by L.H. Thomson
Burton, meanwhile, had gone back to his office puzzled and anxious, which was about right after any meeting with his father-in-law.
The pile of work on his desk seemed almost to tower over him, and Burton looked at the folder in his right hand. What could Ash possibly gain from sabotaging his client’s receivership?
He threw the folder on his desk, took off his suit coat and got back to work.
Whatever Howard was up to, Burton was certain defying him was utterly out of the question. Instead, he set about trying to put together a convincing mathematical argument for a bankruptcy that would flush all but one-third of creditors’ money down the drain.
The hours ticked on.
And on.
And on.
Finally, as the clock ticked past midnight, Burton closed the file, wrapped the thin red string around its binding post to hold it closed, and slipped it into his briefcase, ready for the commute home. Even at this time of the night, he still had a fairly long drive ahead of him, and he’d started the day tired. Now, he could practically feel the warmth of the bed covers wrapped tight, just an hour and 20 minutes down the Hutchinson River Parkway.
Burton had at least four solid hours of Heaven ahead of him; four solid hours of blissful sleep.
Preview CH. 2
Delphinium stood beside the kitchen counter and watched Burton at the breakfast table as he fiddled with his tie.
He really was a silly little man sometimes, she thought, so awkward and graceless. But he was so sweet and good, it was hard to fault him for his lack of style, or his general absence of ambition.
Or his posture. Or his imprecision. Or his inability to properly manage his schedule in ten-minute increments.
These things could all be worked on, and Delphinium was proud to say that, over time, she’d made great strides with him.
“Burton, dear, do stop fiddling. It’s a double Windsor, that’s why the knot feels chunky. I tied it that way on purpose,” she said.
In fact, she’d tied the burgundy silk Givenchy as a shorty, 1940s style. “It looks just marvellous, dear,” Delphinium added, “so leave it be.”
Burton looked down at the monstrosity and said, “I don’t know… it’s just so large….” He felt like an extra from an Abbott and Costello movie.
“Button up the suit, dear, and you’ll see how marvellous it looks. I mean really, Burton, do we have to go through this every time we try something new? You know my taste is impeccable.”
The infuriating part was that she was right, Burton briefly thought. He looked at his blurred reflection in the steel refrigerator. Even the funhouse mirror version of the suit – Delphinium’s latest addition to his wardrobe – looked remarkably sharp.
He tilted his head slightly as he looked, then swaggered a little. “Do you think I’d look good with a fedora? It would certainly go with this suit …I could wear it at sort of a rakish angle…”
“Eat your breakfast, Burton, it’s very important that you’re on time today.”
Burton looked quizzical. What an odd thing to say.
Delphinium noticed his puzzled expression. “Well, didn’t you say Daddy wanted you in bright and early today?”
Burton said he did. “He wanted me to finish up this one particular file. Quite strange, actually. He….”
She waved him off. “I don’t need to know the details, darling. Details are incredibly tedious! They slow the pulse and contribute to sudden onset seizure. What I do know is that you’re never at your best when your blood sugar is low, and that daddy is always right. You get awfully cranky. So eat your breakfast, Burton.”
He munched on his bacon. “Yes, dear.”
The drive to work had been horrendous. He’d taken the Manhattan Bridge on some sort of insane whim and the upper roadway had predictably turned into a parking lot. Terrified of the prospect of Howard on a rampage, he’d sweated it out for 20 minutes before contemplating whether to risk the legally and physically insane proposition of squeezing between the inside lane and the median.
Just then, traffic had started to move again, albeit so slowly that he could’ve walked over from Brooklyn faster. Burton tapped nervously on his leg. “Come on, come on,” he thought.
Quite suddenly, the outside lane began rolling faster. Three cars passed him, then five. Burton sat there, wondering whether he should pull out as well, whether there was a reason that lane was moving faster, and …
Before he could pull out, the gap had filled with new vehicles and all three lanes were back to the 5 mph crawl. Should have gone, Burton thought. Should have made the bold decision, the selfish decision, cut in that lane. I’d be halfway across the bridge by now.
In the right hand lane, a portly child in the backseat of a station wagon was pressing his nose up against the glass, so that it flattened out grotesquely and his nostrils flared. He looked vaguely like a strange genetic cross between a human, a pig and a bat.
Then he licked the glass.
“Eww,” Burton said, to no one in particular.
The inside lane began moving faster once more. “Perhaps …” Burton thought.
But the problem with jumping into the inside lane, Burton thought, was that if you got stuck in it, you were two lanes outside the exit lane, and the general goodwill of New Yorkers was never enough to guarantee safe passage across that near-paralyzed mass of commuter tin and suburban rage. You could miss all kinds of exits with that foolishness.
So he stayed in the center lane. Better safe than sorry.
In the city, the predictable steady crawl got him to the office with five minutes to spare. He practically sprinted to the elevator bank.
Inside the double glass main doors the receptionist, Janice, was smiling. “Hello, Mr. Trimble, Good to see you, sir,” she said.
Strange. Janice usually only lifted her head long enough to register Burton’s presence and reaffirm his irrelevance.
Mister Trimble? Sir?
The front-of-office, which housed the assistants and non-partner accountants, was completely empty … at 8 a.m.
Burton looked around quickly.
“Janice ...”
“Yes, Mr. Trimble?”
“Where is everyone?”
“Oh … you didn’t get the email, sir? The entire staff is expected in the conference room in ....” she looked at her watch, “…two minutes sir.”
Damn, Damn, Damn. Burton picked up his pace, heading down the corridor that led to the conference room. He checked his Blackberry as he ran, but there was no email. As he approached the double doors, he slowed down and put his phone away, then brushed his hair back into place quickly with both hands, before straightening both suit lapels.
He checked his watch: 30 seconds until the top of the hour. Hopefully that was good enough for the insane old buzzard. Burton pushed the double doors open in unison.
The room was full, the partners filling out the seats at the board’s conference table and the junior partners and accountants all standing along the walls. Howard was seated at the head of the table.
“Ah… Burton. Last to arrive, but first on the agenda,” Howard said. Burton could have sworn he’d smiled as he said it, thought it was more like a shark bearing his teeth optimistically – a little bit off in the execution.
“Sir?”
Howard got up and pushed his chair in. “Burton, come up here and stand beside me for a moment, would you?”
Burton paused, unsure whether he should challenge a raw-nerve survival instinct that was telling him to never get within a knife-blade’s range of the old maniac.
“Sir …?”
Howard’s face twitched slightly with a faint tick, his slightly crazed “smile” still in place as he tried to maintain his demeanor. “Heh, Heh. Very funny, son. Very funny. Come on up here.” He motioned with his hand, and his eyes told Burton to hop to it.
Burton scanned the room quickly. Everyone looked as frightened and nervous as he did, like a roomful of Christians
in Ancient Rome, waiting to see who would be thrown to a particularly nasty lion.
He hurried over to Howard. “Sir.”
“Son, this is an important day. Everyone, I want to make a very special announcement. I know a lot of you will have been wondering what my future plans are, given that I’m planning on stepping down. I have decided to announce that, upon my retirement later this year, my son-in-law, Burton, will be taking charge of the firm. Effective immediately, I’m promoting Burton to full partner and the rank of senior executive vice-president of Ash, Cooper, Smythe, Wibeck … and Trimble.”
The room broke into applause. Burton felt faint, and for a moment, his knees began to buckle. Howard seemed prepared, as his hand discretely found the small of the meek accountant’s back and propped him up. Howard whispered, “simmer down lad, simmer down. Stiff upper lip!”
Howard used both hands to motion for quiet. “Gentlemen, I’m sure to some of you this appointment comes as something of a surprise. But I should state categorically that if I was somewhat tougher with Burton than the rest of you, it was only because I recognized his leadership potential. Burton, a word for the troops, hmmm?”
He gently pushed Burton to step forward.
“Uh…yes, well. Very surprised, as… well as I’m sure you all are,” Burton stammered, again immediately self-conscious for talking too much with his hands. “I’m very grateful, and …uh… again, surprised. Uh… thank you.” He stepped back.
Howard stifled a look of disdain and instead motioned to the empty chair near the head of the table, second only to his. “Your new chair, Burton. And I believe you’ll find your new office is ready, next to mine.”
That was Warren Smythe’s seat. Burton looked over at Smythe, who sat to Howard’s left. He was even older than Howard and looked typically uninterested. These days he was barely ever in the office to begin with. – and that was still better than Wibeck, whom nobody was even sure was still alive.
Around the rest of the table, several of the partners looked edgy.
Then Howard explained it. “Now, I understand the case of musical offices this has caused is an irritant to everyone here, but just keep in the mind the important part to the company, which is that if you annoy him, Burton now has the power to utterly destroy you and everything you hold dear, just like me. Everyone clear?”
There were nods and murmurs around the room.
“Well, that’s fine then,” said Howard. “All right gentleman, now let’s get out there and make some money.”
The murmurs raged on as everyone filed out. “Burton, obviously if you could stay behind for a moment….”
He did, and the two stood alone in the vast, empty conference room , the early morning sun streaming in through the floor to ceiling windows where the louvered blinds had been left slightly open.
“Now, Burton, I suppose you’re wondering what prompted my change of heart towards you. And I’m not going to bullshit you, son, I’m still not the fondest of you. I still think my daughter could have married someone of more appropriate stock.”
He paced over to the windows and opened the blinds so that the morning light streamed in. “You see that city, Burton? I really do love it here, you know.” He rocked back and forward on the balls of his feet slightly as he pondered the weight of it all. “Been an Ash in business in Manhattan for over 100 years.”
Howard turned back to him. “But there’s a contagion out there, Burton. Do you know what it is?”
Burton didn’t have time to shake his head before Howard continued.
“It’s a contagion called ‘dependency’.”
The elder man then gestured back out the window. “Out there, most of them just scurry about, leading the lives of insects, doing the bidding of others. Why? Because they can’t make it. They can’t make it on their own. While some of us are scratching and clawing our way to success, they’re content to exist for the bidding of others, as long as they can hang out together on a Friday night,” he said, practically sneering, turning back to address the younger man, “… and drink beer while watching their ‘basketball’. And do you know what that makes them, Burton? That makes them vulnerable. Powerless, visionless and vulnerable.”
Burton nodded, but inwardly he wanted to interject. After all, Howard’s self-assurance came with a multi-million dollar inheritance. In his self-described Titanic struggle for success, Howard had faced all the challenge of a $5 croquet bet at the club.
His father, Strom Ash, made a fortune banking on postwar U.S. investment in firms helping rebuild Germany and Japan. His son, a college legacy, turned that aggressive hot streak into a half-century of cautious steady growth as an accountant and financial advisor. Howard never met a 5% margin he didn’t like.
“I don’t want my daughter to be vulnerable, Burton. In fact, I won’t stand for it.” He put his hands behind his back and looked back out the window, rocking in spot slightly, a rare show of anxiety. “I could just give her the money. But that would still leave the firm out of family control for the first time in over a century, and I won’t have that, either. Won’t have it.”
Burton didn’t know what to say. It was generous, and extraordinary … and he didn’t trust Howard as far as he could throw him. This was a man who once fired an assistant on Christmas morning when he didn’t get the morning paper …which didn’t publish on Christmas morning.
“Well, sir…”
“Please, Burton … call me Howard.”
“Well, Howard … I’m not sure what to say.”
“I don’t expect you to say anything, Burton. Just don’t mess it up. None of this means a damn thing until I’m gone anyway, with the exception of me perhaps piling a few more accounts on you to befit the higher salary.”
“Yes sir…”
“Burton…?’”
“Yes…”
“Stop calling me sir, damn it.”