Citizen Girl (35 page)

‘I can’t reveal that right now. We’ve got quite a few other re-org ducks to get in a row first.’

‘How many people?’

‘That either.’ Oh-kay. She flips the well-chewed end of her pen out from between her teeth. ‘MC, Inc. is on the brink of a major transition. We can’t run the risk of being publicly linked to a large-scale reduction in force, so
everyone
is on a need-to-know basis. I promise you’ll have all the information you need to execute this task to the best of your abilities. But the board wants this rolled out stealthily.’

‘Stealthily, of course,’ Guy affirms, jolting the table with his palms. Our very own King of Stealth.

‘Now I’ll be getting everything prepared for the subsequent re-launch so you two can work from Guy’s office. And Stacey’s not to be involved in this. Questions?’

‘Yes,’ I speak up, ‘I really appreciate your confidence. But my experience with firing—’

‘Rightsizing,’ Manley interjects.

‘Rightsizing – is really very limited.’ Fuck you very much, Doris. ‘And I guess I have reservations about the responsibility.’

‘Guy, we need a moment.’

He looks from one of us to the other before standing and running his hands through his hair. ‘Such a fucking downer,’ he mutters as he tugs the door shut behind him.

Manley slides the Krispy Kreme box over to me with the tip of her pen. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I want to be honest, I really don’t have any training for something of this nature and Guy and I, well …’ I pause, glancing with concern at the partition wall.

‘It’s soundproof.’

‘Guy doesn’t like me very much.’

She smiles as if I’ve told her a joke. ‘Are you kidding me?’

‘No.’

‘Who cares?’ she snorts. ‘Girl,
who cares
? I don’t care. You definitely shouldn’t care.’ She pushes herself up to stand, still grinning. ‘Doesn’t like you,’ she laughs, waddling over to the garbage and letting the box drop in. ‘Get over that, Girl. It’ll sink you.’

I redden. ‘Thank you.’

‘Sure,’ she laughs again. ‘So we’ll be calling it “The Project” and I’d like you both to set to work on a roll-out plan immediately.’ She walks back to her desk and picks up the phone. ‘Doesn’t like you,’ she replays to herself as I let myself out into Guy’s maze of condensed grandeur.

‘So we’re working on this together.’ I close her door behind me.

‘Yeah. You can set up, uh, over there.’ He tosses a Nerf football by way of direction, bouncing it off the chaise.

I squeeze over to it, my knees jammed against his desk. ‘Maybe we should start by moving some of this furniture out so we can be a bit more mobile in here?’

‘Maybe
you
should start by remembering your fucking
place
,’ he scowls, jerking his chair around to face the window. Oy.

‘Why are you out here?’

Having retreated to my old desk by the next morning, I peer over my laptop screen to Manley, her hand on one pregnancy-obscured hip. ‘Oh, it just seemed a more productive spot than the chaise. It’s okay – I’m keeping everything covered and nobody really wanders over here anyways. I prefer it, actually.’ I affect what I hope to be a preferring smile.

She arches an eyebrow and steps up to Guy’s closed door. ‘Get your laptop and come with me.’ Reluctantly, I unplug the cord and follow. Manley locks in on Guy. ‘Is there a problem here?’

He immediately drops the
Harvard Business Review
into his lap. ‘Not at all, just killing a few minutes before the meeting.’

‘This desk is big enough for two, understood?’

‘Yeah, of course!’ he beams. ‘She wanted to work out there.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Manley points me to the other side of his desk. ‘What do you two have so far?’

Guy gestures my way.

‘Well,’ I slide my laptop gingerly onto the far corner, ‘I’ve been researching what support materials companies are giving to their fire— rightsized employees. Information from Unemployment, placement counselors—’

‘Oof.’ Manley’s hands fly to her jostled abdomen. ‘That’s fine, Girl, but our priority is strategy.’

‘Well, I thought you’d probably want to bring each person into Guy’s office and talk through letting them go.’

Guy’s eyes lower just enough to continue reading his magazine.

‘Nope – can’t afford to roll it out that way. We need this planned to the minute.’ Manley grimaces again, her hand rubbing her stomach. ‘All right, that’s the board.’ She cocks her head at the advancing stream of white-haired men visible through the open door. They file in behind Rex, as if he’s leading a field trip from The Club. Guy stands, his magazine slapping the floor as the space fills like a Metro North bar car at rush hour, packed shoulder to shoulder in pinstriped summer-weight woolens.

Smooshed flat to the wall, I hear Rex’s familiar boom:
‘You all know Guy.’ There’s an indistinct murmur from

the board.

He clears his throat. ‘Hi, everyone!’

‘And,’ Rex continues, ‘most importantly, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, this is Manley, who’ll be getting us back in the black with our new little subdivision. Gentlemen, I advise you to pay close attention. She can teach us a thing or two.’

‘Please,’ she demurs. ‘Gentlemen, it’s a pleasure. Step into my office and we’ll get started.’

Guy starts to follow and all eyes look to Rex. ‘Hey, better to sit this one out.’

‘Oh, okay.’ Guy puts up his palms, acquiescing a bit too good-naturedly. ‘I’ll be out here if you need me.’ He reclaims the helm of his desk.

Manley peers through the felt door. ‘Girl, get together a rough agenda for The Project in the next hour, please.’ And the divider closes. I resume my post on the pony chaise. Opening a blank page on the screen, I try to conjure that day with Doris, making a list of the worst parts of the experience and then outlining what she could have done to minimize the humiliation. 1. Drop dead.

Within an hour I’ve handed the document off to Manley in exchange for neatly noted bullets on yellow paper. ‘These are the Affected.’

‘Okay.’ I gently close the door while looking down at the names.

And names, and names.

And names.

I run my finger down the first column and then flip it
over to count … four, five, six columns. Times twenty-four – that’s, that’s … one hundred and forty-four people ‘affected’.

‘One hundred and forty-four?!’ I gasp. ‘
One hundred and forty-four
?’

‘Don’t do that,’ Guy hisses.

‘How can we possibly?’ I turn to him. ‘Do that many people even
work
here?’

‘We’ve got a hundred and sixty-two on staff.’ He retreats to his magazine.

I sink down into the chaise, staring at the drawn curtain, behind which sits a world we are – I am – about to obliterate. ‘Guy, this is practically the whole company. I thought we were talking fifteen, maybe twenty people.
But one hundred and forty-four
? I can’t possibly—’

‘How the hell do you think this is for
me
, Girl?’ Guy bolts up and strides to the curtain. ‘That’s my
family
out there.’ He yanks it back, throwing his arms out in an encompassing circle, eliciting stares from the floor. ‘These people look to me for leadership and I have to
cut them off
, I have to
sever
their faith in me. I feel like a total ass about this so just, just …’ He turns to me, his eyes wild. ‘Just stop saying that fucking number.’

I chew the inside of my cheeks, reading through the short list of Unaffected beneath my name. Then I reread it.

‘Stacey. You’re firing Stacey.’

‘If she’s on the Affected list,’ he bristles. ‘Don’t look at me like that – I inherited her. It’s not like she was my hire.’

‘Aren’t you keeping any women other than me?’ I stand.

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘There’re no other women’s names on the Unaffected list.’ I thrust it at him.

The door swings open and Manley emerges. ‘Okay, they want it executed in under an hour, first thing in the morning, and no contact between Affected and Unaffected. Girl, we need something real.’ She tosses my initial suggestions back at me and disappears.

I spin to Guy. ‘No contact? How are we going to— There are no walls here.’

‘I don’t know, we’ll just, ah … hand out tickets, you know.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Red and blue and then we can send an email telling the blue people to go to a meeting in my office and tell the red people to go home and we’ll call them later and then when the blue people leave, call the red people …’

I tune him out, staring at Stacey shuffling from the kitchen, her soda carefully balanced atop her Tupperware container as she weaves back to her desk. ‘Guy, I don’t think we can do it like that, with tickets. I think it’s better to be up front.’

Door opens. ‘They want it on the roof.’ Manley sticks her head out. ‘No opportunity to email, reduces risk of getting in the papers.’ Door shuts.

‘The tickets will say “roof” or “not roof”, maybe, instead of the color, or maybe do both,’ Guy continues, pacing back and forth.

Door opens. ‘They want cell phones confiscated
before the roof. Run a strategy for end-of-day instead; don’t want the morning news traffic helicopters picking it up.’ Door shuts.

‘We could say it’s a communications check!’ Guy jerks his golf club out of his toybox and swings, nearly hitting the glass. ‘If it’s at the end of the day, we could take’em in the afternoon and say we’re wiring new technology into the phones.’

‘Do they do that?’ I ask quietly. ‘Wire new technology into phones?’

‘Does it matter?’ Guy’s glow is returning to his cheeks. ‘We can freeze the computers the night before, say it’s a bug or something.’

‘These are technically savvy people. They might suspect something.’

Door opens. Manley again. ‘They want you to send out an invitation to an awards ceremony – you know Best Programmer, that kind of thing.’ Closes. Opens. ‘Before the roof, they want you to get signatures releasing us from claims, leverage severance as a threat if they don’t.’ Closes. Opens. ‘They want to make sure there’s security.’ Closes. Opens. ‘They want’em to take the stairs up. Too much talking if they have to wait for the elevators, too many little groups plotting.’ Closes. Opens. ‘They want Unaffecteds on the roof while we clear out Affecteds and then bring Unaffecteds to the basement—’

Guy beams. ‘That’s great! That’ll work great with the blue and red tickets. Then the red can say “roof” and the blue can say “basement”. We’ll have’em wait in the basement – if it’s darker they’ll be calmer—’

‘Or we could just gas them.’

‘Problem, Girl?’ Manley steps inside, closing the door on the din of men’s voices behind her. Guy leans back on his desk, squeezing the club between his feet.

I look into her expectant face. ‘I can’t do this.’

The creases deepen between her eyebrows, conveying the absurdity of my misgiving. ‘Of course you can.’

‘Well, these plans seem really … extreme to me. I just think Rex, or Guy – someone who had a role in bringing them into the company – would be better suited for this—’

‘Guy?’

‘Yeah?’

‘We need the room.’

‘Well,’ he tosses the club up and catches it. ‘I’m good with all of this. Check, check, and check. I’ve got the whole ticket thing worked out, so just give me a wave when you’re ready.’

‘Right.’

Guy hops around the boxes and leaves. Crowded into the narrow lacuna by the partition door, Manley takes my hand and cups it in both her palms, which are almost feverishly warm. ‘Look, I’m not going to bullshit you. We’re amputating to save the patient. MC isn’t evaluating personalities, or character. This is solely about skill sets that meet business needs or don’t. It’s not about being liked. For them or us.’ Her deep brown eyes are fixed on me. ‘I picked you for a reason, Girl. This is a huge growth opportunity for you managerially. And I really want us to be able to give Magdalene that money. Big picture, Girl.
Trust me on this.’ She drops my hand and extends her arm ceilingward to get a firm grip on the curtains. Facing the floor of Affecteds, she nods out at Stacey, who darts her gaze back to her screen. ‘You don’t want to be sitting in that seat for the rest of your days, do you?’

‘No,’ I say, unable to discern if it’s a question or threat.

Manley yanks the drapes closed, then checks her watch again, holding it for a moment on her wrist. ‘Look, this meeting’s going to run all day. Accounting has the check for Ms Gilman. Go run it over to them, clear your head, and be back by two.’

Door closes.

One of Julia’s assistants ushers me into Magdalene’s new home. Wet to the bone, I shake off my already broken umbrella, purchased five minutes and fifty gallons too late from a street vendor on Fulton as I searched through the downpour for the boarded-up storefront across from Trinity Church.

‘Thank you. It’s really coming down. Is Julia here?’

‘Girl!’ I follow her voice across the ash-shrouded skeleton of the former ‘Wholesale Liquidator’s Warehouse’ to where Julia’s perched atop an industrial ladder. In jeans and a flannel shirt she waves me over to her with one rubber-gloved hand. ‘Just clearing the dust!’ she says cheerfully, tapping her sponge against one of the long flat light fixtures that hang like baking sheets from the ceiling.

‘This place is great!’ I exclaim, my heels leaving muddy prints on the linoleum floor as I cross to her. ‘Oh, no, I’m not helping. Sorry!’

‘God, don’t worry.’ Julia abandons her bucket on the top rung and climbs down. ‘This whole place needs to be hosed off. Thankfully everyone will be pitching in starting tomorrow; that should make it go faster.’ Smiling, she wipes her hair off her shining face with the back of her wrist, sponge in hand. ‘But it’s going to be wonderful. Would you like the tour?’

‘Absolutely!’ I nod.

‘Well … first we’re going to clear out those,’ she says, swirling her sponge in the direction of the few remaining display cases. ‘And that.’ She points up at the shredded store sign. ‘Downstairs needs to be reventilated, which will be the big investment.’ Her eyes dart to mine. ‘But then it’ll only take a few coats of cheery paint to make it a wonderful large-capacity dormitory. This level will be divided into a communal area,’ she indicates the far wall like an airplane marshaller waving landing batons, ‘classrooms, offices.’ She waves to indicate the periphery of the space. ‘
And
… if we can find the money –’ her eyes dart again – ‘I’d love to have our own room for checkups on-site. And … tah-dah!’ She holds her arms out in a gesture of finale, her optimism radiant against the mat backdrop of detritus and debris. ‘So, whaddya think?’