Zero Regrets

(October 2017)


31: Midterm and Later

Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, had well and truly arrived by mid-October.

The week of midterms arrived and passed, and as usual, the next week followed. At Wendy's urging, she and Dipper picked up the pace on their daily runs—"Gotta get you in shape for the track season, dude!" Meanwhile, Mabel's excitement about the play mounted as she helped paint the sets that now stood on the main stage—"It's gonna look so great!"

Wendy, Dipper, and Mabel sweated out the midterm exams in all of their classes. They came out the far end with Dipper hanging onto a 4.0 or A average, but barely—college was harder than hi 2gh school, and he held onto that A literally by the grace of mathematics, since numerically his average worked out to 92.49, which fortunately rounded up to 93, the minimal A level. Wendy did better, a solid A with an average of 94, though instead of feeling envious, Dipper was proud of her.

Not one bit to her surprise, since the play was demanding a lot of her time, Mabel had to settle for a 3.6 GPA, which was a middling-high B at her school. "Eh, if I can hold on to that, I'm OK," she said, but she did continue to get in an hour a day of tutoring, almost always in math, from Dipper and Wendy.

Elsewhere . . . .


At the Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C, Ford held the semi-annual Directors Meeting from October 16-18. He rarely showed up in the Agency's technical HQ building, preferring to center most of the administrative functions in the West Coast center outside of Sacramento. Lorena went along, and the two planned some extra time for visiting museums and historic sites.

Ford found himself somewhat surprised but gratified to learn that the Agency's coffers were in excellent condition. Since it operated off the books—its Federal appropriations amounted to less than the amount set aside for the maintenance of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia—most of its income flowed in from patents, recoveries (let's face it, exorcising ghosts often led to the discovery of treasure troves the ghosts had guarded) and consultancy fees, since the Agency lent its expertise to governments around the globe.

At any rate, the Agency's income had increased over the prior year's by about eight per cent, and it now held significant investments and a comfortable cushion for operations. As usual, the investigations over the past six months had discovered no paranormality in eighty per cent of the cases, annoyance-level disturbances in reality in fifteen per cent, and real threats in only five per cent. Hazard had filed a report on the Western Alliance haunting, and it fell into the severe threat category, justifying the fifty thousand dollar-plus expense of repairs and insurance payouts.

Trigger asked about a question of jurisdiction—after all, Hazard was heading up a brand-new office—but Ford quashed that easily: "The haunting was in California, granted, but I took a direct role and I wanted to work closely with Deputy Director Hazard to observe her methods. We'll waive the jurisdictional question for this one instance."

Because he had destroyed a suspected paranormal item—the Baphomet medallion—and because Agency rules require an account of that, Ford showed slides of the silver disk and gave its provenance: "We dated it to approximately 1250 CE, probably produced on the island of Malta. In itself it held no detectable energies, but it had been used to summon a Type 7-A paranormal entity, and prudence led to its disintegration. More about it is in the report."

The conference took place over Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning. On Saturday, the Professor—the former head of the Agency, whose retirement had made room for Ford to take over—came in for a visit, since he lived nearby in Virginia. He received a warm welcome and then went on to have lunch with Stanford and Lorena. He told them he was enjoying retirement and was working on an academic book he'd long planned to write.

That left Saturday afternoon and Sunday for museum and sight-seeing time. The Kreeger, the Smithsonian American Art, and the National Art Gallery museums were on their itinerary, and though Ford wasn't an aficionado, Lorena found them entrancing, and her enjoyment pleased her husband.

"I wish we could stay another few days," she said on Sunday evening. They had return tickets to Portland the next morning.

"We'll come back anytime you wish," Stanford said. "However, it's imperative that we be back in Gravity Falls by Tuesday."

"Halloween," Lorena said. "I understand."

Oh, yeah. Summerween in Gravity Falls was iffy enough. Halloween could be hell on wheels.


Stanley and Sheila took some time off that same week. Stan went solo to Las Vegas for a couple of days, pulling off his usual coup of losing, losing, recouping and a bit and moving on to another casino, coming out several thousand ahead.

Then Sheila joined him in Portland, and they boarded the Coast Starlight train down to Los Angeles. They had a little bedroom on the train, enjoyed the scenic trip, and then spent three days in L.A. being tourists.

Which meant they did all the corny things—toured the homes of the movie stars, visited the La Brea Tar Pits, got tickets to be in the audience for a couple of TV shows, visited the Guggenheim Museum ("They'd do more business," Stan observed, "if they put in some slot machines."), they visited the Chinese Theater and stood in the footsteps of old-time movie stars, and they even made about six celebrity sightings, though to tell the truth, Stan recognized only two of them.

Then back up to San Francisco, and another three days of being tourists—the cold Bay boat tour around Alcatraz ("If we could go inside, I'd show ya the cell where I was incarcerated for three days before they found out they had the wrong guy all along"), shopped, trekked up and down the hills in Chinatown, they ate at all the interesting restaurants, enjoyed some chocolates in that place near the summit of the long, long hill along which cable cars trundled to and from the Bay, all the rest.

"This has been real nice," Stanley said as their vacation came to an end. "Did you enjoy it?"

"You know I did!" she said. "I got to spend so much time with you, and we didn't have to worry about ghosts or taking care of business in the Shack. Hey, how about taking a cruise for our next getaway?"

"Huh, I dunno. Sometimes cooped up with no way to escape, you know, I get kinda nervous."

"I'm sure we can find a cruise that includes an onboard casino."

"Oh, yeah!" Stan said, brightening. "Huh. Have to time it so I'd take the big haul like on the last day the casino was open, so's I wouldn't get banned. Yeah, I think I'd like that! How about next spring? Maybe a Caribbean cruise? Or to Hawaii and back?"

"That one," she said. "Cruise out, maybe a few days in the Islands. That would be heaven."

"Well," Stan said, kissing her, "you are an angel!"


And the last week of October found Avenue Q on the main stage of the Olmsted theater—to Mabel, the whole energy of the show seemed to pick up once they were actually on the stage where they would perform. Now they were no longer concentrating on scenes, but doing full run-throughs of the whole show, the lone piano and the prerecorded music giving way to the accompaniment of eight musicians.

Now they also had a projection screen on which some simple cartoony art pieces appeared to punctuate the live action. And at each run-through, a small gaggle of people, a dozen or so, sat in the dark, giving them a bare-bones audience that laughed and reacted.

With midterms behind, Mabel concentrated on her other self-imposed assignment. She visited the Western Alliance campus whenever she had time in the afternoons, meeting Eloise—the two got on great together—and scouting for likely boyfriends.

"I don't think you'll have any luck," Eloise told her one dreary afternoon, cloudy and dark without rain. "I sure as heck haven't."

"Yeah, I usually don't do this," Mabel said, taking out her phone, "but let's talk what qualities you're looking for."

More amused than serious, Eloise listed a few: Tolerant, willing to listen, not so credulous as to believe in every superstition out there, but not so skeptical as to sneer at the unknown, either, fun to be with, with more on his mind than being all grabby and pushy, and so on and so on.

"I think I should forget about chasing a guy and just let it happen. Or not happen," Eloise said.

"Fair enough," Mabel told her, saving the list she'd made, "but somewhere there's someone who's lonely and a perfect fit for you. It takes time, but be patient. I got two tickets for you when the show opens. If you want, I can try to fix you up with someone from Olmsted. Or if you've got a friend here on campus, that would be fine, too."

"We've got a little time," Eloise said. "Let's let it drift for now."

"OK. But I'm gonna keep my eyes open!"

One little thing came up. Halloween fell on Tuesday, and the Western Alliance Student Council was sponsoring a masquerade ball for that evening.

And, since they had been working hard and the show was in good shape, Mabel and the other Avenue Q cast members had that night off, so they could attend.

Wendy and Dipper were planning to go. Mabel insisted they leave their costumes to her.

She even found a guy named Parker King, one of the musicians for the show (drums and xylophone) to blind-date Eloise. Parker, by all accounts, was a nice, quiet, shy guy who would be a reasonable dance partner, though probably not serious boyfriend material, but he was a start.

Mabel, of course, fully intended to attend the dance. Dipper scored two tickets for her, though she told him she would definitely not be bringing a date for herself—just one for Eloise.

Ah, if only Teek could be there.

"So what are you doing for Halloween?" Mabel asked him the Sunday evening before as they face-timed.

Teek, who looked a little thinner these days—he found film school exciting but demanding and admitted he'd been skimping on meals not because he was poor but because he stole time from lunch and dinner for studying or working on projects—said, "Nothing special. Just another school day."

"No dances?"

"Not that I've heard of. Anyway, I wouldn't go to one without you," Teek said, smiling. Then immediately he looked anxious. "I didn't mean you couldn't go to one if you wanted to—"

"Hey, if I do, I promise no slow dances with anybody," Mabel said. "I really, really miss you!"

"Yeah, me to. Man, if I could get home at the end of next week—but it's too close to Christmas break. I can't wait for Christmas."

Mabel bit back the surprise they had not yet sprung on him. Teek didn't know it, but he was going to receive airline tickets to let him come home for the week-long Thanksgiving break, see the show, enjoy the week, and then return to Atlanta.

"Me, either," she said. "Hey, did you get that midterm grade that was slow coming in?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. "An A, I wasn't worried. Oh, I've got Production Techniques 1 and Fundamentals of Screenwriting for next semester! They're hard to schedule, but I picked up both of them."

And so it went. For both of them, fall was a mellow season, the time of rest between summer and holidays.

With luck, nothing would come down the pike to disrupt it.