“Hey, Ruthie, you got a minute?”
Two minutes later Ruthie and I were walking into Mary’s office, Ruthie closing the door behind us. Mary was just getting back from a business lunch herself. She plunked her car keys down on her desk and looked at us suspiciously as she began pulling her laptop out of her Coach handbag, beige like the pant suit she was wearing.
“What’s up?” she asked.
I told her as succinctly as I could what Gerald was planning. As I recall, I got it all into one sentence.
“Gerald just offered me a job at the company he’s started to steal your biggest client away from you.”
The words more or less froze Mary in her tracks, but the look on her face told me that they barely registered with her.
“Say that again,” she said.
I exchanged a cautious look with Ruthie and she gave me a motherly nod.
“I said, ‘Gerald just offered me a job at the company he’s started to steal our biggest client away from us.’”
Mary’s next reaction surprised even me. She laughed. Her eyes and her arms gave an appeal to the merciful God in Heaven and she laughed, not loudly and not with relish, but with a strange kind of satisfied resignation.
“Have a seat,” she said, motioning me to one of her visitor chairs. And then, “Ruthie, ask Don to come down here and make sure we are not disturbed.”
I took the chair she had indicated and watched her continue and complete the process of docking her laptop in its station and powering it up.
“Mary--”
“No,” she said, holding the palm of one hand up to me and using the fingers of the other to type in her password. “No, Alan, Wait for Don to get here. Please.”
She didn’t sound angry, but she did sound serious. I didn’t know what she thought was going to happen when Don got there, but it wasn’t going to be fun and games. Not knowing what else to say, I sat there silently and watched Mary go to work on her computer. Her screen was at a difficult angle, and I didn’t want to crane my neck, but from what I could see it looked like she was accessing personnel records of some kind.
Don appeared long before I would’ve expected him. He must have been in the neighborhood, not all the way on the other side of the office in his Enormous Pod, or the conference room that adjoined it.
“What’s up?” he asked, shutting Mary’s door behind him.
Mary spun in her chair, very much like the boss had just arrived. “Have a seat, Don. Alan, tell Don what you just told me.”
I watched as Don eased his bulk into the second visitor chair, the bolts that held it together straining but holding firm against his mass. He turned and looked at me with his bloodshot eyes and I repeated what I had now said two times before.
At first, Don seemed to have no reaction to my words at all. He gave Mary a sidelong glance and I saw Mary return a knowing nod, and then, quite unexpectedly, Don began to interrogate me.
I’m not sure what else to call it. There was a sudden barrage of questions, digging into every aspect of my conversation with Gerald. Where we were, what was said, who was around us, what might’ve been overheard. A crime had been committed, Don was the police investigator, and he was going to get to the bottom of it. Under the withering assault, I told Don how Gerald had first approached me in the office this morning, laying out his plan, and then inviting me out to lunch to discuss the details.
“And why did you choose to go to lunch with him?”
I was ready for that line of questioning. Don and Mary, both, were the kind of people who jealously protected what they had, and saw enemies and plots around every corner.
“To get more information,” I replied quickly, pitching the tone of my voice to convey my unwavering loyalty to them and their company. “I wanted to see who else he had been talking to. To find out how far this betrayal went. I hoped it didn’t go any further than Gerald and Paul Webster, but if it did, I needed to know so I could warn you.”
I was the first one to mention Paul Webster’s name, and from the look on Don’s face you would’ve thought I had let off a stink bomb under his chair. His wide nose wrinkled on his fleshy face, and it looked like he might vomit.
“Yes,” Mary said. “Paul Webster. Don, we’re going to have to give Mister Webster a call.”
Don nodded, swallowing back his gorge and getting himself under control. His questions began again, as fast and furious as before. It began to feel very much like he was trying to catch me in a trap. I did the best I could to avoid them, which wasn’t too hard because I was essentially telling them the truth. The only thing from the whole episode that I held back was the phone call I had made to my wife, seeking her advice and what I should do. They must never know that I had even halfway seriously considered Gerald’s offer. That, I knew, would spell my doom as much as Gerald’s.
Eventually, the interrogation ended. Don fell into an uncomfortable silence, his pudgy fingers gripping the arms of his chair.
“Okay, Alan,” Mary said. “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. That will be all.”
I looked at her. While I had been sweating under Don’s bright lights she had been busy typing on her keyboard, printing a handful of documents, and paper clipping them together into a pair of identical and unlabelled folders.
“Ummm, okay,” I said. “What happens now?”
“Go back to your office,” she told me gently, the way a parent might speak to a child they intended to spare from something grown-up and grisly. “Don’t speak to anyone. Go back to your office, close your door, and don’t come out until I come to get you.”
Next to me, Don was lifting himself out of his chair. When the difficult maneuver was completed he stood beside me, evidently willing to serve as my escort if necessary.
“What are you going to do?” I asked Mary, rising to my own feet. “Are you going to fire Gerald?”
Mary remained seated behind her desk, looking up at me with her best poker face. “We’ll discuss it when I come to meet you in your office. Now go.”
I looked at Don and he gave me a stern look, extending an arm to begin the process of directing me towards the door.
Not knowing what else to do I complied, leaving Mary’s office by the same door I had entered. Whatever confidence I had brought in there with me, I was taking none of it back out. Everything that had happened had felt wrong, and I had no idea what was going to happen next.
“Ruthie,” Don said as he shut Mary’s door behind us. “Will you make sure Alan makes it back to his office and stays there?”
“Yes,” Ruthie said, springing suddenly to her feet and extending a hand to me like I was lost on an elementary school field trip.
I looked at her hand, the latest ring Desmond had given her sparkling on one of her fingers.
“I can find my own way,” I said, defiantly, and walked away.
“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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