Seven Shoes

by Mark Davis

  What choice did the ancients have but to believe in gods?

  “I have never seen this before,” Lars said.

  “That cannot be true.”

  “I mean in summer. This is a once in a lifetime spectacle for late July.”

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “It is worth losing a little sleep over this. I have never seen this before, at any time of the year.”

  They stood in silence for a long time, shoulders touching, their breathing the only sound in the room. Within minutes the spectacle faded as weak light suffused the evening sky, herald of the relentless summer sun.

  Elizabeth closed the curtain, tight.

  “How are you Lars?” she asked.

  “Not so well right now,” he said.

  Elizabeth sat on the bed. Enough light was already leaking through the curtains that they could see each other. She patted a spot on the bed. Lars sat next to her.

  “Tell the good doctor.”

  Lars chuckled then turned serious.

  “I spent the afternoon with Thor’s mother,” he said. “He was her only child. We had to admit her to hospital.”

  “And what else?”

  “I feel responsible.”

  “You heard the technician. Thor had a myocardial infarction.”

  “Thor had a heart attack because he was being chased. For his laptop.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “It was a murder.”

  Elizabeth realized that Lars had put it all together while they were still in the car leaving Pedersen and the prison, just from details he had heard over the phone. That is why he brought the team with him and demanded that the site be treated as a crime scene. This park ranger was quite a good detective.

  Elizabeth rolled across the bed. She bunched up some pillows for two heads and patted the mattress again. Lars scooted next to her and lay down with his back to her. She rested against his back, her arm draped over his hip, her fingertips lightly grazing his stomach. They lay in silence like that, her breath on the back of his neck.

  Their breathing gradually fell into sync and within minutes they were asleep.

  FOURTEEN

  The conference rooms scattered throughout the leviathan complex were named after large-scale XRO projects. The name plaque for this one was “Orinoco River,” although the Venezuelans had expelled XRO and nationalized its properties decades ago.

  “Mind if I ride up in the driver’s box?” Scooter asked.

  Scooter Jackson, the wizard of IR, had no official reason to be at this meeting, but Ken was pleased that his friend had come to sit next to him in what promised to be a hard meeting.

  “I don’t know,” Ken replied. “Did you bring a shotgun?”

  They both sat in silence, facing the glass wall that looked out to a small pond with fleshy lily pads and a line of snapping turtles sunning themselves on a log. Beyond that was a green wall of steamy, East Texas forest.

  Margo walked in at 10 a.m. sharp, looking fresh in a smart, beige business suit. She took a seat opposite Ken and Scooter. Jerome entered with several MBA factotums on detail to the God Pod. They scattered around the table, with Jerome taking a spot next to Margo.

  Jerome cleared his throat.

  “The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the continuing implications of the Dubai fatality,” Jerome declared, “and the death of a contractor, Rakesh Sharma.”

  “Mister Sharma, as you know, has dependent children living in Charlotte,” Margo said. “They have filed suit against the company in the Western District of North Carolina alleging that XRO covered up the circumstances that led to the death of their father. XRO contests their accusation, supported by amici from Dubai Petroleum and the National Association of Safety Professionals.”

  “Margo, correct me if I got this wrong,” Scooter said, his oscillating twang undiminished by living in posts around the world. “But this is a very well understood, well documented event.”

  Margo said nothing, so Ken stepped in.

  “Yes it was,” Ken said. “It was a simple but egregious error, for which the company is liable. A pressure control at Dubai’s isomerization unit had been documented to be unstable—”

  “The main poppet was sprung,” Scooter said.

  “And should have been rectified immediately, but the plant supervisor elected to continue operations while waiting for a replacement part from Manchester, England, without objections by his deputies,” Ken said. “Our response has been to terminate the supervisor, downgrade the deputies by one level and apologize to the family. Clearly, we’re talking settlement.”

  Margo handled a small pair of black reading glasses and leaned back in her chair. She rubbed the stem of her glasses at the corners of her mouth as if she were going to chew on them, but didn’t.

  “Ken, I wish it was that simple.”

  A turtle on the other side of the glass wall, having had enough morning sun, dropped off the log into the pond.

  Margo sat up slowly, made a show of slipping on her reading glasses and opened a briefing book.

  “We have here a memo you put out from HS&E, less than four years ago, allowing managers to elect to wait for a replacement if the part can be secured in under two weeks.”

  “Hold on there, counsel,” Ken said. “That’s for non-critical parts. Pressure control—”

  “It says nothing here about a criticality threshold,” Margo said.

  “It is understood,” Ken said. “Every engineer would know that.”

  “But the law is about what we put on paper.”

  Margo tossed her reading glasses, letting them clatter across the walnut tabletop.

  “Ken, this was an exceptionally brutal incident.”

  “Everyone here appreciates that,” Scooter said.

  The valve had popped, firing a jet spray of superheated condensate onto Sharma’s face and torso, scalding him to the bone. He had lingered in the hospital for three days.

  “So what exactly are you saying?” Ken asked.

  Margo looked to Jerome, who glanced down at Ken with his best I-feel-your-pain expression. Ken stared back at that pallid jack-in-the-box face, the pomaded bristles of his short hair gleaming under the fluorescent light.

  “Ken,” Jerome said, “the view upstairs is that what we’re looking at here is not just a large payout over an errant engineer, but a significant issue of internal control.”

  ___________

  There was always little traffic at the pink hotel on Bissonnet, so the one who got there first could always indicate the room by parking directly in front of it. The front of Margo’s dark blue two-door Mercedes pointed at the door. She let him in without a word. Margo had already placed their bottle of scotch on the table, so Ken took an ice bucket, filled it and returned to make them two drinks.

  “What the fuck Margo?” he said. “What was that about?”

  “Ken, it’s not me,” she said. “It’s Jerome.”

  “I get that. But do you have to be his enabler?”

  “You have no idea what I do for you behind the scenes.”

  “No, I don’t,” he said. “What do you do for me?”

  Margo shook her head, disgusted by his lack of appreciation. She picked up her drink and took a sip.

  “What?”

  “Ken, he still won’t let the Iran business go. He wants to take this and take that and tie it all up in a nice little bow.”

  “Around my neck.”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Then I’m fucked.”

  “Maybe not. You’ve still got a champion with the Chairman.”

  “I haven’t spoken to him since the presentation.”

  Margo took a hard belt of scotch.

  “Enough of this, for now, okay, honey? We can talk conspiracy later.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Despite all that had happened, Margo looked fine this evening and he wanted her. She threw
the plastic cup on the carpet and began to unbutton, unsnap and slide out of her clothes.

  While they were making love, Margo pulled above him and looked down on him for a moment with that intense, searching look. When they were done, she remained on top for a while, wet and cooling, gazing silently into his eyes. There was a tremor around her lips, her mouth pulled down and tears welled up in her eyes, mascara ran down her cheeks and black tears spotted his stomach.

  What is that look, Ken thought. Anger? Sadness? My God, is it pity?

  He couldn’t think of anything to say or ask. At that moment, he really didn’t want to know. Ken slid from underneath her and went to take a quick shower. He had to be alone for a moment, gather his thoughts. Ken stood for a silent moment under the rush of warm water. What was really going on? The Iran business again? Hadn’t the 499 dispensed with all that? Jerome? They never liked each other, but why was he on such an anti-Ken jihad? And Margo? What was up with that look?

  Sadness over impending breakup, perhaps? No. It was more than that. It was the look one gives to the innocent guest being ushered to the ceremony, just before he realizes that the ceremony is a human sacrifice.

  Ken came out the bathroom in a bath towel and roll of steam, determined to get some answers. But Margo was gone.

  ___________

  Jane had long begged Ken to take her on a two-week, phone-free vacation to the Caribbean. After all he had been through, Ken was ready for it. He turned his work over to his deputies, leaving them with meticulous instructions on how to respond to this and that, and left with Jane for St. Barts. By the fifth day away from the phone, Ken could feel his shoulders come down a notch. He enjoyed a solid week of sleeping late, making love to his wife in the mid-morning, swimming in the late afternoon in turquoise waters, reading novels on white sandy beaches, lolling in a hammock and dining every night on white, succulent fish filets with buttery Chardonnays. The Gordian knot in his stomach began to dissolve. He felt lighter, younger. He even went willingly to several yoga classes with Jane, though he found the task of twisting his body into pretzels unrewarding. After two weeks, Ken returned to Houston a new man, lean and tan.

  Back in the office, the first call Ken had to return was to his lawyer.

  “Glad you finally called me back.”

  “Sorry,” Ken said, not sounding at all sorry. “I decided to take a real vacation.”

  “The document you signed, that homebrew XRO solution they call a 499? Well, it didn’t take.”

  “What do you mean it didn’t take?”

  “The DOJ is going file a letter of intent.”

  “Intent to prosecute?”

  “No, formally investigate, but that is serious enough.”

  Ken checked his inbox. There was to be a meeting in Jerome’s office at 4. No messages from Margo. Oddly, while he had accumulated plenty of emails from XRO offices around the world, there was very little traffic from others at headquarters, even from Scooter.

  Ken told Karin he had an offsite meeting and left at 11. He drove to the pink hotel and took a room. He shut the curtains and turned up the air. Ken undressed, slipped into bed under heavy covers, and day-dreamed about Caribbean beaches and brightly colored fish snapping one way, then the other. He fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Awakened by his phone at 3 p.m., Ken showered—he wanted to be fresh—redressed and returned to headquarters at 3:45 p.m.

  Jerome could have had a corner office on the third or fourth floors with the other executives, but he had chosen instead a small and unpleasant rectangle upstairs. What it lacked in size the little office made up for in location, prime real estate just outside the large, fortified glass doors that sealed off the occupants of the God Pod from the rest of the company. Of course, Jerome had the passcode and could enter the Pod at will. Ken like almost everyone else, had to be buzzed in to see the Chairman and his fellow deities.

  Ken was not surprised to see the head of HR and someone from Legal. They had already taken their chairs. Ken sat in the little semi-circle in a chair that looked plush but was actually quite hard on the back.

  “Ken, have a seat with us,” Jerome said in an excessively polite tone. Ken felt relaxed, almost giddy. He would never again have to endure Jerome’s faux empathy. He would never again have to steel himself to drive into this soul-crushing complex. Dubai was now somebody else’s headache. Ken could say goodbye to the candy-stuffed, alcohol-free holiday parties and other corporate ticks shaped by the mores of the company’s two dominant religions, Southern Baptism and Islam.

  “I believe you know why you’re here.”

  Ken said nothing, poker-faced.

  “In regards to the possible sanctions violations, we’ve worked out a deal with the U.S. Justice Department we believe will benefit all parties,” Jerome said. “They will suspend their promised investigation.”

  Jerome turned to Legal, the assistant general-counsel.

  “We will require you, with your lawyer’s permission of course, to sign some statements affirming that you’ve told us every detail about the incident,” Legal said. “If Justice ratifies, then we’re done with that.”

  “What does Margo say about this?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Legal and HR exchanged glances.

  “Ken,” Jerome said, looking as if had just been gut shot and was heroically speaking through his pain, “Margo has left the company. She resigned while you were on vacation to take a position as an adjunct professor at the law school at San Francisco University, where her late husband was once the dean.”

  “Late husband? Current or late?”

  “Margo had only one husband, Ken. Mike died, oh, five or six years ago,” Jerome said. “I thought you would have known that.”

  Margo had worn a wedding ring. A widow’s ring?

  Jerome leaned forward and placed a smartphone in Ken’s hand.

  “I assume you also know about this.”

  Ken looked into the screen … two naked bodies, entwined, white shoulders and middle-age paunches contrasting with lean, tanned faces and shapely arms. There was a bit of color, the wide circles of Margo’s pink-brown areolae and the gleam of Ken’s gold wedding ring in the flash. A drop of fluid glinted in the bulb of Ken’s slack penis. In the context of the picture, Margo’s smile came across as a leer. Ken’s face was blank, his eyes soulless red dots.

  It was obscene.

  “Before this, we were on the verge of firing her, discreetly of course,” Jerome said. “Margo had long lost the confidence of the Chairman and wouldn’t take a hint.”

  “Now, of course, she has the basis to threaten us with a lawsuit,” Legal said. “Title Seven, nonsense about quid pro quo, coerced sex. All manner of outlandish things about you implied. She threw in lurid hints about Iran and illegal deals just to rattle us. We’re not buying any of it, of course. Justice will know all about this, for the sake of due diligence. But our, uh, inquiries have set to rest any thought that you had anything more than a garden variety affair. Our investigators revealed that Margo has a long history of sabotaging herself with men. She manages to squelch enough of it to keep moving upward ...”

  “Just because we’re not buying into what she’s saying doesn’t mean we’re not paying her off,” Jerome said. “The Chairman doesn’t want to read any of this in the paper. Which he will if she files.”

  At her level, Ken calculated, Margo had to be looking at seven figures, plus all of her vested pension. With a sweet post in San Francisco and some work on the side, she would be doing quite well. The settlement would be secret, so she’d look like legal rock star on the West Coast, free to victimize someone new.

  “Of course, we would like you to leave the premises today,” Jerome said.

  There was a polite discussion of distributing Ken’s responsibilities among his several deputies until a replacement could be named. Any talk of payouts or severance would have to wait until the deal with Justice was done. Handshakes all around.


  Ken returned to his office, packed up his pictures and a few knickknacks, all of which fit neatly into a company satchel. He called in Karin and told her he was leaving the company, effective immediately. She looked stricken.

  “It’s not a death sentence,” Ken said. “Not in the least.”

  He gave Karin a moment to regain her composure, then he told her which deputy should handle which issue. She gave him a hug on his way out.

  ___________

  “At first, I thought I was fine,” Ken said, a light breeze stirring the ragged palm frond behind him. “Of course, my marriage was over. Jane had the picture, don’t know who emailed it to her. Maybe Margo? In any event, when I got home, there was not much of a fight, just a cold and dispiriting settling of accounts. Jane was the one who moved out. She went to her sister’s place in Highland Park.

  “I sold the house, liquidated the vested portion of my pension they could not take away from me,” Ken said. “With my firing, the Aztec priests on the high altar of the U.S. Department of Justice decided that one living, beating heart was enough. After I settled with Jane, and paid taxes, I had only about a million dollars left. Not a fortune, but enough for me.

  “Like Caine in Kung Fu, I wandered the Earth. Or like Cain in the Bible, because everywhere I went I bore the mark. The mark of the Internet. Someone had found it necessary to post the cute little image of Margo and me, along with some choice details about my firing and dark inferences about ‘dealings with Iran,’ and tie it all to my search results. Maybe Jerome had it done? I still don’t know why he hated me so much … maybe it was all just sport to him.

  “Anyway, I am sure that everyone I know has by now seen it.

  “I had thought about showing up at Margo’s doorstep in San Francisco. What would be the point? At some level, she was crazy. At some level, so was I. So after the funds from the house cleared, I took a cheap sleeper bus deep into the Mexican interior.