The Fearsome Particles

by Trevor Cole

  “Are you serious?” he said, regrettably.

  “Absolutely.” Bishop’s weary face acquired a new keenness. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for a while, Gerald. It’s hard to find executives who are committed to the slow climb in an old industry. You’re what I like to call ‘a good soldier.’ Most talented people want the quick splash, big money, star-making jobs.” Bishop snapped his fingers at each kind of job Gerald evidently didn’t want, or have. “Hard to find smart, experienced, trustworthy people like yourself willing to attend to the small stuff and wait for their opportunity. How long have you been chief of operations now?”

  “Four years,” said Gerald.

  Bishop smiled warmly. “There, you see? In a company like ours, most people can’t handle more than two years at that job. They get bored. They want new challenges. I went through five operations men in eleven years before I found you.”

  Gerald nodded, not sure whether he was supposed to respond. It hadn’t sounded like the sort of thing to which a person said “thank you.”

  “Yet, somehow, you manage to stay engaged in the everyday details.” Bishop seemed as perplexed by this as he was impressed.

  “It’s because I’m a worrier,” said Gerald.

  “A what?”

  “A worrier.”

  Bishop’s hearty eye contact faltered a little, and Gerald reviewed some of the many things he might have said that wouldn’t have involved giving his trusting, succession-recommending boss insight into one of the primary flaws in his character.

  “Well,” said Bishop, finding his smile. “I guess I knew that about you.” Then he turned serious again. “As we go forward, that’s not something I’d let on to Gwyn.”

  “No.”

  “He’s more of a jam-on-the-helmet, charge-over-the-ramparts type.”

  “Understood.”

  Bishop smiled, and patted him on the arm.

  Once they had arrived safely at Spent, Gerald climbed the stairs to the second floor as if new super fibres had been grafted into his quad muscles. He took the steps two at a time, hardly noticing the effort, and gripped the railing with a new superized grip. When the receptionist, the lovely, stalwart Mary, greeted him with a cheerful “Good morning,” he said, “Very good.” And by the time he had walked the length of the hall, past the land of offices and open-concept cubicles that would be his to lead, his newly super brain had found and prioritized all the reasons he couldn’t possibly handle the job Bishop was trying to bestow on him, and why Bishop was sure to realize it soon.

  He rounded the corner with his lack of leadership expertise and found Sandy waiting for him next to the bank of filing cabinets, outside his locked office door.

  “You need to move me,” she told him before he had his keys out of his pocket. “I can’t work with him any more.”

  “One second, Sandy.” He jammed the key into his inability to delegate and entered his office, his assistant sales and marketing director riding his heels. She closed the door behind them.

  “He says I can’t be trusted. He says I went to you behind his back.”

  Gerald pointed to the guest chair with his already proven failure to respond to warning signs in ways that might have prevented the market share fiasco. “Have a seat.” He took off his suit jacket and hung it on the wooden coat rack next to his complete dearth of strategic vision.

  Sandy lingered in the undefined region between Gerald’s desk and the table by the window, but when he rolled back his chair and dropped into it, she appeared to latch on to some new resolve and grasped the back of the upholstered guest chair with both hands as if it were a lectern.

  “It’s an impossible situation,” she announced.

  “Would you please have a seat?”

  “He won’t even look at me.”

  Gerald sighed with a full day’s worth of weariness, and waited. Finally she rounded the chair, drew it closer to his desk, and slipped in.

  “I need my own office,” she said.

  He wondered why he had deluded himself all these years, believing that he had CEO potential, when now, with the opportunity at hand, it was obvious he was barely competent at the job he already held, let alone ready for the ultimate step. Every occasion of hesitation and miscalculation in his past seemed fresh to him. He was being pelted with mistakes, including the time the cutting machine went down two days before a big shipment to Alberta and the plant manager Ned Mattick called him from the site:

  NED: There’s something balled up here, Gerald. It’s the feeder assembly, I think, but the whole business is seized and I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to fix. Prob’ly days.

  And what did he do? He paced. He swore. Son of a bitch, he said. Holy shit. What the fuck. He couldn’t get past the problem to the solution. The problem waggled its grotesque haunches in front of him and it was all he could see! It had taken Mattick himself to remind him that their closest competitor, in Oak Ridges, had not long before shut down an old cutting machine and that maybe they could buy some time on it until they got theirs fixed. Ned Mattick had more CEO potential than he did.

  “Isn’t there an office in the sales area that isn’t being used?” Sandy was saying.

  He reached forward and turned on his computer.

  “You don’t need your own office, Sandy. I’m sorry. You and Trick are going to have to work this out.”

  “We can’t,” said Sandy. “I don’t see how.”

  He heard a knock on his door and called “Come in” before he registered Sandy’s desperate flurry of No! No! waving. A large figure appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh, I see,” said Trick, setting his hands on his hips.

  Sandy slammed her forehead into her palm.

  “So this is the way it works now,” said Trick, adopting a louche air. “I guess I should start scheduling my own private grievance sessions.”

  Sandy seemed to make a point of turning only halfway around and speaking to the wall. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “Ha! No, it isn’t. I’m here about the strategy meeting.” He lifted his chin at Gerald. “When’s the strategy meeting?”

  Sandy pushed herself back in her seat and rolled her eyes for Gerald’s benefit.

  Here was a problem, thought Gerald. Here was his very own personnel crisis. He allowed himself the luxuriant, excruciating irony of wondering how good ol’ Ned Mattick would solve it.

  “Trick,” he began, wondering whether it was better to attack this head on or wait to see if it would erode naturally, over time, like the pyramids. “Sandy tells me you think she came to me behind your back with her window filters idea.”

  In the doorway, Trick wobbled his head. “Well, something like that.”

  “Okay. Did you make it clear to her you preferred that she go to you first with new product suggestions?”

  Sandy mouthed a big No at Gerald.

  Trick’s arms flew out from his sides. “Since when is it our job to come up with new products? Isn’t that Allsop’s job?”

  “So the answer would be no,” said Sandy, to the wall.

  “Okay, what about this?” said Gerald, leaning back in his chair. “When were you planning on coming to me about the real market share numbers?”

  For a moment Trick seemed undecided about arms-folded or hands-on-hips. He chose arms-folded. “Market share numbers fluctuate, Gerald, you know that. They’re a snapshot. They’re history. I prefer to look at projections.”

  “Did you project two point five?”

  Trick’s head bobbled and swayed. “Hard to remember all the scenarios.”

  In her seat, Sandy sputtered the sound of uproarious laughter barely suppressed.

  “Look,” said Gerald, glaring at her. “You two are going to have to figure out how to get along. Any company staring at a two-point-five share has enough to worry about.” He held up a hand as they both tried to speak. “Trick, from now on, Sandy will come to you first with any new product innovations she comes up with.”


  “Yeah, and then I guess I’ll just schlep them over to Allsop’s office where they belong.”

  “No. If they sound good, you’ll bring them to me.”

  Trick found a new and apparently more comfortable arms-folded position. “Fine.”

  “Sandy,” said Gerald.

  “Yes.” She had folded her arms Jack Benny-like, her deflated cheek laid against her peevish fist.

  “If you feel Trick is not giving your bold new ideas their due, you can tell me so during one of our monthly meetings together.”

  “Monthly meetings?” She straightened her head. “You meet with him once a week.”

  “Right, because he’s the sales and marketing director.” Through conscious effort, Gerald managed to keep a note of incredulity out of his voice. “You and I will meet on the third Wednesday of every month,” he said. “Eleven o’clock.”

  “But,” she was calculating something, “we just passed the third Wednesday.”

  He looked innocuously at them both and picked up the handset of his phone to indicate their time together was over. “See you at the meeting at three.”

  2

  Sitting in the boy’s room of the Lightenham Avenue house, Vicki could hear Hella in the next bedroom, chopping at the Yves Delorme sheets. She could picture the fierce hatcheting of Hella’s hand as she jammed edges down between mattresses and headboards and flat between mattresses and box springs. She could imagine the stabbing of her blade fingers into tight corners and the winching taut of pretty coverlets. Even at her most laissez-faire, Hella was a demon of bed making; it was the thing that had impressed Vicki most. And now that Vicki had angered her, she was making the bedding suffer.

  The chopping sounds stopped, and Vicki could hear Hella’s feet pounding down the hall. When she appeared in the doorway, she seemed out of breath, and her face was flushed from her effort.

  “So that’s the third bedroom done,” she said. “Do you need more time to sit here? You want me to keep going?”

  Vicki pressed her back flat against the headboard of the mahogany sleigh bed. “Yes, Hella, I do need a bit more time. In fact I wondered whether there might be something left for you to do downstairs, or perhaps in the basement. I’m finding the noise up here a bit distracting.”

  Hella folded her arms and nodded with an apparently grim appreciation of the state of things. “The noise of my working is distracting you,” she said. “You know, I’m not used to having to do all the finishing work.”

  Vicki drew her hands into her lap. “You don’t have to do all of it, Hella. Most of the downstairs is done. The window treatments are properly arranged, the floors are clean, and the tables are all beautifully set. We’ve both worked very hard. I’ve simply asked you to finish the beds, which you do so wonderfully well, and see to whatever details we might have missed downstairs.”

  Hella regarded her for a second or two, then took a crisp step into the boy’s room and swept her gaze around. “Oh, look. Here’s a detail we missed. An entire room.”

  “Tell me,” said Vicki, “have you ironed the beds you’ve made?” Ironing the sheets and coverlets once they were on the beds helped fix the folds of the turn-downs and gave a bedroom an almost subliminal polish. And as a task, it had the advantage of being relatively silent.

  “No,” said Hella. “That’s always the last thing. And I like to do all the beds one after the other so I don’t have to keep waiting for the stupid iron to heat up.” She spread her arms. “And I can’t do this room.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.” Vicki turned her face away. “I’m not ready to do this room yet. Maybe you could run out for some more fresh flowers.”

  “Avis is going to be here for her showing in, like, two hours.”

  “The white callas in the foyer,” said Vicki, “are looking a little wizened.”

  Hella sighed as she reached back to yank her dark ponytail tight. “Well, I’d go, but I don’t have a car today.”

  “Take mine.” Vicki felt beside the bed for her purse, but it wasn’t there. Where had she left it? “I think my purse should be sitting in the sink of the guest bathroom downstairs. My keys are in there.” Her assistant persisted in the doorway like a cloud of cigarette smoke. “I would get enough for the foyer and dining room, if they have them.”

  After another moment, Hella shrugged her bony shoulders and gave a sigh. “All right,” she said, heading down the hall. “I just hope Avis is taking her pills today.”

  Vicki leaned her head back against the scrolled top of the headboard and waited for the sound of Hella leaving. Seated this way, with her legs stretched out before her along the bed, she could clearly see the toenail that had caused Avis such distress. It wasn’t clear to her how the nail had been mutilated, though she had her Geraldish suspicions. But even now it was as though the nail, the toe beneath it, and the foot itself, belonged – or should have belonged – to a different person. Lately (perhaps, she thought, it was age) her body and the things she covered it with were becoming less important to her. In the mornings, it was only habit that pushed her through the motions of putting on makeup, and getting dressed. Looking at her toes now, she was faintly irritated that she’d even been made to consider them. It should have been someone else’s concern. What she needed – here she smiled – was a Hella of the toes.

  When she heard the front door open and close she was able to relax and think about what really mattered. For a long while she sat on the unmade sleigh bed, watched the occasional shadows of birds pass through the circle of light from the bull’s-eye window, and listened to the room. She tried to keep her breathing steady, but that was something of a struggle, because never before, never in all her years of staging had it taken so long to decipher what she was meant to do in a single room. She had already considered the possibility that she was trying too hard now, and that she was blocked, the way artists were sometimes said to become. But it didn’t feel that way; it felt as though she wasn’t trying, or listening, hard enough.

  She worked to get a picture in her mind. She pressed her temples and tried to see the child as an extension of Robert and Margeaux, as an amalgam of their contentment. A boy from those two should be fearless, she thought, and of the world, born into trust and steadiness, into impetuous joys and a flood of light. A child like that, it seemed to Vicki, should be easy to see.

  When that didn’t work, and it hadn’t before, she tried to see the boy through his parents’ eyes. She strove to know Margeaux’s expectations and intuit what kind of boy she would love. In an effort to jog her inspiration, Vicki did silly things. She got off the bed and roamed the room carelessly, as she imagined Margeaux might. She walked partway down the hall, turned, and came racing back, as if she had wonderful news, in the desperate hope that when she arrived at the doorway, the boy would appear to her, surrounded by his things. But it was a futile effort that only made her breathe all the harder.

  There was never any thought, however, of giving up and filling the child’s room with make-do delight – a ball and a baseball glove on the side table, an encyclopaedia on the revolving bookshelf, open to the page on grasshoppers, and a framed picture of the space shuttle mounted on the wall – except to acknowledge how desolate the idea made her feel. And she knew anyway that she had more time, that the deadline was not as imminent as Hella believed. Because when two o’clock arrived, Avis would not be walking into the house, bringing her sorrowful couple with her. Vicki had a plan to see to that.

  When she heard the sound of her own car pulling into the driveway at half past one, Vicki went downstairs to meet her assistant at the door.

  “I got all they had,” called Hella as she came in, her arms loaded with linen-white callas. “I’m sorry it took so long. And it came to over two hundred dollars!”

  “They’re lovely,” said Vicki as she walked barefoot across the foyer tiles.

  Hella kicked off her shoes in a rush and started to make for the kitchen, but Vicki greeted her with her arms outspread
.

  “I’ll take them,” she said.

  “Don’t you want me to put them in the vases?”

  “No, it’s fine.” She received them into her arms the way she would a newborn, protecting their fragile blooms. “Now, Hella,” she said, “you’ve done so much, and I’m very grateful because I know it’s been frustrating for you. Why don’t you consider your work done for the day?”

  “But there’s still tons more to do!”

  “Well, as you made clear it’s time I did my share.”

  Hella frowned as if she was confused, and when Vicki turned with the flowers she began to follow. “What about the boy’s room? Is it done? Can I see?”

  Vicki stopped and faced her again. “I’m quite serious, Hella. I’d like you to go home now. I’ll pay you for a full day.”

  “Well” – Hella blinked – “my husband’s not picking me up today. I was hoping I could get a ride with you.”

  “Take my car.”

  “But what –”

  “Please.” She stared at Hella until the angular woman seemed to settle back on her heels. Then she smiled. “All right now, off you go!” And she turned and took the flowers into the kitchen where she stayed, tense at the sink, until she heard the shuffling of shoes, and the closing of the door.

  Quickly she cut the tips off the flower stems – because the callas were lovely and it would have been a shame to waste them – set them in the sink and ran enough cold water to cover their severed ends. And when she was sure that Hella had driven off through the arbour of Lightenham Avenue’s shapely oaks, she hurried back across the polished floor to the front entrance, drying her hands on her dress as she went. With the practice of years she slipped on her pumps without looking, took the house keys from her purse, which Hella had left on the floor, and went outside.