My phone was ringing when I got back to my office. I rushed to pick it up on the third ring that I heard, not knowing how long it had been ringing before that.
“Hello, this is Alan Larson.”
“Alan. This is Paul Webster calling. How are you?”
I felt my heart stop. Literally. There passed probably five seconds of silence where it would either decide to start beating again or I would flop over onto the floor of my tiny office.
“F...fine, Paul. How are you?”
“Well, I was a lot better a week ago. I was hoping you and I could have a talk about some of the things that have transpired since then.”
“S...sure,” I said. “Give me a minute to close my office door.”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
I clunked the phone down on my desk and walked over to my door like a zombie. While I was there I took a moment to look out through its cracked glass to see people arriving and getting settled into their cubes. Among them I saw Caroline Abernathy -- the young woman who was almost fired the day they terminated Amy Crawford, who needed rescuing from the clutches of Wes Howard in the dark basement of Club NOW. She was wearing another one of those droopy sweaters she always wore, the tissues for her perennial runny nose tucked reassuringly into its pockets and sleeve cuffs. She wasn’t talking to anyone, simply easing herself into her ergonomic chair and into her lot for the day and suddenly, insistently, I wanted to be her, to give up everything I had and everything I was to be her, sitting alone and unbothered at my desk with my long, straight hair hanging around my face for the next eight hours. That had to be better than what waited for me on the telephone, and whatever would come after that, and after that.
“Hello?”
“Yes, I’m still here, Alan.”
“What do you want?”
“Just a few minutes of your time.”
“You got them.”
Paul paused, probably uncertain about how to proceed. My tone so far had been hostile. I certainly wasn’t going to make this easy for him.
“Well, Alan,” he said slowly. “How are you doing these days?”
“I’m fine.”
“Really? That’s not what I hear. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like your world is caving in around you.”
I did not respond. It was all I could do to sit in my chair and force my heart to slow down.
“Alan?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“That’s a little more like it, isn’t it? First it was Susan Sanford, and then Michael Lopez, and now Gerald Krieger. There all leaving, moving on to better things, perhaps, and there you stay, taking on more than you can possibly handle.”
His voice was strangely intimate in my ear, almost like my own cricket conscience chirping its secret thoughts and worries.
“How do you think it’s going to end?”
I closed my eyes. “Is there something I can do for you, Paul?”
“Actually, yes, Alan. There is. I was hoping you would keep me in the loop about what is going on in the organization.”
“Which organization? Yours or mine?”
“Well, both actually,” he replied, evidently understanding that I was drawing a distinction between Mary’s company and the non-profit organization whose leadership he had just been forced out of.
“Why would I do that? Mary told me you were finished.”
“Mary doesn’t know half of what she thinks she does. I’m not finished. She is.”
I opened my eyes and was shocked to see Mary standing on the other side of my glass door. Her back was partially towards me, engaged in some kind of conversation with Don Bascom. Whether she was on her way to my office or just passing by when Don stopped her, I didn’t have any idea.
“Alan, did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, I heard you, Paul. You said that Mary was finished.”
“She is. She doesn’t know it, yet, but, I promise you, she’ll be the next one to go. You should think about where you want to be standing when that happens.”
I had no response to that. I was frankly more focused on Mary and Don, having what appeared to be a hushed and fairly serious conversation right outside my office.
“Paul, I have to go now.”
“Wait. Don’t hang up. What you do next may very well determine if you’re going to be in or out when the shit comes down. If you play your cards right, you may be the one sitting in that corner office of hers.”
Mary suddenly turned, her conversation with Don ending, his bulky form lumbering off and out of view. Her hand reached out to grasp my door handle.
“Paul, I need to go now.”
“Wait! At least tell me…”
His voice drifted off as I dropped the receiver back in its cradle, executing the movement just as Mary pushed my door open and stepped halfway into the room.
“Alan, do you have-- Oh, sorry. Were you on the phone?”
“Just finished up,” I said as pleasantly as I could. “What’s up?”
“Who was that?” she asked, now stepping fully into my office, but not closing my door behind her.
In the split second I was given to make the biggest decision of my day I decided to lie. “Samir Mahdi,” I said, picking someone who was on my list to call that day, a minor committee chair that would be attending the leadership conference next week. “He had some questions about the event.”
Mary looked at me quizzically only for a moment. “Have you called Wes Howard, yet?”
“No,” I said. “He said over email that he would be available later this afternoon. I’m planning to call him around two.”
Mary nodded. “Okay. Just make sure you connect with him today. He has some changes to the invitation list that will need to be dealt with. Whatever he says, just do it, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, forcing my smile to grow wider. “He’s the new boss, right?”
I meant it light-heartedly, but Mary’s reply was deadly serious.
“Yes. He is.”
I kept smiling, nodding my head like the petrified idiot I was.
+ + +
“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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