10
“Are you sure you’re not just feeling sorry for yourself?” Johnna asked.
She was standing at the foot of the king-sized bed, arms folded across her chest, facing into the bathroom. I had just spat out the residue of my consciously applied oral hygiene. I straightened and focused on her in the mirror.
As we ate last night I had told her of my inefficiencies earlier in the day. They had become larger and as I recounted them more visceral to me as examples of my ineptitude. A night of fitful sleep followed.
“What? Me?”
“Christ, you just listed about a million reasons you think you suck at your profession.”
“They’re all accurate. And that’s just from yesterday. And I don’t think I am feeling sorry for myself. What the hell is that?”
“I have seen you under pressure and here’s my assessment of your reaction to it.”
“Fabulous. Let me have it.”
“In the moment when you become aware of the pressure you panic, but just for that moment. I have always thought it had to do more with the expectations others may have of you than anything else. I saw it in Springfield and I heard it in your voice from Canada. I saw it at supper last night. You can handle the pressure, but the fear you may let others down…that’s a different issue.”
I closed the toilet lid and sat. I pressed a brilliant white hand towel from a brass rack to my face and listened. I knew it was my task to separate the emotional from the intellectual in what Johnna was telling me. Knowing one’s task and executing said task are not the same thing.
Johnna was equally smart, smarter than I, and intuitive. She also was the primary agent, perhaps sounding board is a better term, in my evolution as a person. I valued her opinion even when it was unwelcome.
“See sweetie, once you have worked out the expectations shit, you’re OK. You’ll be OK this time, too.
“I’d feel better if I had been more productive yesterday. I went into a meeting with a woman who considers her life in danger and had zero idea…shit, I wasn’t even sure why I went to Portland in the first place.”
“Shake it off, it’s over.”
“I know, I know. I just needed a little of your sledge hammer to the thoracic vertebra bedside manner.”
“Happy to oblige.”
“Now, if I had a better handle on what this woman wants of me…”
“Well, look at it this way: perhaps you can’t worry about living up to her expectations if she hasn’t defined any.”
“You know you’re right, but that points to what a fuck up I can be, too. I took a job from someone who was either unable or unwilling to articulate what she wanted of me. That’s not the wisest way to conduct business in this profession, is it?”
“Yeah, and you saw fit for some reason to give her your car and your home.”
Johnna was pulling a silk tee shirt over her head. If Mislava could see what I was seeing she would have no questions about Sparky’s gender.
Through the material she said, “I can’t solve all your problems, asshole… Come on the boat will leave without us.”
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