The Alpha For Her

“How are you this morning?” he asked, lightly.

Jennifer refused to try and find a double meaning.

“I am well,” she said. “And you?”

“I am pleased,” he said with a grin. “Do you realize what you just did? You modified a verb with an adverb. Most people use adjectives – mostly ‘good’.”

“Meals are good,” Jennifer said, grinning back. “As was the one I had last night. Thank you again.”

“My pleasure. Walk with me.”

Lois disappeared into the studio as they crossed the bridge. Jennifer was grateful that he did not take her hand. The path walked by the little brook.

“So,” Flint said.

The word hung in the air.

“So,” Jen replied. She let that one hang a few moments, and then, refusing to be adolescent, she said, “About last night?”

“No,” he said. “About today. We’re ready to start your coaching. Are you?”

“Wait a minute,” she said stopping. He turned to her. “Please – you’re not going to pretend that last night didn’t happen.”

“Nothing of the sort. In fact, I have had to steel my mind to think of other things. Now, I know that this might sound unemotional, perhaps even rude, but I have to compartmentalize. Here and now, I have a task.”

“I see. And so, when, and how will last night find its way into its proper compartment?”

“Now, I will be emotional; we’ll know.”

Jennifer knew that she could either challenge him and force a scene, or she could back away and let him lead. She chose a third way. She leaned into him, laying her head on his shoulder and placing her hand softly on his chest. His response was instinctual; he held her gently.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay.”

They stood like that, listening to the birds and the brook until Jen couldn’t take it anymore.

“Okay,” she said, breaking away and pacing, wringing her hands.

“Thinking again,” he said with a chuckle.

“Yes. And I think – I think that I’m still scared.”

“Then, this becomes more than an opportunity; it becomes a challenge.”

“A challenge…”

“Yes,” he said. “If you fail, then you fail. No big whoop. But if you don’t try, you’ll always wonder. But, the choice is yours. If you want, Lois will take you back, and that’ll be it. You can spend the rest of your time wallowing in luxury, go home with some swag, maybe a quarter of a million dollars, and that’s that.”

“May I ask; what’s with that – the million dollars?”

“It’s an incentive.”

“But you’ve just raised the stakes tremendously,” Jen said. “It was one thing when your little games were about pride; the competition was bad enough then. Now – I’ve already seen one argument.”

“What your generation needs to understand,” Flint said, picking up a stone, “is that this isn’t school; this is real life. In the real world, not everyone is a winner, and you don’t get participation awards. People lose. When I first called you, I gave you a challenge; I sent some ads your way.”

“A challenge?” she said. “I thought that you did that to make a point – to prove that you were you.”

“That too. But the real point – the challenge is keeping those ads. Do you know how many of your competitors have seen them, and are even now plotting to steal those ads somehow? It’s a ruthless world. So, as to the prize money, I didn’t raise the stakes, I made them real.”

Jennifer frowned.

“And so,” Flint said, tossing the stone in the brook, “let’s get back to the challenge at hand. If it’s any incentive, your friend Candy is in. That girl’s a firecracker. I swear, we almost came to blows.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jennifer said, resuming her pacing. “Okay,” she said after a bit. “Okay. I’ll try – I’ll take your challenging opportunity, but on one condition.”

“I don’t–”

“Yeah, well, you’re going to consider this one. I’ll take your challenge, but I am not going to make it my be-all, end-all here. I am not going to do this exclusively. I am not leaving my friends and abandoning their chances at a chunk of change. I’ll take as much as I can, and then go play.”

“Amazing,” Flint said, shaking his head. “That’s almost exactly what Candy said.”

And so in the studio, Jennifer began with vocal training. There was a coach, a linguistic expert, but Flint was there also. The coach had her read a random article from a magazine, then had a conversation with her. He made notes and cringed some. It seemed that Jennifer would clip her final t’s and d’s, glottalized a lot, and had a nasty tendency to fall into the falsetto mode.

“Say whaa?”

“You say an instead of and, hid id instead of hit it, bah-ell instead of bottle, and you can tend to get high and squeaky when you’re excited – like a Valley-girl. But, on the whole, your modal register is sound.”

“I’m so glad.”

She spent some time with the linguist, and then Flint led her to a room that had a wall of mirrors where a woman who worked on her posture, pose and walk.

“But I’ve been walking all my life,” Jennifer protested.

“And I am sure that you have it down perfectly,” the woman replied. “Now we will teach you to waltz.”

And so she learned the basics. It didn’t help that Flint was grinning the whole time. When that was over, it was almost time for lunch. The woman left, and Flint hung around.

“So, how do you think it went?”

“I dunno,” Jennifer said, sling a hip and slouching.

He laughed, slouching in his stool.

“Well,” she asked. “Are my lessons done?”

“For today. Sure. But, tomorrow, in addition to all of this, I am going to want to talk with you about, well, your business philosophy. And to do that, I am going to ask you what your goal is. You and your blog are doing well, but, you must realize that the well you’ve tapped will someday run dry. Face it, there’s only so many things that you can do with eyeliner.”

Jennifer started to speak.

“No–” he said, holding up a hand. “Success, is not a goal; success is a result of executing a well-considered plan designed to attain a goal. And before you can think through a plan, you need to have a clear, and concrete goal. You want to be the President? You need to start by knowing the issues, and the things that concern you. So step one would be education; what school are you going to go to? Step two is funding; who do you have to meet? Step three is name-recognition; how do you do that? As you plod through each step in your plan, you get nearer your goal. And then, as always, with luck…”