On the Eve of Negotiations

Dr. Donald Guy Generals overlooks Spring Garden Street from the marble penetralium of his office in the Mint Building. He is a man of power, a man of discipline, a man who does not cave, undaunted by faculty protests, untouched by student unrest, unfazed by the rising demands not only from the bargaining table but beckoning from City Hall. 

Yet late at night, in the corridors of the Mint Building, where whispers of revolution mix with the scent of lavender bleach, she lies in wait. 

He ambles with low shoulders, prowling, easing his feet along the granite floors. Dr. Allen T. Bonnell, the first and founding president, watches from his portrait, flanked by his successors, frozen eternally to their chairs, their childish smiles feigning ignorance of the empire they built. 

Professor Johnson sees through his bravado. The paralegal lecturer by day knows the truth: the faculty is underpaid, the students overburdened, but Dr. Generals, for all his awards and accolades, has yet to face the one battle he cannot win stammering through a specious speech. 

He stops and feels the chill prickle down his vertebrae. He was nervous, but now he is fully unnerved. Illuminated behind by the cold corporate lighting of the hallway, her silhouette casts a long shadow before his unpolished black loafers. He falls into the umbra that is her body and the light ensnares him. 

He lunges hard for a man of his age and grabs for her hips, considerably stronger than his own. Tenderly, but with a firm grasp, he pulls her in. She is breathless, speechless. His chest rises against hers, the weight of administration pressing against resistance. 

“$80 million in reserves,” he murmurs, his voice smooth as the southwestern wind over the Schuylkill. 

She bristles, pulling back like a sycamore rejecting Spring. Her breath catches. How dare he mock her? All day her Faculty and Staff Federation chanted about the college’s financial standing. 

He lunged again, grabbing her palm and waist. A dance. The congas tip-tip-tap-tippy-tapping away in the mind, irreverent of her tension. They play on and on as he sways meekly. Johnson hears the rhythm through the silence. It beats against her like an argument she refuses to lose. 

No. She clenches her fists. The bargaining table awaits. The contracts burn in her mind. Her coworkers needed raises over the next four years that account for inflation. Her students needed smaller class sizes and free SEPTA passes. All of it, with the pebbled sweat glimmering on his bald head, could get wiped away. 

He shifts his hand naturally, bringing her closer to his chest, so she would not look at his forehead so inquisitively. The touch on the small of her back melts her coolness. 

She was his, at his disposal, as was wont for an employee of her stature. 

The vice presidents, the meddling eunuchs of the administrative court, were eager to see what was now out of Bonnell’s view. Quietly, they took turns sneaking eyefuls around the corner of the hallway before pulling back, whispering. 

“He’s slipping,” said Dr. Dave Thomas, nervously stroking his chin and pulling his goatee in a fluid motion. 

“He is too careless when we should be frugal.” Jacob Eapen, the Vice President of Business or whatever, had finances on the mind. 

“Perhaps this is to our benefit. We can make this go out quietly.” Dr. Shannon Rooney had a way of seeing the forest of communications through the meager trees her boss liked to see late at night. 

Johnson struggled against the weight of power and passion. She had come for battle. Not for this. And yet, she dropped to her knees. 

A sharp inhale echoed against the cold marble walls. 

~ 

The table, a polished void of institutional destitution, stretched long and unforgivingly between them. Dr. Generals sat stiffly, his gaze locked in on an inlaid ornate flower, refusing to meet a union eye, lest he happen to find hers. 

Johnson was unshaken. Across the table, she and the union bargaining committee sat tall and unyielding. The proposal being the same as the last and the administrative counterproposal just as meager as the last, the chant began, low and rhythmic, a hymn of solidarity that grew like a rising tide: 

“They don’t like us, WE DON’T CARE! They don’t like us, WE DON’T CARE!” 

The words crashed against him. He gripped the edge of the table, fingers blanched against the wood. He felt it: the lingering heat of the night before, the unspoken moment, the hesitation. He had already lost. He swallowed hard into his dry throat. 

His cabinet of vice presidents flanked him, silent and watchful, their expressions hard like marble as Johnson leaned forward. For the first time, he felt truly afraid.