Lori looked up at Kawalski and crinkled her nose. When she was younger, vanity had kept her from first getting glasses and then wearing them. She had learned to squint to see the chalkboard or a friend's face. Her mother had bought contact lenses for her to try, but her eyes wouldn't adjust to the lenses, so another year passed squinting at the chalkboard. By the time she started wearing her glasses, the squinting was an ingrained habit. With the weight of the eyeglasses now resting on the bridge of her nose, the squint had changed to a crinkling of the nose adjusting the position of her glasses. What no one had ever told her was that the scrunching of her face was more than a little distracting, it was down right erotic. Her lips would pout and open slightly. The wrinkling of her cheeks and focusing of her eyes gave her the same expression of someone lost in passion. The reason the arousal was so intense was that the look would flash across her face and then be gone. It was a little like subliminal suggestion, a flash of sex then nothing. She knew that there was something about her being close to anyone talking that would break their train of thought. She had even overheard an old boyfriend describe her as being distractingly cute when she was near. But she never learned what it was.
Unconscious of what she was doing, she looked up at Kawalski crinkling her nose and saw in his face his confusion as he forgot what he had planned to say. She took the opportunity the hesitation caused to quietly, but firmly, say into say into the recorder, "Please stop touching my leg." She then gently pushed his foot away.
Kawalski, unfamiliar with being refused and confused at having his seduction interrupted, leaned closer to Lori's face and reached down to put his hand on the inside of her thigh. "You need to make it worth my while to let you stay."
"Mr. Shermon won't let you get away with this."
Kawalski laughed, "Shermon? He wants to fuck you too. Let's cut this crap. You want to keep your job-you put out. No fucky, no money. Get it?"
Lori reached between her legs and pulled on his hand. "I get it-but you're not!" she gasped as she pulled at the resisting hand.
Still laughing, Kawalski said, "And just who is going to stop me, sweetie?"
"I am, dearie, and Bonnie and Mike, who are waiting for me just the other side of that door."
"What?" Kawalski removed his hand and stood up. He looked at Lori, still sitting but trying to arrange her clothes. "You're fucking with me. There's no one out there."
"See for yourself?"
Kawalski opened the door. Bonnie and Mike were sitting at his secretary's desk. They looked up when the door opened. Bonnie said, before Kawalski's opened-faced astonishment, "Mike, it looks like I was right. We will have time for a meal before the first showing of the movie.
"Hi, Mr. Kawalski. Don't you just hate being stuck working on a Friday
night?"
Lori pushed past Kawalski. "Goodbye, Mr. Kawalski," she spit out as they left.
Kawalski stood in the doorway his fingers turning white as he clenched the doorframe as they left.
* * * *
_The door opens. *Click.* The light is on. The hands seem to be slow and deliberate as they turn over the_ next card.
_An angel pouring water between two cups is the figure on the upside down card._
_The shrouded figure gazes for a time at the card before reaching for the light._
CHAPTER 5: Temperance reversed
People who have not taken heat baths cannot believe how good they feel. The Native Americans consider it a religious experience. Finlanders reject that idea for very practical reasons. If it is religious act, then you can only take the bath at certain times or with certain ceremonies. Finns want their saunas whenever they can.
James Makinen was sitting in his father's sauna for his regular Saturday night bath. He loved his father's sauna. His father had worked for years to get the size of the room to match the size of the stove. Too large a stove and the heat could get too intense and ruin the tranquility of the bath. Too small and the room could become cold-under 100 degrees-by Finnish standards during the bath. James had only been in the sauna for five minutes barely able to get acclimated for the normal one-hour bath. His father sat next to him. Neither man talked. They let the dry heat soak into their bodies.
Used to the heat, James poured some water on the top bench to cool it and climbed up to the hotter ceiling temperatures. As the heat penetrated his body, he considered what had happened to him that week. By the time he reviewed in his mind the phone call he placed on Friday to the union lawyer, he had relaxed enough to calmly analyze everything she had said. She had told him that over the last three years, seventeen teachers in the state had formal sexual complaints filed against them. Only two had been proven. Out of the remaining fifteen, five teachers had kept their jobs. Those five districts had not made any public announcements and had let the professionals investigate their cases. Six of the others had won their cases and had received back pay but had not been given their jobs back. The remaining four had won every case in court, but instead of paying any money, the districts had kept appealing the awards. She felt that the remaining four teachers would never receive any back pay. The districts had already paid more in lawyers' fees than the court awards.
The more James thought about the conversation, the more he became convinced he would not take it anymore. He heard his father fill the dipper at the faucet near the cement floor. He handed his wash cloth to his dad to wet.
James covered his face with the cold wet cloth. He heard his father throw the water on the rocks covering the stove. He listened to the rocks sizzle, then felt the hot steam roll down off the ceiling. Needles of heat penetrated his body as the steam transferred its heat. Finally, James had to go to the lower bench. Careful to sit where his feet had been resting so his bottom wouldn't be burnt, he let the heat slowly soak through his body, dropping the blood pressure and relaxing the muscles. In the calm of the heat-induced lethargy, he let his mind plan his moves for the coming week.
He heard his father wet some cedar boughs and briefly heat them on the rocks. He took one and gently slapped his body. The heat had relaxed his muscles and dropped his blood pressure to close to dangerous levels. The gentle slaps would tighten the muscles and bring the pressure back up.
James and his father cycled the heat up once more, then doused themselves with cold water and went into the cool dressing room. There they stayed until the steam stopped rising from their bodies. They repeated the process.
The only conversation between the two men occurred when they were cooling in the dressing room. The heat from the sauna seemed to let each know everything they needed to know from the other. The only two unusual items talked about were Jim's request to borrow a 200-pound nail magnet from his father and his father's request that Jim join them on Sunday morning at their church. His father sensed that his son was in trouble.
A 200-pound nail magnet didn't weigh 200 pounds but it was capable of lifting a 200-pound weight. They were used for collecting small metal objects such as roofing nails from the ground after re-shingling a roof. His father wondered what Jim would be using it for.
* * * *
Tom Peterson was a young pastor. He had been minister of the Chapel of God Church for only a year. He still felt the passion and enthusiasm of life in the Bible College when they talked about The Church fighting the things of the world. What he didn't know and what most people attending the politically active Protestant denominations don't know, is that the fight against the 'world' now being waged by the churches is mostly a creation of their own making. Peterson's bible college teachers knew that competition brought the best out of a group. In sports, the competition is easy to define. But bible colleges taught theology, and for theological competition, you needed an opponent. Any education the religious couldn't control has always been a safe target for a church to compete against. The college instructors taught that the public education system was a religion called secular humanism with the school's educators as the religion's priests and the school buildings as its churches.