by Jody Wallace
“No, thanks.”
Beau shifted to block the doorway. I’d have to boot him aside to get past. “Not going to ask me if I want anything?”
While it might have been fun to give him a swift kick in the nads, I kept my distance and shook my head. Not everyone at YuriCorp was as standoffish as I’d become, but most of their touching was behind the scenes. You did not want to open closets big enough to hold two people at YuriCorp unless you were positive they were empty.
“I don’t care if you want anything,” I told Beau.
He and I had this ongoing “Cleo is my lab assistant” struggle, and I usually came out on top. It helped that I deliberately screwed up half the tasks he gave me.
“Black, three sugars,” he said. “You don’t have to suit up. Put it in the specimen box.”
“Rot your teeth,” John muttered.
“All right.” I compromised. “Coffee. But no tests.”
“As soon as we get back,” Beau said. “Come in tomorrow”—a Saturday—“and we’ll go over the security protocol and rehash those prompts.”
“It won’t help. I can’t talk and fade at the same time.”
“Or walk and chew gum, but Yuri insists you keep trying,” Beau said. “You don’t want to be the first to go in the layoffs, do you?”
“There aren’t going to be layoffs.” Enough people were quitting now that there hardly any need. “John, I thought you and I were going over the security protocols?”
John glanced up briefly. “It’s not a bad suggestion. You and I don’t have time with all these personnel files.”
“Traitor,” I hissed.
John jerked half out of his chair. “It’s not what... Forget it. I’m breaking for lunch.”
He left the room so fast, the top file I’d restacked flapped open and its contents ruffled to the floor.
I stared at the papers I’d just picked up. “I guess it’s time to eat.”
“So it is,” Beau agreed. “Black, three sugars. And a sandwich.”
~ * ~
Three days into my first assignment, my worst fears had not come true. Finally unleashed to use my powers for, er, good, not to mention months of cramming business textbooks, I was not useless as a management consultant. Even without fading, I could get a bead on people that served us well. Oh, and there were no signs of the saboteur.
There were plenty signs of corporate mismanagement, shabby office upkeep, and sloth, but I’d realized...okay, John had informed me...I couldn’t recommend the new owners fire the entire staff.
Three days into it, another fear hadn’t been affirmed, either. Beau remained content with my contributions, thanks to my sly and desperate maneuvering. Whenever I read a juicy lie during an employee interview in which Beau was present, I made sure to encounter said employee “in the break room” or “in another meeting”. He took every opportunity to let me know what I was doing wrong, but I was still able to function.
John could only smell so many people before he had to leave information-gathering to experts like me and Beau, so he aided us—me—as much as possible. He was the front man for our extrasensory operation. The John who frowned all the time was not the John on site. This John was friendly, charismatic—I mean, where did that come from?—and exuded an aura of trustworthiness that put everyone at ease. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have suspected him of some kind of Samanthaness.
I hoped I knew better. Seeing him on the job made me wonder if Beau and I were the only ones who had secret talents.
As for Beau, he should stay faded. He’d make more friends if people didn’t know he was in the room. I got the impression he resented the suit and tie. Getting out of bed in the morning. The selection of local restaurants. Riding in elevators. Sharing a room with John at the hotel. I’d considered offering to share my room with John, but he’d been a cold fish since the kiss.
The cold fish and I had to cover for Beau several times when he broke fade and shot off his mouth, as if the assignment were leaching whatever civility he’d mastered. Some poor woman from Accounts bluffed her way through our questions about job performance, and he’d jumped her ass.
I guess he’d had enough, but so had I—of him.
“Why is he allowed to leave the lab?” I asked John the next morning. We had assembled our notes over Starbucks and canned sodas we bought outside the office and didn’t allow out of our sight. John wanted me to strike out on my own today; Beau disagreed.
John shook his head. “He’s good. You know that.”
“He’s an asshole. No home training. He can’t be trusted to act like he’s getting paid to do this, and it makes us look bad.”
Beau stood up on the other side of the table. “I’m right here.”
I smiled. “I know.”
Beau had maintained a low grade fade the whole time we’d been on assignment, but a low fade didn’t phase people who knew him. I wondered if the fade was some instinctive reaction to his unwillingness to be here.
“She’s not ready to work alone,” he said. “She’s no better than a norm when she opens her mouth. Now you want to turn her loose?”
“She’s interviewing the administrative staff.” John blew his nose in one of his special antibacterial tissues. Was it fair that, with a reddened nose, he was still handsome enough to make me want to violate his personal space? “They’re often retained in this type of merger.”
“I’ve got a rapport with them.” I could use my skills to flatter someone when I wanted to, and they all thought I was a sweetheart. “Piece of cake.”
“She’s terrible with security.” Beau placed his fists on the table and leaned forward. “Going out to lunch with those women yesterday without either of us present? Not regulation.”
We’d gone to a nearby mall for burgers and sales, but a bargain-hunting woman is a woman too distracted to bother with subterfuge—unless you asked her opinion of a really ugly pair of shoes.
“I knew where she was.” John tossed the tissue into the trash. “She wasn’t in any more danger than either of us.”
Beau huffed and tightened his lips. “Not all employees who burned out did it at the customer site. And none of them were idiots who wouldn’t recognize a threat if spit in their face. This isn’t a great part of town, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
The building that housed Wyse Money wasn’t high gloss. There were scrapes on the walls, tufts on the carpets, and the computers caused the employees some degree of grief. The units outside the conference room emitted a lot of beeps and ominous, high-pitched tones.
Sometimes there was cursing and wailing. Other times, nobody seemed to notice.
“Having another supra around hasn’t kept anyone safe,” I pointed out, though the possibility of the bad guys hunting me down at the mall hadn’t occurred to me. “You do interviews alone. What’s eating you, Beau?”
Beau stalked away from the table and stretched, his shirt untucking from his pants and lopping over the waistband. “Not my professional jealousy of your competence, that’s for sure.”
Troll. “That’s right. Take it out on me. It’s better than taking it out on our clients.”
“It’s a specific strategy used in garnering confessions,” he said. “Shock startles people out of defensive posturing.”
“So we’re the Redneck Inquisition.” I sipped my Starbucks and watched him over the rim, pacing like a wind up toy. He didn’t realize he was pontificating to the Mistress of Truth. “Should we break out the bright lights and pointy things?”
“Make all the jokes you want.” Beau paused by the window and rubbed his fingers along his hairline. “That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“Whatever we’re doing, we should do it properly dressed.” The back of his shirt was as wrinkled as if it had never been ironed. John’s tailored shirts were always perfectly starched. “Button up, cowboy. Your inner slob is showing.”
“Children,” John said, “we have work to do.”
That morning�
��s bickering, as essential for Beau and me as morning coffee, set John on the wrong path. Instead of Fancy New John, in the sessions he conducted with the uppity ups, he frowned. Or maybe that’s how you’re supposed to consult with uppity ups—act serious and solemn since, in the near future, a bunch of people are going to lose their jobs. Yuri, Al and our other managers had been exuding that same solemnity the past couple of weeks, and it was a relief to escape from YuriCorp’s tension and immerse myself in Wyse Money’s.
During the session with customer service—my mano-a-mano interviews were after lunch—John pulled me out of my quasi-fade and spoke to me directly, a YuriCorp procedural no-no. It disturbed clients to realize they’d forgotten someone who was sitting calmly beside them, taking notes.
“Cleo, what was the percentage Mr. Haverson gave yesterday? I can’t read your handwriting.”
“Uh.” Stu Haverson, the VP of the purchasing company, sat in on most meetings but wasn’t in this one. Did John want me to clarify what had come out of Stu’s mouth or what he’d lied about? “He may have mentioned...” with great dishonesty “...that no department would be cut by more than twenty percent.”
The Customer Service Director frowned, inspecting me as if she’d forgotten I was there—which she had. “I need to retain my whole staff,” she said, a mask popping on and off around her face like a blinker. Considering her staff was in the meeting with her, what else could she say?
“If you’re looking at ways to preserve jobs, allowing employees to multitask instead of outsourcing cuts several financial corners.” John paused and sneezed into one of his tissues. “Excuse me, I seem to have caught a cold.”
“It’s the pollen count,” said the woman. “It’s driving everyone mad. I’m sure Mr. Haverson will agree none of my employees are redundant.”
Except for the ones that get on my nerves, said her mask.
I wrote a note to that effect on my YuriCorp-only clipboard and shot the woman an innocuous smile. She was on Stu’s chopping block herself but it wasn’t our place to tip the employees off.
“Thanks, Cleo.” John shuffled papers. “Do you have any other questions?”
“No.” I wasn’t supposed to ask questions. Good thing Beau wasn’t here. I was pretty sure he wasn’t here. Suspiciously, I glanced around the room. If he was here, his fade was too strong for me to pierce without effort. It’s not like he could be invisible, just that my conscious mind would register him as “this is not the jerk you’re looking for”.
“Anyone else?” John asked. No one spoke.
I concentrated on reestablishing my fade and felt the peculiar tingle across my face that indicated I’d succeeded. I’d been assuming the flush was embarrassment all this time. Once I managed that, it was no trouble to read the lies of the assembled staff.
I didn’t learn anything else relevant. The afternoon interviews would be easier. With free reign, I could do my job more efficiently than the whole good cop, invisible cop set-up. I wouldn’t have to pretend to be a chameleon, and I wouldn’t have to wait for John to ask the questions. Best of all, I wouldn’t have Beau cataloguing every misstep.
After lunch I began my interviews with a sense of anticipation. I had to mind the security protocols, but they didn’t affect what I was going to do much. I wasn’t to eat or drink anything offered or let anyone I hadn’t vetted touch me. I was to keep the doors closed in whatever room I was using, stay away from the windows, and avoid pointy objects.
Piece of chocolate cake. I had a rapport with these women.
Part one of my solo flight was a group session with the administrative staff, some of whom I’d accompanied to the mall yesterday. When they were seated in the smaller conference room, facing me expectantly, knowing my presence had something to do with who was going to be let go, I realized something horrible.
I had no idea what I was going to say.
Chapter 13
Uber-Sneaking, the Sport of Lizard Kings
“Um.”
Good start, me.
“Hi, everyone.” What the hell was I thinking, asking to do the whole segment? Group sessions weren’t private conversations where I could concentrate on one person at a time. I had all these people to read, all these people to get information from at once. I couldn’t ask weird questions and gloss over them by reformatting my quarry’s lies.
I found myself wandering too close to the windows and hopped sideways. “Nervous.”
They looked at each other. “Whatever’s going to happen will happen,” a dark-haired lady said. “We’ve been living with the news of this merger so long, we’re beyond nervous.”
“I mean, I’m nervous. How are you?” They were all employees of a year or more, so unless they’d been recruited, none were likely to be YuriCorp’s saboteur. I couldn’t imagine a conspiracy running that deep.
Fear of burnout, however, wasn’t drying my mouth and dampening my palms.
“Not nervous,” she said with a laugh. She was the senior administrative staff member here today, the executive secretary for one of the VPs. She was one of those intimidatingly professional women with perfect clothes, hair and makeup, a gold chain with a tiny pendant her only jewelry. However, she had a wicked glint in her eye and awesome taste in power suits. And she was as short as I was.
I liked her already.
“Nice to meet you, Gladys,” I said, squinting at her badge. They’d been wearing nametags this week for our benefit. Several of the younger women had added smiley faces and glitter to theirs.
I tried to channel Pavarti, before her burnout. Samantha, without the rubbing and petting. Fancy New John’s penetrating sincerity.
Instead I channeled pipsqueak.
“I’m sure you all know you’re here today to, ah, undergo employee assessments. I mean, undergo makes it sound like it’s a medical procedure, but it’s not. No painful, invasive probes,” I said. “With, you know, medical probey things and biopsies.”
Gladys crossed her arms, and most of the women began to shift in their seats. My God, was I nuts? Probes and biopsies? My face started to tingle as I wished I were somewhere other than here.
Uh-oh.
“Basically it’s an interview,” I said in a rush, hoping I could get this over with before I faded. “We’ll talk about your feelings and the merger and all that touchy gushy crap.”
“You’re new at this, aren’t you, sweetie?” asked a white-haired lady in the corner. “You’re that intern.” She and Gladys hadn’t gone to the mall with us.
“Yes, ma’am.” I took a deep breath. Was it a fade or embarrassment? When I talked it would blow my fade, anyway. “We’ll do the interviews and skip the pep talk. You guys are the secretaries. I mean, administrative assistants.” Damn, I’d been told not to use that term. “You know what’s going on more than management.”
“Sounds good.” Gladys spoke for the group. “What are we supposed to do while we wait our turn?”
“I have questionnaires to hand out.” I shuffled through my box. “You can stay here while you fill them out or go back to your desks. I’ll fetch you for interviews. I think we can get everybody done today.”
“I don’t suppose you know who’s going to get laid off, do you?”
I had a good idea, based on what Stu had lied about and what we planned to recommend so far, but I wasn’t allowed to hint. “We’re only the assessment company. YuriCorp’s primary management philosophy revolves around kaizen—change for the better. That means working with employees instead of putting employees out of work.” I felt like a geek, quoting the slogan on our website, but they seemed to buy it and turned their attention to the paperwork.
“Who wants to be first?” I asked.
“I need to get this over with. I have a bunch of portfolios to assemble for the sales staff,” Gladys said. We returned to the office I’d been given to conduct interviews.
I sat on the boss side of the desk in the small, cluttered room. A bookcase heavy with business and investing man
uals lined one wall, partially blocking the window. In the other corner was a filing cabinet teeming with plants that seemed like they could be used as deadly weapons. The office was obviously somebody’s, somebody with unattractive children, goggling at me from matching gold frames next to the blotter. I assumed they weren’t Gladys’s because they were mutt white and she appeared to be of Asian descent.
Gladys sat in one of the two chairs next to the door and crossed her legs.
“Cute kids.” I indicated the frame, half-turning it so she could see.
“They’re monsters.”
“Oh.” Silence descended as the expanse of the messy desk yawned between us like a sleepy dog. I didn’t want to sit here with the monster children watching me, condemnation in their gazes, so I rolled my chair to middle of the room without getting up. I had to scrabble on the plastic mat, but eventually I made it.
“That’s better.” I shuffled my clipboard and pen into note-taking position and smiled at Gladys. “Let’s get started.”
“I’m ready whenever you are,” she said.
“I, ah, have my own interview questions,” I told her. “Hopefully they’re less boring.”
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
In an attempt to be casual, I thought about propping my feet against the chair on the other side of the door but decided against it. My skirt was knee-length. “So, how do you like working here?”
She glanced at her paperwork. “You realize that’s the first question on the form, right? Do you want me to write it down or answer you?”
I blushed. Definitely a blush, not a fade. “We’re here to chat. Do the paperwork later.”
“How do I like working here,” she mused. “It’s a short drive from my house, which is a blessing in Atlanta traffic, and the health insurance policy is excellent.”
I scanned the questions and found my favorite. “What do you feel could be done to improve working conditions at Wyse Money?”
“I’d rather not say,” she lied while scribbling on her documents. I couldn’t be positive, because her shadow lips were moving too fast, but the truth of the matter was something along the lines of Assholes assholes assholes!