Dancing with Veronica 

     Sometimes things just seem to happen all by themselves. Rinny didn't dance. He 

never learned how to dance or even played at dancing when he was young. He was 

not shy and he was very sociable. It was just that every time the subject of dancing 

came around, he would disappear into the background, withdraw into places he felt 

more comfortable.

     "Would you like to dance?", just came out as she smiled up at him. It was as if

it was just the right thing to do at the time. She said "sure", and after a short walk 

across the dance floor and trying to step around with the music they smiled at some 

of the other couples and Veronica said "I'm thirsty". "We'll dance over to the bar and 

then we can go outside and dance in the snow", offered Rinny. The two of them burst 

out laughing and it would be their moment for years to come. 

                            

 

                                                           Interview

     It had been a bit warm for January and Rinny had run up the stairs rather than 

wait for the elevator to keep his appointment. So here he was, usually the coolest 

guy you'd ever meet, nearly sweating. He sure didn't want to look desperate for 

this job. As luck would have it, his interviewer liked people who took their work  

seriously.

   "It has you here as a tracking specialist. Is this correct?" The interviewer looked 

right at him and waited. Rinny loved to act. That's all he ever really did. So he slid 

right back easily into his former role where he would amuse himself at being a 

victim in a world where nothing ever went right for him, and yet he just kept going 

anyway.

     The room was warm too. it was going to be a warm day. "Do you guys have the 

heat up too high or is it me?" He asked. The interviewer didn't even smile. "Never 

mind, it seems I came to the wrong place", and he got up to leave. "We need a 

tracker badly", came a concerned reply. "Please, just make yourself comfortable. 

Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?", followed by the slightest of smiles.

     A "tracker" is what they called a person familiar with the process of locating 

potential clients for different kinds of sales or promotions, a screener who would 

narrow down large markets of individuals or agencies to smaller numbers of 

persons or groups who would be more liable to purchase or use their product in 

some way. Perhaps a subscriber or just someone who would offer an opinion about 

one product or another. A professional tracking specialist could locate clients or 

customers extremely quickly and simply knew their way around people and 

businesses. They simply didn't waste any time or effort they knew would not be 

productive. They were worth their weight in gold. They knew it and they demanded 

it.  All 24 carats of it. Rinny was a pro. He was also a reformed Jew and came from

a family of highly successful businesspeople including his older brother Shep.

  

                                                      Veronica 

          Her name was Veronica and she was in the kitchen early mixing up something

and sliding it off a plate into a sizzling fry pan. Rinny stirred in the bed as the smell of 

a fresh breakfast reached his nose. Veronica was from Florida and the sight of newly 

fallen snow was still new to her. Rinny came up to her and kissed the back of her 

neck. "Mmmm, she smiled, how'd you sleep?" "Great, thanks, what smells so good?' 

"We call it alligator stew, she laughed."Green peppers and tomatoes mostly, lots of 

onions and potatoes from last night too." 

     The sun was bright in the back yard. His heart was light too. It was going to be one

very warm day in January in southern Vermont.

 

                                                Stars Over Vermont

     Rinny went outside and lit up a Bennington Long. It always made him smile 

to think about growing tobacco up here in Vermont. It just didn't happen. He looked 

long and hard at the stars above, trying to see if anything moved, if he could tell the  

earth below was moving by changes in their positions. You could tell, but it took a few 

minutes.      

     He began to look at himself, question his existence. What should he be doing? 

What was life really about? Survival? Survival alone? Dogs did that! Was it 

something  he forgot along the way? Something he had yet to learn? It hit him. it  

wasn't just about him. That one girl, that beautiful girl dancing threw light on it all. 

     He hurried back into the club and walked up to the girl. She turned and smiled at 

him. "Wanna dance?" 

ns

                                          

                                                         Vermont Seasons 

          Northeastern Vermont experiences very cold weather in the winter. Sometimes the 

winter lasts nearly five months, starting early in November and ending late in March. There is 

still plenty of snow left on the mountains for good skiing even in April. 

     Seattle and Tacoma Washington might actually be situated further north than Northeastern 

Vermont, but their winters are nowhere nearly as cold and generally very wet. The reason 

being the warm humid pacific ocean winds that flow continually from west to east over the 

whole state. The Cascade mountain range rise high in the east of Washington and the cold 

peaks cause the warm moist air to condense and, as a result, it rains continually through 

most of the year in Seattle and Tacoma.

     Frigid Arctic air spills down over Northern Vermont in the winter instead, the jet stream 

carrying it down as well as influencing most of the continental United States the same way 

but not as severe the further south you go.

    Lengthening and, of course, warmer days make for striking growth in the Spring and, 

likewise. abrupt cooling in the Fall has the opposite effect and the well known, brilliantly 

colored, landscapes of Vermont appear with their reds and yellows and browns.  

     These changes in seasons are remarkable and had a specially powerful effect on Rinny 

who had just been smitten by as beautiful a creature you could imagine actually dancing with 

a motion perhaps imitating the currents snowflake laden air coming in 

from the northwest.