by Joan Cohen
The vitriol she’d pushed down became a force, a current racing through her body. “It’s my fault you’re sitting in that bed? You’re the one who never considered where Jake’s relapse might lead, and you’re the asshole who cranked up the music and gunfire at kickoff.”
“I didn’t do that,” he yelled. The patient behind the curtain turned his TV louder. “And Milton Cox, the moron, was supposed to set off his car alarm, not drive through the window.” The alarm on Parker’s monitor blared a warning, though Jeanne was sure her own racing heart had set off the sensor.
“Don’t think you’ll get away with this just because people feel sorry for you.”
“And who do you think will listen to Jake’s baby’s mama?”
A nurse entered, looking harried and annoyed. “Heard you both down the hall before the monitor went off. This conversation is over, and so are visiting hours.” Jeanne slammed her chair back and rose, leaving the nurse to minister to Parker and his monitoring electronics.
In the hallway, her face hot with rage, she fervently wished Jake had killed Parker. She looked back over her shoulder, as though someone might have divined her thoughts, and jammed her finger into the elevator button several times. If only she could detail Parker’s transgressions to the board and the trade press.
Once she was outside the overheated hospital, her pulse slowed. The frigid wind stabbed her cheeks. Huddled over and shivering, she made her way through the parking lot. She was no longer the Salientific hero unfairly excoriated by Parker. She was a powerless nobody, a terminated executive who had slept with her CEO and an investor. If she attempted revenge, she’d be seen as a spiteful ex-employee bereft of credibility. Parker would make sure she was finished in the industry, if her own actions hadn’t accomplished that already. Gnashing her teeth in frustration, she maneuvered her belly behind the steering wheel.
The next morning, Jeanne tried to come up with a reason to get out of bed. Her fleece blanket provided insulation from the bedroom’s cold air but not from the memory of the previous evening’s ugliness. It lodged in her brain and gut like acid.
How could Parker continue to see himself as the company’s Machiavellian savior? He had denied causing Jake’s meltdown at kickoff. If she could believe anything he said, someone besides Parker had been out to get Jake. She swung her feet over the side of her bed.
Wrapping her robe around the belly it scarcely covered, she relied on the generous sash to hold it in place. The living room thermostat read sixty-five degrees. The heat was pumping, as it was set to from six o’clock on, but had not yet reached its daytime warmth. Jeanne wasn’t sure if she felt a draft from a poorly fitting window or was chilled from within by the possibility of yet more malice at Salientific.
She opened the kitchen cabinet above her coffee maker and reached for a Salientific mug. With her finger looped through the handle, she paused. She no longer worked for Salientific or the companies whose names and logos adorned every mug in her cabinet. How sad that any visitor would grasp how she defined herself merely by looking inside.
She braced herself against the freezing air of her garage long enough to fetch a carton she’d saved for recycling and the stepladder she kept by the kitchen door. She set the carton on the counter and stepped onto the first rung of the ladder. With one satisfying sweep, she emptied the shelf of mugs, her breath catching at the crash of breaking ceramics.
Just so much trash, she thought, as she carried the carton out to the garage and set it beside her dumpster. She returned to the stepladder and brought down the Mikasa cups and saucers she’d relegated to the top shelf. After washing one set, she brewed a cup of coffee, which she was certain was her best in memory.
She kept thinking it was Saturday, though it wasn’t. Is that what every day would feel like from then on? Even if her employment at Salientific was over, she couldn’t just detach herself from the company along a perforated line the way she tore her expense check away from its printed statement.
She sat down at her laptop and looked up the phone number of the production company Mariana had engaged for the sales meeting. Reaching for her cell phone was automatic, and surprised by its absence, she realized it was still on her night-stand. When she returned to her computer, she called Kevin but landed in his voice mail. Feeling slightly guilty, she left a message identifying herself as Salientific’s VP of marketing. If he didn’t know she’d been fired, he’d be more likely to return the call.
Halfway through Jeanne’s shower, her phone rang. She emerged and dried her hands on the towel beside the stall. Pulling it off its hook and clutching it around her, she managed to answer before the fourth ring. Kevin responded to her breathless greeting and inquired how she was doing, but Jeanne had no interest in exchanging pleasantries. She asked if she could stop by his office to talk about the sales meeting, and though he agreed, his voice was wary.
It took Jeanne half an hour to get to Burlington, which left her fifteen minutes before her appointment. She stopped at Starbucks, ordered a decaf and approached a low-slung leather club chair. Would she be able to hoist herself out of it? A nearby table was occupied by men bent over papers spread between them. Their conversation, replete with software industry jargon, was easily audible. She changed direction so she could take a seat farther away and wished she’d brought something to do with her hands.
She remembered the day she thought she’d lost her Alzheimer’s notebook. Maggie had insisted she leave the office and walk till she calmed down. On the residential street Jeanne had chosen, with its swing sets and strollers, she’d felt like a tourist. Yet here, she felt the same way. If only she could remember the levels of Dante’s hell she’d studied in school. Surely she was stuck in one of them now, somewhere in the middle.
She took the coffee with her. Sitting in Kevin’s lobby was preferable to contemplating her misfit status at Starbucks. Lobby was hyperbole, since the entrance was more than filled by an administrator’s metal desk and a couple of orange molded plastic guest chairs. Audio equipment was stacked in the corner next to a droopy plant. Fortunately, Kevin spotted Jeanne, sparing her a wait.
His office was full of electronics and what appeared to be contracts piled on his desk. “Business must be good,” Jeanne observed as she took a seat on another orange chair. Kevin nodded but didn’t respond. “I’d like to know what happened at the sales meeting right before Jake . . . lost control.”
Kevin repositioned himself in his chair and didn’t meet her gaze. “I’ve already talked with the police.” She guessed his recalcitrance came from fear of legal exposure.
She leaned forward. “What happened when Bart took the stage? The music rose to God knows how many decibels over the soundtrack of guns and bombs. Is that what Bart asked for? Deafening?”
“It was an accident. I don’t think Alberta meant it to happen.”
“Alberta!”
“She was sitting so close to me, she just kind of knocked into the volume control while I was watching Bart. She’d been curious about our equipment—said her brother wanted to get into the business—so I’d been explaining during the break how we coordinate special effects. Look, I’m sorry your CEO flipped out, but it isn’t Alberta’s fault. I didn’t want to get her in trouble, so I didn’t mention it to the police. Just said we had an electronic malfunction. What were the odds someone would freak out?”
“I understand completely.” What Jeanne understood, though, was that Alberta’s “accident” was likely deliberate. Call it speculation, but Jeanne had no doubt Alberta was capable of sabotaging Bart’s presentation in retaliation for his dumping her. Maybe disrupting the perfect orchestration of Bart’s kickoff and messing with him at the start of his presentation were part of a more extensive plan to keep him off-balance.
Jeanne wanted to drive straight to the office and confront her, but she was supposed to interact with Salientific remotely. If she showed up at the office, she’d have to answer people’s questions. Perhaps she’d even be shunned fo
r her indiscretion with Jake. She ran her hand over her belly. “Indiscretion” was a euphemism. It would hurt to see disapproval replace respect on the faces of her colleagues.
Jeanne’s car was already freezing, though her visit with Kevin had been brief. She turned on the ignition and cranked up the heat. Cold air blew from the vents. The seat warmer was on but seemed as reluctant to do its job as the heater. Bart answered on the first ring. “Glad I caught you,” Jeanne said. She watched her puffs of breath heading for the windshield as she waited for Bart to figure out how to greet her.
He mumbled a bit before the obligatory, “Sorry about the board’s decision to let you go.” Was he really? It hardly mattered.
“I need to meet you.”
The pause was lengthy. “Jeanne, it’s crazy busy here with all the changes. How about next week?”
“No good. Has to be today.” He sighed and agreed to a three o’clock coffee at Starbucks in the mall but warned her he could only spare twenty minutes. Jeanne ended the call and slapped the phone down on the passenger seat. Her new supplicant status was humiliating, especially toward Bart. The indignities of her situation were limitless.
Bart arrived at 2:55. In the past, she’d heard him tell his reps if they were less than five minutes early for a sales call, they were late. They took a table in the corner. Bart didn’t bother to buy a coffee or even remove his topcoat. There was no sign of his irritating clown smile, even in his greeting. Jeanne set aside her curiosity over what was going on at the office. “Do you know why the kickoff was disrupted?”
“Uh, yeah. The short version is Jake scared everyone shitless before he blew his brains out.”
“I’m talking about what set him off—the music, the gunshots.”
“You came here to berate me? Okay, I’m guilty. I decided to use the gunshots and explosions at the start of my presentation and not just at the finale. I wanted to be the leader encouraging his troops at the front line. It would have been effective, too, if I’d been able to speak. Happy now?” He started to get up.
“I’m talking about the music that shook the walls.” He sat and adjusted his chair, scraping the legs on the tile floor. Jeanne related the conversation she’d had with Kevin about Alberta’s “accident.”
“No way she’d have done that.”
“I realize you may not see me as having the moral high ground here, but Alberta thought you were getting a divorce to marry her.” His cheeks flushed. “By the way, Jake and I were not having an affair. We had a one-night stand, which was stupid, and it had unintended consequences. It should have been obvious to you if you wanted to string someone along, it couldn’t be another employee. For all I know, Alberta may have it in for Mariana too.”
Bart scowled. “Wait till the board hears this. I’m going to get them to fire her ass.”
Jeanne laughed. “Oh, really. Based on what proof? And you’re going to tell them you were screwing her? Besides, Salientific has no CEO, no VP of marketing, a VP of finance out on medical leave, and you want to get the human resources VP fired? If you don’t care about the employees or the company’s future, at least protect your stock options.”
Bart looked down at his hands, folding and unfolding his fingers, his lips pursed. “Got it.” He rose and turned away, then sat down again. “Just curious. Why do you care? You’re out. Is this about your own stock?”
She didn’t answer, instead taking a long sip of her coffee. Finally, she returned his gaze. “I still care about the company.” What else could she say? Bart’s eyebrow went up and a corner of his mouth contracted. He was skeptical of altruism as her motive. Who could blame him? She wasn’t sure herself of her motive.
Perhaps she was just being as pragmatic as she was urging him to be. Perhaps her rage at Parker needed an outlet. Nor could she discount anger at Bart as the reason she’d called him. His inability to keep his pants zipped had led Alberta to put a match to the tinder Parker had piled beneath Jake.
Weekends had always been so welcome. Why then was home such a hard place to be? Jeanne paced from room to room. She double-checked her home phone’s dial tone to see if a broken tone might indicate a message that hadn’t gone to her answering machine—nothing. She turned on her cell to see if she’d missed any alerts indicating texts—nothing. Her phone was practically an extension of her hand, and suddenly it was silent. “Even you have abandoned me,” she said to the inert metal rectangle. She tossed it on the couch, where it immediately rang.
Jeanne was sure the call was from someone at Salientific and with great relief answered, “Bridgeton.”
Maggie responded, “‘Bridgeton?’ You’re a civilian now. How about ‘Hello’?”
“Sorry, I’m going nuts. I can’t stop thinking about my company and Parker, Alberta, and Bart. Are you going to send me out for another walk?”
“Not a bad idea. It’s just an addiction, you know. You can train yourself out of it the way you train yourself to stop eating when you’re bored, stressed, or procrastinating. Substitute something else when you feel like reaching for your cell phone.”
Jeanne groaned. “You expect me to give up overeating and work at the same time? What’s left? And don’t say sex. Look where that got me.”
“I’m off on Wednesday. I’m going to make it my personal mission to find another focus for you.”
Jeanne was used to ending conversations to get back to work or a meeting. Maggie needed to go, and Jeanne stared at her phone. Instead of a red button offering her the option to end the call, it said “call ended.” Jeanne sat down on the couch. Abandoned again. Without allowing herself to look, her fingers crept over until she lay on her side with the phone in her grasp. Is this how it feels to relapse into a drug habit? She pushed the thought away and called Lou’s number.
She was afraid when he saw her name on his caller ID, he’d duck the call, but he picked up on the first ring. “How are you doing? Maybe that’s a dumb question after everything that’s happened.”
“Probably still in shock, but not letting myself in on it.”
“Me too, but without the time to think about it. I’ve got a full plate, but not the kind that fattens you up.”
“I don’t mean to burden you further, but there are a couple of things I need to tell you. Can you break away for coffee or lunch this week or even meet me for a drink after work?”
“This is a really bad time.”
“Please, Lou,” she pleaded.
“Can you come here? I realize it may be awkward, but, honestly, I’m chasing my tail. Just can’t get away.”
Two days later, when Jeanne rolled into the Salientific parking lot, she wasted five minutes searching for a space before she remembered she could use a visitor’s spot. Eduardo’s broad smile helped ease Jeanne’s discomfort. Signing the guest register felt all wrong. She hesitated at the “Company” column next to her name and considered writing “ex-pat.” Instead she filled in the blank “consultant.”
Eduardo handed her a visitor badge. “Really?” she asked. He nodded. She peeled the backing and stuck it on her maternity top. “Please don’t make someone escort me.”
“I have to, Jeanne. You understand, don’t you?” He looked miserable. “I’ll call Lou.”
When she and Lou were settled in his office, she looked at the door he’d left open. He answered her unasked question. “Trying to keep the appearance of cloak-and-dagger stuff to a minimum. Morale is low enough already.
“I’m no fan of the board’s decision. They should have put more weight on your value to the company, and, for that matter, your courage at the sales meeting. To me, those matter more than your violation of the rules.” He lowered his voice. “It’s not like you’re the first person to screw around. It’s usually a guy, though. They didn’t have Jake to blame, so they focused on you. I don’t think they knew what to do.” He leaned across his desk. “Jeanne, people inside the company are behind you.”
“I thought I was a pariah.”
“Clara
and Mariana even went to the board to persuade them to reinstate you. They were unsuccessful, but that Clara, she’s a fighter. Told the trade press you were a hero.”
“Talk about courage . . .”
Lou leaned his head back and rubbed his temples. “When Parker comes back, that will help right the ship. Vince is great, but he’s distracted by his responsibilities at BTF Ventures.”
“Parker! He’s the reason for my coming here. Lou, you can’t let him come back. He’ll lobby the board to revoke your interim CEO status and make him president. He’s behind Jake’s suicide, maybe not directly, but he wanted Jake to flip out. Once that car crashed into the lobby . . .” She explained Parker’s plan to see if a car alarm could make Jake relapse, and how the malleable Bart had embraced Parker’s idea for a military theme. It didn’t occur to Bart that the sales kickoff might unhinge Jake. Alberta was Parker’s unwitting accomplice when she cranked up the gunfire volume to get back at Bart.
Lou listened, wide-eyed. When she finished, he muttered, “Fuck,” and leaned his seat back. He was silent for a few minutes, contemplating the ceiling. Before he could respond, Vince appeared in the doorway. Startled to see Jeanne, he asked if the conversation was business or social. “Business,” Lou answered, as Jeanne stood to leave.
Lou reached out his hand to detain her. “You need to tell him. I can’t stop Parker alone.” Vince closed the door behind him, in spite of Lou’s open-door policy, and regarded Jeanne with mistrustful, narrowed eyes. Why had she come? Too late to follow Maggie’s advice to disengage. Lou broke the silence. “It seems our friend Parker had a hand in Jake’s slide.” He gestured for Jeanne to continue.
When she was finished, she added, “This is probably a good time to initiate a search for a new CEO. As for Alberta, I have no proof her actions weren’t an accident.” Vince remained tight-lipped. Avoiding her eyes, he thanked her for the information and asked if she were headed to marketing. Jeanne took that as her cue to leave.