The First Ninety Days Ch. 09

"It sucks," Jon said. Brandon and Meredith were such nice people; they deserved better than this. "Makes me really glad Caitlyn and I aren't having kids yet."

"Yeah. Number one way to sink yourself into poverty: divorce. Second way: kids."

"Kinda funny how so many of their friends are starting to deal with both of those things," Jon said. "Is it normal for so many of us to be married or getting married this early in our lives?"

"Maybe it was," Jeff said, "back in the 1600s. There was a time when you hit puberty—or made your first kill, or whatever coming-of-age ritual your society upheld—and that was it, you were an adult and ready to get married and have your own family and everything. Nowadays it's a little different. With increasing health standards, kids are hitting puberty earlier and earlier in their lives. But with increasing job standards, they're hitting theworkforcelater and later in their lives. You start having this ten-yeargap where the person is physically mature, but not... Not what, noteconomically mature, I guess you'd say. Not yet acting as an adult in the economic sense of holding down a good job and being self-sufficient and whathaveyou. That's where 'adolescence' comes from. Heck, that's where 'teen pregnancies' come from. In the 1600s, there were no teenagers—just adults and children. Teenagers, young adults, adolescents—these are people who are old enough to have kids but not old enough to pay for them. And, yes, Brandon and Meredith are in that category, and they're fighting as hard as they can to get out of it. It may even be working."

"And yet here we are," Jon said, who appreciated these new and interesting thoughts but still hadn't really had his question answered. "Caitlyn and I, and Zach and Christa, following in their footsteps. —Not with thekids thing, but, with everything else. By your analysis, we're not even ready to bemarried, because that too costs money and most of us are still getting our fourth level of education. I'm the only one with the, um, with the whateveryoucallit. —The 'economic maturity' to be getting married. We're starting early. And all of us know Brandon and Meredith."

"That's true," said Jeff. He cracked a dim smile. "It's like they're beacons for love or something. They just, what, trade it around."

Jon was going to laugh, until he saw that Jeff wasn't really joking.

"Maybe it's their mutant power," he said.

"Quite possibly," Jeff agreed.

"Convincing all and sundry to fall in love."

"Oh, it's not just all and sundry," Jeff said. "I think that all they do is—whether by accident or by design—they organize the people around them. Using their gravitic influences, of course. And, just by moving through their lives, they get that person pointed in the right direction and facing someone they can find love with. They just make it... Easy to find someone who's good for you."

"It worked on me, and I didn't even reallyknow them," Jon said. "I mean, we were friends, but, I wasn'tnearly as close to them as Caitlyn was. Is."

"They've got the magic." Jeff shrugged. "That's all I know."

Around the time people had started getting hungry, a delivery man from a pizza place showed up, called in by the Cranes; Caitlyn insisted on paying, and would have won if Jon hadn't rolled his eyes and sided with Zach. There was a small but varied selection of alcohol, for those who would care to partake in it; everyone gathered around as Caitlyn took her first official sip of alcohol, from a can of beer which she immediately pronounced disgusting and foisted off on Jon. Jon, who also found it disgusting, threatened to pour it down the toilet until Zach, loathe to waste beer of any caliber, appropriated it from him. Under Meredith's guidance, Caitlyn found a wine cooler much more to her taste. And shortly thereafter Christa trotted out Meredith's cake, a rich dark confection containing a denser concentration of chocolate than anything Jon had ever experienced.

Caitlyn was having fun, but by the time the cake was gone, it was apparent to Jon that she was starting to tire of the constant buzz. For that matter, so was he; though he had a higher tolerance for chaos, this was too much. Not to mention that he had to be up early tomorrow for work. Fortunately, Christa and Zach had planned for this eventuality; Jon had merely to stand up and explain the situation, and the guests were wishing Caitlyn final happy-birthdays and moving out the door. Not the Cranes and the Chamberses, of course; they stayed to help clean up. "We also figured you might want a little quiet time to wind down in," Christa remarked.

Caitlyn shook her head, amazed. "You guys think ofeverything."

"We've had practice," said Zach with an insufferably smug look.

Laurelyn had been asleep for some time, and after checking on her, Meredith returned to the main room, where the others were relaxing. "I hope that all wasn't too much or anything."

"It was... A lot more than I expected," Caitlyn said. She was curled up on the couch, her head on Jon's shoulder, and it was all Jon could do to keep a big, satisfied grin off his face: there was nowhere else on earth he would rather be. "I mean, whenever I thought about my 21st birthday, I figured I'd be... With my parents... And, like, we'd see a movie, and have a party, and that would be it. Maybe they'd let me try some wine or something. This was... So much more."

"Blame him," Meredith said, pointing at Jon. "He set most of it up."

"Hey, I just organized it," Jon protested. "All you subcontractor folks did the actual hard work."

With a winking look at Jon, Brandon asked, "And, Caitlyn, were you expecting to be married on your 21st birthday?"

Caitlyn sat bolt-upright to stare at him. "What, are you kidding? I wasn't sure I'd be married on my25th birthday! If I thought about it at all! When I was sixteen I took a look around and, just... Ugh." She collapsed back on the couch, a little too far away for Jon to reach. "All I saw was just this, this wasteland. Here I was, in college, but younger than everybody there, and not making any friends, and... And I wasn't sure how tochange any of that, you know? I mean, yeah, I couldwait for a few years until I was actually the same age as the people around me, but... What do I donow? And plus on top of that I've always found it easier to relate to people who are older than me... I mean, when I was eighteen, I was asked out by this guy who was thirty-seven. And I told him, 'I'm eighteen,' and he said, 'That's not a problem with me,' and I wasthis close to actually going with him." She shook her head. "I just... I saw the future I wanted, but... I had no idea how toget there."

"Yeah," said Brandon.

"Yeah," said Meredith.

"Yeah," said Jon.

"Yeah," said Zach.

Christa looked around at them. "My goodness. Am I the only one here who's never felt that? I feel so... Virginal!"

"Well, that's why we keep you around, babe," Zach said, draping an easy arm over her shoulders. "Innocent, unfettered optimism."

"What else did you guys do today?" Meredith asked.

"Well, besides this morning," Caitlyn said, "we—"

"Why, what happened this morning?" Brandon asked, a shameless grin on his face.

"We-ell," said Caitlyn, looking a little guilty. "Well, um, we, um. We had fun."

"Well, that's good," said Meredith, totally unashamed.

"Wealso went to church," Jon said, rolling his eyes. "This crazy lady over here played her harp in all three services, including the super-early-in-the-morning one."

"How super-early was it?" Christa asked.

"Was the sun up?" Zach asked.

"7:45," Caitlyn said.

"Man," Zach said.

"Man," Christa said.

"If our church asked us to show up for that service, we'd tell them to go jump off a cliff," Zach said. "In a respectful and Christ-like manner, of course."

Brandon snorted. He was grinning.

"Wait," Meredith said. "You'd tell them in a respectful and Christ-like manner to jump off the cliff?—or you'd tell them to jump off the cliff in a respectful and Christ-like manner? Did Christ prescribe ways for jumping off cliffs?"

"Right, anyway," said Christa, after giving Meredith a dirty look. "What else did you do today?"

"Well, church," Caitlyn said. "And then afterwards... Suddenly I'm cold." She looked around in confusion. "Did someone open a window?"

"You took off your sweater," Jon said.

"I... I did?" Caitlyn chafed her arms. "No, it's right here."

Jon spread his arms wide, giving her aDuh look.

"Oh!" Caitlyn exclaimed. She snuggled back up to him, draping her body over his in an entirely satisfactory manner.

"I swear," Jon said into her hair. "You have two undergraduate degrees. I thought you were smart!"

"Shut it, buster, or we aren't having any fun tonight," Caitlyn said, a smug grin on her face.

"Oh-hhh!" Brandon, Zach and Meredith said all at the same time.

"So, anyway,honey," Jon said. "What else did we do today?"

"Well... We dropped the harp off... The entire congregation sang 'Happy Birthday' to me because my harp teacher told the head pastor—"

"Oh, isthat how it happened?" Jon said.

"Yeah, didn't you see her? She was in the third row."

Jon hadn't seen any trace of Mrs. Sellitz. "No."

Caitlyn sighed. "You need to look harder. She was there. Anyhow, I had that happen... Then we dropped the harp off... Then we had lunch... Then... Oh!"

"Oh?" said Meredith.

"Does this have anything to do with where you were when I called Jon?" Christa asked.

"Well, it's more Jon's story..." Caitlyn said.

"No, go ahead, you tell it," Jon said. "We haven't had a chance to talk about it. I wanna hear what you thought."

"Well, youstarted it," Caitlyn said. "He approachedyou in the first place."

"Look," Brandon said, grinning, "just tell the freaking story, okay?"

"Well, Jon was at work," Caitlyn said, "and some guy came in to be dented."

"Huh?" said Christa.

"Oh, that's mine," Jon said. "I work at a dentist's office. So, verb form of dentist, dent. To dent. A dentist dents."

Christa gave him a most incredulous look.

"Don't worry, honey, it makes sense," Zach said.

"It does not!" Christa protested. "Verbing weirds language!"

"Right, so, dentist," Caitlyn said. "And Jon's the receptionist and probably just twiddling his thumbs, and so this guys says, Hey, my company's hiring, you look bored, what do you think?"

"And Jon said, Sure?" Meredith guessed.

"Jon said Sure," Caitlyn agreed. "And he called the guy later that day—"

"Youmade me call him," Jon protested.

"You said you had nothing to lose!" Caitlyn said. To the others: "This guy's such a dork. Anyway, so, he called this guy Roger, and Roger said, Hey, why don't you bring your wife too, and so after lunch we went to his office."

"And?" said Christa, an excited expression on her face.

"And, I think it was a scam," Caitlyn said.

Christa's face fell.

"What did you think, Jon?" Brandon said.

Jon shrugged—not an easy proposition with Caitlyn leaning on him. "Well, as Cait pointed out to me in the car, I wouldn't know a legitimate business from a scam if my life depended on it. I figured I'd better trust her judgment. She's got the Accounting degree, shewould be more likely to know something."

"Their office was empty," Caitlyn said. "Like, empty. A huge room with no one and nothing in it. Andhis office didn't have a single paper in it or anything—it was too neat, it didn't look like he actually used it. And practically the first thing they asked us for was fifty dollars."

"Fifty dollars?" Meredith said.

"Each," Caitlyn said.

"Thatis kinda fishy," Christa said.

"Was there anyone else in the office?" Zach asked.

"Not that we saw," Jon said.

"But that could just be because it was a Sunday," Brandon said.

"Yeah, but who works on a Sunday?" Meredith said.

"Either someone who was golfing all week or someone really desperate," Zach said.

"Either way, is that someone you want to be hired by?" Christa said.

"So, what did you do?" Brandon said to Caitlyn.

"We got out of there," Caitlyn said. "Jon was really good. I could tell that none of this had even crossed his mind—he figured it was all legitimate—but he picked up on my signals and we bluffed our way out." She smiled up at him. "I'm glad I married someone with brains."

Jon felt absurdly pleased.

"Are you going back?" Christa asked.

Caitlyn looked to him, and Jon felt a moment of confusion.Me?

"Umm... I don't know," he said. "Probably not. I... I mean, maybe it's legitimate. And, what Roger was talking about, how Caitlyn and I can work together and make money and... Well, it sounded like a good deal. I wish I didn't have to pass it up. But... It's simply too risky. It's not something I feel like I'd be able to trust. If it were just me, then maybe... But it's not, it's Caitlyn too. There's just too much at stake right now."

"And is it important for you to find a new job?" Brandon asked, with a glance at Meredith.

"Well... Yeah, just a little," Jon said, mopping his face with his hand. "I mean, I like what I do now, but there's no... What's the term. —Oh. No growth potential. I mean, I'm a receptionist, it's not like you can move up from there. And we're barely making ends meet as it is. I can't continue like this."

"Then shouldn't you be looking for another job?" Caitlyn said, turning her head to face him.

Oh God, not now. "Cait, that's... Easier said than done. Everything out there... I check the websites, I check Craigslist, I check Monster.com, and everything anyone's looking for is, 'With experience,' 'with experience,' 'with experience.' I don't have experience. I'm entry level. And the few Ido find for entry-level, I send in my resume and a nice cover letter, and... Nothing happens. It's not easy to just, just keep..."

"We may have an answer for you," Brandon said, looking back over at them. Beside him, Meredith looked rather pleased with herself.

"As you know," Brandon said, "I now work in a doctor's office."

"You do?" Jon said. He hadn't heard anything about that.

"Okay, as youshould know, I now work in a—"

"You never told us," Caitlyn said.

Brandon tossed his hands. "Okay. As you havenow been informed..." He shot them both a sarcastic leer. Caitlyn gave a magnanimous wave to indicate he should continue. "I work in a doctor's office. But not as a receptionist, Jon: as an assistant."

"Hmmm," said Jon, already seeing the potential.

"It's skilled labor, so they pay more—I'm getting about $30,000 a year now. It's the medical field, so you'll always have work because people will always get sick—ifthat changes, there's bigger things afoot than just job loss! You get to work with people—which, because you were a Psych major, I'm guessing isn't going to be a problem. And there is lots of, as you said, growth potential: there's tons of fields to specialize in in medicine, and tons of niches to fill."

"Okay, but, I can't move to Mount Hill with you," Jon said.

"Not a problem," Brandon said. "My boss, Dr. Keltey, has a friend, a Dr. Aaron... Umm, something—I'll get you the exact name and contact info if you're interested, don't worry—Dr. Aaron Something, who works here in the Shellview area, and is looking to hire. Kelt asked me because I used to go to Greenfield, I might know someone. And, hey: looks like I might."

"Okay, but, you said 'skilled' labor," Caitlyn said. "Does Jon have those skills?"

"No, he doesn't, but that's the thing," said Brandon. "Neither did I. And a lot of doctor's offices are starting to form sort of joint-scholarship/internship things where you're eased in, simultaneously taking classes and getting on-the-job training. You have to pay for the first couple of months of classes out of pocket, but after that you start actually working and drawing a salary—and that pays for the classes pretty quickly, let me tell you."

"Wow," said Jon. "That sounds almost too good to be true."

"It almost is," Brandon said. "With the Baby Boomers starting to hit that really medical-intensive age, and less and less non-immigrant Americans going into medicine, they're strapped for manpower. Normally you're supposed to go to school first to become a certified medical assistant—"

"There's such thing as a medical assistant?" Caitlyn said.

"My point exactly," Brandon said, grinning. "Nobody'sheard of the field, so nobody goes into it."

"There's alot of fields like that nowadays," Christa remarked. "They just keep diversifying what's going on."

"Remember in that old video gameOregon Trail, where there were only three jobs?" Zach said. "Those were the days."

"Right, as I was saying," Brandon said, rolling his eyes at them. "Nobody's heard of it, so nobody goes into it. Now, obviously, if you're friends with one, you've heard of it, and before now that sort of person-to-person recruitment was enough to fill all their vacancies. But not anymore. So now they have this stop-gap program, where they train you and put you to work simultaneously."

"What do you do?" Jon asked.

"Well, the last time you went to the doctor's office, what happened?" Brandon said. "You went in, they took you to a room, and someone came in and did your blood pressure and height and weight and stuff like that—the busywork, in other words, before the doctor came in and did the actual thinking. That busywork person is a medical assistant. When they're not doing that they're running the front desks, making appointments, dealing with phone calls... You've got a lot of responsibilities, yeah, we kind of get stuck with everything that's not doctoring. Docking?"

"That's right," Caitlyn said. "Take the second syllable off."

"Right, well," said Brandon, giving her a leer. "Anyway, that's the job description, but if you think about it, none of it is too hard. I guess this is the menial-labor side of the medical field—we're like the gardeners, the construction workers, the shelf-stockers, stuff like that. But it'smedicine, so it's a little more glamorous."

"Wow," said Jon. He wasn't sure if he was going to like or enjoy or even be good at such a thing, but he knew he had to try: it was simply too promising to pass up. "What a birthday present."

"And it's not even your birthday," Meredith laughed.

"Consider it a gift for the whole family," Brandon said.

" 'Whole'?" said Caitlyn. "There's only two of us. Unless, um... Unless, Jon, there's, uh, something you want to tell us."

Jon's mind flashed uncontrollably on subjects of alien implantation and tentacle rape. "I'm not gonna tell you aboutthat!"

"What??" said Caitlyn.

"What??" said the others.

"Okay, um," said Meredith. "Does anyone elsenot want to know what just went through his head?"

"Not me," said Christa.

"Not me," said Caitlyn.

"Not me," said Brandon.

"Not me," said Zach.

"Ha-ha, you were last," Brandon said. "In the mush-pot with you."

"What!" cried Zach. "Nooo! Last night I had to wash the dishes, and nowthis?"

"Life just sucks for you, honey," Christa said with a conspicuous grin. "Deal with it."

Zach gave a martyred sigh. "All right, all right. What was it you thought of, Jon?"

Jon shook his head.So not talking to anybody about that! "Sorry, guys, just... It's late, I'm tired. My brain must be short-circuiting or something."

"Aww, is it time to go already?" Meredith said.

In a stage whisper that was probably audible across the courtyard, Brandon said, "They want us to go home so they can have sex."