As I walked back to the office I thought a lot about some of the last words Steve had said.
At least not presently.
That one stuck with me the most. I had asked him if he wanted to schedule another call to continue our discussion, and he had said that it wasn’t necessary. At least not presently. It was more his tone than the words themselves, but they left me with the decided impression that I had passed some kind of test, and that there were only a few more formalities to move through. Steve had seemed to signal, intentionally or otherwise, that we would be speaking again and that, when we did, it would be on a new and different footing.
Discuss the remaining candidates.
And that one gave my exuberance pause. There were other candidates still being considered? Those words reminded me of the stage management I had been subjected to in Boston, ostensibly to keep me from accidentally bumping into other candidates, but which instead left me with the impression that they were instead hiding from me the fact that there weren’t any other candidates. And again, Steve’s tone seemed to communicate something different than the words themselves, something along the lines of that original impression. The remaining candidates, right? You’re a professional, Alan. You understand that I have to pretend that there are other candidates. That’s how this game is played.
Either way, I felt extremely confident. I thought I had nailed it. I would have wagered a large sum of money that I was going to get offered the job. In fact, I remember standing in the elevator lobby of my office building, watching the lighted numbers slowly count their way down to my level, and seriously considering the idea of not getting into the elevator car when it arrived. There was likely a shitstorm waiting for me up on the eleventh floor, and maybe, just maybe, it was something I no longer really needed to wade into.
I could just leave. I could just go home and never go back to that awful place. In a few days, Steve would have his conversation with the Executive Committee, they would discuss the “remaining candidates,” make their decision and, a few days after that, I would receive (and almost certainly accept) their offer. With that prospect before me, what was the point of subjecting myself to more of the pain and suffering that comprised my current employment?
It would be a risk, I supposed. I felt confident, but maybe I was misreading the situation again. Maybe there really were other candidates, and one of them was going to get the offer next week instead of me. Then, where would I be? Unemployed with no real prospects on the horizon. That felt scary -- terrifying, in a way, knowing how much Jenny and Jacob and the new baby were depending on me -- but, at the same time, it also felt liberating. So I don’t get the new job? So what? There were other jobs out there, and I would certainly get one of them eventually. And without the drama and dysfunction of my current position getting in the way, I could better dedicate myself to getting one of them. We had some money in our savings account. We could make it for a few months if we had to.
I thought about calling Jenny -- and was in the process of fishing my cell phone out of my pocket -- when the elevator dinged and its doors opened before me. Standing in the car was Bethany Bishop, a cardboard box filled with the personal effects from her office in her arms. We both froze upon recognizing the other. I’m not sure what expression sat on my face, but Bethany looked like she had just given birth.
In a moment, the elevator doors started to close, and that prompted action -- the two of us reaching out simultaneously to prevent their movement. My arms were freer, and I had an easier time accomplishing the maneuver.
“Bethany,” I said. “What are you still doing here?”
She shook her head, as if determined to not fall into a trap. “Mary had to put off our meeting,” she said quickly. “They just finished interrogating me. Now they’re looking for you.”
She sounded exhausted, but I detected a small lift in her voice at the end. Yes, I thought. I’m sure they are looking for me.
“Stand aside, Alan.”
That woke me from my reverie and I realized I was effectively blocking her exit from the elevator car. Mindlessly, I stepped aside, continuing to hold the elevator door open with my hand. Without another word she charged forward, her heels clicking on the tiled lobby floor and she made her way to the parking structure. I watched her go, watching as she hitched her box on one wide hip in order to free a hand to open the door, and then disappear inside. In the same mindless fashion, I stepped inside the elevator and pushed the little button with the number eleven stamped on it.
I don’t know what I thought about on the short ride up to my office floor. I probably didn’t think about anything. I was probably incapable of any real thought at that point. Somewhere, deep inside my brain, instinct had likely taken over. There would be an ordeal to suffer through, I knew, and it would serve me better than my constantly vacillating consciousness.
When the doors opened, I entered the office complex and immediately made my way down to Mary’s office.
Ruthie saw me coming. She looked at me with some mixture of contempt and compassion, and stood up to silently escort me into the corner office she traditionally guarded. Inside I found both Mary and Don, sitting together at the conference table. Three small pendant lights hung down over the table, only two of them working, their sharp illumination lighting them as if actors on a stage.
“Well, Mister Larson, there you are.”
It was Don doing the talking, and I took that to be an extremely bad sign. As Ruthie closed the door behind me, I felt like I was being locked in a room with two angry dogs, one of them rabid.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
And he was swearing. Not good at all.
“I was eating my lunch in the park,” I said, having prepared that much of the lie.
As I strolled over to stand just below the small dais on which Mary’s conference table sat, I saw Don’s beady eyes shift to the decorative clock in Mary’s award case, then back to me. “It’s two twenty-six. You’ve been gone since before twelve. Do you always take such a long goddamn lunch?”
I looked at Mary, and caught her eyes boring into me, her lips pressed so tightly together I couldn’t see the shade of lipstick she was wearing. I thought that maybe they weren’t both angry dogs. I thought that maybe Don was the dog and Mary was holding his leash.
“Not always.”
Don flinched as if I had tried to hit him. “Do you think this is funny? Do you know what happened while you were ‘eating your lunch’ in the park?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Don?”
“Sit down and I will, goddammit. I’ll tell you not just what happened but what the fuck is going to happen next. And you’re not going to like it.”
“Then I think I’d prefer to stand.”
I’m not sure what it was that was keeping me calm. Facing Don was always a terrifying prospect, and when Don’s back was up -- as it appeared to be now -- it usually caused people to wilt, weep, or wet their pants. It was probably an aftereffect of the conversation I had just had with Steve, and the confidence that it had given me that I wasn’t such a loser after all. But I’d like to think that I would have been able to remain calm even without that support. I had seen Don destroy people before, and I remembered telling myself whenever I saw it, that eventually, inevitably, his anger would turn and be directed at me; and that when it did, I was not -- EVER -- going to give that fat fuck the satisfaction of seeing me crumble before him.
“All right, smartass, have it your way.” Not without effort, Don worked himself up to his feet, almost toppling his chair over backwards as he did so. “While you were out ‘eating your lunch’ in the park, Bethany Bishop was in this office, resigning her position, and telling us -- guess what? That you were the reason for her departure.”
I looked over at Mary, who had remained seated, her arms now crossed over her chest. She looked nothing but uncomfortable to me, the way someone facing dental surgery might.
“That’s four by my count, Alan. Susan Sanford, Michael Lopez, Gerald Kreiger, and now Bethany Bishop. Four of your direct reports who have left the organization and who have cited you and your inadequacies as the primary reason they were leaving.”
I flipped my eyes back to Don. “You fired Gerald, and you only did that because I told you what he was doing to undermine our position with our largest client.”
Don shook a chubby fist at me. “You're goddamn right I fired him, Alan! And after the things he told us about you I wanted to fire you, too, but Mary decided to save your sorry ass.”
I remembered the cracked glass in my office door, cracked when Gerald punched it on his perp walk out of the building. You’re a dead man, Alan! You’re a fucking dead man!
“She saved my sorry ass?” I said, incredulous, and turned back to Mary. “Is that what you did? Working me to death is saving my sorry ass?”
Don started barking at me again, but I kept my gaze focused on Mary, and she eventually held up a hand to muzzle him. She still looked uncomfortable, like trying to swallow a slippery eel, but when she spoke, there was an icy coldness in her voice.
“The things that Bethany said about you are almost unbelievable, Alan. As challenging as things have been around here for you, even I didn’t think you would stoop to such a level.”
They were the first words in the drama that gave me any kind of pause. I blanched. There’s no other word for it. Remembering the lies that Wes Howard threatened to spread about me and Bethany, and the familiarity that we had shown in the office and at the recent conference, I suddenly feared the lies that Bethany may have decided to spin about me.
“She’s lying.” It seemed the safest and most all-encompassing thing to say.
“Is she?” Mary asked. “Then you’re not trying to undermine my authority?”
Wait a minute. What?
“Don’t just stand there with that ridiculous look on your face, Alan. Tell me if the things Bethany said about you are true.”
“What did she say?”
Don suddenly huffed with exasperation. “Oh, for fuck sake, Mary. Let’s just fire him already!”
Mary raised her hand to him again. “Just a minute, Don. I want to hear him deny it, if he can.”
“Deny it?” I said. “I don’t even know what I’m denying. Tell me what she said about me!”
And Mary did just that. Evidently, Bethany had really decided to throw me under the bus on her way out the door. According to Mary, she said that she was leaving because she could no longer work for a supervisor who was actively working against the leadership of the company and the clients it represented. Bethany said that I had frequently talked with her about both Mary and Don, expressing my opinion that they were corrupt and incompetent, running the company for their own personal enrichment and setting everyone who threatened them up for failure and termination. According to Bethany, it was me, not Gerald, who had been conspiring to steal the client from the company, and that I had tried to recruit her into my diabolical scene. On top of all of that, I had evidently been inappropriate with her -- especially as she began to push back against my schemes of conquest -- calling her names, insulting her, and threatening to fire her.
It was a lot -- most of it without a iota of truth to it. But there was one thing, the idea that I thought Mary was a moron, and that I had shared that opinion with Bethany in times of heartfelt intimacy -- that was true. The idea that she would share that with Mary, that felt worse than all the other lies she told about me. And, as I looked into Mary’s eyes as she summed up and demanded an accounting from me, I could see that that was the item that had hurt her the most, too.
“So, tell me, Alan. What am I to believe? Bethany was very convincing, with enough facts and figures to support many of her claims. Is anything she said true? Do you really have such a low opinion of… of the company?”
I stammered before I could form any kind of coherent response. “I… I don’t… I don’t know what to tell you, Mary. She’s lying. She’s… She’s mad at me, and she evidently wants to see me suffer.”
“What is she mad at you about?”
This last was from Don, who was still standing on the opposite side of the table from me, and had evidently been listening and waiting for an opportunity to poke his sharp stick back into my side. I looked at him, then back to Mary, then back to him.
“It’s… It’s complicated,” I said. “Bethany and I are friends. Just friends. At least we used to be. We recently had a falling out.”
Mary unexpectedly rose to her feet. “I don’t think I want to hear it, Alan. Whatever was going on between you and Bethany, I’m confident that it isn’t going on anymore. Tomorrow the two of us are supposed to get on the same airplane and attend the leadership meeting that Wes Howard will be chairing. I spoke to Wes this morning and, believe it or not, he spoke positively about the work you have been doing to adjust and support his vision there. I think he’s expecting to see you there, and I’m not sure that we should act on this situation until after this meeting is successfully completed.”
Don began to sputter again, but Mary waved him aside. “We’re not letting you off the hook, Alan. We’re just delaying any action we decide to take until Monday. There’s just one thing I want to know. Can I trust you?”
“What?” I said, not knowing what to think, much less say.
“Look me in the eye, Alan. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you are going to behave yourself until Monday. That you are going to attend this meeting like a good soldier and do exactly what you are told.”
It was evidently too much for Don to take. He threw up his arms, cursed, and stormed out of the room, saying that he wanted no part of this. The commotion gave me a moment to gather a mere handful of my wits together, to realize the depth of the dysfunction I was experiencing, and what I needed to do if I wanted to keep receiving a paycheck.
Mary turned back to me. “Tell me, Alan. Tell me what I need to hear.”
“I promise, Mary. I’m not working against you, and I’ll do what is required of me at this meeting.”
Slowly, she nodded her head, clearly making a decision in her mind.
+ + +
“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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