The Assistants (10 page)

T
HE NEXT DAY
, back at work, it was all I could do to keep from throwing myself down on Robert's $1,200 wingtips and beg for forgiveness. The brief respite I'd felt, the sense that I'd made it to the other side of this mess, had been given over to acute guilt and shame. To make things worse, it was the day of Robert's weekly editorial meeting with his managing editors—for which I was called upon to do the most important task I had all week.

This recurring meeting was the fifteen minutes or so Robert spent deciding Titan's “message of the week,” which would then be pounded away at through his various media outlets, resonating throughout the country. (Remember: Even if you haven't heard of Robert, he has influenced you. If you exist in the modern world, he owns all or a portion of the media you consume.) This fact—that one man could have so much influence—enraged many people. To me, all it meant was that it was ten a.m. on a Tuesday.

Today, though, my hand shook as I set down a pitcher of ice water and a stack of cups at the center of the conference room table. Physically, I was falling apart. Someone of my already-anxious constitution was just not designed for a life of crime. If I wasn't careful I thought I might end up giving myself a heart attack, or waking up one day with a head full of gray hair and a face like Keith Richards'.

I stood beside the conference room doorway, waiting, notepad and pen in hand, trying to do yoga breathing, or what I thought yoga breathing was supposed to be.

Dillinger entered the room first, as usual, immediately followed by Cooper, Hayes, and McCready. Then Robert entered, taking his place at the head of the table.

Now I was free to sit, as far away from everyone as possible, which, given the football-field-length nature of the conference table, was actually quite far.

Robert began talking, picking up where he'd left off in some previous statement. “I want our reporters to challenge him,” he said. And I began scribbling notes, fortunately (for me) understanding who he meant by “him.”

To be clear: the “message of the week” was often a directive to frame (or some might say
spin
) a current piece of news in an unfavorable light for the currently Democratic president. Today, though, Robert changed it up a bit. Today's directive was instead a character assassination on an antitrust activist who'd recently made some public statement that pissed Robert off.

Dillinger and Co. nodded.

“Embarrass him,” Robert said. “Humiliate him.”

More nodding.

This was how our multiplatform news-media talking points were composed. I wrote down whatever Robert said, while everyone else agreed with him.

“Let's spend a good deal of time discrediting his basic argument,” Robert continued. “Anything to disrupt him. Find that information and report it. Got that, Tina?”

I looked down at my chicken-scratched paragraph. It was my turn to nod.

“Good.”

Done. Everyone stood up. I returned to my desk, entered the memorandum into an e-mail, and sent it out to the entire staff. God bless freedom of the press.

Character assassination turned out to be the overarching theme of my entire workday, the poignancy of which, in light of my newly renewed role as traitor and embezzler, was not lost on me.

Robert's three o'clock appointment was US Representative Mike Nesbitt, one of Robert's best friends from college. They went to the Cotton Bowl together every January and celebrated opening day of deer-hunting season every November. They even had matching Audemars Piguets. But Nesbitt had dropped the ball on an important favor Robert wanted. Some regulation that Robert needed relaxed (his word). He basically wanted Nesbitt to send the regulation out for a massage, or a colonic. Anyway, news had broken yesterday—a lurid photo of Nesbitt at the W Hotel with a prostitute—so here he was now. The assumption being, of course, that Robert was responsible for the breaking news.

Robert's office door was closed, so I couldn't hear Rep. Nesbitt through the glass, but I could see him yanking on his neatly cut,
pomaded brown hair and on the crisp red knot of his necktie. He leaned forward in his chair, pointed his finger into Robert's face, and yelled something along the lines of,
You mother#%!@ing c@#%$ucker!
That was my cue.

As I'd been trained to do any time it appeared like Robert was having difficulty with someone, or they might try to murder him, I picked up my phone and buzzed his line pretending he had an important call. It always amazed me how talented Robert was at this act—he never gave us away by glancing knowingly at me or by not appearing surprised enough. He could have given any Method actor a run for his money the way he refused to break character, except maybe Daniel Day-Lewis, because that guy took pretending to a whole new level of insanity.

At the sound of my first buzz, Robert huffed and held up his hand, cutting Nesbitt off midsentence. He grabbed his phone's receiver like it was the biggest imposition of all time. “This better be important.”

“Do you need an out?” I whispered conspiratorially. This was the extent to which Robert's viciousness had, up to this point in my life, been a blood sport I could watch and support and enable from the safety of my cubicle.

“Tell him I'll just have to call him back,” Robert barked—which meant he was all good with his fight, that he was winning and maybe even enjoying himself.

He slammed the receiver back down onto its base, like always, except this time he must have knocked some buttons because his phone hadn't hung up properly. Somehow he'd put himself on speakerphone.

“Now, where were we?” I heard him say through my phone's
receiver, with crystal clarity. All I had to do was hang up my phone and it would disconnect us—but then I heard Nesbitt's reply: “We were just discussing what a lowlife rat bastard you are.”

Whoa. Not hanging up. This scene had the dramatic potential of a
Dynasty
catfight, circa 1985—my latest Netflix nostalgia binge.

Robert chuckled just like a billionaire on pre-present-day-golden-age television would. Though I'm pretty sure back then the billionaires were only millionaires, since a million dollars was still a lot of money.

“This was too malicious, even for you, Bob,” Nesbitt said. (Bob?!) “To turn on me this way, after all we've been through together.”

“Who turned on whom?” Robert was cool as a cucumber pickle from Momofuku.

“There was nothing I could do. My hands were tied, you know that.”

“Bullshit,” Robert said.

I could hear that Nesbitt was about to cry, which would have both disgusted and exhilarated Robert. “You've destroyed my career, Bob, my entire family, for what? Because you're pissed off about not getting an FCC waiver? Are you fucking serious?”

“You betrayed me,” Robert said, and the acid from my stomach began boiling up my throat. This was how nasty it got when someone crossed Robert.

“You betrayed me,” I heard Robert say yet again, just before I hung up the phone.

I'd heard enough.

Nesbitt betrayed Robert, so Robert ruined him. Simple as that. This was the Robert the public read about in malicious headlines
(in the more liberal papers) and cruel blog posts, the one they referred to (like Margie Fischer did) as a bully and a propagandist. A monster. This was the version of Robert that had never applied to me before, that I'd never had to fear—but did now.

—

T
HAT NIGHT
, we met at Bar Nine. Emily, Ginger, Wendi, Lily, and me. Bar Nine was the only place within walking distance of the Titan building that didn't feel like a Midtown bar. It was a wash of red light and flickering candles, oversize velvet couches and—fortunately for us—a private back room.

The five of us eyed one another from around a too-low wooden table. We'd all come straight from the same place of work, but who could tell? Between Emily's diamonds and Ginger's fuck-me pumps, Wendi's bondage pants, and Lily's cardigan with giraffes on it, we looked like the snapshot of a new Tumblr meme. We may as well have had a neon sign over our heads blinking,
We're a ragtag group up to something no good!
Though a sentence that long would have required a lot of neon, so fluorescents were another option.

Wendi had her laptop out on the table and she was showing us what her computer program could do, which sounded a lot to me like computerstuff computerstuff functionality bitmap vector browser analytics computerstuff computerstuff.

I focused on the clickable pictograms displayed on-screen. They were surprisingly adorable, more than one clearly inspired by a fat cartoon animal. I was finding that Wendi often undermined my expectations this way, reminding me anew each time that beneath all the daggers, skulls, and anarchy symbols was a
violin-playing straight-A student who very possibly had a thing for Hello Kitty.

“This here allows Tina to keep track of all the money going in and coming out.” Wendi clicked on an icon of a smiling dollar sign with googly eyes and whiskers. “We can subsidize whoever Tina approves and also allow them to contribute what they can.”

It went on like this, Wendi clicking and dragging various cartoon personifications, saying stuff the rest of us pretended to understand, until Ginger came to with sudden comprehension.

“Hang on. Wait a minute.” She flared her ruby-red nails. “Only Tina gets to decide things?”

“She's the administrator of the site,” Wendi said.

“Why is that?” Ginger asked.

“Because that's how I made it,” Wendi said.

Emily lingered a few thought steps behind Ginger in recognizing they'd lost the reins of their get-rich-quick scheme. “When you say
subsidize
,” she asked Wendi, “what exactly do you mean?”

Wendi appeared perplexed.

“You used the word
subsidize
before,” I said in an effort to clear up Wendi's confusion. She wasn't as accustomed as I was to Emily's five-minute delay. “You said we can subsidize whoever I approve.”

Lily raised her hand up high, enthused by the opportunity to define something. “A subsidy is a grant or gift of money,” she said.

“Right, so, how much will we be subsidized?” Emily asked.

It was time for me to step in. To take control even if it meant having to audaciously imitate one of my toughest role models: Cagney and/or Lacey, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Bea Arthur. As far as I was concerned, Dorothy Zbornak from
The Golden Girls
was second only to Robert in toughness overall.

“We'll pay off Ginger's debt using Wendi's website,” I said in as Dorothy a tone as I could muster. “Emily, you've already had your debt paid off.”

“And then we can take it from there.” Wendi tossed a bag of tobacco and some rolling papers onto the table and began constructing a cigarette.

“Take it from there how?” Ginger asked.

“Let's cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said.

“I have a few ideas.” Wendi carefully rolled her tobacco-filled paper between her thumb and middle fingers. Then she licked the edge of the paper and sealed the cigarette. “Once this groundwork is in place with all of us trickling in funds—”

Lily raised her hand. “Not me though, right? I'm only here for moral support.”

Wendi bowed her horns to Lily's concern. “Correct. With the three of us—Tina, Ginger, and me—trickling funds through you, Emily, there is great potential for . . .”

Emily was pitched forward, clutching her diamond necklace. The gear shifts of her calculating mind were spinning.

“. . . a redistribution of wealth,” Wendi said. “Robert's wealth.” She stuck her cigarette behind her ear.

This was just the sort of opportunity Wendi had been waiting for, wasn't it? A foolproof way to get at the evil Robert Barlow. Why else would someone like her want to work for a corporation like Titan in the first place?

Emily and Ginger leaned back, appeased. They returned to their drinks.

It was fine with me that the two of them could mistake such a statement to mean they would be enjoying Robert's wealth. At this
point my main concern was that neither of them screech up to the Titan building in a red Ferrari. Now that I effectively ruled the purse strings of
the scheme
, I could keep Emily and Ginger from sabotaging themselves, and me.

Wendi's dreams of a Marxian class war were another story—and an argument for another day. For the moment, that crisis had been averted. I was in control of everything.

“For now though,” I added, shooting a look specifically at Wendi, “nobody tell anyone else about this. Okay?”

There was agreement all around—except from Wendi. “What do you mean don't tell anyone? What good is my program if you don't use it to its full potential? We can't build a network in a cone of silence.”

Or maybe Wendi's dreams of a Marxian class war were in fact an argument for today.

“I never agreed to build any network,” I said as calmly as I could.

Wendi reared back. Her horns stood on end. “I thought we had an understanding.”

“I know you did,” I said. “But here's what you need to understand. I'm just trying to keep myself out of jail. I'm sorry, but—”

“No.” Wendi raised her palm to my face and I braced myself to be hit. “You're better than that. You're better than apologizing after you betray my trust on purpose.”

There was betrayal going on all over the place, wasn't there?

“Wendi, what do you want me to say? I'm not an anarchist, or whatever it is you consider yourself. I'm not an activist. I don't even like activists. I think they're annoying and self-righteous, and often smelly.”

I looked to Emily and Ginger for support, which they gamely provided.

“Very often smelly,” Emily said.

Wendi crossed her arms over the chest of her black hoodie. “Well, what's to stop me from telling people? What can you threaten me with? I can rat the three of you out tomorrow if I choose to.”