Tales From Heller

All Good Things...

I:

Frank didn't consider himself the sort to have unfinished business, but he couldn't deny he had a few loose ends to take care of. "Loose ends" sounded menacing, like he was going to order a hit on somebody. "Unfinished business" it was then, except that didn't sound much better. Everything was an euphemism if he said it in the right tone, he figured, so he decided to call it unfinished business and leave it at that.

Pranav happened to be at Berkeley one day on club business, and since Frank had never bothered to come visit senior year during the summer—they had barely spoken over the last few months!—Frank figured it was time to do what needed to be done. Juliet was on vacation, too, so he had no other excuses, and if she were around, she'd ask why she wasn't invited. So this worked out nicely, and Frank walked downtown to the train station and sat around reading the Wall Street Journal until he reached his destination.

He had been on plenty of college campuses on vacation, on field trips, and that sort of thing, and Berkeley wasn't excluded: he had some Cal gear sitting around at home that he never wore. But anyway, Pranav was waiting by Sather Gate, and had promised to take Frank to lunch with the rest of the guys. Not just guys, of course—despite their more "creative" methods of operation, they were remarkably inclusive compared to some other groups on campus—but that's always what they called themselves when they didn't use the term "good people."

"You made it, Frank! Like what we've done with the place? We commissioned the gate ourselves! I'm just kidding, of course. How's Juliet? You could have brought her along. She'll have to do this sort of thing at UCLA anyway. I'd never have pegged her as a club president, but the responsibility will all be hers." Pranav felt confident in talking about Juliet this way because they'd never spoken in depth to each other. Pranav's first impression of Juliet was one of those first meetings his junior year, her sophomore year, when she vied to chant the loudest and march the stiffest. If it were his choice, he'd have promoted someone else to vice president, but at least it ended up working out at the end. If he didn't know any better, he'd think Frank promoted her only because she had a crush on him. That Charles Manson-esque style of psychological manipulation was clever, and it was also the sort of political calculus that had translated well to college.

"She's on vacation. We have our own lives, you know. Gosh, it's weird saying that, like there's that implication we're supposed to spend all our free time together."

"That's typically what people do when they're dating. And you two did talk a lot at Heller."

"That was for business. Now it's only pleasure—mostly pleasure. All thanks to you," Frank said, and they started walking through campus. Frank hadn't ever been to UPenn's campus, but he had seen pictures and it reminded him of Berkeley's to some degree. In the way that all college campuses looked the same.

"So, Pranav, how many people do we have total for the college branches so far? Obviously we haven't been talking too much about daily operations, but all I've heard through the grapevine is that we're as popular as we've ever been. We fit right in—isn't it funny how after all our efforts to stand out during high school, now we're just another pre-professional boulder dotting a rocky landscape?"

"Funny way of phrasing it. Well, the ten or so of us from Heller covered eight schools, and all of them kept recruiting more people. We make it pretty easy to start things up—our financial situation's improved dramatically, too. We give new branches a bunch of money and tell them how to spend it. We make enough off interest at this point for things to be really easy, and the more people who join, the better it becomes. If you want to work with college students for all your life, you could make a career out of simply doing finances. That's what I'm going to be doing."