No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  I open the Manila folder I brought, and hand him a single typewritten page. On it is a double-spaced list of names. No bold typographical heading, by the way, saying: ‘To Be Fired Next Wednesday’. That’s one of those little CEO tricks you learn after many years of accidentally leaving papers on the photocopier.

  ‘Before we start,’ Pete says, ‘maybe we should call your HR person in here and have her join us?’

  I tap my index finger next to one of the names on the list – Kathleen Rossi, Director of HR.

  ‘Ah,’ he says.

  I nod grimly.

  He looks over the list. ‘OK, let’s cut to the chase. Forty names. How many of them are black, how many women?’

  ‘Zero black, four women.’

  ‘How many women will be left after you fire everyone on this list?’

  ‘Two,’ I answer.

  ‘No good,’ he says, quickly. ‘Take all four women off the list.’

  ‘You’re shitting me.’

  ‘I shit thee not,’ Pete says. He doesn’t look up. He’s busy drawing a line through each of the obviously female names. ‘You’ll save whatever you think you’ll save on salary, but you’ll pay it back ten times, first to me, then to the EEOC.’ He looks up. ‘Now, tell me about the old folks. How many on the list?’

  ‘How do you classify “old folks”?’

  ‘People over forty.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  Pete leans back in his chair and studies me through slitted eyes. He has the look of a doctor trying to decide whether a patient is ready for grim news. He tosses his pen onto the table. ‘Clark Rogers, he’s the partner at Stillwell who handles employment law? – you probably know him?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘He has a saying. You wanna hear it?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘“When an employee looks ugly, things get ugly.” That’s his saying.’

  ‘Classy.’

  ‘You said you wanted to hear it.’

  ‘Actually, I didn’t.’

  He shrugs.

  ‘There are six people on that page over forty,’ I say. ‘“Old folks”, to use your fancy legal jargon.’

  ‘So let’s do the math. Six people means fifteen per cent of all the people being fired,’ Pete says. ‘How many old folks are employed at Tao currently?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘See the problem?’ Pete Bland asks. ‘They make up eight per cent of the workforce, but fifteen per cent of the lay-offs. Might as well cut a cheque right now. Write it out to “Aggrieved Old Persons Class Action Trust”. How much money you got in the bank?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Enough to pay my bill?’

  ‘I wouldn’t sit on our invoice, if I were you.’

  He looks at me warily, to see if I’m joking. I am not. He slides the list to my side of the table, gingerly, a train robber passing a stick of dynamite. ‘Here’s what you do. Take three of the old folks off the list.’

  ‘Which three?’

  ‘I don’t care. Flip a coin.’

  ‘I’m firing them for a reason. They’re terrible.’

  ‘Of course they’re terrible,’ Pete says. ‘They’re old. When people get old, they get lazy. That’s why we want to fire them. But you can’t do it. Not in this country.’

  He stares at me, lets his point sink in.

  Then he goes on: ‘Once you make the changes that I’m recommending – the girls and the old folks – you’ll be OK. The WARN Act doesn’t apply here. You can just terminate at will. When’s the big day?’

  ‘Wednesday, next week.’

  He nods glumly. ‘I am sorry,’ he says. ‘I know this is the hard part of your job.’

  Actually, I want to tell him, the hard part of my job is figuring out who not to fire. This company is like a high-tech grease trap – all drippings, no meat. But I put on a dour expression and say, ‘Yes, it’s going to be very difficult.’

  Pete Bland attempts to commiserate with me, for exactly five seconds, by not speaking, and nodding. Then, his mourning complete, he clicks his pen smartly, as if snapping the head off a particularly annoying insect. He rises from his chair, puts his pad back into his attaché. ‘You married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We should go out. Me, you, the wives. There’s this little place on the water, only the natives know about it. It’s called the Gator Hut. Ever been?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s great,’ Pete says. ‘I’ll have my assistant set something up.’

  ‘Sounds like fun,’ I say. An image comes to me: of Libby, seated at the table with Pete and his wife. My wife wears a morose expression, and her arms are crossed, and she stares sullenly, refusing to speak or to eat, like a political prisoner on a hunger strike. ‘A lot of fun,’ I repeat.

  ‘Good,’ he says. We shake hands.

  I escort him to the door. ‘There is one other thing,’ I say, as if it’s an afterthought. ‘Someone at Tao is embezzling money from the company. Would you mind doing a little fact-finding?’

  ‘Fact-finding?’ He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘The money is being sent to a house on Sanibel. I want to know who owns the house.’

  I hand him a piece of paper with the 56 Windmere address.

  ‘Easy enough,’ he says. ‘I’ll have someone run a search.’

  CHAPTER 15

  I leave the office at six thirty and arrive home ten minutes later. When I climb from my car, I notice my neighbour across the street – the velociraptor with the overbite and the protruding forehead.

  He’s pacing on his front porch, speaking into a cellphone, gesturing with his free hand, which holds the stub of a cigar.

  He’s far enough away that I can’t make out his words distinctly, but I hear the murmur of his voice, the rhythm and flow of his words. I am about to turn and walk into my own house. A breeze catches my neighbour’s voice, and carries it to me. Something clicks, and now I know why I couldn’t understand him. He is speaking Russian.

  He turns to look at me, and our eyes lock. I feel guilty, as if I’ve been caught spying. He says something into his phone – but now the breeze is gone and I can’t hear him – and he snaps his cellphone shut, and drops it into his pocket. He throws his cigar to the ground, crushes it with his heel, and walks inside.

  I search for Libby in the kitchen first, and then in the bedroom. I do not find her in either place. I wander back outside, into the front yard, to look for her in the vegetable garden. But the garden too is empty. The soil is flat and virginal, without a single footprint.

  I go to the side of the house. A chorus of cicadas ululate around me. Twenty yards away, behind the pool, there’s a garden shed, on a raised wooden platform. The door of the shed is open. Inside is dark. When I approach, I see my wife, kneeling in the shadows of the shed, her back to me.

  ‘Libby?’ I call.

  My wife turns to me. ‘Jimmy,’ she says, sounding startled. She pushes a bag of topsoil quickly onto a metal shelf.

  She rises to her feet, slaps her palms. Then, without looking back, she leaves the shed, and closes the door behind her. ‘You’re home early,’ she says. It sounds remarkably like an accusation.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just gardening.’

  I think about the garden I just passed, its flat soil and lack of footprints.

  ‘What happened to your head?’ she asks.

  ‘Accident.’

  ‘What kind of accident?’

  Admitting that I broke into someone’s house, or that I found four million dollars of cash in a stranger’s attic, or that I hid behind a shower curtain from a man with a gun, will probably not build my wife’s confidence in my good judgement.

  So I say, ‘Supply closet at work. Would you believe all I wanted was a lousy pen, and this is what I got?’

  She looks dubious. But then she smiles. She takes my hand and guides me into the house.

  We order pizza from Domino’s. We sit on the little veranda just off
the master bedroom, above the pool. There are two chaise longues here, but we share a single one. We sit cross-legged, facing each other, with the grease-soaked pizza box between us.

  I tell Libby about my day – most of it, but not everything. I tell her about my meeting with Pete Bland, and his neon tie, and his Doc Martens, and his long sideburns. I recount how Pete described people over forty as ‘old folks’, about his advice that Tao fire people in a precise mathematical ratio, according to sex and race.

  I do not tell Libby about my trip to 56 Windmere, or my discovery in the Sanibel attic.

  Things feels right and comfortable between us – maybe for the first time since I arrived. Not great, exactly, but comfortable. How many times have we sat this way, facing each other, with a pizza box between us? How many meals have we shared? Many, surely, and these are the moments that make up a marriage – these small events of no great note. It’s these moments – not the big dramatic ones – that determine the fate of a relationship. I’m happy finally to have a quiet, boring evening with my wife. Our lives could use a little less drama.

  We finish the pizza. I get up from the chaise, stretch my legs, and look through the glass door, back into the bedroom. ‘Should we go inside?’ I ask.

  This was not really meant as a question, of course. It was more a statement. What I really meant was: Time to go inside now, Libby.

  But Libby looks into the bedroom in a way that suggests she is actually deciding whether to join me there. Whether to return inside. Ever. A strange expression crosses her face – a momentary darkness – like a shadow of cloud racing across a sunlit meadow. ‘I wish we didn’t have to go back in there,’ she mutters.

  I look through the glass again, trying to understand what she means. I stare at the bedroom. There is nothing in the bedroom, save for the bed, of course, and a few bureaus, and a ceiling fan. Is it possible that I misunderstood her? I say, ‘You don’t like the bedroom?’

  ‘I don’t like the house,’ she replies.

  But then, as suddenly as the darkness appeared, it is gone, and she laughs, throwing back her head, showing me the pale white curve of her throat. ‘Oh never mind!’ she says, and smiles. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just... I like it out here. I like the fresh air.’

  She takes my hand, and starts to lead me to the door. But I pull away from her, and I lay my palm on the door handle, to keep her from opening it.

  ‘Wait,’ I say.

  Something tells me not to let this moment pass. Maybe this is Libby’s way of reaching out to me. Maybe this is her way of letting me know that she is ready to talk about that night. The night that Cole died.

  I say, ‘Sometimes I see him, Libby.’

  She looks at me. Her face is wary. ‘You see him?’ she repeats.

  ‘Our son,’ I say.

  ‘Oh.’ She nods. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I know you blame me for that night. And you should. Of course you should, but... ’

  ‘Please,’ she says, and grabs my hand. ‘Please, Jimmy. Let’s not talk about it.’

  ‘We lost our child, Libby. How long can we not talk about it?’

  Libby looks beyond me, into the distance, to someplace very far away. To a different time. To a different place.

  She remains silent. Staring. Distant. What is she thinking about?

  When she speaks, at last, her voice is just a whisper. ‘Something we share,’ she says.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Losing a child.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ I say.

  But before I can say more, or ask what she means, she steps forward, and kisses my cheek, very softly. Very sadly.

  She turns, and goes back into the bedroom, leaving me alone on the veranda, as if it were I who resisted returning to the house in the first place.

  Downstairs we watch TV – one of those reality shows where people try to act naturally while performing for cameras that they pretend do not exist. An hour of this is enough to convince us to go back to our own reality show, and so we climb the stairs, back to the bedroom.

  We undress for bed. My wife stays on the opposite side of the room, keeps the bed between us, her back turned to me. As she slides on her T-shirt, I catch a glimpse of her naked breast, in profile, and – despite myself – am aroused.

  She slides into boxer shorts – men’s boxer shorts – there’s nothing sexier than a woman in men’s boxer shorts, is there? – and she climbs under the covers, and turns off her nightstand light. ‘Good night, Jimmy,’ she says. ‘I’m tired.’

  Not tonight then. Another image comes to me, unbidden, of my receptionist’s breasts, her small, pink nipples, that weird tattoo.

  I turn off my own nightstand light, and we lie together in the dark. I listen to the creaking electric ceiling fan above us.

  ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you,’ I say, into the darkness. ‘About how I hurt my head.’

  I know immediately that I’ve made a mistake, that I’ve chosen a path that will lead to conflict. But there was an instant tonight, out on the veranda, when Libby connected with me – or nearly did. It lasted just a moment, but maybe that’s what I’m searching for now, again – another moment of intimacy – a connection with this woman who always seems so far away.

  ‘You said it was the supply closet at work,’ she says.

  ‘I lied. It was a house, actually. I broke into someone’s house.’ I have that familiar feeling now: that I’m ruining things – the pleasant evening we just shared, the pizza on the chaise longue, the moment of intimacy on the veranda – all the closeness, all the comfort. I just can’t leave things alone. Here comes Jimmy Thane, with a torch, ready to burn it all down. ‘I climbed into the attic. I found a bag filled with cash.’

  I tell her the story: about 56 Windmere, about the cheques written by someone at Tao and sent to that address, about how I slipped into the house through a back window, and found cash in a garbage bag, and was almost discovered by men speaking Russian, men with guns.

  When I finish, she is silent.

  Silent for so long, in fact, that I wonder if she fell asleep during my recounting of the tale. But no, I feel her sitting upright beside me in the dark. She is awake. But silent. Completely silent.

  I must admit: I was not expecting silence. I was expecting a reaction, some kind of reaction, because that’s what a wife does when her husband tells a story about breaking into a house and finding four million dollars of cash in a garbage bag – she reacts, somehow. How she reacts is beside the point. Maybe she is titillated. ‘You broke into a house?’ she might say. ‘You? Jimmy Thane?’

  Or maybe she is angry. ‘What a terrible risk you took!’ she might say. ‘You could have been hurt! They had guns!’

  But silence? I was not expecting silence.

  This silence continues for a long time.

  Finally, I say, ‘Libby?’

  She whispers, ‘Jimmy.’

  I can’t read her tone.

  ‘What are you doing, Jimmy?’ She sounds sad, disappointed. She mutters, mostly to herself, ‘Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why do you ruin things?’

  ‘I don’t ruin things,’ I say, even though she’s right, even though this is the exact thought I had about myself, just a moment ago. I tried to ruin things this afternoon when I broke into the house; and when that didn’t work, I tried ruining things again, just now, lying in bed, when I insisted on telling Libby about the house and the money. I couldn’t leave things alone. I couldn’t let our nice evening together end... nicely.

  ‘I just wanted to find out who’s stealing money from the company. I need to figure out who’s responsible. It’s my job.’

  ‘Your job?’ she repeats. She turns on her nightstand lamp. In the sudden brightness, her skin is pale and lined, her face haggard.

  She stares at the teak fan blades, spinning lazily above us, and addresses her next words to the fan, not to me. ‘Why do you think you were hired, Jimmy?’

&nb
sp; ‘Because Tad Billups—’

  ‘Tad Billups what?’ she spits. ‘He thinks you’re a great CEO? Is that what he thinks, Jimmy? That you’re a great turnaround artist? He hired you because you’re the best candidate? In all of Silicon Valley, you were the best one he could find? You’re his last great hope?’

  ‘No,’ I say weakly.

  ‘What did Tad tell you when he hired you? Do you remember what you told me? “Protect me”, he said. “Protect me, Jimmy.”’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I ask. But even as the words leave my mouth, I know. As usual, I am one step behind her. As usual, she understands things long before I do.

  But she continues, relentless, pressing her advantage. She stares at me the way an entomologist stares at a beetle she’s about to pin to a specimen board. ‘We finally have a chance, Jimmy. After everything you’ve done to us, we still have a chance. God only knows how.’

  ‘Libby... ’ I croak.

  ‘We still have a chance,’ she goes on. ‘But you want to ruin it. Tell me something. If you keep digging, what do you think you’re going to find? Do you honestly think you’re some genius detective, uncovering a big secret? There is no secret, Jimmy. Why do you think you’re here? I tried telling you before, but you didn’t listen. Why do you think Tad Billups, your so-called friend, who practically gave you up for dead – why do you think he gave you this job in Florida, to save some crappy company that he knows can’t be saved? Because of your impressive pedigree?’

  I’m shocked into silence. When I look at my wife, I see an anger and intelligence I never recognized before. Where is that soft waitress I flirted with at The Goose, so many years ago? Where’s the girl who knew nothing about venture capital when we married, or high technology, or CEOs, or corporate turnarounds? She is gone. She has been replaced, by someone else. Someone new.

  Lying in the bed beside me is a clever and hard woman.

  I say, ‘I just want to know what’s going on.’

  ‘You don’t know what’s going on?’ she asks. ‘I know what’s going on, and I’m your wife. Should I lay it out for you?’

  I stay silent.

  ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Here’s what’s going on, Jimmy. You were not hired to dig and investigate what’s happening at Tao. You were hired to be so goddamned grateful you’re there, that you ignore whatever the hell you see. You were hired to shut up and act stupid. That shouldn’t be too hard for you, Jimmy, should it?’