| That Guy By Jim Correale �Who�s that guy?� Rene was looking down the corridor at a man about my age who was wearing a smart gray suit and carrying a sleek black briefcase. Just as she spoke the man had caught sight of me after appearing out of sorts for a moment, and then he began to walk down the hall toward me. I was leaning against the silver radiator beneath a large window. Outside the autumn evening was squeezing the light from the day. Rene held tightly onto the fingers of my left hand with both of hers. The nine-year-old girl was repeatedly leaning back on her heels and then pulling herself upright while we talked. As she swayed backward I tightened my hold in case her fingers slipped. When he was perhaps twenty feet away, David let out a greeting of �Hey� and I responded with �What�s up?� He placed his briefcase on the floor by his feet. From the rooms down the hall came the voices of children and the constant clink of pool balls, snap of ping-pong balls and whirr of foosball men. The muffled noises of teenagers playing basketball in the gym came up through the floor like the foreshadowing tremors of an earthquake. �David, this pretty young lady here is Rene,� I said. Of course she blushed. �Rene, this is David. He�s an old friend of mine. We went to school together.� David tilted his head, smiled and said hello to the girl. She looked at him and said nothing. �So how�s work going,� I asked him, and we launched into a little small talk. All the while, Rene clung to my fingers, falling back and pulling up. David had come to the community youth center as a favor to me. He was a senior accountant for one of the city�s largest real estate development companies, and our board of directors was, as usual, in turmoil and in need of some good people with business backgrounds and a few corporate connections. I had introduced David to Harold Williams, our well-meaning, but often frazzled executive director, at a fundraiser the previous month and my old schoolmate had agreed to attend the first board meeting of the new fiscal year and to apply for membership with the body. I appreciated David�s efforts, for I knew he was working long hours at the firm. He had assured me that it would be no problem; that one meeting a month plus a couple of days of assisting at fundraisers was not a problem. Heck, the golf tournament was right up his alley�he had been a participant since the first year, often bringing a foursome or two from the office. Crack! A pool cue smacked the wooden floor, slipping from the small and inattentive hand of a youngster. The noise occurred no fewer than a dozen times a day and reverberated throughout the entire building. David scrunched his shoulders at the sound. Rene and I did not react. Moments later I interrupted the conversation and asked David to excuse me. Slightly raised voices were coming from the gameroom, and I went to investigate. Rene trailed silently behind me. I settled the dispute between the ping-pong players, cautioned the pool players to hold tightly to their cues and took control of the blue foosball team that was standing idly by as a boy manipulated the red team. I knocked the ball around the playing surface a bit before sliding it by his goaltender. He smiled and jerked his head to one side. I looked up and David was in the doorway laughing. He looked around the room. He had been a member at the youth center as I had when we were kids. �OK,� I said to my foosball opponent, �Rene is going to finish this game for me. And she�s pretty good.� She stepped up and took over the contest, and I went over to where David stood. Behind him, sweaty teenagers�taking a break from their game in the gym�were gathering around the water fountain. �The place hasn�t changed much, huh?� David asked. In some ways it hadn�t, though I was sure that I wasn�t doing as good a job as program director as had any of those who proceeded me; certainly not as good as Joe Dennis, the guy who ran the place when we were kids. Behind David, Teddy was taking a little too long with his turn at the water fountain. Some shoving had started and now he was standing there not drinking and telling those behind him he would finish his drink only when the others stopped pushing. Teddy was a pretty annoying kid. I went over and told him to drink and made the others back up and after a couple seconds put my hand on Teddy�s shoulder and said, �Next person,� and before Teddy could argue the next teenager had his finger on the button and his lips in place and Teddy closed his perpetual motion machine of a mouth and ambled to the back of the line. David watched all of this with a mixture of puzzlement and embarrassment. �Let�s go upstairs and find Harold,� I said. The executive director�s office and the small space we called the boardroom were on the top floor of the facility, which was a converted school building. Halfway down the corridor I poked my head into the arts & crafts room and I heard my name called. A girl with shoulder length dirty blonde hair ran over clutching something in her paint-spattered hands. She held out the object to me, and I could see it was a small plaster figure decorated in a wild array of colors. �Is it dry?� I asked. �Almost,� the girl, who was 12, said. �Well, why don�t you set it down until it�s dry and then you can bring it down to me later, OK?� She shook her head and I thanked her. David and I walked onto the end of the hall, where we found Harold behind a desk piled high with papers. |