“Hello?”
“Hi Roland, it’s Kara.”
“I know. I saw your name on the call display.”
“Oh. Well, I just wanted to see if we were still on for dinner at Joalina’s tonight.”
“You see,” Roland said, “the thing is that I won the lottery yesterday.”
“Oh my God, Roland. That’s fantastic!”
“Yes, it is.”
“Everyone’s going to be so excited. We can celebrate tonight.”
“See, that’s the other thing,” Roland stammered a bit. “I was thinking maybe it’s best, you know, if we stopped seeing one another for a while.”
There was a momentary stunned silence on the other end. “Wait . . . you want to break up? Why?” Kara said.
“Well, to be honest with you, I’m going to be really rich. I figured this might be my only chance to date a supermodel or an actress or something. Some girl who might not even talk to me if I wasn’t super rich.”
“You’re telling me you want to trade up?!”
“Well, when you say it like that, it doesn’t sound very good,” Roland said.
“But that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Roland cleared his throat. “I just thought it would be best to be completely honest with you about my intentions. That way we can still be friends.”
Kara’s voice grew suddenly angry.
“So you’re telling me you would rather date someone who loves you for your money than me?”
“Um . . .”
“You superficial bastard! That’s the shallowest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Roland sighed. “I was hoping you would understand. Life is short. I might never get another chance to have sex with a supermodel.”
“You can go to hell!”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Roland said. “Try not to be upset. You know, my grandmother always says — you can’t control the actions of others. You can only control your perspective in this world.”
Kara slammed the phone down.
Roland hung up his phone as well and continued writing his email, all the while humming the tune to Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s “Islands in the Stream.” He finished the note, signed it ‘Roland the Rich’ and was about to hit send when his supervisor Chad stopped by his desk.
“Roland, can I speak to you for a moment?”
“One second,” Roland said. He scanned his email one last time, hit send and then turned back to Chad. “I’m all yours.”
They walked down the hall to Chad’s office. Chad shut the door behind them and the two men sat down in chairs facing one another. Chad was a full ten years older than Roland. He was also a good five inches shorter with a slighter build. Two years ago, during the period in which Roland grew his long unmanageable beard, Chad’s curly black hair had started to recede. Chad headed his hairline off at the pass, abandoned his military-style crew cut and shaved his head. With his $500 Dolce & Gabbana glasses, his lightly starched shirts and his efficient bald head, he looked the part of confident success.
Roland didn’t necessarily dislike Chad. He was an all right guy, Roland supposed. But he was corporate through and through. His blood flowed green with company money. Chad spoke in consulting speak — using phrases like enabling vertical connectivity and re-engineering seamless paradigms. Three months ago, Roland approached him with a legitimate business problem concerning one of their key clients. Chad hardly listened to Roland’s issue before interrupting him and launching into a long-winded diatribe on how Roland should practice leveraging synergies in order to ramp up a frictionless value chain. Roland had given him a look of abject hatred, a look that Chad hardly seemed to notice. The past month had been, from Roland’s perspective, tense to say the least.
Chad looked Roland square in the eyes.
“Roland,” he said, “when you come into work in a T-shirt, you send a certain message as to how you represent our company.”
“But it’s casual Friday,” Roland said. In the background, he saw his email pop up on Chad’s computer.
“Yes, it’s casual Friday, but that only means we don’t have to wear suits,” Chad leaned back and let Roland have a good look at his pleated khakis and faded orange golf shirt. “You still have to wear something with a collar.”
Roland lowered his eyes in a descending arc toward his torso where his navy blue T-shirt hugged his body. He looked back at Chad, who was nodding his head in self-acknowledgment of the synergies he was currently leveraging.
Chad continued. “I find it’s best in these situations to look to someone with years of experience under his belt, someone with strong moral fiber, good family values and a keen eye for doing what’s right for the business. I like to take a step back and ask myself — what would Regis do?” Chad gave Roland an expectant look. The room fell so suddenly quiet a pin drop would have sounded like a grenade. “Do we have an understanding?” Chad said.
“No,” Roland said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean — we don’t have an understanding. I’m not going to come in here on casual Fridays wearing some god-awful golf shirt with a corporate logo on the breast pocket. I look good,” he gestured toward his T-shirt. “You’re the one who looks like an asshole.”
Chad’s relentless nodding came to a grinding halt.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Roland said. “I won’t comply. So fuck you. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
Roland leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head in great satisfaction. An enormous weight instantly lifted off his shoulders. He was only seconds away from escaping this cubicle prison. All he had to do now was sit back and wait for Chad to fire him. Only Chad couldn’t speak. His brain had slowed to a Neanderthal crawl. All of the courses Chad had been on — the company retreats with their PowerPoint presentations and their index cards and the uniformity of it all — hadn’t prepared him for such brazen insolence. There wasn’t a consulting phrase in his mental dictionary to apply to this problem. Luckily for Chad, he wouldn’t have to say anything. At that exact moment, the company president showed up at Chad’s door. He had two security guards with him and he looked angry. Apparently, he’d read Roland’s email.
Two and a half minutes later, Roland was tossed out into the street and told never to return. The guards manhandled him a little on the way out, but Roland wasn’t upset. In fact, he would have had it no other way. He struggled with the guards, yelled obscenities and cursed out the random pictures of company ambassador Regis Philbin on the walls. When they entered the elevator, Carol from accounting was just exiting. Roland told her she had really nice tits and that he’d always wanted to tell her that. Carol from accounting didn’t seem to know how to take a compliment as she called Roland an asshole. Roland said, “If you want to see an asshole, go to Chad’s office. There’s an asshole for you.”
He was then dragged through the lobby and made to leave not only the building, but the company property itself. On his way out through the lobby, a short bottom-floor security guard who looked vaguely like Alfred Hitchcock bore witness to Roland’s antics and opened the doors for all three of them. Henrik watched in stupefied wonder. Now, there’s a man who knows how to make an impression, he thought. He has such passion, such eccentricity, such commitment to his cause. No one will ever forget him. He’ll be defined by this forever.
Henrik’s heart sank to the bottom of his stomach as he watched Roland being dragged out into the street. Not in his wildest dreams could he ever behave that way. Or could he? Roland’s wild taunts and flailing arms stirred within Henrik a sudden revelation.
When the guards from the fifteenth floor returned, Henrik informed them that he was feeling quite ill and asked if one of them would be so kind as to take his spot in the lobby for the rest of the day. The nicer of the two guards volunteered and Henrik left work early. He headed straight to the local shopping mall.
Outside, Roland couldn’t conta
in his excitement. He felt so alive. For the first time in months — years even — he was excited about life. This money would change everything. It had to. He’d already dumped his girlfriend and quit his job. As well, there was at minimum a 90% chance that he no longer had any friends left. Every friend Roland had in this world worked at the company from which he’d just been fired and in his resignation email he called many of them out, making obscure references to long-forgotten incidents that Roland had never been able to let go.
In addition to the wicked insinuations he launched upon Mason, Roland charged Bradley from sales with never paying a proper tip in a restaurant, general frugality and altogether cheap behavior. He charged the computer guy Graham with leering at his mother’s breasts, a crime made infinitely worse by her accidental death a mere three months after the incident of Graham’s lustful eye. Roland indicted several others on even more malicious accounts — adultery, intentional cold spreading, silent farting during closed-door meetings and most egregiously, the malicious cock-blocking of Roland’s attempts to seduce Carol’s breasts at last year’s Christmas party.
Roland had forsaken everything — love, employment, friendship. Undaunted, he walked down the street with a skip in his step. He would start over again. There was a new life to be had out there and he had enough money to buy it. He’d already arranged to go speed dating at an affluent restaurant in the downtown district. There he planned to meet a beautiful, alluring woman who would be impressed with his newfound wealth. Yes, the world was his oyster and Roland planned to suck all of the goodness out of it.
Roland’s cell phone rang. He picked it up without looking at the number on the call display.
“Hello?”
“You bastard!”
“Mason, how are you on this fine day?”
“It’s not how I am. It’s where I am.”
Roland stopped at a crosswalk. “And where’s that?”
“Five minutes ago I was sitting in the corporate jet getting ready to take off to the Bahamas. Then the company vice president opens his laptop and checks his email. Next thing I know, he throws me off the plane and now I’m standing on a runway at the airport holding my suitcase and wondering what the hell happened.”
“That’s terrible,” Roland said. “What an unfortunate turn of events.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Mason said. “The vice president said you sent an email to the whole company. What did it say?”
Roland was momentarily distracted by a Spanish beauty with long flowing locks and a swivel in her hips. He stared at her miniskirt and Supergirl top until the light turned green. “In my email, I mentioned that you only got the job because you promised the interviewer you would dress up for him like Cher and sing ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ with your pants off. I might also have mentioned that your new job title would be Oral Liaison to the Vice President.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did. And I also attached a few of the emails you’ve sent me over the years.”
“Which ones?”
“Let me see, in one you said that the day Carol from accounting wore a tank top to the staff volleyball game was the best day of your life.”
“That’s not so bad. There’s no way they would fire me for that,” Mason said.
“In another one you wrote that our upper management is filled with a bunch of lazy miscreants who couldn’t work a register at McDonald’s. You also said the only way to take care of them would be to give each and every one of them an enema with a garden hose.”
“I never wrote that.”
“Oh yes you did. March fifteenth. Three years ago. The day you got passed over for a promotion for Chad’s job. I saved the email in a special folder for just such an occasion.”
“You son of a bitch! This is ten times worse than anything I ever did.”
Roland pumped his fist in the air, victorious.
“That may be true. But much like Rocky, I didn’t draw first blood.”
“That’s Rambo, you idiot.”
Roland stopped in front of the bank. “What?”
“Rambo was the one in First Blood. Rocky was in Rocky.”
“Fascinating,” Roland said. “Perhaps you can get a new job as a professional movie buff. Now listen, I have some really important things to do. But have a great day and a great life and take the time to enjoy yourself. You deserve it.”
Roland hung up the phone and entered the bank. He removed his jeans from the safety deposit box and carried them all the way across town to the local lottery office. With confidence, he told the woman behind the counter that he’d just won the lottery. She seemed genuinely excited for him and called out to her supervisor. Very carefully, in full view of three lottery officials, Roland pulled the ticket from the back pocket of his jeans and couldn’t believe his eyes. His entire world — the fictional one he’d built up in his mind in which he was a jet-setting vagabond playboy with two girls on either arm and an arsenal of rock star friends — came crashing down to painful reality.
The white ticket, smudged with a little plum juice, contained the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
twelve
Conrad knocked on the door. On the other side, a motion sensor flashed a red light to alert Billy Bones that he had visitors. Conrad slammed his fist against the door a second time. When there was no answer, he and Alfred both frowned. Their stone deaf associate Bones might merely have passed out in his Barcalounger. But at Shady Oaks Park, where any nap in front of the television could be your last, an unanswered knock at Bones’ door more likely meant one of three things: (1) he’d keeled over and was lying in a puddle of drool on the linoleum floor, (2) he’d finally cornered the young floor nurse and was blissfully chasing her around his room or (3) he’d grown so delirious he’d forgotten how to use the doorknob.
“Bones!” Conrad yelled. “Get a move on, old chap.”
Silence filled the hall. Conrad twirled the ends of his moustache with his gloved hand while Alfred picked at a liver spot on top of his head.
“Perhaps we’ll be completing the mission ourselves,” Conrad whispered under his breath.
“Gentlemen,” a voice called from down the hall. “Gentlemen, may I help you?”
The voice came from the retirement home director, one Abraham Arnold, formerly executive administrator of the esteemed Cottage Estates. At fifty-one years of age — decades younger than Conrad and his associates — Abraham was all business. He ushered the residents around like cattle and chased down the sick and decrepit the way a shady lawyer chases ambulances. Abraham saw each resident who died as yet another room he could rent at a higher rate. And the residents knew it. They nicknamed him the Grinning Reaper, in part because of his appearance — his lofty height, his far-too-large head that swiveled as if on a pendulum, and his hunched over, Lurch-like demeanor — but more for the ominous way he stood beside the gurneys of recently deceased seniors with barely an effort made to conceal his gleeful smile or the dollar signs in his eyes.
Some of the more paranoid residents had suggested Abraham kept toe tags in his suit pocket and others remarked on his somewhat clairvoyant ability to sense when a resident had fallen down and broken a hip. To a person, they all feared Abraham.
Everyone, that is, except Conrad.
Three months earlier, Conrad had had enough of Abraham’s imperial rule and hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on the retirement home director. And such dirt there was! Abraham’s son, it turns out, was a high school dropout with dreadlocks and a bong in his back pocket. His wife Bianca (nicknamed Bunny in social circles and Pickle by her Scandinavian lover) spent her evenings guzzling boxes of red wine and busied her days spending Abraham’s money on antidepressant-fueled shopping binges.
Most scandalous of all was Abraham himself. Only recently he’d taken over at Shady Oaks Park after being released from his contract at the released from his contract at the much-vaunted Cottage Estates, largely considered the Rolls Royce of retirement homes. Sizeabl
e amounts of money were alleged to have disappeared into a tangled web of holding companies and offshore bank accounts. While it was never proven, Abraham remained the chief suspect.
Conrad had been biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to make the tall man wither in his presence. “We’re just waiting for our associate to answer his door,” Conrad said.
Abraham drew nearer. Conrad could smell him now.
“You needn’t hover,” Conrad said. “I’m sure everything is fine. Bones will be out in a moment.”
“Are you sure? I could use my master key to unlock the door.”
Conrad held up a gloved hand.
“You will do nothing of the sort.”
“Nonsense,” Abraham moved toward the door.
“How is that son of yours?” Conrad said. “You know, the titan of industry. What is he again? A stockbroker on Wall Street?”
Abraham stopped short.
“He’s a stock boy at Walmart. You know perfectly well —”
A smile curled at the corner of Conrad’s mouth.
“And how about your wife? Bunny’s her name? Or is it Pickle?”
Abraham went white. He shoved his keys back into his jacket.
“Do tell me good sir, what is the Scandinavian word for pickles?” Conrad said.
Alfred, delighted to see the Grinning Reaper squirm, attempted to get in on the banter. A clever quip — involving raw cucumbers, the pickling process and Abraham’s wife’s non-virginal womanhood — formed at the tip of his tongue but never fully left his mouth. As Conrad struggled to hear what his associate was saying, Abraham mustered his courage.
“Where are you taking Mr. Bones this morning? Does this have anything to do with that man who visited the other day? The man in the red suit?”
The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark: A Novel Page 8