A CALIFORNIA ROSE
Chapter Eight

November 19, 2002

Rose groaned as her alarm went off, signaling the beginning of a new day. Quickly, she shut off the alarm, before it could wake her roommates.

Rose looked around. Mari and Michelle still slept peacefully, despite the loud beeping. Michelle’s hand was flung out, clutching the blind cords in a death grip. Mari mumbled something, then pulled the blankets over her head.

Rose grabbed a few clothes and headed for the shower. She felt oddly happy this morning, as if she had a new lease on life. And, she reflected, she did. She would survive, no matter what Cal or anyone else threw at her.

Rose showered and dressed quickly, then headed for her accounting class and the midterm. She only had this one class this morning, so she was free the rest of the morning. She didn’t have to be at work until one o’clock.

As she worked her way through the midterm, Rose debated whether to drive over to Masline and return Jack’s schedule to him. He probably didn’t need it, she reasoned, so there was no reason to visit him. On the other hand, she wanted to see him again. She knew she shouldn’t go, and she knew that Cal would be furious if he found out, but she felt that she should at least thank him for saving her life. After all, she had nearly dragged him over the railing, too, and then he had nearly been arrested because of her.

When she finished her midterm, Rose hurried out to the parking lot. After carefully backing out of her space--two other cars had parked so near to hers that it was hard to get out--she headed down the freeway toward Masline, twenty-five miles away.

Rose found her way to Masline City College without too much difficulty, although she had difficulty finding a parking space once she got there.

Climbing out of the SUV, Rose pulled the schedule out of her purse and tried to determine where she might find Jack. The schedule showed that he should be getting of a class in the art building soon, but she had no idea where it was.

After asking for directions several times, Rose finally found the building she was looking for. As she reached it, students began to stream out the doors. Rose waited, looking to see if Jack was among them.

Just as she was about to go inside and look for Jack’s classroom, he stepped out of the building. He didn’t see her at first, as he was talking animatedly to a student with black hair and a heavy accent. When he caught sight of her, he looked surprised, then headed in her direction.

"I’ll catch you later, Fabrizio," he called, waving to his friend. Fabrizio shouted back in an unfamiliar language, then took off across the quad.

Jack turned to Rose. "What brings you here?" he asked, looking her over curiously.

Rose was suddenly embarrassed. It had been a stupid idea, driving all this way to return a piece of paper.

"I...ah...you dropped this last night," she told him, holding out the piece of paper.

Jack took it and looked at it. It was his class schedule, which he no longer really needed, having memorized where everything was.

"Uh...thank you," he told her. Had she really come all this way for that?

Rose shuffled her feet uncomfortably. "You’re welcome. Um...I’d better be going." She turned to leave.

Jack’s voice stopped her. "Rose...you really drove all this way to return a piece of paper?" His voice was doubtful.

Rose blushed. This was one of the stupidest things she had ever done. "Well...actually...I wanted to thank you for what you did last night. Not just for pulling me back, but for your discretion."

"You’re welcome."

Rose sat down on a bench near the door. "Look, I know what you must be thinking. Poor little rich girl. What does she know about misery?"

Jack sat down beside her. "No, actually, that’s not what I was thinking at all."

Rose looked up at him.

"I was thinking, what could have happened to this girl to make her think she had no way out?"

Rose was silent for a moment. "I...well...it was my whole life, and all the people in it. And the inertia of my life, plunging ahead and me powerless to stop it." She held out her engagement ring.

"Man, look at that thing! You would have hit like a sack of bricks."

"The wedding is scheduled for next June. My mother is making all the plans for me...I have no say in anything."

"Do you love the guy you’re marrying?"

Rose looked at him, shocked. "What?"

"Do you love the guy or not? It’s a simple question."

"His name is Caledon Hockley, and I..." Rose couldn’t answer the question. She didn’t love Cal, and was more certain every day that she didn’t want to marry him, but she couldn’t tell Jack that.

She changed the subject, instead. "What is this stupid thing you’re carrying around?" She gestured to a portfolio at the top of his stack of books and notebooks. Grabbing it, she looked at the papers inside.

"So what are you, an artist or something?" She looked closer. "Jack, this is excellent work."

"Well, it’s not up to professional standards yet, but I keep working on it. These are mostly for school purposes."

Rose had come to a series of nude drawings. "Are these for school purposes, too?"

"Some of them are." He was blushing.

Rose looked more closely at the drawings. "You like this woman. You used her several times."

"She’s a good model. Doesn’t act all scared or nervous at being drawn sans clothing."

"I think you must have had a love affair with this woman."

"Oh, no. She’s Fabrizio’s fiancee. If I laid a hand on her, he’d beat me to a bloody pulp."

"Fabrizio. Isn’t he the guy you were talking to a few minutes ago?"

"Yeah. We’re renting a house in a slightly run-down area of Masline, along with another guy, Tommy Ryan, who’s not in college right now, and Fabrizio’s fiancee, Helga Dahl."

"You can afford that?"

"The neighborhood’s not exactly in a high-class area. The house rents for about six hundred a month. It would be more, but the roof leaks and part of the kitchen was burned out by the last tenants. We each pay about one hundred fifty dollars a month, though we’ll be needing to find some new roommates soon, since Fabrizio and Helga are getting married in April and moving out."

Rose contemplated this. She might be able to afford rent that low, though of course she wouldn’t need to, since she was marrying Cal.

Instead, she asked, "Don’t you work for Sunpeak?"

Jack nodded. "You remember seeing me there."

"Yeah. How do you like it?"

"It sucks. The hours are too long, especially if you’re a full-timer, and the pay is as low as it can get. If it weren’t for the fact that they’re the biggest employer in Masline, I don’t know how they’d find employees. Of course, they have fewer people now that they’ve merged with Titan Construction, but that just makes the hours longer. Someone complained, and the area manager said that business is better than its been in years, and we should be grateful for all the work we have to do. Right. Their full time employees work sixty hours in a short week, and the bosses think they’re being generous."

Rose shook her head sympathetically. "How many people have been laid off?"

"About a fourth of them."

"But you’re still there?"

"Yes. Unfortunately. Although, since they said that the people they’d laid off just weren’t performing well enough, it might make another job harder to find." He looked at his watch. "I have to be there in a couple of hours. I work part time, two to seven, Monday through Friday, and sometimes, or now usually, Saturdays, because they want to get the work through in a ‘timely’ fashion."

Rose clenched her hands angrily. "I knew this would happen! Mergers are only good for the executives!" When Jack looked at her questioningly, she explained, "Cal is CEO of Titan Construction. He thinks this merger is a wonderful idea. He’s getting a big bonus for helping push it through."

"Well, won’t that be good for you?"

Rose turned to him furiously. "Listen, buster, I couldn’t care less about big bonuses and high status! Maybe I have more compassion than I should for people, but I think that the rights of people should come before the profits of executives and presidents!"

"So what are you majoring in? Sociology? Pre-law?"

"Business."

He laughed. "You’re so concerned with the rights of workers, but you’re majoring in business? What are you doing, planning a revolution in the workplace?"

"Being a business major was Cal’s idea, not mine."

He just looked at her for a minute. Rose, realizing that she had revealed more than she had planned, changed the subject.

"We’ve talked about me. What about you? Why do you work for Sunpeak? Why are you a student here? What were you doing at Elias last night?"

He sat back, considering. "It’s a long story."

"I’ve got time."

He grinned. Rose didn’t give up on things easily.

"Well...you want the complete story or the abbreviated one?"

"Whichever you choose to tell."

"Okay...I’ve been on my own, more or less, since I was fifteen, when my parents died in a fire."

Rose interrupted him. "Oh, I’m sorry!"

"It’s all right. It’s been a long time now--six years. Anyway, I was put into the foster care system. I admit I didn’t take too kindly to it--there were all these rules that I wasn’t accustomed to, some of the foster homes weren’t so nice, and I missed my folks. I ran away several times, but they kept catching me and bringing me back. When I was seventeen, I fell in with a gang of petty criminals...drug dealing, theft, that sort of thing."

"You were a drug dealer?"

"No...I didn’t get into that. I’d seen too many kids who’d been hurt by drug use, and the stuff this gang sold was mostly the really hard stuff--cocaine, methamphetamines, stuff like that. Pot was one thing, but the other stuff is too dangerous."

"I once made an impromptu speech about how people have the right to smoke pot if they like," Rose commented.

"I agree...if no one gets hurt."

Rose nodded in agreement.

"But I never even got into selling marijuana, or using any drugs, either. I got into petty theft, mostly picking pockets, snatching purses, and walking off with unguarded valuables."

She just stared at him, her eyes wide.

"I finally got caught...I tried to steal from an undercover cop. I was convicted, and spent eight months in juvenile hall. They let me out shortly after I turned eighteen."

"Ah...do you still...uh...like to steal from people?" Rose asked, moving slightly away from him.

He shook his head. "Eight months in juvenile hall taught me my lesson. I always appreciated my freedom, so being locked up was torture. I didn’t like a lot of the other kids, either--some of them were real hard cases, and I figured that if they were that bad as kids, they’d be worse as adults, and didn’t want to wind up in prison with them. When they let me out of there, I took off. I found some creative ways of earning a living, but nothing that was illegal."

"What did you do for a living?"

"A lot of things. I hitchhiked from place to place, did day labor, worked temporary jobs...I even worked picking crops with migrant workers for a while." He shook his head. "The way some of those farm owners treat these workers makes Sunpeak look really good."

"So why do they put up with it?"

"A lot of them are illegal immigrants, so they really can’t say anything without fear of being deported. And, for many of them, it’s still better than what they left behind." He paused. "Fabrizio was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. We worked together a lot, and when we’d decided that we’d both had enough of working the fields, we left. We took off for Los Angeles, where I drew portraits of tourists for two dollars each. Fabrizio managed to get a fake green card, and he’s now working on becoming a citizen. After Fabrizio met Helga, we moved down to Masline, were Helga was living with her cousin, Tommy. They were looking for roommates to help share the cost of rent, so we moved in with them. I got a job working for Sunpeak, and decided to go to college. Masline City College is inexpensive, and you can take your time learning, studying what you want, without them pressuring you to choose a major or be a full-time student. I’m a part-time student, taking two classes, but I have enough time to learn everything. The semester is eighteen weeks long, so you don’t have too much pressure."

Rose looked at him with admiration. "Why can’t I be like you, Jack? Choose my own life, study what I want, take things at my own pace." She paused. "Say we’ll go to Los Angeles sometime, even if we only ever just talk about it."

"No, we’ll do it. We’ll visit Olvera Street, and go people-watching. We’ll find one of the cheap amusement parks, drink cheap beer, and ride on the roller coaster ‘til we throw up. Oh, and we’ll visit the beaches, and go surfing."

Rose giggled with delight. "Can you show me?"

"Sure."

"Teach me to ride the waves."

"And wipe out."

"And...and bodysurf!"

"What, you don’t know how to do that?"

"No!"

"Man, you’ve got a lot to learn!"

Rose shouted with laughter. "Of course I do. I’m just a freshman!"

"Me, too, but you don’t see me complaining!"

Rose doubled over laughing. She hadn’t enjoyed herself so much in a long time.

"You’re too old to be a freshman!"

"Not here! I’m helping design the set for the musical the theater department is doing, and half the other designers--and the actors--are older than me."

"What musical is it?"

"It’s a Broadway musical--Titanic."

Rose clapped her hands in delight. "I’ve always wanted to see that, ever since I found the lyrics on the Internet! When does it open?"

"This Friday. It’s running for two weekends. There’s still tickets available for all but the last performance, which is a matinee. Those always sell out early."

Rose thought about it. "I’d like to see it, but Cal always insists we go out on Saturday nights--he chooses where--and he gets really upset if I go someplace without him."

"So bring him along."

"I don’t know...he thinks this place is beneath him."

"Tell him you’ve always wanted to see this musical, and this is the first time it’s been shown close by."

Rose frowned, then shrugged. She could only try.

"I’ll try to get him to take me." She watched as another group of students began trickling into the building. "What time is it?"

He glanced at his watch. "Twelve thirty."

Rose leaped to her feet. "I’m going to be late for work. I’ve got to run."

"I’ll walk you to your car. Where are you parked?"

"Over that way." Rose gestured in the direction of one of the parking lots.

As they hurried toward the parking lot, Jack asked her, "What’s your e-mail address?"

"Rosedb@yahoo.com," she told him, digging for her keys. "What’s yours?"

"Dawson@hotmail.com," he replied. "I’ll e-mail you, okay?"

"Good. Thanks," she told him, unlocking the door. "I’ve really got to get going. Cal’s going to kill me if I’m late."

"Okay. See ya, Rose." He waved, wondering if she’d be back.

Chapter Nine
Stories