“The questions kids ask today,” Mr. Leonard grinned.

Kit spoke with deep conviction: “My daddy makes 10,000 dollars a week.”

“You don't say,” Mr. Leonard patted her on the head and chuckled. “With money like that, your daddy must be slumming at San Anselmo.”

“What's slumming?” Kit asked.

Night school class. Photo Courtesy of Living Library

“Well, it's when you're a prince or a superhero and you try to live like an ordinary person among ordinary people,” Mr. Leonard said.

Jason said, “That's what I've been doing my whole life.”

“Da-ad!” she chided. “You're an actor.

As Jason stood by the coffee urn, Mr. Leonard was saying, “I schmoozed with Roxie, our principal, yesterday.” He shrugged, “Look, gotta do what you gotta do.”

Jason drank the coffee down to where it gave way to granular sugar and grounds. He rolled them over his tongue.

“The Credential Committee is coming in June,” Mr. Leonard said.

Jason's eyes glazed over, he suppressed a burgeoning yawn. Mention mind-numbing educational jargon, you might as well shoot Jason full of Ambien: tenure (insurance against life), accreditation (zoops!), methodology (yawn), curriculum (yikes), syllabus (silly-bus) and so forth.

“It'll give 'em something to show when the committee comes. We take pictures, shoot some video,” said Mr. Leonard. “Roxie dug the idea of ESL theater. All they got to do is get approval from downtown and it's a done deal. Thanks entirely to you.”

Jason's interest excited and his ego woke up at the sound of YOU!

“When you did the yes-no exercise with the two Marias. They showed emotions—something totally lacking from the classroom," said Mr. Leonard. "That's when I got the idea that the students could cotton to rehearsal and different feelings. Students will be ready for drama that your exercise evoked.”

“Wow! I'm stoked,” Jason said.

“You're a poet, Jason--! Evoked and stoked. When you showed up at San Anselmo, I gotta be honest. I had misgivings about being around an actor. O thought 'Oh god, here we go again.'”

“I'm not a poet, I'm an actor,” Jason gasped, “Where's Kit?”

With startling suddenness, Jason grasped that his daughter had been off his parental radar for a few minutes. It was the last drop of a cumulative Chinese water torture over the morning's erratic course, dripping against a pond's surface, the pond of peace and equanimity.

Drip – Suzanne asked for more money.

Drip – $35.07 in his bank account.

Drip – Suzanne had a TV show. The other college classmate had a play running on Broadway. He was in the third chair at Eureka College. When was Jason's day in the sun going to hit?
Drip – Kit disappeared.

You got enough drips he went kerflooey. His head whipped around, his breath constricted, “Where is Kit?” His head and ears elsewhere, he said, “Where did she go?” If she could just disappear through a crack in the ground, it wouldn't matter. It would be all her fault. It reached that point where the drip, drip, drip vexations had a cumulative effect, and he snapped into stress-out mode when he'd been around her too much. But of course, it mattered: she was his heart, his life.

He had entertained his doubts about Mr. Leonard, and now he'd left Kit all alone in an institution run by a class of men whose decorum and strewardship of children was more impeachable than unimpeachable.

Than a piercing voice reached his ears—Kit! Off he and Mr. Leonard raced through the church's cavernous kettle-filled kitchen. A crowd of students were gathered at the foot of the junk-filled stage in the social hall. With the help of the two Marias, she had held aloft a Christmas ornament, a tarnished bauble that wouldn't fetch 15 cents in a flea market. She turned her hands into a megaphone, “Five dollars. Cinco dólares!”

The dollar bills flew from the humble students pockets on origami wings and filled a bucket to overflowing. The dusty stereo speakers, the 8-track player and cassettes, the sewing machine, wires and cables and Christmas ornaments vanished, revealing the stage's shiny floorboards to the open air for the first time in years.

The portly priest walked in, gazed at the crowd engaged in a bidding war.

“What's going on?” Father Javier cried.

(to be continued)

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