Moving Up

[intheheart]

Title: Moving Up
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Jake gets a new job and Gail gets a new minion.
Date: June 2007
Notes: How about something happier, hmm?


The day his boss told him he was being considered for promotion, Jacob Foster embarked on a campaign that would shame most presidents.

It wasn't that he didn't like his job-- or, well, it was, but not for the reasons most people would have cited. Jake loved the long hours debating semantics and legalistic loopholes. He adored coming in on Saturdays to do paperwork, showing up early and chipper to the annoyance of his coworkers. He could have done with a slightly higher salary, but he was a grad student and used to living on two gum wrappers and a shoestring.

The problem with his job was his boss. A rail-thin, balding, sweaty man who was vocally only in it for the money, Lewis DeForrest's outlook on life made Eeyore look like an optimist, and his cynicism knew no bounds. Jake, who was still an idealist at heart despite diagnosed psychiatric problems and the adolescence from hell, thought that the poor children in New York City's educational facilities had enough problems without DeForrest being anywhere near them. He dreamed of the day when the man would get either fired or promoted somewhere where he couldn't do any harm.

Besides (and this was a rather more practical concern), Lewis DeForrest did not know his ass from his elbows. Jake usually wound up doing three-quarters of his work for him and getting none of the credit.

But despite all that, he loved his job. He loved the occasional contact with the whitewater world of politics and the usual serene paddling in protected nooks of water, loved knowing that something he did would lead to a teacher getting a job, or a child getting lunch.

So when word came down the grapevine that there was a higher position going begging, and when DeForrest mentioned absently to a superior that Jacob Foster had been there for two years and had just gotten his law degree, he saw his chance for a bigger, brighter future, and jumped for it.

First came the schmoozing; kissing up to anyone who might have a say in the process and quite a few people who didn't. That got his name and face around the department, made him known. Then, with a little help from selected trusted friends in the office, he made it discreetly known just how much of DeForrest's job he'd been doing, and just how good of an aide he was. That got the higher-ups talking, as he'd expected. Finally, distribution of resumes to interested parties.

That got him this interview. And he was damned if he'd blow it.

--

"So you got your degree in civil law." The woman in front of him looked more like a kindergarten teacher than a politician, with her hair falling out of its gentle updo and her glasses sliding down her nose. If it had not been for the (somewhat disheveled) suit and the unnervingly intense way she was looking at him, Jake might have thought Gail Hirschfeld was as ineffective as his last boss, if less offensive to everything he held dear. As it was... he thought he'd rather not cross her.

It was an extremely unnerving feeling. Jake shifted in his seat. "Yes, ma'am," he replied. "From Columbia. JD."

"And you got your first degree from..."

"Ohio State University, double major in law and government." He'd written all this in the resume that lay in front of her, of course (along with the not-insignificant fact that he'd graduated with honors), but she clearly wanted him to say it, for some unknown reason.

It could be a test, of course. Easier to write a lie than to remember and say it in an interview. Or just a way to gauge his presence, that nebulous quality so important for a politician of any stripe. Either way, it was clever of her.

"Hmm," Ms. Hirschfeld said, and pushed her glasses up her nose with an absent stab of an index finger. "Mr. Foster, did it ever occur to you that you're overqualified?"

Jake started. "I'm sorry?"

"I can understand working here while you were still attending Columbia." She leaned back and steepled her fingers at him, which he considered cruel and unusual punishment. "Local politics are a good place to get your feet wet, but you've got your degree now. You could go off to Albany and do this on the state level, or even DC if you wanted to. So why here?"

Jake blinked. That was not the question he'd been expecting, which was why he answered with total honesty. "I like it here," he said. "State and federal politics would be... too intense, I guess. New York is just about the right size for me."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "The backbiting's as rough here as it is anywhere else, Jacob."

"It's Jake," he corrected without thinking, then added, hastily, "Ma'am."

If he interpreted her expression correctly, and he was not at all sure he did, she was struggling to stifle a smile. "Jake. It can get pretty tough sometimes. People don't like me very much." Judging from her tone, she didn't care.

He couldn't stop himself. He honestly tried, but he couldn't. "Oh? Why's that?"

Ms. Hirschfeld didn't even try to stop her smile that time. "They think I'm using my powers to help my daughter. Which I am, naturally, but it's not just benefiting Summer, and somehow my colleagues always seem to leave that little fact out."

"Your daughter, ma'am?" Jake glanced at the picture propped next to her laptop; Ms. Hirschfeld, an unidentified man who was probably her husband, and three children, two of them redheaded girls.

"Summer, my youngest," she said, and leaned forward to touch the face of the smallest girl in the picture. "She has Asperger's Syndrome, which is..." She paused, expectantly, and arched an eyebrow at Jake.

"Uh," he said, and then, "I really don't know, ma'am, but give me five minutes and a computer with internet connection and I can tell you something reasonably accurate."

"Initiative," she said, sounding amused. "I like that. It's an autism disorder. Summer is a mild case, but there are children in the system much worse off than her, and none of them were getting anything like a decent education until I started working on it. Most of the poor things were just getting shunted off to special ed and ignored. I've been trying to get them more attention and care. It's my particular bugbear, and I'd like you help with that."

Jake thought about it. "Workshops for the teachers," he said, presently, "and presumably not just on teaching children with ASD, but on noticing and making preliminary diagnoses. I'm not special ed," he added, quickly. "But I figure catching it early can't hurt."

"Of course not," Ms. Hirschfeld said. "Keep going."

"You'd want to educate the parents, too," he said, mostly thinking aloud. "Get speakers to PTA meetings, maybe. And draw up some standarized educational guidelines for kids with ASD. I'm not really sure what they'd need."

"I've done that," she said, and Jake, who'd slumped over and put his chin in his hand without noticing, bolted upright again. "I used to be a teacher myself, so I'm pretty familiar with what they need. But that's good, about the PTA. I hadn't thought about that."

"Well," Jake said. "That's just what I'd do."

Ms. Hirschfeld smiled at him, an open, generous grin. "That's what you will do, starting tomorrow. Or today, if you like. Right now. Sooner is better."

Jake stared at her. "Sorry? Am I hired?"

"You are," she said. "Welcome to the team. Go find Shea and have her show you where you can work, then put together a proposal for getting speakers for PTA groups. I'll want to see that by Friday."

He sat very still for a moment, then began to smile. "Permission to get my things from my desk downstairs first?"

Ms. Hirschfeld gave him a brief narrow-eyed look, but she must have seen he was joking, because she laughed. "Granted. Now get."

"Ma'am," he said, restraining an urge to salute, and got up to go find Shea.

--

The next time Jake Foster was offered a promotion, he turned it down.

He was quite happy where he was.