Todd pushed the thought away. In a way, ignoring the truth was an inherent component of working in PR.
"You wanted to see me, sir?" He cursed himself silently, remembering the promise he'd made to himself not to phrase everything as a question around his superiors. He'd read once that it made the speaker sound weak.
"Have a seat, Ted."
Todd, he thought but did not say. It was much too late to correct Reagan on that. He made to close the door.
"Leave it open," the boss said. Todd sighed inwardly, imagining Kenneth Pratchett pressing his ear against the crack, giving a hushed play-by-play to the rest of the office. Imagining the silver-gray eye at the office door, and its grunting, self-pleasuring possessor.
He sat. Vic Reagan lingered by the windows, taking in the impressive penthouse view of the city, the Harbourfront. His masculine figure, maintained at his personal gym by a fitness trainer who worked with visiting celebrities, silhouetted by the empty sky over the lake. "Ted, I've worked here fifteen years," he said, not turning. "I used to do copy when I started, did you know that?" Todd had heard it countless times, like everyone else in the office, but Reagan pressed on, not requiring a response. "In all my years at Savvicorp, I have never seen such potential as you had when you started here... just squandered."
Todd felt his cheeks flushing, and could do nothing. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and glanced in the direction of the door.
"I took a chance when I hired you." Reagan finally turned. His silver gray hair shone in a halo of sunlight. "I looked past your cheap suits, both of them, and your not-quite-close shave, and that cologne," he pulled a face, "do you know what people say about your cologne, Ted? Look, I don't mean to sound like I'm berating you--"
Oh no? Todd thought but would never dare say. You could've fooled me.
"--honestly, Big Guy, I was pulling for you. I wanted you to succeed. Sincerely, I did."
Sincerely. The same complimentary close Reagan used in all of his emails, as if he were writing a personal letter. With Vic Reagan, sincerity was the equivalent of a liar saying Trust me. About as genuine as a politician in the midst of a sex scandal.
If you wanted me to succeed, he thought, you wouldn't have stuck me with the damn Raleigh's account.
Todd said nothing.
At the window behind Reagan, while the man pontificated--sincerely--a work platform lowered into view.
"I mean, we're a consulting firm, Ted," Vic Reagan was saying, "we're certainly not being paid to consult with our wives over Big Macs at the mall."
Behind him, the platform blotted out the sun.
Todd watched as the worker shuffled his feet, his legs the only part of him in view, silhouetted against the sky. Could Todd push away the thought that those were work boots scuffling on the platform? Could he push away the thought that those were coveralls?
The ability escaped him.
Caulking, he thought. The little white slugs were caulking.
Todd considered how apropos it was that the sicko had caulk on his pants as the boss continued his spiel. "It's a dog-eat-dog world, Big Guy. Either you're the dog," Vic Reagan said, "or you're the bone."
Bone... Like the one the pervert at the mall tried to give me.
The sun highlighted straggly whiskers below the man's chin and on his cheeks. The caulking gun held in both hands at his groin. The silver-gray eyes staring with hunger, the shriveled tongue dragging across sun-chapped lips.
Todd could hold his tongue no longer.
"AHHHYEEEAAGGHHHH!" he shouted, leaping from his chair. He lifted it into the air, all sixty pounds of it, while Vic Reagan, he of the mixed metaphor, sat flabbergasted.
"Ted? What the heck are you doing, Big Guy?"
Todd rushed headlong at the window like a Spartan with a battering ram. He launched the chair, all sixty pounds of it, at the tempered glass.
Vic Reagan said "Shit!" as he leaped from his chair, shielding his immaculate salt-and-pepper hairdo from the imminent explosion.
The window shattered outward in a million tiny pieces. Todd stepped back, hit by the shock of impact, the sound of it, like a depressurizing airplane cabin at 32,000-feet. Recycled air rushed past him, ruffling his hair and the panels of his six-hundred-dollar suit, sucking out papers from Reagan's desk--his pink slip along with them, Todd hoped--which fluttered like doves into the pure blue sky as a rain of glass pattered against the polished hardwood floor.
Todd took another step back, sucking in a gasp like a man waking from sleepwalking, and surveyed the damage he'd done. A golf ball rattled to the edge and over, where the entire pane from floor to ceiling had disappeared.
So had the work platform.
Oh no, Todd thought. Oh God no, please.
He put a hand on the frame and peered over the edge of slick wooden flooring. Wind whipped his suit, his tie fluttering, slapping at his chin and cheeks.
Todd craned his neck upward first, certain the silver-eyed man from the bathroom had pulled the apparatus up in time to avoid the chair that would certainly have killed him. His gaze found nothing but glass and sky. Above them the rooftop was green, an innovative addition that had garnered them national attention at the time. There were no wires, nor anything to suspend them with. Anyone looking up would see the mirrored surface of 323 Bay, the reflection of the buildings along the Harbourfront, the blue of sky and water, unmarred but for the single black gap where a man stood, his mouth agape, his tie flickering in the wind.
They would assume he'd be soon to follow the chair out the window. It was just the sort of incident managers strived to avoid by firing on Fridays.
His first instinct was to apologize, to beg for Vic Reagan's forgiveness. But his boss had hidden behind the big desk. And anyway, he should at least see what sort of damage he'd done before he made his excuses. He might be better off saving his apologies for the jury.
Beneath the scuffed tips of his orthopedic dress shoes, colorful ants scurried about, huddling around a bright orange taxi in the street where Todd's chair had landed. The miniature cab driver stepped out of the car. It was difficult to tell whether or not he'd been injured. From the way the cabbie was moving, it appeared as though Todd had dodged a bullet.
"Whoops," Todd said, and cackled madly.
Behind him came a brief knock at the door and Kenneth Pratchett's smug voice saying "Everything okay in here, Vic--? Ho-lee shit!"
Todd turned and met Pratchett's eye. They stood in silence, the spacious room separating them. Todd on the other side of the desk now, Pratchett peering in with a look of shock, like a frightened animal caught in the headlights of Todd's wild-eyed gaze. Todd could think of nothing to do but shoot Pratchett with his own trademarked finger gun. Startled by the implication, the handsome weasel slinked back out of the room.
Todd stretched around, his right hand still on the window frame, to look for his boss.
Vic Reagan was kneeling alongside his desk like a kid practicing Duck and Cover during the Cold War. There were tiny square chunks of glass in his hair and on the shoulders of his Gucci double-breasted suit. He shook them off and stared at Todd with fearful fascination for a long moment. He didn't get up off the floor.
Todd held his gaze, until his so-called superior looked past him at the gaping mouth of the window.
"Todd? You know, you could have killed someone down there, Big Guy."
He knew it. And although it must surely have been his intention to kill someone at the time, he hoped--sincerely--nobody was hurt now.
"Maybe you should take a vacation," Vic Reagan suggested. "Relax for a bit, come back with a fresh outlook."
Come back? How could he come back? These people would think he was a crazy man. You don't "come back" from an assumed nervous breakdown.
"That's a good idea, Vic," Todd said, looking at the open space where the window had once been. Had he imagined the man in the window? He was certainly nowhere in sight--which was good, Todd considered, because if he had been in the window
when the chair went out, Todd would be worrying about how to shit in the toilet of a two-man prison cell instead of considering a vacation.
"A very good idea. But what about the Raleigh's account?"
"The lubricant guys? Oh Christ, Kenneth can handle that," Vic said with a dismissive wave of his manicured, unnaturally tanned hand.
That was good. Kenneth deserved it. That handsome little weasel deserved everything his good looks would afford him.
The telephone rang. Vic stood to answer it, still eyeing Todd cautiously. "Vic Reagan." As he spoke he never took his eyes off of Todd, until Todd turned his way. Then, blessedly, he lowered them. "Is anyone hurt? Oh thank God. Yes, it was an accident. The damn thing just slipped out from under my ass." Todd had to hand it to him. The man knew how to spin. Not the best maybe, but he could sell a line of bull with a straight face. Vic squinted at the window. "Okay, thank you very much. Yeah, bye."
Todd stepped away from the window. "I'm going to go now," he said.
Vic's face told him it was a wonderful idea. "Sure thing, Big Guy. Whatever you like."
Whatever he liked. Todd thought about this as he strode through the cubicles, everyone watching him until he turned to face them, then looking away, to their desks, to their computers, to their feet, anywhere but at him. It seemed as though looking at Todd Pendleton as he beamed through the office had suddenly become like looking directly at the sun.
They were seeing him for the first time. Oh, they'd looked a lot before, but they had never really seen him.
He was one of the Big Dogs now. Big Dogs did whatever they liked, and what he wanted right now was to go home, eat some supper, watch Jeopardy! and make love to his wife. He had a good feeling he'd see "results" below tonight... and an even stronger feeling he'd have the confidence to tell Darlene he wasn't ready to have kids just yet, particularly with a vacation in their future.
Maybe he'd swing by the mall first. Head into the men's room. See if the silver-eyed man with the bushy beard and filthy coveralls was in there, exposing himself to some other poor schmo. Todd wanted to thank him for inspiring his newfound courage.
Or smash his head into a door, he really hadn't decided yet.
CUTTINGS
KATIE WAS IN the kitchen when a low rumbling rattled the window. As she moved the curtain aside to peer out, a large off-white object filled her view, and the blast of a horn startled her away from the glass. Someone had pulled into the driveway.
Hanging half out the kitchen door, Katie took a cautious look at the back of an ugly old van spewing black exhaust into the carport. The tinted rear window was cracked, the bumper on a sharp cant, every inch covered in a layer of scum, even the small silver letters spelling out RAM.
"What the heck is this?"
The driver door opened as she spoke. Katie recognized her husband's designer jeans before he stepped down on the concrete slab, and she saw that he had clearly gone mad, because only a crazy person would have such a bright, goofy smile stepping out of such a filthy, run-down vehicle.
Gavin Leslie had only just recently lost his job and now he'd lost his mind.
"Honey, before you say it, I got a great deal."
"Unless you traded for magic beans, a great deal is still too much."
"Honey," he said again, in the tone he used when he knew he was in the wrong, "you're gonna love this van. And she was only twelve-hundred dollars."
"Twelve-hun--" Katie let go of the doorjamb and stepped out onto the cement porch. She had to, for fear of keeling over in shock. "Jesus, you really have lost your mind."
Gavin threw open the back doors, his biggest surprise saved for last. In the back stood a bathroom cabinet papered with faux wood, alongside a soiled mattress. Katie gaped at them. Gavin took her surprise for a favorable reaction and the smile returned to his scruffy face. "You love her, right? I knew you'd love her."
"I know times are tough, Gavin, but surely you don't expect us to live in that van." Trying for patience, her tone sounded more like measured anger. Had he really just called it her?
"I'll take out the mattress," he assured her. "And the cabinet. I guess the previous owner must have camped in it." He squinted into the back, a forlorn quality to his look Katie didn't quite like. Then his eyes lit up. "I forgot the best part. It's got a tape deck! You remember cassettes."
"Honey, we're the same age. Of course I remember them."
"I found a whole bunch of old cassettes in the cabinet. It's got Mr. Big. You remember Mr. Big."
Katie rolled her eyes, and Gavin drew himself away from the van to stand below her at the steps. "I bought her for us." He took her hand. "For the business."
"What business, Gavin?"
"The flower shop." Excitement crept back into his voice. "Cuttings," he added with a hopeful look, reminding her of the name he'd picked as a joke only the two of them and his dead stepmother would get.
Katie peered over her husband's newly balding head at the beaten-up van with its tape deck and '90s hair band cassettes and the moldering bedroom in the back. She knew what her sister would call it: she'd call it a rape van. Katie held a similar sentiment. Likely a previous owner had camped out of it, as Gavin suggested. Or lived in it, she thought uneasily.
But they could take out the mattress. They could take out the cabinet. The flower shop had been a pleasant dream when they'd first started dating, before bills and real life had gotten in the way. Before Gavin's stepmother, Deanie, who'd always filled the Leslie home with the colors and mingled fragrances of a hundred different blossoms, had passed away in a hospital room resembling a greenhouse with all the Get Well flowers.
"The flower shop," Katie said, warming to the idea. "I hate the name Cuttings, though. If we're going to go through with this, we really ought to call it Deanie's."
A smile crept onto Gavin's lips. He took her hand and kissed it gently.
❚❚
SIX WEEKS LATER, Deanie's Flowers was a living, breathing thing eating up a good portion of their life. But it felt good to be doing something other than banging out her latest book, and even better to see Gavin working again. The layoff had been hard on him. Secretly, Katie thought he'd felt emasculated living off the meager royalties of his wife's crime novels.
With a view of the back gardens, the glassed-in conservatory made an excellent workshop. They'd removed all the furniture, filled the space with tables and covered them with asters and baby's breath and poinsettias and tulips. In the center of the room they'd erected a long counter with a stone finish where the two of them could work side-by-side.
Gavin was an expert with flowers, but arranging wasn't his strong point. Here, Katie discovered an untapped talent. So while he cut the flowers and groomed them, kept them fresh and vibrant, she performed magic with vases and pots and floral foam. While Katie placed orders and created the budgets, Gavin's experience in marketing gradually brought in new customers. He also drove the delivery van, which with its new paint job and Deanie's Flowers decal began to look somewhat respectable, despite its shabby past.
Together, Katie and Gavin Leslie made a perfect team, and as Deanie's Flowers began to bloom so did Gavin's libido. His hunger for her had waned after the layoff but now it roared like the engine of his ugly old van. The day they cleared out the workshop, high from the news of their loan approval, they'd fucked on the cool ceramic tiles in the middle of the glassed-in room, oblivious to potential stares from over the back fence. Gavin devoured her with an enthusiasm he rarely showed, even during their courtship. Secretly, Katie had often thought he felt inadequate, despite her reassurances. But that night and every day since, he'd pushed her to orgasm multiple times until her own cries grew so loud she embarrassed herself, and the two of them lay their sweaty heads together on the cool slab floor, laughing and panting.
The Leslies were happy, healthy and growing more successful by the day.
❚❚
GAVIN SNAPPED AWAKE. He'd been sleeping in an awkward position and his legs felt numb,
belonging to someone else. His chest was constricted. His first instinct was to struggle, bound to a familiar chair, though his hands were unrestricted.
Where am I?
He blinked into the dark. As his vision adjusted, he saw the black rectangle before him, a glimmer of glass. He thought of the conservatory, of his chair at the worktable, but here the glass was too close. Moreover, he didn't smell flowers and damp earth but a familiar musty vinyl.
Yellow light flooded the backyard, triggered by some creature of the night, and he recognized his surroundings: the van. The pressure on his chest was the belt in the driver's seat. Somehow he'd wandered out here in his underwear and buckled himself in behind the steering wheel.
The yard light dimmed, throwing him once again into darkness.
"How did I get out here?"
As he spoke he became aware of a presence at his side, the urge to turn both powerful and repellent. He unbuckled first, drawing his hand slowly across his lap, conspicuous of the erection tenting his boxers, the snap of the buckle like a dead twig to a prowler. When he was free, able to bolt if he needed to, Gavin stole a look at the pallid thing in the passenger seat.
The girl shivered in her flimsy bra and panties, bruised and beaten, rivers of mascara and saliva pooled in her sharp jugular notch. Someone--Couldn't have been me--had tied thick nylon rope under her conical breasts and around her ankles, the flesh red and angry beneath, as if she'd been struggling.
"Who--?" Gavin tried to ask, but the tape player came on abruptly with the dash lights, blaring the three-part harmony of Mr. Big's "To Be With You." At the sudden noise, the girl snapped her head toward him. Her eyes, dark brown and moist, bore the look of a beaten puppy.
She's afraid. Afraid of me.
Gripped by a fear of his own, Gavin snapped on the dome light.
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