The Big Dream

by Rebecca Rosenblum

  By the time Sanjeet reached the couple, the music had changed to jagged rap over the same fake drum and the girl was tucked in close to Mark’s pink-shirted chest (Sanjeet wondered what had happened to his chalk-stripe suit jacket). She was still clutching his hand. Mark might have been sleeping. The girl glanced at Sanjeet. Her lips gleamed when the light hit them – it could have been lip gloss, but Sanjeet was worried it was semen. He and Mark had a close working relationship, one that included the occasional too-much-party vomit, but never semen.

  “Mark!”

  His eyes opened, quicker than Sanjeet expected. “What?”

  There were a million whats – leading the pack, what they would say in the “directional” meeting with their American parent-company’s leadership first thing in the morning – but suddenly he felt as if he’d shown up in Mark’s bedroom instead of the fire-exit hallway of an ugly club. “I’m going,” he said finally.

  “What?”

  He jerked his thumb at the door. “Seeya back at the hotel.” He took a step following his thumb.

  “Going?” Mark grabbed his shoulder, digging like a crab-claw.

  The girl gazed from one man to the other.

  “Yeah, we got that thing in the morning, and then the flight . . . .” Sanjeet had hit on like 14 women, dancing well, smiling well, and gotten nowhere. At least he hadn’t lost his jacket. He wanted to go back to the hotel and drink the minibar and sleep and wake up and have an entire plate full of bacon at the breakfast buffet. Then get to work.

  Mark squirmed away from the female, staggered deeply and grabbed her bare shoulder for support. “If yer gonna go, um unna go too.” He turned to peer into the girl’s face. “Whirr inseparable. Bess . . . colleagues. He goes, I gotta go. Yah unnerstand?”

  “Yeah, that’s nice.” She reached up and squeezed the hand on her shoulder, and then tugged it off. “Bye.” She turned down the hall to a door marked Fire Exit. No alarm bells went off when she went out.

  Sanjeet turned to watch her go and then Mark threw his arms around his shoulders, leaning his full weight against his back. When Sanjeet twisted back, they were closer than they’d ever been before. “Are you really this drunk? Or were you roofied?”

  Mark pressed his face into Sanjeet’s shoulder. “I am this grunk,” he muttered through a mouthful of expensive fabric. “Are we really going to lose the company?”

  The music had become a female moan. “I – ”Sanjeet pulled Mark’s left arm until it was around his own shoulders, then began hauling him through the club “ – am not drunk enough for this conversation.”

  They slept in and missed the breakfast buffet, and the meetings were grim, endless, and uncatered. Of course, O’Hare was a hot mess, as always – their flight was an hour delayed, the guy who checked their baggage was visibly holding back tears, and there was a pigeon in the foyer. They had some sort of business airline membership that entitled them to sit in a sealed-off glass room with comfortable chairs and drink tepid imported beers, but that was useless at eleven a.m. when you were hungry. Those lounges always had bits of cheese and grapes that were deflated on the underside. They went to a restaurant anyone could go to, instead.

  Sanjeet read the menu as Mark muttered into his phone at his wife – Sanjeet could hear Devorah’s squeaky snarl in between Mark’s words. “Yes, we are. I said yes. No. Terrible. I really – don’t want to go into it. I said no. K, goodbye. Jesus. I love you too.”

  There was quiet music playing – while Mark redialed you could hear it. It had some sort of chimes and a heavy bass, haunting but tinny and faint. It took him a minute to locate the source – a laptop on the next table, guarded by a dark-haired woman bent so low over her work you couldn’t even see if she was pretty. The lyrics – now that he was focused he could hear them – were about hanging around wearing bathing suits, but the low slow music was so dark. When she glanced up, he still couldn’t peg her attractiveness, obscured by glasses and hair and the flush of finding him watching. She bent again and plugged in her earphones and he lost access to the sound and her face.

  All morning, throughout his thoughtful recitation of their company’s woes, through the insistence of head-office that the Canadian team fold one of their major magazines and outsource the call centre – through it all, Mark had been hungover miserable and Jeet had carried him. But now they were alone, together, the flight was delayed, it was eleven a.m. on a Thursday, the restaurant wasn’t even serving breakfast, and Mark was listening to the refracted ring on his inane wife’s bejeweled Blackberry Pearl.

  “She doesn’t want to hear you say goodbye again. Put it away.” When Mark did, Sanjeet started immediately with, “I can’t believe that with all this shit yesterday, overhead cuts and layoffs and looking like idiots, we take a break to get politely trashed and you not only forget to call Devorah, you find your second wind to fuck a teenager.” He took a breath as the waitress arrived. She was obviously herself a teenager and wide-eyed at these flabby, bed-headed, unshowered gentlemen in smoke-coloured suits wishing to fuck her. She set down the coffees.

  “Thanks.” Mark took a gulp, winced. “Could we have some cream? And eggs?”

  “I told you, sir, the breakfast stops at ten.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  The girl continued to stare, bellicose but uncertain too. “You ordered the chicken burger. Do you still want that?”

  Mark’s glossy black Boss shirt was three buttons undone, revealing chest hair. “Um, sure.”

  “Ok.” She turned away slowly, as if they might jump her.

  “To return to the topic at hand . . .” said Sanjeet.

  Mark blinked hard. “To return to the topic at hand . . . what? We went to dinner, we went to that stupid club with the Australians – if there’s any national heads in worse shape than us it’s them. Ok, I got more than what you’d call ‘politely’ trashed, but you’re a born-again virgin, these days.”

  Sanjeet’s scalp crinkled in rage, but Mark kept talking. “And then back to the hotel to sleep it off. I don’t remember every detail but I know I didn’t . . .”

  “Didn’t get a blowjob in the back hallway from a 19-year-old?”

  A bowl of dairy cuppets hit the table hard, and a two-percent bounced out. “Here you go!” It was hard to tell if the edge to the waitress’s voice was nerves or rage.

  “Thank you.” Sanjeet scooped up the milk before it rolled off the table.

  She gave them a grim, appraising look before leaving.

  Mark said slowly, almost hopefully, “I don’t even remember hitting on anyone. I mean, I don’t do that, right?” He tapped the phone.

  Sanjeet sighed, peeled back the milk top and poured it into Mark’s coffee. “Congratulations. Do you remember anything, though? If the whole evening’s blank, I don’t know how much you can really assert . . . .”

  “I remember . . . music, dancing. I danced with that marketing lady . . . Pam?”

  “Ok, the girl I saw kneeling by your dick did not look like she was from the direct-marketing division.”

  “Kneeling by my – ? So where did she look like she was from?”

  “High school.”

  Mark smiled. “That doesn’t sound like me . . . .”

  Sanjeet rolled a creamer in his fingers. “Fine. You fucked a teenager when you were too drunk to remember it. You’re 45, but I guess as the head of a foundering magazine concern, about to be sold for parts by the parent company, that’s about right . . . .”

  “Even if what you said is true, I didn’t fuck her. A blow job . . .”

  “I believe the technical term is face-fucking.”

  “Weren’t we born in the same year?” Mark slumped forward as the waitress arrived with the chicken burger and pizza. She thumped them down, then departed. “Aren’t you COO of that same failed concern?”

  “Oh, I know. We have to reach a 30% reduction in head count, make a restructuring plan.”

  Mark picked up his burger. “The other was more interesting.
But ok, let’s work.”

  Sanjeet held his fork up. “Is this a pepperoni?”

  “I would assume so, yes. That’s the logical circular meat to find on a pizza.”

  “I ordered plain. I’m vegetarian this week. It’s like a mini-cleanse.”

  “Man, you just can’t win. So, we gotta outsource the CSRs?”

  Sanjeet pressed the fork tines against the edge of his plate until the meat slid off. “So you’ve heard nothing that’s been said the last 18 hours, is what you’re saying?”

  Mark reached for the leather file folder lying on the table. “I’m here now, man.”

  Sanjeet liked his commute. When he was doing his MBA and living on soba, when he and Mark were putting together their first scrappy-weird fashion mag and working 17 hours a day, he had pictured a lot of things about his future, but not the crush of the 401 as the sun rose behind him, tinting his dashboard gold and fuchsia. This had never been the status symbol he’d had in mind: a dull silver Mercedes stuck in traffic for 45 minutes as Kelly Clarkson gasped along with the string section. Still, it was nice. Satellite radio pre-sets, expensive Free Trade coffee in a stainless steel coffee mug – these were the little signs that a life was working out pretty goddamned well.

  What he didn’t like was the way the problems of the upcoming infringed upon the drive. It was supposed to be just him and Kelly and his coffee, all the way from the loft by the water to the sprawling Mississauga parking lot of Dream Inc. But when he was fretting about how pissed the laid-off people were going to be, he was not savouring the traffic and sky and coffee. The fretting was like the music – the second he silenced the radio, that dark grimy tune from the restaurant-girl’s laptop was droning in his head. He didn’t like not being able to control his internal pre-sets.

  At work, Sanjeet was rounding the corner to the exec wing when he couldn’t resist glancing into HR – another pre-set he hadn’t chosen. Belly’s big clean office faced the hall, and she sproinged up from her ergonomic chair when she saw him. Her silk blouse tightened against her chest in the wind of her stride. Her briskness was only somewhat undercut by the fact that her shoes made no sound.

  “Welcome back. You missed some things. How did it go?”

  “Thanks. What things? Terrible.”

  “A girl fell down the east stairwell and broke her leg. We have a mouse infestation and they’ve been chewing through the phone jacks. And there was some kind of scuffle in Customer Service yesterday – huge mess.”

  “Ah. So, you haven’t been running the company all that well in our absence.”

  Belly drew herself up. “What happened?”

  They walked down the wide bright hallway in silence. Sanjeet wondered where the art on the walls had come from – there was one of a nude turned away in blue and purple shadows, another of a puppy staring quizzically at the viewer. He liked them all.

  “Is it really that bad, Jeet? Or are you just not allowed to tell me?”

  “It’s . . . it’s bad, Belly. Maybe you should run the company. We’re gonna outsource the customer service team, and Dream Woman is gonna fold. And then . . . we can hold on for a while.”

  “Even worse than the mice.” Belly flopped onto the leather couch in his office, which made a whoomp noise as the air shot out. “But what about all the staff issues at Dream Condo? What about the mess with art and design? What did they say about that stuff?”

  “We didn’t . . . we didn’t go over every single issue. The parent-company guys, they have a dozen international outfits, a hundred publications. We did the big stuff.”

  He realized Mark was behind them by the noise of his mastication. He turned as a fat cranberry fell out of Mark’s muffin onto the steel-grey carpet. “He lives!”

  “Hello, darling. What’s for dinner?”

  Mark thrust the muffin at him and Sanjeet took a big bite without using his hands.

  “You guys are hilarious,” said Belly, trying to put her hands on her hips while sunk in the couch. “You’re really going to let all of customer service go?”

  “You say you like it’s our brilliant idea. This is coming from head office. They have some great deal in Chennai for the American mags, so they’re trying it . . . .”

  Belly looked at Mark. “Is there a muffin tray?”

  “No, I just got this for myself at Coffee Time. Sorry.”

  She sighed. Mark and Sanjeet chewed. Finally Mark swallowed and cleared his throat. “So, you’ll get on it?”

  “On what?”

  “On the layoffs, Belly, can you arrange the paperwork?”

  “Right away?” Her voice was bright, but her jaw clenched. They stared at her; Belly was usually ironically put-upon, but this time there was something else.

  “This has got to be as soon as possible, the notice and the severance and everything, so the new team can start up.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Gotta be.”

  Sanjeet tipped his head back against the wall above the couch. His eyes were shut but he felt the couch lower then rise when she stood.

  After Belly left, Sanjeet realized he was sweating through the collar of his lavender dress shirt. “She didn’t sound too hop-to-it,” he said, struggling out of his jacket.

  “Hop?” Mark muttered as if just waking.

  “The layoffs? Symonds said we should – ” he made curly-fingered quotation marks “ – hop to it.” More quotation marks.

  Mark sat up and looked Sanjeet in the eyes. “I’m a good person.”

  Sanjeet rubbed the fronts of his thighs. “Sure.”

  “I still don’t really remember but I am sure I just wouldn’t have. Not witha – Christ, if she were 18, I’m almost two-and-a-half times that.”

  “I’m the ops guy, I’ll do the math.” Sanjeet flipped open his portfolio and sucked something out of his molar. “Apparently, our inbound and outbound call-scripts suck.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I have no interest in what you said. That can’t be called belief or non-belief.”

  “You care. Jeet, I saw, yesterday in the Denny’s – you were disgusted with me.”

  “No. You’re my CEO. You get your dick out in public and the wrong people take an iPhone pic, I’m in almost as much shit as you. But I don’t judge you. Also, that was not a Denny’s.” The song in his head was just a couple bars on endless repeat – he couldn’t remember the words or even most of the melody. Maddening.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Denny’s does not have a franchise in O’Hare airport. I would – ”

  “Bullshit, ‘I don’t judge, I just think you are a tabloid headline waiting to happen.’ If you weren’t such a prude – ”

  “I really don’t think it’s repressed – what are we talking about? How do you make your sex life take precedence over people getting fucked in a way that actually matters?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Do you think any of customer service cares about your issues when they’re not going to be getting cheese on their burgers for the next while?”

  Mark inhaled deeply through his nostrils. “Ok, ok, right. I’m being ridiculous. Over something that maybe, probably didn’t even happen. What do we have to do?”

  “For the layoffs, actually, not much. It’s a Belly thing – an HR thing. We just need to think about what’s next in terms of editorial, and decide – ”

  Mark swallowed the last bit of muffin. “We should plan some remarks . . . .”

  “I don’t think . . . I don’t think so.”

  “I’m a good person.” Mark’s lower lip stuck out slightly.

  “You think no one ever got laid off before?”

  “Not by me.”

  Mark’s earnest speech on accountability and acknowledging errors won over Sanjeet. Belly was tougher, concerned that their presence would tempt laid-off employees to assign blame, get hostile. They had promised to follow her script to the letter.

  Belly explained that the best time to do these things was n
ine a.m. Studies showed that people felt stupid for working all day not knowing that it was for nothing. So they all had to come in early on Tuesday to prepare for all those workdays that wouldn’t be.

  They were using the HR meeting room, not the CSR one, for a reason Belly had explained but Sanjeet forgotten. He liked to think it was because that people were more reserved in unfamiliar territory. Why he broke up with women in parks and malls.

  It had taken two weeks to get to this point in the layoff process, and yet Sanjeet still had that damn sad song in his head. It was the soundtrack as Mark wandered in carrying a briefcase though he usually had a courier bag and usually left that in his office.

  “Where’s the catering?”

  “No catering. This is a short, focused meeting – no mingle-muffin time,” Belly snapped without looking up from her folder.

  “I feel like – ” Mark dropped the briefcase heavily “ – we should at least give’em breakfast. So they’re ahead on that front, you know. One less meal to buy?”

  “I do not think an 80-cent muffin will put them very far ahead. But you can go to the caf and ask if it’s too late to set up a tray. If you want.” Belly was wearing an emerald green blazer, as if she had just won the Masters, but sexier, with a silky white blouse. It should not have been sexy at all, but it was. The blouse was probably not even real silk.

  Ahead popped into the doorway. Pale with blond cropped hair like a soldier. “Is this where the CSR update is?”

  Belly straightened, which had the effect of thrusting out her breasts. “Yes. But not for half an hour.”

  The guy nodded. He was wearing a greyed white button-down and dark jeans – clearly the last rung of business-casual. “Cool, I’ll hang out in here, cause the CSR room is locked for some reason. Is there muffins?”

  Belly’s eyes bugged. “Actually – no, no muffins. And we need the room.” The guy jerked back slightly. “Sorry. We’re just . . . could you wait in the cafeteria, please?”

  “Oh. Ok.” He backed out slowly, gaze lingering on the table at the front of the room, as if the muffins might appear there. Then he was gone.