The Wall of Fame

The next morning, Amanda found Ben waiting outside the office with two cups of coffee. He handed one to her without saying anything, as if this had already become a routine. They walked toward the dining hall while the camp was still waking up, the paths quiet and the lake almost perfectly still. Ben seemed unusually nervous, which Amanda found charming because nervousness was not a quality she associated with him anymore. The boy she’d picked up drunk outside the bar had become increasingly confident, increasingly comfortable in his own skin. He took a breath and asked her out.

Amanda looked at him over the rim of her coffee. “A date?”

“With me.”

She smiled. “I have a condition.”

He waited.

“You stay away from the pretty little blondes for one week. No flirting, no kissing, no disappearing into the woods with anyone. One week, and then I’ll consider going on a date with you.”

Ben thought about it for barely a second. “Easy.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He took another drink of coffee, looking entirely too pleased with himself. Amanda realized she’d just watched him negotiate a contract without negotiating anything. “That doesn’t mean we have a date.”

“It means I’m one week away from having a date.”

“You’re very optimistic.”

“I’ve been told that’s one of my better qualities.”

She shook her head, smiling despite herself. Then Ben, sensing that she was feeling generous, decided to push his luck.

“Can I drive your car?”

Amanda laughed. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a six-speed.”

“I can drive a six-speed.”

“You’ve never driven a six-speed.”

“You can teach me.”

She looked at him. He gave her the same innocent smile he’d had the night she’d picked him up at the bar, except now there was something different behind it. The innocence was still there, but so was confidence. He knew she liked him.

“After the campers are asleep,” she said.

His grin widened. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do not call me ma’am! I’d rather hear you call me ‘boss’ again.”

That night, Amanda drove the BMW to the far end of the camp road. The campers were asleep, most of the counselors had disappeared into their cabins, and the road was empty except for the occasional deer and the moths circling the headlights. Ben climbed behind the wheel while Amanda sat beside him, explaining the clutch.

“Slowly,” she said.

“I am going slowly.”

“You’re murdering the transmission.”

The car lurched forward and the gears ground with a metallic shriek that made Amanda wince.

Ben looked at her. “Was that bad?”

“That was the automotive equivalent of a cry for help.”

He laughed and tried again. This time he found the clutch. The BMW rolled forward smoothly, then accelerated. He shifted into second. Then third.

Amanda watched his hands.

“Okay,” she said. “Now you’re driving.”

Ben glanced over at her with a triumphant smile. “I told you.”

Ten minutes later they were flying down the empty Maine road with the windows open, Amanda’s hair blowing across her face and Ben laughing beside her. John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” blasted from the speakers. Amanda laughed so hard she could barely breathe. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a car without having somewhere she needed to be. No airport. No client. No meeting. No deadline. No productivity metric. Just a road disappearing into the darkness and an eighteen-year-old boy who had somehow learned to drive her BMW in less than twenty minutes.

For once, she didn’t need to optimize the experience.

She only needed to enjoy it.

They pull into a public docking space. Cut the engine. They sat on the wood dock, looking up at the stars. Ben gave her a “camp chilled” beer which means it had been sitting in a car trunk all day. He drank with ease. She tried not to spit out the first sip.

He laughed, “It’s been a while you’ve had to slum and drink warm beer.”

“I’ve never drank warm beer.”

“You didn’t have any wild days?”

“No. Every summer was an internship. Professional experience opportunity. The only time I drank was to network. And it was drilled into me early never to have more than two while networking.”

“It makes me sad. It’s sounds like you never had fun.”

“I had fun. Just not the kind that you’ve been having with these sorority girls.”

His blue eyes searched hers, “What type of fun do you think I’m having with these girls?”

She blushed and turned away, “I’m not discussing my observations.”

He squeezed her in a hug, “Observations need to be stated so they can be checked. If not they’re just personal perspective which may be skewed. Just know I like you. On our next dated we will not be drinking warm beer.”

The next morning, reality returned.

At 6:14, the camp radio crackled with a maintenance problem. The women’s shower house had a clogged toilet. The maintenance crew wasn’t on-site yet, and calling someone in would mean emergency pay. Amanda looked at the schedule, looked at the budget, and decided she could handle it herself. This was one of the things she was good at: identifying a problem, calculating the cost of the available solutions, and selecting the one that produced the least waste.

The shower house was empty when she arrived. She grabbed the tools and started toward the bathroom, then noticed something taped to the wall.

A photograph of Ben.

Someone had written BIGGEST FLIRT above it in thick black marker.

Underneath were comments from the counselors. Some were obviously jokes. Some were crude. Some were the kind of things twenty-year-olds wrote when given a permanent marker and too much free time.

“Dick bigger than an ear of corn.”

“Too much tongue when he kisses”—>BUT IT FEELS GREAT ON YOUR KITTY

“Proposed just to get me to the wedding night then divorced me the next morning.”

Amanda understood intellectually that the wall wasn’t evidence. It wasn’t a deposition. It wasn’t even particularly reliable data. But she connected that to her observations: the blondes on his arms, the bicep squeezes, the comments from male counselors about adding another tally.

Amanda had spent the last several months learning that data didn’t always tell you what you wanted to believe.

She stared at Ben’s photograph.

His smile. Those blue eyes.

The same eyes that had looked into hers from the top of the Ferris wheel.

Then she remembered Daniel’s tapes. The lies. The betrayal. The humiliation of realizing that the person she thought she understood had been living an entirely different life.

Her brain did what it had learned to do.

It connected the dots.

Ben wasn’t different.

He was just younger.

She had mistaken attention for affection. She had mistaken a flirtation for something meaningful. She had allowed herself to believe she was special when she was probably just the newest name on a list.

Amanda put down the wrench and walked out of the shower house.

The toilet remained clogged.

For once, she didn’t care.

Ben was waiting outside her office with two cups of coffee. He smiled when he saw her and held one out.

“Morning.”

Amanda walked past him.

He followed. “I brought you coffee.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“You always drink coffee.”

“Not today.”

He stopped walking.

Amanda kept going.

He watched her disappear into the office, completely confused. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He didn’t know there was a wall in a shower house that had become the prosecution’s star witness in a trial that existed entirely inside Amanda’s head.

Amanda didn’t explain.

That was the old Amanda.

When a problem became emotionally complicated, she didn’t investigate the root cause. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t confront the person involved. She simply removed herself from the process and hoped the problem would eventually disappear.

It was exactly how she’d handled Daniel.

And, like before, avoidance felt remarkably efficient right up until it wasn’t.

That afternoon, her phone rang.

New York.

Amanda almost let it go to voicemail, but something made her answer. A recruiter from a national consulting firm introduced herself and explained that they were looking for someone with Amanda’s background. Director-level position. Larger clients. More responsibility. A substantial salary increase. National accounts. More authority. More travel.

Amanda listened without interrupting.

Then the recruiter gave her the number.

Amanda sat back in her chair.

The salary was obscene.

She should have been excited.

Instead, she felt something more dangerous.

Relief.

She knew this world. She knew factories, executives, spreadsheets, flowcharts and PowerPoint decks. She knew how to walk into a failing operation, find the waste, establish the baseline, build the future state and convince everyone that the new process had been their idea all along. She knew how to measure success. She knew how to make herself valuable.

There were no twenty-three-year-old camp gophers in that world with impossible blue eyes and ridiculous smiles.

There were no blonde counselors.

No Ferris wheels.

No confusing feelings.

No possibility of getting hurt.

The recruiter asked if she wanted to interview.

Amanda looked through the office window.

Ben was outside carrying a stack of life jackets toward the waterfront. He stopped when he saw her. Even from a distance, she could see him smile.

She looked away.

“Yes,” Amanda said.

The word came easily.

Too easily.

She hung up the phone and stared at the screen.

Amanda had spent her entire career eliminating variation.

Now she was about to eliminate the one variable she couldn’t control.

Herself.