Come Back, My Love

Five years ago, in Maryland, Rex was sitting idly in his office looking out the window during the first days of spring semester break in early March, when his secretary, Roseanne Croft, brought in the latest copy of The Chronicle of Higher Education—the bible of administrative educators—with a few positions circled for his attention, and laid it on his desk atop the other mail.

"Something for you in the morning mail."

He swiveled around and looked at the circled ads. She stood there and waited for him to read them. When he looked up at her, she said, "Which one will it be?"

"Wait a minute now. What are you telling me?"

"I know which one I’d like if I were you."

"I’m not looking for a job. I have one."

"You’ve been here what now...eight years?"

"And I’ve settled in."

"To the same old stuff day after day. Nothing will change here. You’re young and need a challenge. Let’s face it, you’re just going through the motions." She sat down across the desk from him. "I’ve been through three deans and I could tell when it was time for them to leave. I know when the Board gets itchy. I don’t want it to happen to you. I want you to leave before they look for reasons to get rid of you. You’re too good to be destroyed by them. Sometimes they’re so absorbed in their own mindless, political self-interests that they don’t care who they destroy. I’ve seen them change unaccountably from praise to bitterness to destruction from one board meeting to the next, all because of state politics and their posturing for appointments."

The position in The Chronicle which interested him was on the West Coast.

He worked with Roseanne to update his Vita and off it went with a cover letter in the late afternoon mail pickup.

Ten days later he received a phone call on his private line and was asked by Don Hewlett of the Valley Villa Search Committee to fly out for a personal interview with them and the Board of Trustees. He took an early morning flight out of Baltimore; arriving early afternoon, he picked up his Hertz rental car at San Francisco airport and drove two hours south to Monterey where arrangements had been made for his two-day stay at The Doubletree Hotel.

From his sixth-floor window, Monterey Bay was a frozen Pollock canvas of interlacing marine colors—sapphire, jade, cobalt, turquoise; the blinding afternoon sun starrily flickered on the white crests and plumbed its mysterious depths. The cloudless sky, a concave mantle of lapis, invertedly cupped the sea on the horizon.

After unpacking and showering, he went down to the coffee shop and had a combination sandwich and coffee. When he finished, he took out his directions to Valley Villa College which Don Hewlett had given him over the phone. From the hotel, he knew how to get back to Route 1 South; all he had to look for was the left turn onto Carmel Valley Road.

The deeper he drove into Carmel Valley, the more mountainous and rural it became.