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DEHE5TUHD57S 


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I had been transcribing this from a word doc I have for the story and I ran short on typed stuff, will be looking for the handwritten stuff to start adding to what I have posted in next day or so. Check back!

How can i quit a job like this one?

When it finally sunk in for Frank that Vanessa was actually leaving the firm, the smile vanished from his face during the presentations and meetings to be replaced with furtive looks of suspicion.  This all came to a head during her last week at the firm. Frank came into her office with the firm’s owner Steve Peterson.

                “Hello, Mr. Peterson-“

                “Call me Steve.”

                “Steve, Frank. What can I do for the two of you?”

                “Well, Vanessa can I call you Vanessa?” Steve began then continued after she nodded. Steve gestured at chairs and they all sat down in her office. Van crossed her legs, marveling as she felt that muscles that had formed there over the past few weeks. She unconsciously flicked at her skirt and smiled over at Frank. Frank squirmed. She blinked then glanced back to Steve who folded his hands in his lap and licked his lips.

                “Vanessa, Frank informs me that you are planning on leaving us very soon?”

                Ah, so this was what Frank had been up to. She smiled back at Steve Peterson.

                “Yes, Steve, I am in fact down to my last three weeks before I leave.”

                Steve glanced at Frank, one eyebrow raised, Frank to his credit only squirmed a little then shrugged. Steve nodded as if making up his mind about something and looked back over.

                “We are prepared to offer you a promotion to director of Marketing with a substantial raise in salary, if we can persuade you to stay with the firm?” Steve gives her his million dollar smile.

                Vanessa keeps her smile in place as she ponders what a substantial raise would entail. After a reasonable pause she shook her head slightly and watched to her great amusement Frank’s shoulders tense.

                “Are you sure, We’d be open to negotiations on the benefits and perhaps even the salary.” Steve said trying to smile even bigger.

                Wow, apparently I never gave myself much credit of my importance to the company- or… Vanessa pursed her lips realizing that there was something more going on. She shrugged slightly and shook her head again.

                “I am sure we can offer you more than Russell Nash can with more perks than he has.” Steve announced as he steepled his fingers in front of him. Frank looked so tight she figured he would snap in two at any moment.  

                Aha and oh ho, as Spencer would say at a critical moment in his books. The truth is revealed. Steve doesn’t want her to go so much as to her personal importance to the firm as much as he cannot deal with losing an employee to his nemesis, Russell Nash across town. Van almost laughed and her eyes sparkled as she shook her head in an effort not to giggle. She succeeded in stilling the laughter, as delicious as it was. Her mouth quirked into a grin as she watched Steve’s expression go from incredulous to a dark shade of red- anger or embarrassment or both?

                “Steve-“  Vanessa began.

                “Mr. Paterson.”

                Well, that was the way of things.

                “Mr. Paterson, while I am flattered by these offers, I am afraid I cannot accept them.” She held up her hand to stop him from interrupting. “I am not sure what you have been told but I can assure you that Mr. Nash has not made me any offers. I am not leaving the firm to go work for a competitor.  No, I am not” - this at his sudden scornful look of disbelief.  “I am leaving the for a change of career and scenery.”

                “Well, Ms. Schumpert I am sorry to hear that but the offer still stands despite my own personal feelings to the contrary.” And with that he stormed out of her office. Frank stood wiped his hands in his best Pontius Pilate imitation (though Vanessa seriously doubted that Frank had ever read the Bible) gave her the evil eye and walked to her door before stopping and looking back at her.

                “You know, I am not fooled by any of this. We both know what you are up to and I won’t be held accountable when the chips are down.”

                Talk about mixing metaphors. Frank was the king of that and never even knew it, well she wasn’t going to point it out.

                “Frank, I told you that I am not pulling a fast one, I want to travel and go on a-“

                “Vanessa stop kidding yourself, we both know the whole adventure-“ and here he held up his hands to make an exaggerated quotes expression before continuing “ is complete malarkey.”

                She must have shaken her head as she shrugged because Frank flapped his arms, threw up his hands and slammed out of her office. Vanessa sighed as she leaned back in her chair. She spun around to look one last time out of her office window.

                “Leavin of an jet-plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again.” She sang to herself as she spotted the hunky guy from her office musings making his way through the construction site. She waved down at him, more for herself than any hope he could see her.

                Sue came in later to announce that the staff was waiting in the break room and there was cake. So she followed Sue out to the break room where the men and women from her department yelled surprise and her going away party started. Sue led the staff in singing “For she’s a good fellow” before presenting her with the ginormous cake. Everyone lined up for cake and punch which tasted quite alcoholic.

                People would come up and ask her where she was going and Sue-who was a bit tipsy by that point would interject over anything Vanessa would say and tell them outrageous lies.

                “She’s joined the brothers of Assisi and is moving to Tibet to live in a monastery.”

Or

                “She taking up professional bull fighting and moving to Mexico (which she pronounced as MEHIKO).”

Or

                “She’s joined the space program and is being launched into space Friday.”

Following one of the last statements, Vanessa escorted Sue to a couch and had her sit down for awhile until she thought the woman would sober up a bit and stop giggling.  

getting ready

                The day Vanessa packed she found that she had reduced her life down to 4 pairs of Old Navy Jeans,  a blue jean skirt and dress that appealed to her by Levi Straus, 4 pairs of LL Bean  canvas cargo pants, 6 tee shirts, 5 light weight blouses from Kohl’s in pastel colors, 4 plaid over shirts, a pair of Hiking boots from Newman Marcus, a pair of Sketchers cross trainers and 1 set of Christian Dior Heels she could not bear to part with, A tidy pile of Hanes comfort wear, a couple of no-nonsense stockings, 4 pairs of sports socks and 1 pair of black tights with a blue leopard print leotard. Several sports bras and one silky Victoria’s secret wonder bra, a couple of baseball caps chosen at random- one an LA Ink and the other a Seattle Seahawks plus 2 pairs of Ray bans and they bags were full.  There was a small bag of toiletries along with minimal makeup and a couple of Burt’s Bees Lip gloss. Surprising it all fit into a pretty compact suitcase and backpack assortment.

                She looked down at this accomplishment not without a sense of wonder at being methodical enough to reduce her wardrobe down so effectively and efficiently to fit it all into the two pieces of luggage so quickly. She was also thoroughly efficient in her other choices. She purchased an ereader and connected it to her laptop and downloaded every book she had ever owned, then selected several camping guides and a selection of travel/survival books and a complete set of fantasy books including the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, The Wheel of Time, Memory sorrow and thorn, A song of Ice and Fire as well as Earthsea and Chronicles of Narnia. She included several other books that looked interesting before going over all the music she had ripped from her CD collection before remembering to go back and get some books on homeopathic medicine and remedies as well as a book on herbalism and plant gathering.

                The next day she realized that a power source for recharging would be unlikely so she went to Radio Shack and Best buy and bought extra batteries for her laptop and some battery boosters and whatever else the all too happy clerk recommended. She had money to burn from the sale of her car and the advance on her condo so she didn’t haggle much over it. The clerk at Radio shack armed her with 2 smart phones, a thing he called a “burner phone” which looked like a prepaid cell phone to her. She turned down the GPS since the Smart phones had something almost as effective, she almost bought one anyway but got an emergency beacon instead and hand-powered flashlight/radio.

                On her way home she picked up a small stack of notebooks, pencils and pens and a compact photo album which she selected her favorite photos and printed them and placed into it over the following week. She bought a small backpack that could double as a purse and sorted out everything she thought she would need to carry in it. At some point she wondered if there was any point to credit cards and pitched all but one American Express, she kept the cash and wondered if there would be some way to exchange currency at the border. She sat there in the center of her living room surrounded by all this stuff laughing at herself since she wasn’t sure if there would be a border much less currency.

                She packed and repacked it all several times wondering what the hell did she think she was doing. Then she repacked making sure to leave out an outfit for traveling. Then it was time to go to bed and go back to work. Work was meaningless. And yet the less interested she became with her job the better that Frank seemed to think she was doing with it.  Each night following work she would pack and repack all the gear testing it to see if she could carry it around the condo easily without killing her back.

                She had decided the day following the visit to her parents house, pretty much on the point of the decision that she would go wherever Quest would take her that she had to not only get equipped but also get some training or as much training as the window of time would allow. The next day following work she went out to a local Dojo/school that a girl at her gym recommended and talked the owner one Mr. Steven Wong to take her into the beginner class in Jujitsu and Kung fu. Turned out the reason he was reluctant was that she was not only the only woman in the class but she was also the oldest participant by 20 years!

                There she stood amongst 7-12 year old kids learning the basics. She had to spar with the instructor who could stop grinning. Van just shook her head and concentrated on the task at hand. Eventually after 3 classes the instructor relented and told her he had an adult class she could join. Despite the obviousness of the ruse to see if she was really dedicated to learning, Van actually missed the kids more than she let on. Kids are after all mostly guileless and honest. The adult’s participant wanted to be kind or date her or both so they lied about how well she did or didn’t do and she never really felt she got a measure of if she was getting progress in her fighting skills.

                While she was selling off her worldly goods, packing up the remainder and learning Kung Fu, she enrolled in the Police sponsored self defense class and joined the Tae Bo class at the gym. Some days she went non-stop, up at dawn down to the gym for a spinning class then hit the showers and off to work until lunch when she would run – yes almost sprint the five blocks for a 30 minute session at the Wong’s dojo and then back to work then catch a light supper and then go either to Tae Bo or the evening class of Jujitsu meets Kung Fu for 2 hours and then home to pack and repack her goods. Bed came late and she rose early to begin again. Oddly her performance at work improved with the new routine   rather than worsen and Frank left meetings with a big mysterious smile on his face. She hardly noticed the months slip by and before she realized it two had passed before she remembered that the time must be coming soon.

                After the self defense class came to an end she enrolled in the Firefighter’s CPR training class. She received a very warm welcome from the 14^th and many volunteer victims to resuscitate. After several come-ons she found that they were all very willing to teach her quite a bit of first responder aid and dole out advice on what to do in emergencies. Most were disappointed to learn that Van had little to no time for dinner or dates as she had enrolled herself out of anytime to date. Always having a class to go to or something work related when not. She never had to lie about not being able to even after some pretty tempting offers came her way. She would close her eyes as a new offer was made and envision a battlefield and not being able to patch up a comrade or protect him or her from an unseen enemy and the no came out quite naturally and pleasantly.

                Van even talked a very surprised Wong into giving her some weapons training towards the end. She was a very determined student albeit a very inexperienced one and while she could hold her own sparring most of it was very robotic as most beginners are. Wong reluctantly agreed to let her attend his weapons classes on the weekends but not participate in the sparring since he could not see her being able to go toe to toe with the men in the class. After the first class Van could see why. The men were mostly amused, annoyed and irritated that she was there at all and did everything they could to show off or show her up when they thought they could get away with it.

giving it away

She knew that Quest was- one weird dude as her brother, Kevin, so amply put it when she tried to tell him about it. He had mostly shrugged as she spoke and recounted the money she had given to him as he stood in her doorway. She had sold off her most of her worldly possession s including a pretty extensive CD collection and shoe collection to boot. She grinned at her lame joke; Kevin had rolled his eyes as he stood there with the cash in his hand. She had gotten the money together and paid off bills and was left with a tidy sum of it, then decided she might as well give it to him.

                He had laughed nervously and actually looked embarrassed as she told him that she loved him and would miss him dearly. He took her money but she could tell that he didn’t believe a word of what she had said. He never had believed any of what she had said in the past, still most of her threats had proven to be little more than empty ones and Kevin treated this one like the others. He gave her a lopsided grin and hugged her and told her to come by for a beer sometime and left, recounting the money, all the while shaking his head at his crazy sister.

                She gave some of her CDs to Tom and tried again to explain why but he shook his head in confusion and then asked sheepishly if she would give him her stereo. She had given it to him and most of her movies. The Television she gave to his wife Anne along with a DVD player with strict instruction to ration access in exchange for house and yard work. Anne had smiled at the thought and Tom had look kind of sick at the thought of what was surely coming.

                Vanessa invited Sally over for a meal which they ate at her kitchen bar since most of the furniture was gone by that point and presented the woman with just about all of her jewelry and makeup. Sally had giggled and laughed and tried on several pieces before the suspicion painted itself on her face and she had given Vanessa with a hard look.

                “What’s going on?”

                “I am going away for a long time, Sally.”

                “Right.”

                “No, I mean it where I am going there won’t be much use or need for the makeup and jewelry.”

                “Uh-huh.”

                “You can take whatever business suits you like as well. “

                “Oh.”

                In the end, Sally had taken 6 outfits, 4 pairs of shoes- which she barely fit into, and all the jewelry and the makeup. As she said goodbye she had shook her head, then turned and walked a few steps.

                “Have you given notice yet?”

                “Nope, I was hoping that you would serve notice to the firm for me…please.”

                “Oh, Okay.”

                In the end, Sally agreed to serve the notice in exchange for the jewelry, 4 pairs of shoes, most of the makeup, 2 bottles of Aloe skin moisturizer, 3 CDs of Rascal Flatts and 2 bottles of wine would have been three but they drank most it during the negotiations.