The Consultant

by Little,Bentley

  He wished he could call Angie and Dylan. He’d suspected there might not be cell phone coverage out here, so he’d warned them that he might not be able to talk to them, but he hadn’t suspected that his phone would be confiscated. He wondered if that was legal. Even if not, he didn’t plan on making waves about it. He had the feeling that there were going to be a lot of other things coming up that he objected to, and he needed to pick his battles carefully.

  The air was cool and crisp, the sky bluer than it ever got in the Los Angeles basin, the trees almost tall enough to be redwoods. It was like something out of a PBS nature show. The area was beautiful, and he thought that maybe some weekend he’d bring Dylan up here. Especially when there was snow on the ground. The boy had never seen snow outside of a picture book.

  A few other people emerged from their cabins. Scott Cho wandered over to the fire pit, lighting up a cigarette.

  “I didn’t know he smoked,” Elaine said behind him, and Craig turned around.

  “I didn’t either,” he said.

  Elaine smiled. “Another reason not to like him.” She took a deep breath, though he couldn’t tell if she was enjoying the clean air or having a hard time breathing because of the altitude. He could definitely feel the lack of oxygen up here.

  “Kind of a small cabin,” Elaine said.

  He nodded. “It’s weird,” he admitted. “Do you want to switch with someone else?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure we can. Besides, there aren’t a lot of people in management I get along with.” She motioned toward Scott, ostentatiously exhaling smoke. “I might get stuck with him.”

  Craig chuckled. “We’ll make it work,” he said.

  “I never doubted it.”

  More people were emerging from the cabins—there wasn’t a lot to do inside—and some were making their way toward the lodge. Phil came out of Cabin 6, yelling something at Parvesh, who remained within.

  “God, that guy’s an asshole,” he said, walking up. “I’m done bonding. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Elaine smiled. “Only forty six hours to go.”

  Phil sighed. “I’ve died and gone to hell.”

  Jack Razon and a couple of other people from Advertising were already walking across the overgrown grass toward the lodge. Craig nodded in their direction. “Shall we?”

  The three of them made their own way through the open square. Inside the main building, Elaine excused herself and walked over to Robards to ask if there was a restroom she could use. Garrett Holcomb, Phil’s department head, waylaid him to ask about sales projections for a product Craig was not involved with, and Craig wandered around the big room, looking for something to do.

  Although he hadn’t noticed it before, a primitive record player sat on the floor underneath a picture window that looked out on the cabins. Next to the record player was a stack of LPs. He crouched down. The album on top, by Randy Newman, was titled Good Old Boys, and the cover featured a blurry photo of what looked like John Belushi and Tammy Wynette with their arms around each other. Randy Newman was one of those guys Craig didn’t know much about. He’d heard of him, and knew he was supposed to be a respected songwriter, but the only music of his that Craig could remember hearing was the theme from Monk.

  Flipping through the stack of remaining records, he finally found one that he recognized: U2’s The Joshua Tree. It was the second CD he’d ever bought, though he’d never seen the vinyl version before, and he picked it up, intrigued by the size and heft of the album.

  Phil came over, having extricated himself from the conversation with Garrett. “What are you—?” he began, then his eyes widened as he saw the stack of records. Dropping down next to Craig, he started sorting through the pile. “CCR!” he exclaimed, pulling one out.

  It was a greatest hits collection, with multi-colored foldout silhouettes of the band members’ faces on the cover. Craig looked at a list of song titles on the back as his friend withdrew the album from the inner sleeve. “Oh. Those guys,” Craig said. “All their songs sound the same.”

  Phil was putting the record on the turntable. “You don’t like Credence?” He seemed astounded that anyone could hold such a view.

  Craig shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re all right, I guess.”

  “Well, you gotta listen to ‘Proud Mary.’ I want you to tell me if I’m crazy. Because everyone thinks it goes, ‘Big wheel keep on turnin’/Proud Mary keep on burnin,’ but what John Fogarty really sings is ‘Big wheel keep on boinin’/Proud Mary keep on boin.’ It makes no goddamn sense, but I swear to God that’s what he says. No one believes me. I’ve told this to a million people, and they all think I’m full of crap, but now I have a captive audience, and I’m going to prove it.”

  Turning on the record player and placing the needle in the groove, he held up a hand as the song began, pointing to the spinning album as the line approached. “See?” he said immediately afterward. “See?”

  “Could be,” Craig admitted.

  “Could be? It is!” He picked up the needle, moved it back and put it down. “Listen again. That’s no ‘T’ sound. That’s a ‘B.’ Boinin’. And the second time he says ‘boin.’ Listen.”

  Craig wasn’t sure if he was simply buying into his friend’s delusion, but it did sound like the singer was singing “boinin’” and “boin.”

  “He’s right,” Dash Robards said from behind him, and Craig nearly jumped. He stood up. A crowd had gathered around, and Phil happily played the section of song again, telling everyone what to listen for. He asked if they’d heard what he heard, and they all seemed to agree that he was right.

  “Victory is mine!” he declared.

  The last few stragglers, including Matthews and the four remaining members of the Board, had arrived, and Robards moved to the center of the room, holding up his hand for everyone’s attention.

  “We’re going to play a little game before dinner,” Robards announced.

  There were audible groans.

  “No, this’ll be fun. It’s Speed Conversation, a game where everyone gets a chance to talk to everyone else—for twenty seconds. It’s quick, but it’s personal, and this will enable you to get to know one another in a way that you probably have not during your encounters at work. What I’m going to do is separate you into two groups. You will stand in concentric circles, with the inner group remaining stationary and the outer group moving clockwise. Each participant from group one will ask a question of a corresponding member of group two, who will answer that question in twenty seconds or less. Then group two will move on. Afterward, the circles will switch places. Everyone is to answer honestly and no one is to take offense. There will be no repercussions for anything said here tonight. This is your chance to say whatever you want. So,” he announced, “if I tell you that you are in Group One, please move to the right side of the room. If I place you in Group Two, please move to the left side of the room.”

  Robards hadn’t been quite correct, Craig realized. They wouldn’t actually be interacting with everyone, only those on the opposite team. He watched as Robards started separating people into the two groups and noticed that he did so by looking at nametags and then at a sheet of paper in his hand. Was there a strategic reason for each placement? he wondered. Had Patoff ordered Robards to place specific people in a specific group for a specific purpose? He wouldn’t put it past the consultant, and when he saw that he and Phil and Elaine were all part of Group Two, he started looking at who else had been chosen, trying to see if he could detect a pattern. He couldn’t. There was no consistency of department or managerial level or anything that he could detect— although the fact that Matthews was in Group One led Craig to believe that his own team consisted of those who were on the outs.

  Or the whole thing could be completely random.

  What was with Robards’ sheet of paper, then?

  He didn’t know. Maybe this was a head game Patoff was playing. Maybe he wanted them to think—or overthink—the stabilit
y of their positions.

  Following Robards’ direction, Craig’s group formed a circle in the center of the large room, each of them facing outward. Around them, Group One formed a larger circle, facing in.

  Craig found himself opposite Matthews, and when Robards blew his coach’s whistle, the CEO asked him, in an unexpectedly reflective voice, “What do you think of the decision to hire consultants?”

  He had to answer immediately, didn’t even have time to wonder why Matthews would ask such a question, and he said, “I don’t think they were necessary. I think the Board could have made decisions about the company’s future based on information gathered in-house.”

  What did he see in Matthews’ eyes? Affirmation? Agreement? Craig didn’t know, but he couldn’t ask his own follow-up because the whistle sounded again, and a second later, the CEO was gone, replaced by Garrett Holcomb.

  Eventually, he would have a chance to ask a question of everyone in Group One, and Craig bided his time until the groups switched places and he was once again face-to-face with Matthews.

  “Are you sorry you hired the consultants?” Craig asked.

  “I don’t know,” Matthews said, and there was a pause. “Maybe.”

  The answer was honest, and Craig wondered if he had shared that with anyone else, if the CEO had canvassed the room, trying to get a sense of his management team’s opinions of the consultants.

  But there was no time for him to follow up, no time for Matthews to elaborate, and the whistle blew again. He moved to his right and found himself facing Sid Sukee. “What are you thinking about?” Craig asked.

  “When I was a teenager. The first time I came in a girl’s mouth. I’d only jerked off before that, and it was so amazing to me that there was no mess! I didn’t have to aim it or think about it or hold back or anything. I just let it happen. I spurted and spurted, and she swallowed it down, and that was it, done, all clean.”

  The whistle blew, and Craig nodded politely and moved on, remembering why he never spent much time with Sid. Or, indeed, most of the other members of management. These were people he worked with, not his friends, and the truth was that he saw no real reason for them to bond emotionally. They didn’t need to be buddies, they just needed to do their jobs and interact in a professional manner when necessary.

  After the game ended, he was hoping to find a moment to speak with Matthews further, but this retreat seemed to have been scheduled down to the second, and they were all ushered into the mess hall, where a wrinkled gnomelike old lady, barely four feet high and wearing a patch over one eye, was placing a final plate of food on the farthest picnic table in the last row. She shuffled toward the open door that led to what had to be the kitchen.

  “As you can see,” Robards announced, “my wife has prepared dinner.” He smiled at the stooped old woman. “Thank you, Edna.”

  Craig glanced over at Phil.

  Wife? his friend mouthed.

  “Please find a seat and begin eating,” Robards instructed. “You have an hour.”

  There were no set seating assignments, so Craig pulled out the nearest bench and sat down at the end of the table. Phil sat next to him. Dinner consisted of fried chicken, french fries, a small salad and a roll, all on a metal plate more suited to a mining camp. The food was cold, and the water in the tin cup next to the plate was warm. He wished they had something stronger to drink, or at least something with more flavor than water, because he was having a hard time getting the odd taste of the salad out of his mouth, though he’d had only a single bite.

  Bob Tanner was on the other side of Phil—Craig wasn’t sure where Elaine was sitting—and that made him leery of speaking freely, but he had to tell Phil about his speed conversations with Matthews. Keeping his voice low, he explained that the CEO had brought up the subject on his own, asking if CompWare should have hired BFG. “And on the next round,” Craig whispered, “when I asked him if he was sorry he’d hired the consultants, he said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’”

  “So even he’s having second thoughts. That’s a good sign,” Phil said.

  “What’s a good sign?” Bob Tanner asked.

  They changed the subject to something vague and boring, let it die off, then got down to eating the truly god-awful food.

  After dinner, after chores had been assigned (“What is this?” Phil asked, sotto voce. “Betty Ford?”), after two of the department heads had cleared the tables while two others performed dish-washing duties, Robards led everyone outside to where benches had been set up around an already lit bonfire. Craig expected a pep talk or a seminar-style lecture, but instead Robards told them a horror story (Phil again: “Are we ten years old?”). It wasn’t very scary, but it was site specific, the tale of a boy who had been left behind at the camp some fifty years ago, had disappeared and become a cannibal, and who now snuck into the cabins of unsuspecting visitors to kill and eat them while they slept. The story seemed designed to be interrupted by someone jumping out at a prepared moment to frighten the listeners, but that didn’t happen, and the story ended, and they all dispersed.

  On his way back to the cabin, Craig looked at his watch. Dylan was in bed by now, and he felt sad that he hadn’t even been able to call and say goodnight.

  In the dark of night, it seemed even more awkward and uncomfortable to be sharing the small room with Elaine. He turned on the light while she locked the door behind them. The beds seemed closer together than he remembered.

  “Do you need to use the bathroom?” Elaine asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I shower at night,” she informed him.

  “That’s fine,” Craig said. “I take mine in the morning.”

  “Do you mind if I…?”

  “Go ahead,” he told her.

  She opened up her suitcase, took out some clothes, presumably pajamas, and went into the bathroom, closing the door. A moment later, he heard the water turn on.

  He had always liked Elaine, but she was a work friend, someone he only saw at the office, and then only occasionally. If pressed, he probably wouldn’t have even had an opinion as to whether or not she was attractive. But hearing the water run in the shower, knowing that only five feet away, behind the thin wall and the door without a lock, she was naked, made him realize that, yes, she was attractive. It was a random thought and completely natural under the circumstances, but merely acknowledging to himself that she was naked and so close made him feel creepy. And disloyal to Angie. The fact that Elaine was unmarried didn’t help, and he quickly opened his own suitcase, changed into his pajamas and got into bed. The water turned off, and he closed his eyes, pulled the blanket tight, rolled over to face the opposite direction and tried to fall asleep before she emerged from the bathroom.

  TWELVE

  In the morning, when Craig awoke, his bowels were full to bursting and he desperately had to go to the bathroom. He didn’t want to do it here, just a few feet away from Elaine’s bed, where the entire process could be heard—and smelled—so he tried to hold it until she got up and went out for breakfast. She was a late sleeper, though, and the pressure was building, and finally he was forced to give in. Trying not to awaken her, he picked up the jeans he’d been wearing yesterday, took a clean shirt out of his still-open suitcase and crept around the foot of her bed, opening and closing the bathroom door as quietly as he could. He turned the shower on, hoping the noise of the water would cover him, then sat down on the toilet and did his business quickly. Taking off his pajamas and hopping into the stall immediately afterward, he cried out at the shocking coldness of the spray. There was no way he could survive a shower this freezing, and he turned off the water immediately and patted himself dry with the bathroom’s lone towel, still damp from Elaine’s shower the night before.

  He’d forgotten to bring his razor and comb into the bathroom, and, after dressing, when he opened the door to get them, Elaine was awake. “Are you through in there?” she asked. “I need to change.”

  Acutely conscious of t
he smell, Craig closed the door behind him. “Almost,” he said. He hurried over to grab his bag of toiletries, and after shaving and combing his hair, liberally sprinkled his aftershave in the corners of the small room to cover up the stench.

  “All yours,” he said, coming out.

  Breakfast was made not by Robards’ wife but by three division heads, who had been assigned to cook and serve oatmeal and orange juice. Phil was going to be one of two people on cleanup duty. Craig’s assigned chore was to help prepare lunch. There wasn’t a lot of conversation as they ate, though whether it was because people were sleepy and grumpy or whether it was because they had nothing to say to one another, he could not tell. He, Phil and Elaine kept their conversation to a minimum as well, pressured into silence by those around them. There’d been little or no shoptalk on this retreat, Craig reflected, and that was surprising to him. At the very least, the weekend would seem to offer the opportunity for everyone to discuss practical work matters in a pleasant setting and in a leisurely manner.

  While Phil helped clear tables, Craig went into the kitchen with Jenny Yee from Accounting and Alex Mendoza from Promotions. Waiting for them, on the opposite side of the room from the sink and dishwasher where bowls, glasses and utensils were being carefully stacked, was the stooped and wrinkled old lady who’d cooked and served their dinner last night.

  Robards’ wife.

  This close to the patch-eyed woman, the pairing of the two seemed even more odd and impossible. She was old enough to be his grandmother, and her voice when she spoke was a mannish croak. “I’m going to teach you how to make a sandwich,” she said. “If you listen, you’ll learn something. If not, the Lord will damn you to hell.” She let out a cracked glass chuckle, though whether because that was a joke or because she found it amusing to think of them burning in hell, Craig could not tell.