Dane sympathized with Dottie, whose curriculum vitae of professional abuse—overwork, arbitrary firings, repeated and unwarranted insults about her work—was written on her puffy face. But since she was hired to pressure him, her presence was aggravating. She was slow, inefficient and made every job seem twice as hard as it was. Dan viewed Dottie’s hire as an insult to his ability. However, his objection to Dottie was not about efficiency or pride—it was straight survival. On the surface, she was the nicest downtrodden wretch you ever wanted to meet. She shared cookies, cheese doodles and 64 oz. plastic bottles of diet soda with anyone. But kindness was the grinning mask of a gritty foe. Dottie threatened Dane’s livelihood. She was the runner-up for his job and would snatch it if he was fired—a strong possibility at the rate things were going.
Feckless as she seemed, Dottie’s devastating weapon was a lack of ego. She was a human filet—self-esteem had been gutted out of her. Ego is heavy machinery. Without it, Dottie was more flexible and less sensitive to inconsideration, slights and excessive demands. Dane worked long and hard but Dottie could work longer and harder. Dane resented his unpaid overtime but Dottie was grateful for it. Dane resented arbitrary changes to his writing whereas Dottie shrugged when a whole project was rewritten. Dane worked to live; Dottie lived to work. Had she attained higher consciousness or a nadir of groveling?
Dane’s punishment did not end with Dottie’s pitch assignment. It was only the first lash. Nigel did not intend to slap Dane once for his Grovil stand but to pulverize him. He assigned Ron to work with Dottie on other projects. What a fuss she made over her new status! She stopped by Dane’s office with bright rouge circles on her cheeks and mascara lashes shooting outward like black quills protecting her damp, glistening eyes.
“Have you seen Ronnie?” she asked Dane.
“No, I haven’t seen Ronnie,” Dane replied like a father on a ‘50s sitcom. “Should I take a message?”
“No. I’ll check his office later,” Dottie giggled and pranced off.
Dane did not think she was deliberately taunting him about her encroachment. She seemed genuinely excited about working with someone, anyone, especially a man.
One afternoon, Dane broke away from a marathon copy review with the Grovil product team, while they tortured ten words of pharmacy coupon copy to verbal death. Dane had to talk to Ron about a short creative assignment. When he opened the door, he found Dottie snuggling up to Ron, her legs folded on a chair. She was looking over his shoulder at the monitor. She had overcome his last barrier and intimacy suffused the recycled office air. Dane felt like he was interrupting a date. Dottie confirmed this by blushing—right through her blush.
“Sorry, I didn’t want to bother you,” Dane apologized.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Dottie said as if she were hurrying to drape a sheet over her naked self. Even in her shame, she looked so beatifically happy that Dane felt sick.
He had to get rid of her.
A major conflict had surfaced over the iconic foot that was photographed for the Grovil campaign. The client believed its brand foot looked neither old nor wrinkled enough for the target audience to love. Nigel disagreed. He thought the iconic foot was neither smooth nor dainty enough to arouse doctor and patient fantasies.
While mediating the conflict between Dane and Toronto, Ron won a reputation as a conciliator. When he was dispatched to massage the client’s foot conflict, Dane set his plan in motion.
At a card and novelty store in the neighborhood, Dane found what he was looking for in the alternative card section in the back. The cards there were bold and intimate in nature…composed to say sweet generic nothings that stalkers might wish to say to their beloveds.
Dane discovered a perfect card for his purpose. Crimson on plush, porous rag, the card cost $7.95 so you knew the feeling was genuine.
Its illustration, exquisitely drawn and sumptuously colored by an artist with an affinity for Gustave Moreau, depicted a unicorn, pure and white, with his manly erectile horn, and a woman, clearly naked on his back, her virginal, white body covered by auburn ringlets. The message read, “You have a secret admirer.”
This red card incorporated every value Dane had in mind: mythology, mystery, animal passion, even bestiality. But he wondered if it was too flamboyant. He studied another card on the shelf. It showed a knight on one knee, holding in his arms a woman faint from passion. The message read: “I wish I could tell you how I feel.”
“If I only knew, myself,” Dane muttered. He purchased the card.
Before Dottie Wacker came in one morning, Dane placed the envelope on her chair and waited. He knew she would not ask him if he wrote it because she wanted it to be from Ron.
He never saw Dottie that morning and was deprived of her reaction. He did not know if his mischief had its calculated effect. He was not certain that she found it or took its message seriously. For all he knew, he had misread her and she was gay.
That afternoon, Dottie popped her face in his doorway. Just the face, gaily painted like a sagging kewpie doll, with multiple circles—round blue eyes circumscribed by black kohl and hoops of red rouge on her cheeks. She opened the door wide to show off her tartan skirt and white blouse; eureka, she was a school girl again! Dane wanted to pump his fist. Instead, he smiled and said how chic she looked.
“Meeting a client?” he joked.
“No. Have you seen Ron?” she asked eagerly.
“No. But if I do, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
Dottie smiled demurely and thanked him.
When Ron returned, Dottie kept as close to him as she could without physically touching. If he bolted for the men’s room, she escorted him to the door, under the pretext of using the lady’s room nearby, and waited for him to come out. Ron was known for liking his space but Dottie would not let him have it. He was her secret admirer and she could not keep a secret.
The week passed and Ron avoided his office whenever possible. He was “around,” roaming the halls. One day, Dane went to the Adelman washroom and opened the unlocked door. Ron was seated on the closed seat, tired and forlorn.
“Please, don’t tell her I’m here,” Ron whispered urgently, as if he needed not only to avoid Dottie’s physical attention but her surveillance.
“Have you noticed Dottie acting strangely lately?” one of the young women in the office asked Dane. “If I didn’t know better I’d say she’s hitting on Ron. Am I dreaming?”
“No and yes,” Dane answered both questions, leaving the questioner bemused.
Finally the situation erupted. The entire staff heard sobs rolling out of Ron’s office like sirens bewailing a fathomless agony.
“You can tell me how you feel!” Dottie cried out, as if answering the card. “What? You don’t know what I’m talking about? I can’t take it anymore. You’re so unavailable. How could you lead me on like this? You don’t love me. You used me,” she cried. She bolted for the lady’s room, covering her face full of tears.
The staff gathered outside Ron’s office and stared through the half open door. Ron was stunned. He looked at the crowd with sheepish bewilderment. He hated attention and his mentor from the upscale retail store chain tutored him to be a man of mystery and intrigue—handsome, debonair and inaccessible. Now this was impossible. Ron was in a full-blown scandal, accused of toying with an older woman’s feelings. He was humiliated to be romantically linked with Dottie. Fortunately for him, even the agency staff’s urgent need for juicy human interaction and the faintest whiff of gossip could not induce them to believe he took advantage of Dottie. They surmised it was a mistake, albeit an entertaining one.
The situation also yielded a bumper crop of human resources fodder, which portended problems for Dane. What would happen when all parties were called in to explain the misunderstanding? Dottie would present the anonymous love card. If Ron saw it, he would deny seeing or sending it. Management would believe his confusion, suspect mischief and focus their inquiry on Dane, the consummate culpri
t candidate.
Dane needed to make the card disappear but first he had to find it. Since Dottie was hyper-sentimental, she probably kept it near her bed so she could kiss it before falling asleep. However, since Dottie was always at work, it was just as plausible that she kept the missive close at hand in her office—on the desk, in a drawer, or in her coat closet—to inspire her writing of bullet points.
Finding the card in Dottie’s office and disposing of it gave Dane his best chance of avoiding implication in the scandal he fomented. He would need to search at night when darkness and solitude were allies. The task was complicated by Dottie’s tendency to stay late. She turned the corporate office space into a second home by sporting sweats, slippers, going bra-less—and padding around with a mug of hot cocoa.
It was Dane’s good luck that Dottie’s romantic reversal ruined her appetite for thankless work that evening, and she left at eight. Once Dottie was gone and the hallway was dark, Dane sneaked into her office and rummaged through her desk, bookcase and shopping bags huddled on her floor like plastic homunculi, waiting for a bus. But he could not locate the red card. Out of desperation, he flipped through a stack of articles she was using for a piece on hormone replacement therapy, titled “The Power of Women’s Hormones,” and glimpsed a red sliver obtruding from the pile. How poetic, he thought, that she used this card to mark a page on sexual response! He slipped the red square under his shirt and burned it in his bathroom sink.
Nigel and a corporate harassment specialist flew in from Toronto to settle the love spat. They had a long meeting with Dottie in the conference room. She referenced the letter, Nigel asked to see it, and she ransacked her office vainly hunting for it. Dottie cried hysterically and speculated that Ron must have stolen and disposed of it to “deny his feelings.” Hmmm…Nigel and the harassment specialist had a theory: either Dottie was delusional or Ron had tampered with evidence, which made him appear more culpable.
An office interaction consultant was brought in to huddle with Nigel and the harassment specialist. These conspicuously clandestine proceedings shredded Dane’s nerves and gave him palpitations. He hid in the men’s room, where he repeatedly splashed water on his face. One colleague came to the men’s room twice and noticed Dane.
“Face clean yet?”
“Messy udon for lunch,” Dane replied. He knew this excuse would only work once; if he was seen there a third time, he would be a prime suspect for anything. Dane skulked to his office and kept his head down with a tedious referencing task for which he was grateful.
Dane was not summoned that afternoon and he assumed no one suspected his involvement in the affair. He believed he had won. Ron and Dottie would be terminated for mutual harassment and inappropriate collegial relations—and Dane would pick up the loose business.
He never foresaw what followed.
24. THE THIRD PLAGUE: BLACK FEET
Just before Dane left for the day at 6 PM, Nigel, the corporate harassment specialist and interaction consultant called him to the conference room.
“Do you know about Ron and Dottie?” Nigel asked with glinting blue eyes that claimed to know who Dane really was.
“Ron and Dottie?” Dane asked blankly. “No, I didn’t see anything. They were very professional.”
“They’ve had a misunderstanding,” the corporate harassment specialist said. “And they’re distraught.”
“Really,” Dane said. “I thought they communicated well.”
“Dottie believed Ron had, err, feelings for her. So she…ummm, tried to reciprocate. She was terribly mistaken,” Nigel said.
“Creative partnerships are complicated,” Dane observed. He enjoyed this moment despite being scrutinized and tacitly accused. “When brains overheat, bodies ignite.”
“Hmmm,” the interaction consultant interjected. “Dottie mentioned a red card. Something romantic. But it’s hmmm disappeared. Do you know anything aboot it?”
“No, I don’t.”
“We have two people in bad shape,” Nigel said. “They can’t work. Ron wants to go to Brazil to be healed by a holy man.”
“Ron always had a passion for spiritualism and fitness,” Dane remarked.
“And Dottie is in a depression. She wants to ride her horse.”
“She loves horses.”
“Two of your colleagues’ lives are in shambles and you’re not in the least upset,” the harassment specialist observed. She, Nigel and the interaction consultant stared at Dane with reproachful suspicion.
“I have faith they’ll bounce back,” Dane replied.
His three inquisitors’ scowls dissolved into shared resignation. They suspected mischief but had no basis for accusing Dane. They decided not to investigate or to seek retribution. Instead they made healing the priority. Ron received a week of paid sick leave in which to recover from post-traumatic stress. Dottie, meanwhile, was moved to a remote office down another hallway, where she could work with minimal interaction.
The winter holidays suspended office politics. Petty machinations were obscured by parties and gift-giving.
After the holidays, Ron reappeared depleted but free, with a box containing his career mentor’s Christmas gift. It was a portable ionizing foot bath and detoxification kit, to purge toxins from his body at work and on the move. The kit included a tub for two feet, a battery pack and chemicals.
“You’ll see,” Ron promised. “I’m going to be a different person.”
“That’s great,” Dane replied.
Dane researched detox foot baths and how they worked. A person’s feet were placed in a basin wired to charge water with ions at the push of a button. The positively charged ions attracted negatively charged ions as well as acid wastes in the body, which were drawn down and out through 4,000 pores in the feet. Since feet had the highest concentration of pores in the body, they were deemed exit doors for detoxification. The ionizers were also diagnostic. A user could identify which toxins were in his body by the color of the water: red meant too much iron, blue, too much nickel, and black, an overload of copper. A person could ionize himself several times until the water was clear.
According to Dane’s sources, ionizers were quackery. Of course, 40% of people who used placebos felt better. The improvement was psychological, not physiological. This was good news for Dane. If Ron believed in ionizers, he might believe in almost anything.
Dane went to work.
While Ron was out, performing his “rising star” routine, Dane went to a magic and novelty store where he had once purchased a Viking horned hat and a clay drum for a poetry performance. It was a hunch but he found there a bottle of “delayed reaction” ink that was invisible but gradually gained color after mixing in water.
Late one evening, when everyone had gone home and Dane was legitimately alone in the office, transferring changes from a layout to a manuscript, he entered Ron’s office and lined the plastic sides of the detox foot bath with the invisible delayed reaction ink.
The following day, Dottie showed up in Ron’s office to apologize and to ask for his friendship. Ron smiled and appeared relaxed. When Dottie left, Ron immediately felt the need to detoxify himself. He pulled his detox foot bath from under his desk, filled it with bottled water, pushed the button to activate the ions and submerged his feet. Within two minutes the water was black.
Ron appeared in Dane’s doorway with a stricken look on his boyish face.
“I’m a dead man, Dane,” Ron groaned.
“You’re exaggerating, right?”
“I’m toxic!”
“Maybe your feet were dirty.”
“I wash them twice a day.”
“Maybe your designer socks bled dye.”
No. I’m toxic. It’s the only explanation. I’ve been eating nothing but raw vegetables and soy milk.”
“That’ll do it,” Dane said. “Just add stress and stir. It’s a recipe for a nervous breakdown. Take it easy.”
“You’re right,” Ron said. “You’re a good friend.”
Ron took off another day. When he returned, he tried the detox tank to see if the rest had done him good. The water turned black within 30 seconds. Tears blurred his eyes. He said he had to take another sick day, to find out what was wrong with him before it was too late.
25. RON DOWN
The black water in the ionizing foot bath convinced Ron that he was too toxic to perform on a daily basis, or even to be around other people. He wanted to resign but was persuaded to take a leave of absence—and work from home.
Dane had no partner and little work. One half year after starting at Georgian Shield, his promising career move was at a cul de sac. His colleagues were remote because Dane challenged Georgian Shield procedures and showed jovial disrespect for Nigel Hogbine, calling him “Hogtied,” inflating his cheeks to simulate Nigel’s jowls, and waddling around the office with Nigel’s slow gait like he had a load in his pants. His colleagues laughed but spies tattled on Dane’s antics to Nigel. Now everyone was afraid to associate with Dane and he was one man who was an island.
Once more with feeling, Dane had shown poor judgment. He led a revolution in which he was the sole insurgent. The other Americans behaved like Canadians. They respectfully disagreed with the mother office but were discreet about it. If they had been American colonials, they would have turned Tom Paine over to the British and watched him hang next to Nathan Hale.
Despite his mischief and discontent, Dane’s predominant mood was penitent. Rumors circulated that Ron had a nervous breakdown and an inflammatory ailment. He was on medical leave and under heavy alternative medication—a St. John’s wart drip and an herbal colonic purge.
One afternoon Dane received a call from an Arizona area code. Ron was phoning from a healing spa and cryogenic center with a unique guarantee—if you didn’t recover, they froze your corpse.
“Dane, I’m worse than toxic,” the art director whispered hoarsely. He sounded truly ill.
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