Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch (26 page)

“Hi, Beth-Anne. Is Sam there?”

“Hi, Russell. Not right now. Can I have her call you?”

“That’s OK. I just wanted to ask her if we had any cold medications.”

“You have a cold? That’s too bad.”

“When do you think she’ll be back?”

“I don’t know. Did you try her cell?”

“No. Maybe I’ll do that. You guys having a good time?”

“Yes. It’s been great to see her.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Not much. Just the mall and back. The doctor wants me to take it easy till the baby comes. We’ve mainly been sitting around chatting.”

“Just the two of you?”

“And Steve when he’s around. Which isn’t often.”

“That’s nice. When do you think Sam will be back?”

“I don’t know. She borrowed the car. Went for a drive. I think she was getting a bit stir-crazy.”

“OK. I’ll try her cell then. Can you tell her I called?”

“OK. Feel better, Russell.”

“OK. Good luck with everything, Beth-Anne.”

“You too.”

I leave a message on Sam’s cell phone. Casual. Asking her to call me. Telling her I’m home sick. Just running downstairs, but otherwise I’ll be here.

I go to the basement, fetch the box I need, and sit with it by the phone. Half an hour goes by. I open the box. This was supposed to be my best work. But now it seems average and uninspired. I compare it to what Pete has done for me on Livingston Kidd. I can’t quite figure out what parts of his presentation I was hoping to fix. Today, his stuff looks better than I thought and mine looks worse than I remember.

Another half hour goes by. I try Sam’s cell phone again but don’t leave a message. I email Pete and tell him the Livingston Kidd presentation looks great. He should get it to Randy Baker. If it’s OK with Randy, then send a copy to Henry and we’re good to go. I tell him he should be the one to email Henry with it. I don’t tell him that the effort is worthless. All along, we’ve just been going through the motions. It doesn’t matter how good the presentation is. The Livingston Kidd account is already lost.

I call Beth-Anne again.

“Hi, Russell. She’s not back yet.”

“Yeah. I tried her cell a couple of times. Should I be worried?”

Beth-Anne hesitates, then says, “I just think she loves to drive. She said she doesn’t get much chance in the city.”

“You have no idea where she went?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Maybe to meet an old friend?”

“I don’t know, Russell.”

“It wasn’t me who wanted to sell the car,” I say. “She was the one who didn’t want to deal with the alternate-side parking.”

Later when I try Beth-Anne’s number again, it rings four times and the answering machine picks up. I don’t leave a message. I try a couple more times, in case Beth-Anne picks up while her recorded message is still playing. After that I start hanging up on the fourth ring, before the machine picks up.

I call Fergus at home. Julie tells me he’s working late, closing the new issue of
Vicious Circle
. I try his office, leave him a message. Ask him to call me back no matter how late.

The apartment is quiet. I pad to the kitchen in my thick hiking socks. I fill the electric kettle and sit at the kitchen table waiting for it to boil. I rinse out the mug I’ve been drinking from all day. My favorite mug. The one with the red London bus on the side. I sit in the corner of our kitchen at our glass-topped table. In the time it takes the water to boil, I realize how easy it would be to lose my grip completely. Slipping into insanity would be as easy as walking through the wrong door. Insanity is the chair next to mine. Because I sat in this chair, I can stare at the kettle, the mug, the colorful box of Celestial Seasonings tea. I can stand up and pour the boiling water. I can sit back down and wait for the phone to ring or the tea to brew. It was just luck I sat in the sanity chair. If I had sat in the other one, I would be mad already.

The herbal tea is meant to soothe, but I grow increasingly agitated. I try a different flavor. I sit on the couch. I watch TV with the sound turned down.

The phone rings. It’s after midnight. It’s Fergus. I need to tell him about Sam. But he’s talking first. He’s excited. He has news he needs to tell me. He wants me to hear it from him before I hear it from anywhere else.

“Is this about Sam?”

“Sam? No. What’s wrong with Sam?”

“It doesn’t matter. Tell me your thing.”

“Brace yourself.”

“I’m braced.”

“I really hope this won’t ruin our friendship.”

“Why would it?”

“It’s this article I’ve been working on.” And then he stops talking. As if he’s hesitant to reveal something really bad. I turn off the TV and toss the remote onto the coffee table.

“Just tell me what the fuck it is.”

“You know how much I hate Larry Ghosh.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, a few weeks ago I pitched my editor a story idea.”

“About?”

“We were looking for a new angle. We had that torture-porn article last month. We wanted to follow it up with something different. And not just the usual right-wing nutjob stuff.”

I lean forward on the couch, the phone pressed to my ear. “And you came up with…?”

“It was just meant to be this tiny, small, inconsequential little piece about how Ghosh is screwing up the
Daily Business Chronicle
. You know, the kind of stuff you’re always telling me about.”

“You mean the stuff that has nothing to do with Larry Ghosh?”

“Well, anyway, when Ghosh Media announced the launch of the
Daily Edge
, we suddenly had a news angle to run with.”

A chill runs through me. “What kind of news angle?”

Fergus tells me all about the story he’s written. The inside story of Project D-SAW. How Larry Ghosh has been pressuring the
Chronicle
’s management to improve our financial results at any cost. With me as his unnamed source, he has concocted a story of corporate desperation, executive ineptitude and financial mismanagement. He thinks he’s blowing the whistle on how the Ghosh Corporation is putting the final nail in the coffin of one of America’s most respected newspapers. And what’s the big news he’s breaking? Where’s his smoking gun? I think I’ve already figured it out, but I want him to tell me.

“You know that screwup on the business plan?” he says. “The ten-million-dollar mistake? How you told me the project would have never been approved without the fake numbers?”

“You motherfucking cocksucker.”

“I’m sorry, Russell, I had to put it in.”

“You fucking asshole.”

“I’m sorry. I’m a journalist. This is news.”

“Did you use my name?”

“Of course not.”

“So how bad is it going to be?”

“I don’t know. But I had to warn you. My editor has it in for Ghosh too. He decided the story was so big he’s put it on the cover. Our publisher wants to make as much noise as possible with it. We’re sending press releases everywhere. She’s tripled the print run.”

“You fucking shit fucker.”

“I’m sorry, Russell,” he says again.

I resist the urge to call him a backstabbing Judas. I can’t tell Fergus this, but there’s a part of me that’s glad he’s done what he’s done.

“Whatever.” I hang up the phone and rest my chin on my chest for a while. I’m shivering, sitting all alone in the empty apartment. I never did get the chance to tell Fergus about Sam.

I don’t sleep. And then I do. I dream the Twin Towers have magically reappeared. I leave the Burke-Hart Building after dark, look downtown, and there they are. Lights twinkling on all hundred and ten floors as if they’d never been away. People around me are rejoicing, but I start crying instead. Even in my dream I understand this is a mirage, a falsehood—something even sadder than the empty sky.

Eventually it gets light outside. There’s no point trying to sleep. I shave and shower. I get dressed. I sit on the bed. I feel too tired to think, to feel, to function in the world. I go to work.

I rub Lucky Cat’s paw. I try Sam’s cell phone number again. I check my email and the corporate intranet. I call Christine Lynch in HR to tell her that I’m about to meet with Jeremy Stent. Barbara comes into my office with a manila folder that conceals the good luck card she wants me to sign for Angela, who is leaving today. I study the card, the bland words that others have already written. I can’t think of anything appropriate to say. I ask Barbara to leave it with me. I open the other manila folder on my desk. The one that contains Jeremy’s severance letter.

“Hi, Russell. You wanted to see me?”

The best way to handle these things is to get right to the point. No pleasantries or chitchat. No pretense that this conversation is anything other than what it is.

“Sit down, Jeremy,” I say. “I have some bad news.”

He looks at me blankly. I bite my bottom lip to let him know how hard this is for me. “I’m sorry, Jeremy, but we’re going to have to let you go.”

“What?”

“I said I’m sorry, Jeremy, but we’re going to have to let you go. We recognize that you’re an extremely intelligent and talented individual, but we’ve come to the conclusion that maybe this isn’t the right fit for you and maybe it would be better for all involved if you maybe left to pursue a different career path.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“Well, not just maybe. I didn’t do a good job phrasing that. Each time I said maybe, I probably should have said actually instead.”

“You’re firing me?”

“We’d prefer to announce that we’ve come to a mutual agreement. You are still within your probation period. We will set your exit date for two weeks from today, but we won’t need you to actually be here during that time.”

I slide the severance letter across the desk. He reads it quickly.

His face collapses. “What have I done wrong?”

“You haven’t done anything wrong. Like I said, you’re obviously smart and talented. It’s just that maybe this isn’t the right fit for you. Actually.”

“Just tell me what I’ve done wrong. I can fix it.”

“Jeremy, I think we’ve decided that actually your talents will be better suited elsewhere.”

He tells me he doesn’t want to leave because he loves it here and he loves the people and everyone has been so nice to him and says, “Please, Russell, don’t do this to me. I need this job.” His voice cracks and he starts sobbing.

I stare at the colorful spines on the book jackets on the shelf behind his left shoulder, aware of the type but not reading the printed words, and say, “Sorry, Jeremy. It’s nothing personal. There’s nothing I can do. We just think it’s better for all concerned if you leave immediately. Please hand your ID and company credit card to Tony from security, who is waiting in the corridor and can help you carry any boxes you might have down to the street.”

Jeremy stops sobbing and still doesn’t move, so I say, “Or maybe we can ship them to your home address in a day or two if you prefer.”

“I want to talk to Henry,” he says.

“I’m sorry. That won’t be possible.”

“And what about the fire drill?”

“What fire drill?”

“There’s a fire drill today. I’m filling in for Roger as fire warden. I’m supposed to check the bathrooms.”

“I think we’ll manage.”

A minute later I get up and open the door and ask Tony if he could help escort Jeremy out.

Jeremy says, “I’m OK.” He finds a tissue in his pocket, blows his nose, and walks out of my office and down to his cubicle with Tony following a few steps behind.

I shut the door, sit down, grip the arms of my swivel chair, close my eyes, and breathe slowly. My brain feels like a bowl of mashed potatoes. Someone knocks at the door, but I don’t say anything and the person goes away. I hear a siren in the street and the blaring of horns. I imagine an ambulance trapped in midtown traffic as a heart attack victim lies dying on the sidewalk two blocks away. I concentrate on my breathing and start counting each breath. I tell myself to count from one to fifty. To block out the world. To focus only on the numbers in my head. I wonder if Jeremy learned anything useful here. I wonder if I could have helped him more. I wonder if I should have told him how annoying he was. I stop wondering and focus only on my breathing and counting. By the time I reach thirty-five, my body has stopped trembling. I am calm. And Jeremy is someone else’s concern.

I stand up and notice a slip of paper that someone has slid under my door. It looks innocent enough. But it still feels ominous. It’s a two-word message from Randy Baker.
Call me
.

He picks up immediately.

“It’s official,” he says. “My year is in the crapper. Livingston Kidd’s agency just called. They’ve done a deal with the
Times
. Print. Online. Events. You name it. Sucking up their entire budget. They’ve been working on it for weeks. We didn’t even get a look in.”

“Shit,” I say. “Fuck. That sucks.”

“Yep,” says Randy. “Do you think this day can get any worse?”

I hang up, spend a few minutes gazing over at the empty office where basketball guy used to spend his days.

I didn’t say it to Randy. But to me this doesn’t feel like a day when the market opens down and bounces back. This feels like a day when the bottom falls out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

By ten thirty, Fergus’s
Vicious Circle
story is being picked up, analyzed and interpreted by business websites, bloggers and irate investors, all the way from wsj.com to the Yahoo! Finance message boards.

On mediaweek.com, the story is the day’s main news item, complete with a PDF of the magazine cover. The
Vicious Circle
art director has had fun with this. The cover art shows a picture of a battered grocery cart sporting a
Daily Business Chronicle
license plate. The magazine’s headline reads, “Exclusive: Ghosh Pushes
Chronicle
, Wheels Fall Off.”

Barbara knocks on my door, holding an orange fire-resistant vest.

“Jeremy asked me to give this to you,” she says.

I ask her to leave it on my chair, then turn to the article on my screen.