by Jane Haddam
“Come with me,” Alida Brookfield said. “I’ll show you to your office.”
THREE
MY OFFICE WAS DOWN three corridors, around four corners, and directly opposite the unpainted double doors of the Art Department.
The silly part wasn’t over yet. Alida Brookfield wanted me to realize my exact position at Writing Enterprises. Since she owned Writing Enterprises, she reserved the right to define that position. My office was a closet. Literally. Until a week before I entered it, the room had been repository for mops, brushes, and industrial-strength cleaner.
Offices were laid out along the corridors in descending size. Beginning with Alida Brookfield’s Persian corner, the first main corridor contained (in order of diminishing importance) Felicity Aldershot’s office (Writing Workshops and Correspondence Schools), Michael Brookfield’s office (Newsletters), and Stephen Brookfield’s office (Publishing). Jack’s Literary Services started the slide around the corner and was the only office on that corridor with a person’s name on the door. The other doors sported titles. Departments Editor, Writing; Domestic Sales, Publishing; Scheduling Coordinator, WWCS. The progression might or might not have had something to do with the importance of the positions in the firm. The progression on the first corridor, I was sure, had to do with nothing but Alida Brookfield’s personal preferences in employees and relatives. Publishing—fourth on the list—had to be more important to the financial condition of the company than Newsletters, which was third.
My corridor contained Mr. Lahler, the Art Department, the men’s and ladies’ rooms, and me. The Art Department was one large room with rows of desks. Mr. Lahler’s office was a cramped cubicle made more suffocatingly claustrophobic by being forced to accommodate two desks—a larger one for Mr. Lahler himself, and a smaller one for the timid little girl who was his assistant. Two plaques hung from the door, MARTIN LAHLER, COMPTROLLER, the first one read. The second said, ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT.
Someone who looked like an emaciated Jack Brookfield was standing in Lahler’s door when Alida and I came up to it.
“I don’t want any arguments,” he was saying. “For God’s sake, Marty, it isn’t a lot of money—”
Felicity Aldershot emerged from the Art Department, her hands in her hair. “Don’t tell me you’re fighting this out again,” she said. “Alida made it absolutely clear—”
“I don’t care who made what clear,” the emaciated man said. “I’ve got a problem and I don’t see—”
Jack Brookfield stuck his head out of the men’s room. “It’s her goddamn money,” he said, “if she doesn’t want you making an idiot of yourself in front of the entire population of Wall Street—”
“This has nothing to do with Wall Street.”
“Commodities markets,” Felicity Aldershot said. “That has to be the next step.”
“My division is making a lot of money,” the emaciated man said.
Felicity Aldershot gave him the fish eye. “Not that that has anything to do with you,” she said.
At my side, Alida Brookfield decided the farce had gone far enough. She shuffled, coughed, and made a point of bumping into the pasteboard corridor wall. The little group around Lahler’s office swung toward her immediately, straightening, as if they were drawing to attention. They were like a company in a forties army comedy, aware too late of the approach of their sergeant.
Alida Brookfield walked down the corridor ahead of me and stopped at Lahler’s door. She looked the emaciated man up and down with palpable contempt.
“I don’t care how much your division is making,” she said. She turned to Lahler. “Everything I said stands,” she told him. “I’m not putting any more cash into Steve’s fliers, and I’m not putting up with Michael’s—” She stopped herself. She had remembered my existence. “Never mind,” she said. “You’ve got my instructions. All you have to do is carry them out.”
“Someday somebody’s going to carry them out on your head,” Steve said. He gave Lahler a look of childishly impotent rage, one step away from plugging his thumbs in his ears and sticking out his tongue. Then he turned on his heel and strode off toward the more favored corridors. He looked right through me.
Alida Brookfield straightened her dress and her emotions and gave me a smile.
“Well,” she said. “Miss McKenna. I’m afraid I haven’t been able to give you a large office, but I’ve tried to give you a convenient one. You’ll be able to see the mechanicals as soon as they come out of the Art Department.”
Her expression said she was as likely to give a large office to someone in my position as she was to eat cow dung. I decided to ignore it. I’m not good at threats and counterthreats, and we’d had a long morning of those. I’m not good at handling myself in embarrassing situations, either, and no other situations seemed to exist at Writing Enterprises. Felicity Aldershot, Jack Brookfield, and Marty Lahler were frozen in the positions they’d assumed at Alida’s entrance. They didn’t look likely to move.
Alida put her hand on the knob of a door whose green BUILDING SUPPLIES sign had been inadequately concealed behind a sheet of white paper.
“We’ve put a desk in here for you,” she said, swinging the door open and pulling a string to activate the overhead bulb. “And a coatrack and a phone. The phone’s plugged into a jack in the Art Department, so be careful not to trip over the cord. We’ve even given you a closet.”
She sounded so proud of the closet, I moved closer to look at it. It took up almost one entire wall of the minuscule rectangle I was supposed to live in for the next four weeks. It was an oversized portable wardrobe of peeling blond wood with mammoth double doors. I had a suspicion I would never be able to open those doors. If I tried, they would smash into the rickety little desk and office chair that had been crammed against the opposite wall.
“We can get you a typewriter,” Alida Brookfield said. “If you think you’ll need it.” She obviously thought it would be beyond decency for me to need any such thing.
Felicity Aldershot was more accommodating. “Of course she’ll need a typewriter,” she said. “What if she has terrible handwriting? How will you read her memos?” She edged up to the door of the office and peered in. “There’s an outlet in that corner,” she said.
We all looked at the corner. Alida Brookfield considered the possibility that my handwriting might be too idiosyncratic to read.
“She can have Mary Lang’s old typewriter,” Felicity said. “Nobody’s using it yet.” I decided this was a euphemistic way of saying Mary Lang had quit—or been fired—but not replaced. I wondered what made Felicity feel the departure of an employee required euphemism.
Alida Brookfield looked around the office, frowning. “I suppose we could stock the closet,” she said, sounding doubtful. “With paper and pens and things. So you wouldn’t have to go running to the stock girl every time you needed something.”
We all looked at the closet. I looked at the desk against the other wall. I decided it was a good time for pleasant accommodation.
“Well!” I said, actually making myself enter the room. The place made me feel as if I were choking. “This will do perfectly.”
Neither Felicity Aldershot nor Alida Brookfield looked as if she believed me. I patted the top of the desk. I patted one of the doors of the wardrobe. I couldn’t keep my hands off that wardrobe. It would have dwarfed a room three times the size of this one.
“I must admit it’s a remarkably large closet,” I said.
I had to find out whether those doors would open without demolishing the desk. I grabbed the knobs and pulled them toward me.
There was no place to go to get out of the way. When the body came tumbling out, it landed on top of me.
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Copyright © 1984 by Orania Papazoglou
cover design by Heather Kern
ISBN 978-1-4804-0586-8
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