Very late that afternoon Mary stopped by my office. I was in the middle of packing things up for the day, sliding my laptop into its sleeve in my shoulder bag.
Mary shut my door and stood with her back to it. “Paul Webster is out,” she said.
My fingers froze on the zipper. “What?”
“Paul Webster is out,” she repeated. “Don and I spoke to him this afternoon and he’s agreed to resign from the Board. He’s out.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
Mary gave me a disappointed look. “No, if you must know. Not ‘just like that.’ We had to move heaven and earth to pull this one off. Eleanor is not happy about any of this, and especially since we had to pull her in to do some of the dirty work.”
Not happy. That was one of Mary’s euphemisms. It meant Eleanor was spitting mad. She had likely chewed Mary out and extracted all kinds of promises for future work and concessions. And that, I knew, made Mary more uncomfortable than any coup attempt from below possibly could have.
“You and Gerald really did a number on us, but we’ve taken care of it. It’s over.”
“Wait, Mary,” I said. “What do you mean ‘me and Gerald’? I didn’t have anything to do with this. I’m the one who brought it to your attention, remember?”
The look on Mary’s face could only be described as skeptical, but her words were placating. “Yes, I’m sorry. You’re right. I spoke in haste. This was Gerald’s doing, but you should have discovered his plans when he started concocting them, not when he was about to execute them.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “If I wasn’t doing two other jobs in addition to mine, maybe I could’ve kept a closer eye on him.”
It was a dangerous thing to say, but the words were out before I could stop them. Most things Mary said were crazy, but it was typically even crazier to challenge them. For a moment I saw Mary’s eyes smolder, but then she carefully cooled whatever fire was brewing within.
“You’ve got three other jobs to do now, Alan. And the leadership meeting is in ten days. I told you, we’ll talk about help when we’re on the other side of that. Not before.”
I zipped up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. I just wanted to get out of there. “Uh huh. So who am I supposed to coordinate the agenda with now? If Paul is out, is Eleanor going to step in and run the meeting in his stead?”
“No,” Mary said. “We’re moving Wes Howard into the president-elect seat. You should work with him on the final details for the event.”
My heart stopped.
Wes Howard.
“Mary!” I cried, but her hand was already on the door knob and she had already pulled it open.
“Yes, I know,” she said, as she exited my office. “You’ll just have to find a way to work with him. There’s no other way, now.”
And quick as that, she was gone.
+ + +
“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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