Jacqui made a Columbo-like turn back into the room. She stood, large and awkward, her eyes lowered, and she waited, expectant but patient, for an opening in the farewell conversations going on between some students and me. She already knew what her grade was likely to be. She knew that no matter how poorly (within reason) or how well she had performed on the morning's final exam, that she would probably receive a B for her work in this class. She had given me a stamped envelope in which I would mail her the final results and return her final paper. She knew to expect me to mail these items by next Tuesday. We had said goodbye already. But there was more apparently.

I looked around the classroom -- a plain room with little personality and even less now that the students were leaving. Cinder-block walls, a whiteboard mounted on one wall, trapezoidal student tables set up in three rows, molded plastic chairs, nothing on the walls other than a bulletin board with course announcements, and over Jacqui's shoulder by the door a plaque showing the building exit plan. A fire extinguisher hung in the corner, its inspection tag dusty and limp. I wondered if she had left her keys, a book, a purse behind. In a room as uncluttered as this, I could easily see that nothing was out of place.

I've had jobs in the past where I've talked to myself. Twenty years ago in the course of a job I had grown to hate, while I was walking through a skywalk that connected an oil company's office tower to a four-star hotel, I startled myself when voiced words -- not just muttered or whispered -- erupted unbidden and apparently unpreventable from my mouth.

"I gotta get outta here."

A few steps later: "I hate this shit."

"Excuse me?" said an approaching stranger.

"Sorry." I hurried on. Damn!

There was nothing wrong with the job itself. The employer was progressive. The pay was generous. The trappings were great. But even though the work was interesting and challenging and often even fun, it required skills that didn't (don't) come to me naturally although I forced myself to perform well. At the time, I didn't understand how unsuitable I was for the job. I thought the grinding of my internal gears was the norm. Introspection and self-analysis weren't (aren't) my strong points, you see. Haven't really identified any, as a matter of fact. More of a generalist.

So I left the job, and took another similar one that paid even more. And I was good at it. Led the company in several areas for many years, even though I was working now in a smaller market than many of my peers. Sucked at other parts, a symptom maybe. But the muttering started again, aloud again too.

"I gotta get outta this job."

Eventually I left that job too, retooled, and started teaching.

Jacqui continued to hover on the fringe. Up until the next few moments, quite frankly what I remembered most about Jacqui was her distress over her score on the first test (she had neglected to answer two questions), and the fact that she had tacitly declined to be drawn into many of the classroom discussions. Now, as the students I'd been visiting began to gather their book bags and don their coats, she stepped into the circle.

In a classroom that had been populated with students who were aggressively and recreationally argumentative, Jacqui had seldom spoken up. When she spoke now, the other students quieted themselves and stopped their packing.

Softly. "Mr. Patterson, I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed this class."

She went on for another minute, speaking more words in that minute than I had heard her speak in my previous 48 hours of classroom time with her. The specifics don't matter. Thank you, I said to myself.

"Thanks, Jacqui."

That's all there was. The students departed. I gathered my equipment and the student papers together, the last person in the building now, when another set of words erupted unbidden and unpreventable and aloud.

"I love this place."

Anthony, in this same class, has finished his classes for now and will soon return to Brooklyn to help his mother, who recently underwent a triple bypass.

I've been reading Steve Amaya's journal Evaporation for about six months now, and given the caliber of his writing, thinking and wit, I am amazed that he hasn't considered the duct tape fix for the Dockers problem (the hem, not the crotch) mentioned in his entry "Are Innies Out?"