As the week wore on, however, there were fewer and fewer people to disappoint. The second day of the conference was typically the busiest, when the maximum number of people were there, cramming themselves into depressing hotel rooms by night and even more depressing meeting rooms by day, all for the fleeting chance at something they couldn’t get at home. For most, that was education -- a new perspective, a new way, a new lease on their professional lives. For a few, it was more about what happened between the sessions than in the sessions themselves. It was intense and lonely. Few could sustain it for more than two or three days. By the third day there were noticeably fewer people, by the fourth we were probably down to 60% of the total, and by the fifth and last day we approached actually ghost town status.
And as the attendees drifted away, so did the staff. At the beginning we had practically everyone there, every able body needed for some vital task, pushing registration envelopes into waiting hands or moving banquet chairs from one room to another to match unexpected demands. But with fewer attendees there were fewer such demands, and the company, always looking to save money, made sure no one outstayed their usefulness. Matching the pace of the attendees, a small group was dismissed at the end of the third day, including, much to my relief, Bethany Bishop; and a much larger contingent at the end of the fourth, including, much to my even greater relief, Mary Walton. On the fifth and final day, it’s safe to assume that we had little more than a skeleton crew left.
In fact, there were only four of us. Me, the captain of our tiny crew; Angie Ferguson, my executive officer, the person who actually knew how to run things on our sinking ship; and our two enlisted personnel, the two tasked with the actual bailing, Jeff Hatchler and Caroline Abernathy.
On that last day, our official duties wrapped up relatively early. With no dinner events planned, the conference closed up around 2:00 PM. We had to work a little longer than that, packing up boxes and making arrangements to ship them back to the office, but that didn’t take us long. And that was good, because we were all booked on the same flight back home, leaving Miami International that evening at 7:35 PM.
We had plenty of time to kill at the airport, so after clearing security, the four of us gathered in a corner of one of the airport bars and grill, this one pretending to specialize in Cuban sandwiches.
“Hey guys,” the waitress said, appearing at our table before all of us had even found our chairs. Her hair was curly and black, and piled high on top of her head. “What can I get you?”
“I need a beer,” Jeff said immediately.
What followed was a kind of odd silence. Even the waitress, gleaning apparently from our appearance that we were business travelers and, even more intuitively that I was the senior man on the totem pole, understood that this was a work function. If there was going to be alcohol served, I would need to okay it.
“Me, too,” I said.
Permission thus granted, the waitress began reciting everything they had on tap. Jeff selected one and I selected another. Angie ordered a glass of white wine, and Caroline a rum and coke.
“What about food?”
“Give us a minute,” I said, snatching the menu out of the cardboard six-pack holder that served as both the centerpiece and the caddy for the mustard and ketchup.
“You got it.”
It felt like I had just begun to decipher the menu -- my weary brain struggling with both its font and its phraseology -- when she returned with our drinks.
“That was quick,” I said, this time catching the letters printed on her plastic name tag.
“Most people like fast service here,” Consuelo said, dropping a cardboard coaster in front of each of us before placing each drink. “What time is your flight?”
“Seven thirty-five,” Angie replied, snatching the stem of her wine glass before it could leave a ring on the coaster.
“You’ve got time,” Consuelo said. “Do you want to put an order in now, or wait a while?”
I didn’t even think to ask anyone. “Let’s wait. Come back in thirty minutes?”
“You got it.”
Everyone else kept studying their menus, but I put mine back in the caddy. I had already decided. When Consuelo came back, I was going to ask her which was her favorite item and order that. She looked both trustworthy and like she would have a firm opinion.
“I’d like to make a toast,” I said with mock formality, lifting my frosted beer glass into the air. I waited for everyone to respond in kind, and then, with as much good-hearted sarcasm as my tired voice could muster, I said, “To Miami Beach. May we all someday actually get to know her.”
It was a running joke in our company. It acknowledged what we all knew or eventually came to understand. Despite all the travel and beautiful locations we visited, we never truly spent any quality time in any of them. When it came to experiencing a destination, airports and convention hotels just didn’t count.
We all took a healthy swig of our respective drinks, mine more healthy than most.
“I’d also like to make a toast,” Angie said before any of us could set our glasses down.
“Indeed,” I said, raising my glass higher. “Be my guest.”
“A toast,” Angie said. “To you, Alan.”
“To me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you knocked the shit out of this conference. Short two staff people, and with the woman in the presidential suite rooting against you, and you still managed to pull off a win. You were everywhere you needed to be and you kept the damn thing from running off the rails.”
It was Angie’s way of giving a compliment. There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in her voice.
“Just wanted you to know that some of us noticed.”
“Here, here,” Jeff said.
I didn’t know what to say. I looked from one of them to the other. Even Caroline seemed to be smiling at me.
“Thanks,” I said finally, reaching out and clinking each one of their glasses. I thought about asking Angie what she meant by the woman in the presidential suite rooting against me, but decided this wasn’t the time or place. “You guys did pretty well yourselves. Dinner is on me tonight.”
“So,” Jeff asked me after taking another long sip of his beer and plopping his glass down, a line of foam still on his lip. “Are you my boss now?”
Later, after we had eaten and we were sitting in the gate area waiting for a flight to board, I had a chance to talk quietly with Angie.
“Angie, what did you mean before about the woman in the presidential suite rooting against me?”
She let the crochet she was working on drop into her lap. “You don’t know?”
“I might,” I said. “I just want to hear you say it.”
“Eleanor Rumford,” she said, discreetly looking around to avoid being overheard. “She has it in for you.”
“In what way?”
Angie proceeded to tell me a little story. In this story, a woman named Eleanor Rumford came to her in the time between the mix-up with Dr. Lancaster’s slides and my own discussion with her and Mary before the dinner session, and asked her a bunch of leading questions about the performance and conduct of someone named Alan Larson.
“She was looking for dirt on you, Alan.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wanted me to say something negative about you; about the way you conduct yourself, or the decisions you make, or the things you do. I got the distinct impression she was planning to shoot you and was checking in case I had any bullets.”
“You didn’t give her any, did you?”
Angie picked up her project and started crocheting again, her thick fingers working quickly to stab and tug the yarn with a hooked needle.
“Nah, fuck her. Like I said, you’re one of the good ones, Alan.”
I thanked Angie, told her I appreciated her support, and then excused myself to go use the restroom. On the way I had to step over Jeff and Caroline, both sitting cross-legged on the floor, a couple of piles of playing cards fanned out between them. They might have said something to me. I might have even disturbed their game. I was too preoccupied to think much about my surroundings. Angie had defended me, and that was good, but I knew Angie was likely not the only person Eleanor had asked. As I made my way down the concourse, I found myself counting not my steps, as I habitually did, but the number of people in the company who might have been willing to put bullets in Eleanor’s gun.
+ + +
“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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