No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  ‘Jim?’

  I look up to see Joan Leggett peering into my office. She’s wearing some awful pants ensemble, with a big colourful silk bow tie on her blouse. The outfit makes her look like an old vaudeville act, a sad clown about to be sprayed by seltzer.

  ‘What is it, Joan?’

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  I gesture to a chair. She closes the door and sits. Her eyes flit to the photograph of me, Libby, and the satyr.

  ‘I know,’ I say, pre-emptively, ‘like a kidnapping.’

  ‘Actually, I think you look... nice.’ Maybe she means younger. Or less battle-scarred. It was two rehabs ago, come to think of it. She continues, ‘I’m not sure I should even tell you this. Probably it’s not important.’

  ‘What’s not important?’

  ‘Last night, I came into the office. About eleven o’clock. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d do the bank recs.’

  I can imagine Joan Leggett’s life: forty-something, divorced, living alone. With so little else, other than this lousy job at this shitty company, that she rises from her bed near midnight to perform bank reconciliations.

  She goes on, ‘I thought the office was empty. But when I got to my cube, there was someone in it.’

  She waits for me to guess.

  ‘Vanderbeek,’ I say, without much surprise.

  ‘He was using my computer. Going through the financials. I’m sure of it. He was very apologetic. He had an excuse – he was just getting ready for a sales meeting, and his computer wasn’t working, and so he needed to use mine.’ She pauses. ‘But I didn’t believe him. He had that smile. You know the smile I mean?’

  ‘Like a wolf.’

  She nods. ‘I didn’t want to bother you about it. I mean: there are no real secrets at the company, right? Everyone knows what’s going on.’

  I keep my voice steady. ‘What do you mean, Joan?’

  ‘I mean the money,’ she says.

  I keep my eyes fixed on her, try not to move. Try not to breathe.

  ‘Well it’s not a surprise, Jim,’ she goes on.

  ‘It’s not?’

  ‘People know cuts are coming. Headcount has to be reduced. How else can we do it? Everyone sees the writing on the wall.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I say. I feel myself relax.

  But she’s waiting for more. I understand finally what she wants. Maybe even the real purpose of this conversation. She wants comfort.

  ‘You’re staying, Joan,’ I tell her. ‘You’re not on the list.’

  She smiles, realizes it’s unseemly, then tries to look dour. It doesn’t work, so after a struggle, she just smiles again. ‘Thank you, Jim. That means a lot to me.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet.’

  She rises. ‘Well... I know you have a lot of work to do.’ She mutters more thanks and retreats from my office.

  The day drags on, and when its end finally comes, it’s a relief.

  The truth is, I don’t have much work to do. That’s the dirty secret of being a CEO. Like a British monarch, your role is mostly ceremonial – handshakes and public pronouncements, showing up in the right room at the right time on the right day. You are the face of the company, both to the outside world, and to the inside. Supposedly, you are in charge of ‘big’ decisions, but you learn pretty quickly that whatever big decisions you make are never implemented anyway. Your pronouncements are like those of the Oracle of Delphi: you declare something, and the people around you fight about what it means, or how to carry it out, and at the end of the process, nothing much happens as a result.

  So I sit at my desk, makings lists and outlines, reordering priorities, assigning tasks. After Wednesday’s lay-offs, only a handful of people will remain at the company, and so it’s probably worth figuring out who they will be, and what they will do.

  David Paris, the VP of Marketing, will go, because you can’t market a product that doesn’t exist.

  Darryl, the long-haired programmer, will stay, despite his failure at the Old Dominion meeting. I need at least one programmer to develop our product, and he seems the least incompetent of the lot.

  Other than this rearguard action, software development will effectively stop. There won’t be any version 3.0 of our P-Scan software. We’ll try to milk what we have, whatever it is, and stop pouring cash down the development rat hole.

  Which means Darryl will effectively replace his boss, Randy Williams, VP of Engineering, who, come Wednesday, will be unceremoniously escorted into the parking lot. Randy will continue doing the job he did at Tao Software, which was nothing at all; but at least he’ll get to do it from the comfort of his own home, in slippers and a bath robe, and he won’t be burdened by the inconvenience of having to deposit a weekly paycheque.

  That means Dmitri Sustev will go, too, because we don’t need a Quality Assurance department. I already know the quality of our product; no assurance is required.

  Kathleen Rossi, VP of Human Resources, will go, because HR’s job is to hire and fire. There’s no chance in hell that we’ll do any hiring soon, and come next Wednesday, there won’t be anyone left to fire.

  Joan Leggett, our CFO, will stay, as I promised her, because I need someone to wring a few more weeks out of our dwindling cash.

  Dom Vanderbeek will have to go, of course. A highly-paid sales executive is an extravagance. We can implement a channel strategy instead. We can find corporate partners to do our selling on our behalf. This will allow us to cut commission costs, cut T&E, cut overheads, and...

  No. I’m lying, of course.

  Dom Vanderbeek will be fired because he knows too much.

  The conversation with Libby still echoes in my mind: my job is to save the company if I can – but more importantly, to keep things quiet. To make sure there’s no trouble for Tad. Not to look too deeply into whatever is going on. Vanderbeek is a loose end, a wildcard. I can’t have Vanderbeek hanging around, digging into our general ledger, looking at cash disbursements. And those antics he pulled in the lunchroom this afternoon – the drinking and the cheering – that was the last straw. He knows too much about the money, and he knows too much about me. This afternoon he signed his own death warrant.

  And Amanda the receptionist will stay, because—

  I think about this one. Why will she stay, exactly? Because we need a receptionist. That’s why.

  That she happens to be pretty, and sexy in a strange and exotic way, and maybe even a bit wild – what kind of things won’t a girl do who inks a tattoo above her nipple? – that has nothing to do with it. We need someone to answer the telephones. That is all.

  I pick up my own phone, dial my house. No answer. Where is Libby at seven o’clock on a Thursday night? Maybe it’s unfair to expect her to stand by the phone, eagerly awaiting my call.

  But still.

  I dial again, her cellphone this time. It rings four times, then I hear her voicemail message. I hang up.

  It occurs to me now, as I feel the first pang of doubt about my wife’s fidelity, that maybe I shouldn’t have spent that final week before I came to Florida on Orcas Island, enjoying a solitary vacation, while sending Libby here, to prepare for my arrival, as if I were some kind of colonial potentate.

  Every now and then I have moments of clarity like this, and I understand what a terrible person I am – how flawed and selfish. The problem is that these moments of clarity come too late – after I’ve done the deed, behaved thoughtlessly, pushed away those who love me. I never seem to have this clarity before I commit the wrong, when I still have time to avoid the mistake. Maybe that’s why I always make the same mistakes, over and over.

  I call it a day. I stack my papers neatly – so many to-do lists, schedules, and action plans – pen scribbles decreeing the fate of dozens of human beings. I lock the pages in my desk drawer. I pack my bag and head across the bullpen floor. Only two cubes are still occupied, and I note with some pleasure that one of them is Darryl’s. Perhaps I made a good choice to keep hi
m. Come next Thursday, he’s going to run the Engineering Department. Actually, come Thursday, he’ll be the Engineering Department.

  I pass the front reception desk and see that Amanda’s gone. With some discomfort, I note the strange feeling that passes through me when I see her empty desk. What is it, exactly?

  Disappointment.

  That’s what it is.

  In the parking lot, the sky is bruised, with purple clouds swelling on the horizon.

  ‘Hey,’ she says. She’s sitting in her car, a beat-up cabriolet, which is parked next to mine, and her window is rolled down. The cabriolet’s motor is off. I hadn’t noticed her. Has she been waiting for me?

  ‘Amanda,’ I say, trying to keep the delight out of my voice. ‘Why are you sitting in the middle of a hot parking lot?’

  ‘It’s cooler today,’ she says. But in fact my shirt is already sticking to the small of my back, and the air suffocates me like a wet towel pressed to my face. If it’s somehow cooler, as Amanda claims, then it’s some tiny gradation that my body can’t recognize. Maybe it’s like the Inuit and their thousand words for snow – maybe the people of Florida can discern subtle tones of oppressive humidity.

  ‘Well, have a good night,’ I say.

  ‘Actually, I was waiting for you.’

  My car keys dangle in my hand. I look at her carefully. Am I misinterpreting her?

  Every now and then, we middle-aged men have to ask ourselves this question, particularly when we’re speaking to an attractive woman, twenty years our junior. It’s easy to forget, when you’re locked inside your body, how you really look, who you really are.

  She leans over, pops the passenger door of her car. ‘Get in, Jim. I want to take you somewhere.’

  No, I am not misinterpreting her. For the first time, I realize I’m attracted to her. But at the same time, I know with awful clarity that this is a Bad Idea.

  ‘All right,’ I say.

  Libby’s not expecting me back at the house. Hell, she’s not even home. And though I try not to think about it, I can’t stop myself: Libby does seem to disappear an awful lot, and her absences are never satisfactorily explained. For instance. Where is she tonight? Why didn’t she answer the house phone? Why didn’t she answer her cell? Where is she? With whom?

  I look at Amanda. ‘Where are we going?’ I ask, as I climb into her car.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  She smiles. Her hair is down. The tight bun that she wore during the day has been unfurled past her shoulders into loose waves of auburn, the colour of new pennies just unwrapped from the bank, the colour of promise and fresh starts.

  She cranks her engine, and the cabriolet whines in complaint. She backs up and then out onto Route 30. It’s a five-lane road with a shared turn lane as a median. It’s painted crazily with thick white arrows, hash marks, lines like angry punctuation. Amanda ignores the lane marks, as if they are mere suggestions. We weave in and out of traffic. A car behind us honks angrily. Amanda does not notice.

  We drive for a long time, not speaking. The road grows less busy, the restaurants less expensive, the asphalt less smooth.

  She says, ‘I think it’s funny how you are.’

  ‘How am I?’

  ‘Not you personally. Men, I mean. When we take you out of the office, without your big desk and a fancy chair to protect you, you get nervous, like little boys.’

  Again, I notice her accent, just barely there, a thin crystal of frost at the edge of a November window pane – pellucid and angular. Not that I’m any sort of detective. Libby convinced me of that. The real hint was that Cyrillic tattoo just above Amanda’s breast. Yes, perhaps I detect a trace of Russian in her voice.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I ask.

  ‘Most recently? Tallahassee.’

  ‘How about less recently.’

  She glances at me. ‘I came here a long time ago. I have my Green Card, if that’s what you are asking,’ she pauses, then turns the knife, ‘boss.’

  ‘Please don’t call me that.’

  ‘OK,’ she says, easily.

  ‘I want you to call me... Mr Boss.’

  She laughs. She has a loud, confident, ringing laugh. ‘All right. Mr Boss. I like that.’

  I notice her teeth – another clue – uneven, like smooth little pebbles. Americans – even poor ones – get braces when they’re young. I say, ‘But you didn’t tell me where you’re from.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘A woman with secrets.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ she says, and her voice is filled with such sadness, such exhaustion, that I turn again to look at her, to make sure that the woman driving has not aged forty years since the last traffic light.

  She must recognize her voice has betrayed her, for instantly she turns far too gay. ‘Well, there I go, acting like a drama queen. Of course we all have secrets. You have secrets too, don’t you, Jim?’

  She says it casually, as if it’s just meaningless conversation, but I know her question is sincere and she’s seeking an answer. ‘I do.’

  ‘And I know what they are.’

  We drive silently. This quiet, rather than feeling awkward, is intimate, a sign of comfort between us.

  Finally, she says: ‘We’re almost there, Mr Boss.’

  We pull off the main road, onto a two-lane street. Typical Florida zoning policy – or lack of it, more precisely – is evident around us. There is no order, no logic, to the neighbourhood. We pass fast-food restaurants, RV parks, little white houses stacked tightly like gingerbreads.

  A half-mile down the road, we pull into a church parking lot. The church is marked by a roadside light-board, the same kind of glowing sign that rises above a Wendy’s to advertise 99-cent cheeseburgers. ‘Golgotha Church,’ it says, ‘Evening Service, 7.30 p.m. We all make mistakes. Ask the Lord for forgiveness.’

  Amanda pulls into one of the empty spaces. There are a surprisingly large number of cars here for a Thursday evening service.

  ‘Oh, Amanda,’ I say, gently. ‘This isn’t really my thing.’

  ‘Is there someplace you’d rather be?’

  ‘I’m married,’ I explain.

  ‘Married?’ She laughs. ‘We’re sitting in a church parking lot! I won’t do anything to you... ’ With one quick motion, she snaps open her door handle and says, ‘yet’, so softly that the word is lost in the noise of the door; and the moment I hear it, I’m not even sure she really said it.

  She darts from the car, slams the door shut behind her, and circles around to let me out. ‘Come on, Mr Boss,’ she says, holding the door open for me gallantly. ‘You’ll like this. I know you will.’

  ‘I don’t really want to go in,’ I say. I look up at her, refusing to budge. The fun has drained from my voice. I was lured into her cabriolet under false pretences. Now I’m trapped in a church parking lot with a girl who suddenly seems a lot less exciting than she did twenty minutes ago.

  ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Do it for me.’

  Church is not, as I told Amanda, my thing.

  My thing usually comes in bottles. I have, on occasion, snorted my thing, or even lit my thing with a match. There was a time, back in California, when I injected my thing, but that got too intense and so I went back to drinking my thing, or sucking on a pipe with my thing inside.

  But Amanda is persistent. She guides me from the car, down into the church basement. Thirty people are there, sitting on metal folding chairs in a low-ceilinged room with no windows. The chairs are arranged in an arc, and a pastor sits at the centre. He’s young, far too young, with a bowl-shaped haircut shellacked into place with thick and shiny hairspray. His eyes are watery and red, as if he’s been crying. Maybe he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and saw his haircut.

  He smiles at Amanda when she enters, and the other churchgoers do, too. There’s an easy familiarity in the room, with people slumped back, collars loosened, legs outstretched. Most of the people seem working class, in retail and fast-food uniforms, one i
n a white nurse’s outfit. But there are men in suits, too, and they look particularly interested to see me when I enter.

  ‘Hello, Amanda,’ the pastor says. His accent is Southern, as thick as his hairspray. ‘I see you’ve brought someone. No need for names.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. She looks at me mischievously and says: ‘But you can call him Mr Boss.’

  ‘There’s only one boss in this world,’ the pastor says, stiffly. He senses, a bit late, the chill brought into the room by his humourlessness, and so he adds quickly, ‘But, all right, Mr Boss. I’m Brother Sam. Welcome to our little party.’

  ‘Welcome,’ someone shouts from the back of the room.

  Amanda and I step across the floor, over feet and purses and briefcases, to two empty chairs.

  Brother Sam waits for us to settle. ‘Let us begin,’ he says. ‘Let us pray for Jesus to enter our hearts.’

  Brother Sam clenches his eyes tightly shut. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he says, raising his chin to the ceiling, ‘we are all of us sinners, all of us seeking your forgiveness and love.’

  Everyone in the room closes their eyes. A few people lift their palms, halfheartedly, towards the ceiling.

  I leave my eyes open. How else can I watch the show?

  ‘Jesus,’ Brother Sam continues, his rheumy eyes squeezed tightly shut, as if afflicted by some terrible allergy. ‘Thank you for filling our hearts with your love. Thank you for attending our meeting. Thank you for blessing us.’

  Amanda opens her eyes. She sees me staring. She shakes her head as if I am a very naughty child. She put her fingers near her eyes and makes a shutting gesture, in case I don’t understand.

  I close my eyes.

  ‘Jesus,’ continues Brother Sam, ‘we are born in sin, and we live in sin, and we wallow in sin like pigs at a trough. Only with your grace and mercy can we be reborn. So many of us look for answers. We look to drinking, and to drugs, and to pornography.’ His voice lilts and caresses this last word in that peculiar Southern fashion that sounds like so much intimate familiarity – por-nah-graphy – and I picture Brother Sam pulling his own pud in a rectory, a sticky magazine in his lap. I try to dispel this disturbing image.