's give you a trophy."

Weary, more from inner turmoil than actual physical exertion, Vince went to bed. As he did most nights, he wondered, could he have done anything different?

"One thing you can do is get the ball rolling," Vince said out loud. "Quit wondering when she's going to have you served and have her served.

But Vince knew he would not.

As he had predicted, Ms. Proust was incensed that he did not accept her thesis. It actually amused him when the girl pointed out that she had double spaced her work, had made sure the pages were tabulated, that the margins were set.

"Monica," he sighed.

"Ms. Proust," she snapped.

"Whatever," Vince said, enraging the girl even more. "It is not your formatting that is at question. It is the sloppiness of your work that I am taking into account."

Dean Melancon read her thesis through, read the notes Vince had supplied, pointed out the validity of Professor Davis's words and refused to accept the militant girl's work.

Dean Simms read the girl's work, looked at the notes Vince had supplied, and suggested that Monica actually consider redoing her work.

"Ms. Proust," he sighed. "I am no irrigation expert, but even I can see the flaws in your work. Redo it and resubmit it."

Vince nodded his head in approval when both Dean Melancon and Dean Simms let him know of their verdicts. He was still in a foul mood when he rolled into his office at St. Elizabeth's Water & Sewage though.

"Hey, Davis," Joe greeted him as Vince started his computer.

"Hey," Vince agreed, typing in his password.

"Hey, I uh, that convention for engineers? In Chicago?" Joe pressed.

"Damn, it already time for, yeah, it sure is," Vince said, glancing at the calendar on his desk.

"I went last year, Brian went year before that," Joe smiled a knowing smile. "So, now it's your turn in the trenches."

Vince remembered that it had been at that convention that he'd met Jack Warner. Meeting Jack Warner had put Vince at Colfax's water systems. And being in Colfax had introduced him to Leslie.

Joe was smiling; Bert Yates had called him, saying that Jack Warner had inquired about Vincent Davis. Then Jack Warner had called Joe, expressing a desire to have Vince attend the convention.

"Got a head of PR and Marketing? Ain't worth a shit since Vince walked out," Jack had confided.

"Well, Vince's about the best engineer we got, but can tell something's eating him up," Joe agreed.

Vince looked up from the schematics he was working on for the new recycling plant that had been proposed for Kimble, Louisiana. Looking at Joe Gaudet's face, he could see that there was something more than just a convention in mind.

"No," Vince said and returned to his schematics.

"Uh, what?" Joe stammered, genuinely shocked.

"I'm not going to that convention," Vince said, not looking from his screen. "Send Brian, send Tim, send anyone but me."

"Listen up," Joe snapped, truly angered that Vince would refuse to attend the conference.

"You're insisting that I go? You'll have my resignation in the morning, Joe," Vince sighed. "I've already sent the specs sheets to Brian Breaux."

"You're going quit?" Joe bellowed, outraged.

"Yeah," Vince sighed again.

Joe stomped out of Vince's office. He knew, if he spent one more minute with the impertinent subordinate, he'd say or do something he wouldn't be able to take back, or smooth over.

Still angry, he called Jack Warner.

"God damn," Jack sighed. "I was really hoping to send Leslie there, get them back together."

Joe didn't say anything; he did think Leslie Davis must be pretty hard up if she wanted such an unhappy, stubborn man though.

"Please, see if you can convince him," Jack pleaded. "If he could just see, I mean, she's, I'm afraid she's going do something sooner or later."

Joe went for a ride on his sled, roared around the greater DeGarde area. Finally, head clear, he returned to the office.

"Vince," Joe said, tone calm, even. "Listen, I would really appreciate it if you'd go to this convention. You've been before, you know the drill. And, as our best and brightest engineer, you'd be able to scope out what it is that we need here in St. Elizabeth. Okay?"

"No, Joe, no," Vince sighed and made a snap shot of his screen.

He looked at the slowly reddening face of his supervisor.

"No, Joe, send me anywhere but Chicago, okay? Send me to Hell if you want to, but I flat out refuse go to Chicago," Vince said quietly.

Chapter 9

Oakleaf County, Texas was in the early stages of designing, developing a sewage treatment facility. Vincent Davis was the supervisor of the engineering department and was often on the job before most of the midnight shift had begun to clock out. He was usually still at his desk by the time the afternoon shift was well under way.

Even though he sat in the employees' cafeteria every day for lunch, twelve noon, on the dot, he sat alone. Vince did not discourage any employees from sitting with him, but he certainly did not encourage others to join him. He also came into the cafeteria at four pm every afternoon, prepared a cup of coffee, then sat and ate an apple and drank his coffee.

"Hey Davis," Jason Fasterling, the Chief Operating Officer called out one day at 12:10 pm.

"Yes sir?" Vince asked, looking up from his peanut butter and apple jelly sandwich.

"Damn, boy, I know your salary," Jason joked, eyeing Vince's simple fare. "I know we pay you enough eat better than that."

"But do you pay me enough to want to?" Vince asked and let a rare smile crease his face.

"You uh, you taught at that DeGarde University, right?" Jason asked, taking a seat at the table.

"University of Louisiana at DeGarde," Vince corrected. "Yeah, post grad irrigation systems and implementations. Why?"

"Had a student, uh, let's see, Ms. Proust? Monica Proust?" Jason asked.

"Oh God," Vince groaned. "I most certainly did."

"Any good?" Jason asked.

"Tell you what, Fasterling," Vince said and picked up his sandwich again. "Have Ms. Proust send you her proposed thesis. Read it and get back to me."

At four pm, Jason found Vince in the cafeteria again, teeth deep into his apple.

"God damn, what a worthless piece of shit," the man agreed. "Please tell me that's not that crappy hazelnut coffee."

"Good God no," Vince sneered. "This is nothing but one hundred percent real Texas coffee, thank you very much."

"Good, good, never could understand why anyone would want to screw up a perfectly good thing like that," Jason said and prepared his own coffee.

The man sat with Vince again and the two sipped their coffee quietly. Then Jason sighed and looked at a spot over Vince's shoulder.

"Read that girl's thesis," Jason said again. "It's worthless."

"But it's formatted correctly," Vince smirked.

"What? Who gives a crap?" Jason asked.

A moment passed.

"But, she's got other criteria we need; how about we put her in Inventory Control?" The COO suggested.

"What? You're saying we're hiring her?" Vince asked, surprised.

Jason looked around the room. He determined that the three administrative assistants in the corner were too busy giggling to pay any attention to them. He did frown at one of the trio, a young man that had his hair styled into a bouffant hairstyle. Jason leaned closer to Vince.

"Adams has got it in her damned head we're lacking diversity," Jason whispered.

"Did you tell her I'm an African-American transgender lesbian?" Vince whispered back.

"Had my suspicions," Jason chuckled.

He drained his cup of coffee.

"Seriously," Jason said, standing up. "Other than your class, she carried a four point oh. Let's see what she can do for us, huh?"

Monica Proust joined Oakleaf County Sewage Treatment in the inventory department. Her first day was spent doing the mountains of paperwork and watching the Web-X seminars all new employees had to go through.

So, it was not until her second day on the job that she saw Vince Davis. Vince was shocked when the young lady actually gave him a wide smile and a friendly wave. He didn't return her smile, but he did wave in greeting.

At lunch time, Monica was seated with a few of the administration assistants and seemed to be comfortable with the group. She didn't see Vince until it was time to leave the cafeteria. Again, she smiled and waved. Vince nodded that he'd seen her and resumed eating his handful of pretzels.

"Oh, that's Vinnie," Troy Lopez lisped. "I swear, he is so unfriendly!"

"Troy thinks that anyone that doesn't fall madly in love with him is unfriendly," one of the girls whispered loudly to Monica.

"I'm not even going to think of something to say," Troy said, swishing away from the table.

Vince watched the interchange and shook his head in mild disgust. He wondered if anyone had the courage to tell Troy Lopez that he looked positively ridiculous with that bouffant hairstyle.

Two weeks later, Troy Lopez was finally terminated. The young man had been hired to be an administrative assistant, but if he found a job to be too difficult, he simply ignored it. If given a deadline, Troy would push the job off onto someone else.

"I love him like a brother," Mia Sanchez complained to Coretta Adams, the Chief Executive Officer of Oakleaf County Sewage. "But someone needs tell that boy do his own job, know what I'm saying?"

With the termination of Troy Lopez, Mia and several other administrative assistants found a mountain of paperwork on their desks. Troy's laziness had created a backlog and much of it was time-sensitive work.

So, at 12:00 noon, Monica Proust found herself in the cafeteria, alone. So she went and sat at Vince's table. She sat at the table, started to eat her tuna salad and texted on her cell phone.

"That's pretty damned rude," Vince snapped after ten minutes had elapsed.

"Huh?" Monica asked, finally tearing her eyes away from her cell phone's screen.

"You don't even ask if you can join me, just plop your self down," Vince snapped.

(He'd very nearly said 'plop your fat ass down' but fortunately paused long enough to correct himself.)

"Then, no 'hello, how's your day going' no nothing, just whip out your phone and start texting someone else?" Vince continued. "Going do that crap, why even bother sitting here? You can text from any table in here."

He stood up and left the room before his anger got the better of him, before he said something he'd be written up for.

At four pm, Vince almost did not go into the cafeteria. Then he reminded himself, he had every right to go into the cafeteria, had every right to enjoy his apple and his coffee.

"Hi, Dr. Davis, can I sit here?" Monica asked.

"Absolutely," Vince smiled tightly and bit down on his apple. "But uh, don't need call me Dr. Davis anymore. It's just Vince."

The girl smiled and Vince was struck at how attractive the young lady actually was. In his classroom, Monica Proust had dressed as dowdy, as drab as possible. She kept her blonde hair back in a severe bun, or a simple ponytail, kept her face devoid of any cosmetics.

Here, her outfit was smart, fashionable. The skirt was a knee length navy blue and her blouse was a soft pale yellow. Her blonde hair was loose, hanging down to the small of her waist. Her face had been touched up with light powder, a little eyeliner, some lip gloss.

(Vince did think to himself that Troy Lopez had worn more cosmetics than Monica was wearing right now.)

"So, when did you start working here?" Monica asked as she sipped her coffee.

"Hmm? First week in June," Vince said.

"I uh, I I'm sure you had something do with me getting this job here," Monica whispered, looking at Vince.

Her warm brown eyes searched his face. Vince gave her a wry smile.

"Not really," he said truthfully. "The hard work you put in at ULD had a great deal to do with that."

She smiled proudly at his compliment. She took another sip of her coffee then looked at the apple Vince was eating.

"Where'd you get the apple?" she asked, looking at the service bar of the cafeteria.

"From home," Vince said.

"Oh! Where are you staying? I got an apartment, the Crossbow, no, no, the Oxbow off of seventy two," Monica said.

"I uh, bought a condo, Eastlawn Condominiums," Vince said.

"East lawn? Where are they?" Monica asked.

"Other side of Oxbow Lake," Vince said. "From here, take a left on Mariselle then another left on Tucker Drive."

"So you go right past my apartment," Monica said.

"Yep; sure I wake y'all up when I'm on my hog," Vince agreed.

"Your hog?" Monica asked, pretty face wrinkled in confusion.

"My Harley," Vince corrected and washed down the last bite of apple with the dregs of his coffee.

"You still have that? I liked the American flag paint job it had," Monica asked.

"Still have it," he agreed.

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but Vince was already throwing his coffee cup and apple core away.

"See you later, Dr. Davis," Monica said.

Chapter 10

Sections of Highway 72 had to be torn up and twelve inch pipe needed to be ordered and ready for the job. Residents in all of Oakleaf County would be impacted by the job so inventory needed to be ready and at the job sites when they were needed.

"One hour. Just one flipping hour delay and we're in deep do-do," Vince stressed as they planned the project.

"Ha ha, cute," Monica smirked.

"What?" Vince snapped.

"Deep do-do," Monica said. "We work at a sewage plant."

"Ms. Proust, there is a time for joking and a time to be serious. Guess which one this is," Vince snapped.

Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them back and set her jaw firmly.

"Is the inventory ready to go?" he asked.

"Yes sir," she said, voice cracking as she fought to keep her emotions in check.

"Equipment ready to go?" Vince asked Pablo Recendez.

"Yes sir," Pablo agreed. "Everything's already on the trailers.

"Permits already pulled?" Vince asked Jason Fosterling.

"And in Pablo's hand," Jason assured Vince.

"And Ms. Proust?" Vince said.

She looked up from her papers. Her eyes were still quite shiny and her nose was becoming reddened.

"Yes sir?" she asked.

"Ms. Proust, I am very sorry that I snapped at you like that," Vince said in front of the supervisors. "I realize you were just trying to make me tone down my delivery and I took it the wrong way."

Monica looked around the room at Coretta Adams, Steve Adams, the Chief Financial Officer, and no relation to Coretta Adams, Vince, Pablo, and Jason. Monica nodded her head in agreement.

"Thank you, Ms. Proust," Vince said, gathering up his own papers. "Okay, everyone, we start tomorrow morning at nine thirty, after the morning rush hour has died down a bit."

Vince stormed out of the board room before anyone could stop him. He had not been sorry in the least that he'd snapped at Monica. This was serious, timing was vital, and one screw up would put them in jeopardy with the citizens of Oakleaf County. Many were already complaining about the hike in their sales tax, many more were upset that their sewage would be tied in with their garbage service. Sections of highway being torn up while crews stood around waiting on a section of pipe, or a back hoe, or asphalt would not endear them to the populace one bit.

"Yeah, Leslie, did teach me one thing," Vince smiled tightly as he grabbed his helmet off of his desk.

He and Leslie had discussed, on several occasions, how just one unhappy client can adversely affect business.