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Summer 1984
"Okay, does anyone have any other questions about this section?" Rodney Johnson asked as he stood in front of the hotel conference room that had been converted into a classroom.
He paused a few moments to allow the men and women sitting at the five rows of computer terminals in front of him to decide if they had. When no questions were forthcoming, the bearded black man glanced, first at his watch, then the large clock on the wall.
"It's a quarter after twelve," he then said, "so why don't we break here for lunch? We'll pick it up again at one-thirty, so please try and be back on time because we have a lot to cover this afternoon."
With more than a few sighs of relief, the twenty attendees of 'Introduction to Lotus 123' closed their workbooks and began to gather their belongings. All except the light haired nineteen-year-old sitting at the end of the back row. As he had been doing all morning, Jeremy Newman continued to scribble notes in the margins of his book. It wasn't until the room was half empty that he finally put down his pen.
As a clerk in the mailroom of Layton, Dandridge and Sutton, Jeremy's job responsibilities really had no relation to any of the material being covered during the two-day course, but he had signed up for it with an eye on the future, when he hoped to be more than a simple clerk. Putting his name on the sign-up sheet had been, he knew, a long shot in itself, as the posting on the bulletin board had stated that preference would be given based on an applicant's job title and seniority. So it had come as a surprise when, just before he'd clocked out last night, his boss had told him that a place in the class had unexpectedly opened and if he was still interested, he could have it. It seemed that anyone senior who'd already expressed an interest had already gone for the day and the training manager wasn't about to start calling people at home.
The class was being held at the Carrington, a small hotel on the upper west side of Manhattan that derived more of its revenue these days from renting out its first and second level conference rooms than the four floors of lodgings above them. It was conveniently located for most of the attendees, with Jeremy being a notable exception. In his case, getting there from his home on the south shore of Staten Island required a train ride to the ferry at Saint George, a trip across the harbor to Whitehall on that, and then the subway up to West 86th Street. As it was, he barely got to the class before they closed the doors. Still, he thought the class was worth all the trouble.
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As he pushed his keyboard back toward the bulky terminal screen, Jeremy was startled by a familiar but unexpected voice from behind him.
"You weren't peeking ahead toward the end of the book to see how it ends, were you?" the soft voice asked.
Jeremy turned and found himself facing Juliet Wilkes, one of the secretaries from the firm. Five three and a hundred and fifty pounds, the fifty-four-year-old worked for Thomas Sutton, the son of one of the firm's original partners. Slightly overweight, part of which seemed centered around her prominent bust, Juliet had short chestnut brown hair, lightly streaked with gray, that framed a pleasant yet ordinary face. A few character lines were visible there as well, but no more than might be expected of a woman her age. She was wearing a sleeveless beige dress that was loose enough to conceal rather than accentuate any excess weight.
"Oh, hi, Mrs. Wilkes," Jeremy said with a smile as he closed his workbook and slid it into his knapsack. "I saw your name on the sign up sheet back in the office."
"You might have seen my name, but I certainly didn't sign-up," Juliet said with a small trace of displeasure. "Mr. Sutton volunteered me for this class. I don't know why, though; it's not like I spend my day working with numbers or anything like that."
"Computers are the future," Jeremy said with excitement. "Mr. Sutton probably sees that. And it's not just accounting, there's word processing and a lot of other things. In fact, I'm willing to bet that it's not going to be long before having a computer on your desk is going to be as common as having a typewriter there is now."
"God forbid," Juliet laughed, then added, if so, she hoped she'd be retired by then.
"I think it's all fascinating," Jeremy beamed, using one of his favorite television character's trademark phrases.
"You actually understand everything the teacher was talking about?" Juliet asked.
"Most of it," he replied. "My high school had a computer lab and I got to work with VisiCalc a bit. It's a simpler spreadsheet program, but similar enough that I at least understand the basics of Lotus."
"I have no idea what Visi-whatever that is either," Juliet laughed. "Back when I was in high school, we still used an abacus, so all this is Greek to me."
Jeremy laughed as well, recalling a drawing of one of those in a textbook. He then offered his opinion that he was sure Juliet would get it eventually.
"Somehow, I doubt that," she countered.
"You know, if you still had questions, you should've asked Mr. Johnson to explain it again," Jeremy pointed out. "That's what he's there for, right?"
"Well, first off, I wasn't even sure what to ask," Juliet said, "and even if I did, I could tell that the people around me were getting antsy, asking among themselves when were we going to break for lunch. I didn't want to stretch out the morning session any more than it had already been."
Jeremy thought that was a silly attitude; after all, they were here to learn. He almost said so when he had a better thought.
"If you want, I could go over it with you, maybe help you understand it better," he offered, following the advice of his favorite high school teacher, who always said the best way to remember something was to explain it to someone else.
"You'd do that?" Juliet asked, surprise in her tone.
"Sure, why not?" the young man replied.
"What are you doing for lunch?" she asked.
"I brought my lunch," Jeremy said, lifting a paper bag that had been resting next to his knapsack. A bag that he knew contained a sandwich from home, a bottle of Yoo-hoo and a piece of fruit.
"Oh I'm sure we can do better than that, especially if you're going to help me with this stuff," Juliet said.
In the year Jeremy had been with the company, he'd made a number of friends, but most had been in the back offices down on the nineteenth floor. When he went up to twenty, where the executive offices were, to deliver mail or supplies, he might as well have been invisible -- especially to most of the women that worked there. Juliet, though, was an exception, always offering a friendly hello and asking how his day was going.
"We can go to the restaurant down in the lobby, or if you want, we could look for something outside the hotel," she said.
"Either one would be fine," Jeremy replied.
"Downstairs it is then," Juliet decided, "it'll give us the most time to talk."
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