Mistress of the Runes

by Andrews

  I shot Hugh a look, and he averted his head and tightened his lips. I panned the room to get the reactions of my jaded compatriots, who were gaping in stunned amazement at their new leader.

  “Our slogan was ‘Paving the Way to Success,’ and we did that in a very logical and organized way: through predictive maintenance tests, damage-failure control, and motivating workers. I expect some of these things would be applicable to the media industry, and although I don’t understand broadcast and publishing and the various things that you do, you probably don’t know what a Ringfeder Shrink Disc shaft-hub locking device is.”

  He laughed, and a few people in the audience did too, but it was a faint laugh that acknowledged that we were all screwed.

  “Over the next several weeks, I’ll be meeting with each of the presidents and vice presidents of your divisions to create an open door of learning and cooperation. My secretary, Bambi, will be getting with you to schedule some time.”

  Hearing the name Bambi, Jack leered at me and I smiled in spite of myself. “Meanwhile, if you have any questions, please drop them in the question boxes I’ve asked be located at the exits. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and we’ll look for smooth roads ahead. And I want to say I’m very proud to be part of the great organization you’ve helped create. Thank you.”

  Applause and then Anselm and Robert left the stage and the room. Maxine charged past me like a bull. “His expertise is gravel?”

  “Well, what do you think?” Hugh asked slyly.

  “I’m thrilled. Finally someone who knows how to fix my driveway.”

  “You know we’re ruined.” He became serious.

  “The wonderful thing about change is it never stops. This guy is temporary, guarantee you.”

  “You know what they call him in the sand and gravel biz? Robber Baron.”

  “I love the way you withhold salient points until just the right moment,” I said. But beneath the bravado I knew that this man would cripple our company—ruin any chance of our ever breaking ahead of the competition. Gravel. Whoever hired him had rocks in his head.

  Leaving the assembly of staffers, I headed across the wide expanse of offices and cubes separating the workers from the executives. A bank of TVs, mounted high above the lunch atrium, caught my eye because Liz Chase was on camera. I stopped to look. She was talking about suicide and the statistics in our city, then they cut to me on camera saying I told the woman not to jump. I noticed several employees had stopped to catch the news story.

  The editor cut back to Liz, who told her personal story about her college roommate who had almost committed suicide. “Weeks earlier, she called me telling me she and her husband were having a lot of trouble, and she asked me if we could have lunch. I told her I had a busy day at work. I didn’t realize her call was a cry for help.” Liz ended by asking people to be aware of depression, fear, changes in behavior, and she gave the hotline and counseling numbers. I walked back to my office while dialing her cell phone.

  “Saw your story on suicide. Very nicely done. And I’m sorry about everything.”

  “Even though you were totally uncooperative, I managed to make you look good in the edit, don’t you think?”

  “You did a great job. Just wanted to tell you,” I said and hung up.

  *

  I went out to the barn and into Rune’s stall and stroked her forehead, then put my arms around her neck, having begun to look forward to hugging this huge furry neck after work every night. Her almond eyes were now big and round and soft, and she nuzzled my neck and left her lips there, breathing on me. I realized she knew my smell and liked it and was comforted by it. Maybe we were starting to bond, this contrary mare and I.

  “I told you I will never give up on you. You are one gorgeous mare.” Tears were running down my cheeks.

  I didn’t see Liz in the barn until she stepped into the stall with me and took my hand and held it entwined in hers. “Underneath all that fury is a very loving woman,” Liz said to Rune. “And I think, horse, you’re starting to bring that love out in her.”

  The mare let out a great sigh that indicated she knew that. I let my breath out with a sigh as well and was silent, collapsing back into the stall wall. Liz took my hand and massaged the bones inside my wrist, and my entire body loosened up from my back to my groin, and my head became light. Then she massaged every finger of that hand, sliding her fingers along each knuckle.

  “Lotta stress in those hands,” she said, holding her hands out for my other wrist and massaging it. “There you go, Ms. Chandler,” she said in a seductive tone. “That’s all the tension I can release under the circumstances.”

  I felt myself leaning into her, unable to stop, and I put my forehead on hers, not unlike Rune, communicating deeply with her soul.

  A horn blast nearly startled my heart out of my chest, and I snapped my head up to see a strange car light shining down the barn aisle.

  “Hellooo!” someone yelled, and I recognized the construction woman.

  “Thinking of adding a wing to Hlatur’s stall?” I asked without a trace of venom as Liz’s construction woman swung her high heels out of the car and onto the gravel.

  Liz gave me a look that begged me to wait, but I wouldn’t.

  The woman was approaching, all teeth and tits. “I came to see your horse!” she called out.

  “Don’t introduce me,” I said with great sadness, collecting myself, kissing my mare good night, and walking from the barn past the woman. Hate her cologne, I thought idly as I backed out of the driveway, throwing gravel four feet into the air, allowing me to truly leave in a cloud of dust.

  *

  I pulled into my driveway feeling sadly alone—not just alone, but alone without Liz. As I climbed out of the car, I could barely make out the person whose silhouette was outlined on the wall adjacent to my front door—Clare, standing in the shadows on my front porch. I got out of the car and locked it.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I want to talk to you. Is that allowed?” It was a conciliatory phrase delivered in a slightly mocking tone.

  I found myself wanting to keep my distance as I asked her to step aside so I could unlock the front door.

  Inside, I flipped on the lights and realized I still missed Odin after all these years. He had always been there to greet me whenever I came home, no matter where home was. Now even Clare was more welcome than the silence. She looked good in that New England Town and Country way.

  We said nothing as I made coffee, knowing that’s what she would want, while she found a spot in the corner of the leather sectional and lounged back on it with her arms resting atop either side, waiting for me to set the coffee down in front of her.

  Then she leaned forward, catching my wrist and holding me there. “I made a mistake,” she said, looking directly into my eyes.

  “A mistake—you mean like a typo, or a missed question on an exam?” I extricated myself from her grip and took a seat in the rocking chair across from the couch.

  “I want you back, Brice,” she said, and she sounded as if I were an object she’d loaned out and needed returned.

  She was wearing a tight, low-cut blouse, and it dawned on me that she had come to seduce me, to seal the deal with sex. Clare and I hadn’t made love in months before I’d left her, and I’d been away from her many more months. So sex for the sheer sensation shouldn’t be completely off my dance card, I thought, but I knew it was. Liz had now ruined even sport sex for me, which made me even more critical of Clare’s venture into that arena.

  “Why did you sleep with that woman?”

  “Her name is—” Clare began.

  “I don’t really care what her name is. Well, I guess I do. What’s her name?”

  “Elsie.”

  “Elsie?” I felt the corners of my mouth tilt up involuntarily. “Like Elsie the cow?”

  “The cow joke has been overplayed, don’t you think.” Clare frowned in disdain.

  “You mean
milked? Well, not for me. I can get endless hours of joy out of it, and especially now, thinking I was cuckolded by Elsie the cow. Was she good in the hay or just an udder delight?”

  Clare got up and paced, I presumed to repress her irritation. “I had an affair with her because she was there—”

  “Like Mount Everest?” I quipped, as the doorbell rang. I answered it without even bothering to look through the peephole first, not caring who was on the other side and certainly not expecting Liz Chase.

  “Can I come in?” Liz looked a bit sheepish.

  It was bad timing, but nothing could be done about that at this point. I gave Liz a look that said I was glad she was here and hoped she would remember that look once she found out who was in my living room. Then I stepped back and let her enter.

  “Liz, this is Clare.”

  Liz looked like she’d been nailed to the floor at the front door, and her face held a moment of surprise, then hurt. I suspected it mirrored my own face when I’d driven up to her house that Saturday to find the construction woman kissing her.

  “Liz Chase, the TV anchor?” Clare asked, approaching her and extending her hand. “Well, Brice, that must be how you got that sound bite on the news about suicide prevention. You know people in the right places.”

  “She got it because she was the person who talked that woman off the ledge.” Liz smiled and faced me, the sorrow perfectly visible in her deep blue eyes. “You left something at the barn, but you…probably don’t need it now.” Somehow I knew she was referring to herself.

  “Liz, please stay.”

  “No, you’re busy. Looks like you’re having a little construction work done too. Good-bye, Clare,” Liz said and left.

  “What does she mean, construction work?” When I didn’t answer, Clare reached for me, saying, “I want to stay over, Brice.”

  “No,” I said flatly.

  “No?” Her voice was amused. “Don’t tell me you’re after the TV anchor.” Clare seemed to find the possibility more humorous than problematic. “We have great jobs, money, friends. We can have great sex—it’s a nice package, Brice,” she said seductively, putting her breasts against mine.

  I was still for a moment, struck by the realization that being this close to Clare didn’t arouse the slightest desire in me, while merely thinking of Liz set me on fire.

  “It is a nice package,” I said, backing away from her, “unfortunately, delivered to the wrong address.” I opened the door for her.

  Clare paused as if trying to decide what to say, then left, miffed, which was as close to pissed as she could muster.

  I thought about phoning Liz on her cell phone, but what could I say? Besides, Clare’s being in my home doesn’t erase the construction worker’s being in Liz’s bed—hardly the same thing. I turned out the lights and fell forlornly into my own bed.

  *

  The next day the senior executive team gathered in the conference room around the large custom-made, polished marble conference table to give Robert Baron our state-of-the-business overview. He was obviously a man used to striding through caverns of rock and shale and shouting above the clang of heavy equipment at union men in hard hats, so sitting for three hours in a plush conference room had him twitching. I could relate.

  As he listened to Hugh talk about capital expenditures, Baron lowered his eye to the table’s edge and stared across the stone. He rubbed his hands across it lovingly, then caught himself and tried to pay closer attention; but the lure of the iridescent blue marble, with its splash of black ore, was too great for him, and he tore the edges off his documents, rolled them into little balls, and popped them back and forth between his palms across the gleaming marble surface. In fact, I was beginning to believe that this marble table was his favorite part of the company.

  “So, any questions, Mr. Baron?” Hugh wound up his presentation.

  Robert Baron glided back into his body like a time traveler. “No!” he said loudly. “Can we take a break?”

  “Why don’t we all meet back here in fifteen minutes,” I suggested.

  The entire room exhaled and fled the conference room like rats leaving an airless ship.

  As Baron and I continued the discussion, he acknowledged that we’d covered most of the material on employee-incentives: stock options, insta-bonuses for exceptional work above and beyond, and recognition for invention and innovation, but he was squirming.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of actual plaques, you know, awards versus money. And I don’t want to leave out the little guy. One that always works is an award for safety,” he said, frowning perhaps to emphasize thought.

  “Safety,” I repeated.

  “Safety in the workplace is one of the biggest problems any major corporation has. People could fall right through the plate glass in this conference room or down those stairs, for that matter!”

  His excitement over physical accidents was amazing to watch. I wanted to tell him that, in my experience, media people were in danger of being thrown through the conference-room plate glass or hurled down the stairs, but not of falling through or down them.

  “None of our employees really carry anything heavy or work around equipment that blocks their view, so I don’t think safety—”

  “You see, that’s where you have to open your mind. If you asked these hundreds of folks out there to put their minds to it, I’ll bet they could come up with some knock-your-pants-off safety solutions. Let’s give it a try, what do you say?” He was buoyed by his own idea, as evidenced by the excitement in his voice.

  “Sure,” I said, knowing I was now reporting to a very basic man: a man who saw things in black and white; a man who liked to simplify; a man who wanted our complex media conglomerate to look, sound, and function like a rock quarry.

  When the staff reassembled in the conference room, I reiterated Robert Baron’s plan. “And so Robert would like to have our entire staff, down to the level of administrative assistants, put together their ideas on safety.”

  “We’ll have a safety suggestion box and we’ll have a safety award,” he boomed at all the blank faces in the conference room.

  “Mr. Baron?” HR spoke.

  “Don’t call me Mr. Baron. Call me RB.”

  “RB,” she said, “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

  He beamed at her, and we ended the meeting on that happy note.

  I bumped into Maxine in the ladies’ room after the meeting. “So how do you like him?” she asked, giving me a mischievous grin.

  “What’s not to like?” I smirked.

  “Well, I’ve got to get back to my unit and determine whether my research analysts need to be outfitted with steel reinforced boots. People step on our toes all the time.”

  *

  Hugh plopped into a chair in my office twenty-four hours post-RB. “We’re an entertainment company.”

  “You don’t find RB entertaining?” I asked dryly, and Hugh smiled.

  “We need every staffer focused on talent deals and programming and marketing and deal making, and this entire building is running around filling suggestion boxes.” He yanked some small squares of paper out of his pocket.

  “Have you been robbing the suggestion box?”

  Hugh read, “‘The towel dispensers in the bathroom jut out and are too close to the door. If we moved them back about six inches, no one would ever scrape their arm.’ ‘The handrails on the staircase are metal, and on cold mornings you don’t want to touch them, so you walk without holding on. Maybe we could change them out for wood.’ ‘It would be really nice if we could have a picnic once a month on our lunch hour, so we could all get to know each other better.’”

  “That’s out,” I said happily. “It’s technically not about safety.”

  “That was HR’s suggestion.”

  “We’ve got to let her go.”

  “We can’t let her go. She’s sleeping with RB,” Hugh stated flatly.

  I paused for a long ten seconds. “Robert Baron has
only been in this building twenty-four hours.”

  Hugh shrugged. “And that’s about how long it takes.”

  Everyone in this company is screwing someone on the spur of the moment, without any internal turmoil about ownership, fidelity, or longevity. So what the fuck is wrong with me? Damn it, Liz Chase!

  “What are you thinking?” Hugh interrupted my mental digression.

  “I’m thinking that as chief legal counsel, you are the person who should intervene with Robert Baron regarding the sexual harassment lawsuit he might cause us as a result of his boffing, of all people, HR!”

  “What happened to the candy bowl?” Hugh complained, and it was apparent to me that male executives were basically nonconfrontational animals who, far more than women, preferred sex and candy.

  *

  I went to see Madge, who stared at me so long over the top of her glasses that I began to squirm. “What are you doing?” she inquired accusatorily.

  “I’m trying to sort things out! I’m struggling with who I am and why I’m here, and then I find this painting of Liz and me that was apparently painted in the 1600s of the two of us when we were other people living about a thousand years before that, and now the damned painting is here and it’s been donated to a museum in L.A. by a man who became a ferryboat captain in San Francisco and whose great-great-granddaughter I met down by the Yakima River.”

  “You’ll never sort that out. That kind of thing is pure coincidence,” Madge said, and I looked at her as if she might be out of her mind. “All very interesting, but it has nothing to do with your life. And you can use it as an excuse not to focus on your life, because God knows you look for excuses at every turn—”

  “I’ll leave if you start this.”

  “Proving my point! I am asking you what you are doing inside yourself. At the most basic level, you and this Liz Chase person—”

  “Why can’t you just call her Liz?”

  “Because you have never brought her here, nor have you introduced us, so to me she is that Liz Chase person on TV, and you have been seeing each other for months, and—”