I did know that Gerald shouldn’t have spoken to me the way that he had—that no one should ever speak to their boss that way, especially in front of other staffers. But everyone was so used to Gerald breaking the rules, and what he had said made so much sense, that I hadn’t the gumption or presence of mind to do anything about it. How could I have legitimately called him out? All he did, in his own colorful way, was remind me of my responsibilities—of the things I should have taken care of without being told. If I had tried to reprimand him, to slap him down for speaking out of turn, I’d have looked like an even bigger fool than I already felt. Especially, I knew, in Bethany and Angie’s eyes.
The plain and simple fact was that I was in over my head. As I rode up the elevator to Eleanor’s suite, after running like a scared fool down the street to her hotel, that reality firmly hit home for the first time. I wasn’t cut out for this. I never asked for any of these supervisory responsibilities. They were simply thrust upon me after demonstrating my competence in managerial positions and my willingness to stay with the company. I hadn’t received any training. There was no management school that the company sent promising candidates to. There wasn’t even an orientation session for new supervisors. Just learn by doing, that was more or less the philosophy, and the learning part was optional. Just do. Just perform. Just do what we expect you to do without us ever even telling you what it is.
When the elevator doors opened and I stepped out onto the colorful carpeting of the VIP floor, I still didn’t know what I was going to say. Despite everything I had just experienced, I wasn’t even sure what I was doing or why. Tell Mary what happened. That directive was still imprinted on my brain, but why and what for wasn’t at all clear. As I moved down the hallway, my eyes focused on the space ahead of my shoes, the patterns of color seemed to twist and swirl as I passed by, combining with the early morning fog to make me slightly dizzy. Before I knew it, I was standing in front of Eleanor’s door, room 2600, the Commodore Suite, a ridiculous name, perhaps, for a woman more interested in fresh flowers than the nautical theme that dominated the decor, but apropos of Eleanor’s unrelenting style of command and control.
I raised my hand to knock, but then remembered the glowing button that served as a doorbell—a doorbell, yes, the suite was so large it needed a doorbell. No guarantee that someone standing in the waterfall shower in the marble-tiled third bathroom would even hear my meek little tap-tap-tapping on the door. I raised a finger but stopped, catching movement out of the corner of my eye. The suite’s service door was open—not fully, just barely ajar because someone had turned the metal bar that served as a chain lock outward, preventing the door from closing completely. Through the crack I could see someone moving, most likely, based on the clothes, a hotel employee.
Deciding slipping in the service entrance made more sense for the task I had come to perform, I did exactly that, finding myself in a small kitchen area, surrounded by granite countertops and trading dance steps in the small space with a hostess from the banquets department, someone I had briefly met at the Board’s reception the night before, a woman named Matilda who was in charge of all services in Eleanor’s suite.
“Good morning, sir,” she said. “Can I help you with something?”
“No,” I said, looking past her and knowing she was too polite to tell me I had come in the wrong door. “I’m not here for the breakfast. I just need to tell Mary something.”
“Mary?” Matilda said.
Also in the kitchen space stood a chef in a white outfit and a tall hat making crepes to order on a small portable grill. On the opposite side of the serving counter a VIP I didn’t recognize stood, plate in hand, and beyond him, out of the suite’s main parlor about thirty other people stood—most of our Board members and a dozen or so of our organization’s major sponsors—gathered in small groups of three or five, champagne mimosas in most hands.
“Sorry,” I said. “Mrs. Walton,” knowing that was how Matilda had most likely been trained to think of her. “Is she here?”
“Yes, sir. Mrs. Walton was the first guest to arrive.”
I’m sure she was. I spotted her across the room, deep in discussion with Eleanor and Gino Del Monaco, our primary contact with our foremost sponsor. That’s what this VIP breakfast was all about—part thank you for the support offered by our sponsors throughout the year, part venue for negotiating deals for next year.
Matilda handed me an unasked-for mimosa, its bubbly orange color glowing in a gold-rimmed champagne glass. I took it without thinking and stepped out into the suite. The VIP waiting for his crepe gave me a passing glance, but I blew right by him, leaving the smells of fresh ingredients and propane gas behind. Part of me wanted to charge right up to Mary and get it over with, but I knew that wouldn’t fly. Gerald might have convinced me I had to tell Mary what had happened, but no one could convince me it would be wise to tell anyone else at this breakfast reception. I had to first catch Mary’s attention and then get her alone for a few minutes.
I positioned myself in a place I thought Mary could not miss seeing me and then waited for her head to turn the right way. When it did her eyes passed over me with clinical detachment, observing more than seeing, recognizing my presence and, rather than showing surprise, expertly calculating what my uninvited appearance portended and assigning me a prioritized position in the hierarchy of tasks she needed to accomplish at this function. Appropriately categorized, she turned away from me and back towards Gino.
“Good morning.”
It was Paul Webster, the immediate past chair of the Board and the one who had questioned me at the Board meeting yesterday. He had appeared unexpectedly at my elbow and nearly startled me out of my skin. He was wearing the same blue suit he had had on the day before, but now with a bright red tie.
“Hello,” I said to him, keeping my eye on Mary.
“I didn’t think you were invited to this thing.”
Now I turned more fully towards him. His tone had been playful, and his face equally so. He wasn’t so much the enforcer but a co-conspirator. At least he was trying to be.
“I wasn’t,” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible, and taking my first sip of my mimosa. “I’m just here to tell Mary something.”
“Everything all right?”
My heart skipped a beat, the champagne bubbles seeming to expand painfully in my chest. The last thing I wanted was to tell Paul what was going on. Cursing myself for not being better at small talk, I did everything I could to turn on the charm.
“It’s nothing,” I said casually. “Just a report from our morning staff meeting. How are things here?”
“Scripted,” Paul said bluntly. “Same as they always are.”
“Is that bad?” I asked, knowing that’s just how Mary liked things.
Paul seemed to think about it for a moment or two, slurping an ice cube from his mimosa and rolling it around on his tongue. “No, I guess not,” he said, crunching his molars down on the cube. “Not if we expect to raise the money we need for next year’s programs.”
I largely agreed with him. Getting the corporations who supported our organization to part with their money was one of Mary’s prime functions—and she set-up functions like this at the Annual Conference to best accomplish it. A whole series of seemingly casual but carefully planned interactions would take place at breakfast this morning, and the balance of the day would be taken up with closed door meetings with Mary, Eleanor, and people like Gino. One by one they would meet and determine how much would be offered in the year ahead—how much, what for, and in return for which favors and what recognition. It was all a kind of game, but one with serious consequences. One less commitment, one reduction in the level of support could mean the abandonment of programs and the layoff of the staff that organized them.
“And it looks like Mary is reeling some in right now.”
I smiled politely, desperately wanting to get out of the conversation but unable to come up with a graceful way of doing it. Luckily, I thought, Mary would come to my rescue. In just a few short seconds, her discussion with Gino appeared to come to a cheerful end, she directed Eleanor towards another potential donor, and she made her way across the shag carpet to where Paul and I were standing.
“Good morning,” she said upon arrival, nodding to Paul, but zeroing in on me. “Alan, is something up?”
“Just my morning report,” I said, trying not to be too obvious about cocking my head in Paul’s direction.
“Yes?” she said, trying to play along but clearly not understanding the game.
I looked at Paul.
He got it. “Hey,” he said suddenly. “I think one of our sponsors left a big pile of money under the piano in the other room. Why don’t I go pick it up while the two of you talk business?”
Mary gave him a smile that expressed neither warmth nor humor, and we both watched him go.
“What are you doing here?” Mary asked in a terse whisper as soon as Paul was out of earshot.
I placed my mostly full mimosa on the tray of a passing hostess. “There was another incident with Wes Howard last night.”
I hadn’t rehearsed anything. I hadn’t even thought about how to begin. The words just came out of my mouth.
“What? Where?”
“At some karaoke bar. He was there with a whole bunch of our staff. And…”
My hesitation must have made Mary look suspiciously around the room. My eyes followed hers. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us.
“And?” she said, stepping even closer to me.
“And, Amy Crawford was with him.”
The look that passed over Mary’s face told me that even she had not foreseen such a circumstance. “What is she doing here?”
She. Bitterness towards a vanquished foe, returned unexpectedly to battle.
I told her I didn’t know, that I hadn’t even seen her, that I had recognized her from the maniacal cackle that had risen up from the bowels of the karaoke subbasement.
“What were you doing there?”
It was only then that I told her about the phone call from Caroline, they way Bethany and I had picked her up from the bar, and the things she had and hadn’t said about Wes Howard.
Mary took the information in silence, her head nodding as her calculating accountant’s brain worked on processing it all.
“So,” she said eventually. “Neither you nor Bethany witnessed any of this alleged behavior.”
“Well, no,” I felt forced to confess, “but there must have been a dozen or more other witnesses. Caroline said that most of the junior staff was down there with them.”
“Have you spoken to any of them?”
It was spoken like an accusation. I could practically feel her rhetorical finger poking me in the chest.
“No,” I said meekly. “I thought I should talk to you first.”
Mary nodded, her eyes starting to scan the room again. “Okay,” she said, her attention still out there among the VIPs. “I need to finish a few conversations up here. But we need to talk.” She brought up a wrist and glanced at her Cartier watch. “Where can I meet you at...oh, at nine-thirty?”
I looked at my own Timex watch. Its was six minutes after seven.
“Ummm,” I said, trying to recall the details of the hectic schedule I had on this, the opening day of our Annual Conference. “The staff office?”
“Where is that again?”
I gave her the room location and she nodded. “Okay. We’ll talk then.”
And then she slipped away, her eyes having never fully reconnected with mine. I watched her move purposefully towards a small circle of other people, interject herself into their conversation, and receive a warm welcome and a round of happy handshakes.
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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