We see our Lena first at midnight, tall and lithe, tiptoeing up the staircase of the Spearfish Secretarial School. Hard for us to tell if it's her boss who's leading her or she who's leading him. Jake seems ham-handed squinting at the padlock guarding his supply room door. His heavy belly rumbles from the good prime ribs and beer they'd shared. We see he's panting, maybe from the single flight.

They're at it on the desk in no time flat, Lena with her long legs hanging down, banging the oak side in rhythm with her high-heeled shoes, Jake striving manfully to match her pace. And suddenly Jake's wife flips on the switch, the overheads glare down and they're discovered in their dragtail, messy state. We don't know how ol' Myra knew but she knows now, her red eyes hating them, her fingers working an imaginary shears to plunge it in their hearts. She's quivering protectively like Jake's some princely firebird. He'd like to soar away but he's a bit too stout for that.

Mercifully for us all the scene dissolves and here is Lena an hour after leaving Spearfish, Bruce Springsteen on her tape, burning rubber at the Rapid City off-ramp. The transmission of her red Corvette is grinding angrily. In flight, she doesn't look her best for us, hair down in strings, mascara smudged from where she'd knuckled her exasperated tears away. The grainy, kissed-off lipstick that had dyed her mouth has been scrubbed off.

Right now it's three A.M. She makes her left on Federal and brakes impulsively, pulling up beside the office of the My Blue Heaven Motel. She has a plan. Her plan is constant, even in the midst of doing it with Jake. Each time that Lena has her plan shot down she doesn't cry to God or gnash her teeth. She adds a touch or two and launches it again as though it was her privateer dispatched to find a short cut to the spice. She always feels her glory days are just about to start.

She totes her little suitcase to the beaverboarded room and plops it on the wobbly stand. She doesn't bother shucking off the heavy flower-printed spread - wraps her long, slim self around, sheets, coverlet and all and falls asleep upon the pillow sham the moment her pretty head lays down.

Her wakeup call at ten gets her juices going. She's optimistic always, and why not? Ambitious and good-looking in a throwback to Hungarians and Germans who'd settled Iowa and here she is, the six-foot length of her, a lean, pulsating animal, not even twenty-five, who's seen some towns and knows a little bit of life and faces forward with an avid heart. The sun is out. It makes her grin, now up, as though they'd turned it on for her alone.

She scratches at her center underneath the sheets. Again. She frowns. Is she concerned she's caught some curse from Jake? She is magnificent preparing for her bath. She knows enough to turn on just the hot and takes the opportunity, peeing on the john, examining whatever has been itching her, head bent, peering at her golden, springy hair, spreading it with probing fingers on her silky thigh. She discovers nothing so perhaps there's nothing wrong. She tests the water with her red-lacquered big toe, but the hot has turned lukewarm already. She lowers herself, draws up her well-proportioned legs and rests her chin upon her knees -- closes her eyes.

Perhaps she's remembering places more elegant than this- - for she's seen some of those. There was a Hyatt at the Denver schools convention when she hadn't yet turned eighteen. Working part-time for Jack Buford and his penny-pinching wife in Ames. It was her entry to the special world of schools that someone owned. By now she knew the business inside out. She had a plan to be a part of it. To others it might seem her roads were desultory, leading her to cul de sacs. But they'd be wrong. What could she do, dirt poor, too tall, and only with her own ten fingers and her brain? Make the best plan that she could and look for ways.

The man part she could take or leave alone. Any fool can find a man. And pretty ones can find them rich as well. But Lena knows that birdies in a gilded cage or one of tin are captive all the same. Drank the lesson with her mother's milk. She'd understood the opportunities for freedom that ownership would bring, her first day on the job at Ames. If money and credentials are requirements, well she has plans for that. Not all roads lead directly into Rome.

She scrubs her face, whooshing like a porpoise as she does. There! She doesn't look half-bad, our Leaping Lena, pulling back her ash-blond hair, her delicate nipples rising with the motion of her arms. What is that puckering of skin we see slanting at the right side of her breast? We long to cover it protectively, so fragile with its dainty, upthrust curve. It demonstrates how vulnerable she is, last year's lumpectomy that kept her beautiful and whole but dents the perfect armor she will need to match against the carborundum which waits for her out there.

When she's chosen what she'll wear from all her earthly goods inside her overnight, she puts her makeup on, a touch of shade above the baby blues, and she is ready for her new adventure and the world. She has no fortune, but she has her self.

She drives unerringly not down the block to National College on Kansas City Street, but to the American Enterprise Business Academy, taking up the second story of a building cornering on Spruce. She has her plan.

Because it's time for lunch Bud Mulholland, Jr. is running the office solo waiting for Jeannie Barr to come back, tongue clenched pink between his teeth, struggling over Pell Grant forms. It's intersession so there are no kids. Even though he passed away so many years ago his daddy's picture is still up there on the paneling. Willed his school to Bud, what started as a one-room typing course, born of the Depression, farms around him dying and the frightened parents desperate for opportunity to wean their youngsters off the land and into the security of steno or of keeping books.

"Hi," Lena smiles brightly. He looks like he's been star-struck. He shambles over, a big man gone to easy fat. His eyes are shifty, furtive. She takes that in. Her favorite W.C. Fields quotation is "You can never cheat an honest man." "I'm Lena Gerhardt. Spearfish Secretarial School? And how are you today, Mr. Mulholland?" It must be she'd remembered him from the South Dakota schools convention. A man like Jake. She needs just one. Someone who'll let her prove herself, that she is partnership material. Ownership came next.

"Jake Dern sending out spies?" His voice is gravelly but not because it's built on rock. He's soft inside.

They're of a height. She levels her eyes on his, his swiveling to turn away. For a moment she lets herself be caustic, a costly failing that she hasn't yet controlled, comes from bitterness at father wandered off, and poverty. "You found me out. The Mata Hari of the proprietary school biz."

She gnaws her lip, conscious of her gaffe. She knows it doesn't matter if he's slow of wit. Or fat. Or flat insulting as he is. He owns a school. She has her plan.

"Actually, Mr. Mulholland, I'm scouting Rapid on my own. We've met before, right here. Hoped you hadn't forgotten." She tries to get his eye steady enough to lock onto.

"Never forget a pretty face." He steals a glance at her, his puffy cheeks coloring. His sturdy nose has a gray hair poking out. "Remember you real well. Remember asking myself how ol' Jake got so lucky." He raises his head, struck with an idea. "Lookin' to leave Jake? You have a fallin' out?"

She appraises him. Perhaps to see if he's already learned the news, gossip traveling fast in closed circles, even overnight. "Nah. Got no fuss with me -- good at my job. Run his office and the paperwork. See you messing with the Pell Grant forms. I do them one, two, three. I even teach a class when an instructor's late or sick. Shoot. I c'd run that school with one hand tied behind my back. Not a problem of a falling out." She catches his eye and lets her own glance yield to his, lowering her gaze to the counter. She mutes her voice although they are alone, as though she's sharing secret thoughts with him. "I was wondering, Mr. Mulholland, if I'd be happier in Rapid, working in the business of an enterprising man. Spearfish can give a body claustrophobia. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm the type to gallivant -- give me a good book- - but I get lonely -- like the rest." She looks up and sees he's studying her face, his eyes devouring her Magyar sucked-in cheeks, her pale blue eyes, her honey hair, her coloring. His thick lips open just a tad to show the tip of his pink tongue. "I thought of you," she says.

He looks over to the picture of his daddy but there's no instruction there. He peers to ascertain that he has caught her drift.

He clears his throat. "Signing rate has got me puzzled some. Expected we'd be up, the three good snows we had. How's enrollment doing at the Spearfish school?"

She bites her tongue this time. Before she tells him to fuck off. "Mr. Mulholland!?" she says. "You asking me to tell Jake's secrets?"

He colors warmly. "Didn't mean that the way it came out -- Lena. Problem is if all I do's maintain my last year's numbers -- just don't need more staff." In spite of that his eyes belie his words and urge her to press on.

She lowers her voice again so that he has to lean his face closer to hers to hear. "Mr. Mulholland -- there's new opportunity for all of us in the proprietary school business. Not many have caught the weight of that. The ones that do will make more money than there's gold in the Black Hills. You hire me -- you hire more than 126 pounds soaking wet -- you hire my ideas. Jake sees just me. Doesn't see the future that I do. Thought you might."

Jeannie's back from lunch. Inside her paper bag is a stick of Almond Joy which she'll pleasure over on her break at three o'clock. "Jeannie." She stops in mid-stride.

"Yes, Mr. Mulholland."

"Jeannie Barr. I'd like you to meet Lena Gerhardt."

Her lips begin to form an "oh." "A pleasure, I'm sure," she simpers, her mouth working like she's dying to blurt out something so explosive it will rock the world. "You're the one from Spearfish," breathlessly.

"Which one?" Bud asks.

"Oh . . . I just . . . remembered, Mr. Mulholland. Just remembered is all."

Lena appraises her. As soon as that.

"You can go back to work now, Jeannie," Bud says.

"Thank you, Mr. Mulholland." She finds it hard to slew away her curious eyes.

He turns to Lena. "We were in the middle of the Black Hills' gold."

/p> She doesn't have much time. "Buy me lunch. I'll tell you more."

"Jeannie - keep an eye out while I'm gone."

"Yes, Mr. Mulholland. Very nice to meet you, Miss Gerhardt."

Lena nods farewell, noting the excitement in Jeannie's ordinary eyes. Outside the air is balmy with a soft chinook. "Rapid's weather can't be beat. I'll give you that," she says.

"If you're up to walk a piece, I'm a member of a club above the First Fidelity. Good soup and sandwiches for lunch."

"I'm game for anything. Give us an appetite, to walk."

There isn't much to see in Rapid. Eleven streets. Three stories seems to be the highest they can build. Her eyes have lights that tell us that she knows there's more than Spearfish, more than this. But anything at all's a start. A toehold's all you need. She'll be bound to get it soon. Perhaps today.

Bud takes the route that leads them past the Post Office and the barber shop for any eyes he'd like to stun. First Fidelity is a towering six floors. On the way up in the elevator to the penthouse restaurant he nods to Ben Graham, his banker, but makes no introduction. Although he grins.

They're seated at a window where they can see the pride of Rapid City, a plaster cast of Bo, the dinosaur, not unlike the ad for Sinclair Oil before that company got swallowed up. The statue's on the skyline over town.

Our Lena doesn't gain an ounce no matter what she eats. She orders soup and sandwich, both. She asks for extra mayo for her ham.

"The future," he says, taking satisfaction at the stares of Jeb, the feed-store man at the next table. "You were talking about the future of the proprietary school business."

"I'm also talking about a job, Mr. Mulholland, if I'm going to make my move. We should get to that before I spill my guts and tell you all that's in my head." She looks out at the dinosaur, perhaps so Bud can study her and judge the possibilities. She only has her good looks and her self to show. The brains and wants are down below the skin.

He clears his throat, a habit when he's at a loss for words. "What's Jake paying you? I hope that's not a secret, too."

She smiles at him and meets his eye. "Four hundred per." In for a penny, in for a pound. Three was what it was. She's come to the conclusion he'll want her or he won't -- the money won't decide.

He stops, the roast beef almost to his lips. "I didn't think that Jake paid out that kind of dough."

"For what I do for him? I'm not your normal Jeannie, understand. I'm his good left hand and that's because he's left-handed."

He nods thoughtfully and takes his bite. "What would I get for old four hundred per?"

"Full value, Mr. Mulholland."

"Bud. Please call me Bud. Administration? Personnel? Finance? You work directly under me?"

She locks eyes with him at last. "Directly, Bud. We have a deal?"

He sticks his heavy hand across the table and she takes it into both of hers just as Cynthia, his wife, comes up. "Bud! I thought I'd find you here." She's panting even though she's come up on the elevator. He snatches his hand away and tries to find some place for it. "Jeannie says you have some urgent calls, Bud, waiting for you -- best leave now!" She isn't someone to be thwarted, flaming high spots in her cheeks, eyes of acid, burning in her face like holes.

"Cynthia! I'd like to introduce . . . "

"I've heard tell of Miss Gerhardt, Bud. I'll just continue with your lunch -- I haven't had mine yet. You go along. You're needed in the office. I'd leave now -- the calls won't keep."

Our Lena doesn't blame them, hanging on for dear life to their man. They were dependent. Always. One day soon she'll own a school. But not right now. Not here in Rapid City, anyway.

Cynthia's tone, her look, tells Bud that everything he's thinking, fantasized that Lena's working under him, is naked, on the table. He daren't raise a fuss. Not in his club.

"Yes, Cynthia." He rises. "You'll have to pardon me, Miss Gerhardt. Duty calls."

"Of course. We'll speak again."

He shakes her hand as if her fingers are afire and he'll be burned alive if he holds on one extra tick. "Goodbye, Miss Gerhardt." He nods to Cynthia and shambles off, past diners and the maitre d'.

Cynthia's a woman in her fifties, never blessed with looks. Right now they'd be a waste, her nose all wrinkled like she's smelled a putrefying rat, her mouth a slit to sheath her tongue, which otherwise might flash right out to lance our Lena's throat. She chokes Bud's sandwich in her two large hands, controls herself and settles back without a bite and glances at her purse. "We don't have time for games," she says.

"For games, Miz Mulholland?"

"I find you here with Bud," she hisses in a whisper, "at lunch the morning after?"

Clear enough! "I've got to find a job, Miz Mulholland. You've got to grant me that."

"I do. You bet I do." Cynthia leans forward, locking her brown eyes with Lena's baby blue. Her voice is low and quavering with rage. "After Jeannie called I spoke to Myra. Told me how you came to Jake. Same way you left. We know you need a job. But we thought where! Five hundred miles from Rapid. Don't care if it's east or west, just far enough away. It costs to travel, Lena -- we agreed to share." She takes a fat envelope from her purse. She purses her lips as she thrusts the envelope across the table, loathe to hand it over, eager to get rid of her. "We figured taxis ought to get a buck a mile."

She glares her venom, the envelope clutched tightly in her hand before she lays it down between the two of them. "If Myra won't then I'll tear out your twat before I let you make a fool of me and Bud. There's five hundred bucks in there." She glances at the envelope. "If you want to keep your looks you'd best be gone this afternoon." She rises. "You can pay for lunch." She shambles off, not unlike Bud.

Our Lena looks across the table out at Bo. She's been the object of harsh words before. It could be worse and has. She hefts the envelope and racks her brains for where. Her eyes light up as she remembers Lou, that pudgy little fellow with the Roman nose and swarthy skin? His school is in the Loop. Perhaps she'd be there too! Not stuck here in some God-forsaken two-bit burg. This just might be an act of God. She's been burying her light too long beneath the bushel of these hayseed towns. Watch out, Chicago! Here comes Lena in her red Corvette.