After firing his order, the ranger turned to Jasper.
“There’s a local repair shop that takes care of messes like this and home-delivers it for a nice fee. Plus they can organize a replacement car for you on the spot; nothing to worry your pretty girlfriend’s head about.”
Pretty empty head, Serena mumbled to herself. Without waiting for Jasper, she went back inside, slid herself under the covers and curled up into a ball. Why, oh why did these things happen only ever to her, she asked God and upon getting no response, she politely requested that the world at least obediently swallow her up.
Chapter 18
There is always calm before a storm.
Markie remembered reading this once in a prominent business magazine and at the time took it to mean that some things are never what they seem. When things seem smooth, they may really be rougher and such was the life of a tycoon. Oh and anyone privileged enough to work with Lola.
Or make that ABOVE Lola. Since the “fiasco” with his secretary, she (remember, a woman with no real people skills) had competently mastered the art of being honey-sweet to everyone except Markie and Rick. If Markie didn’t know better he would say Lola hated him, except of course he did know better. It was more like abhorrence.
“What’s the deal with the staff?” Rick asked after the fourth day in a row of silent treatment. You see, it wasn’t only a matter of Lola acting weird; the rest of the crew had also begun to catch her disease.
It had come to the point where Rick and Markie felt like wrestlers walking into the arena and suddenly discovering, thanks to the booing, that they were now the baddies. And if it happened to the beloved Hulk Hogan once upon a time who’s to say they were immune?
“No idea,” Markie shrugged. He was playing the part of a nonchalant MD so well, not even Rick could pick out his reservations. But he had them anyway. Lola was definitely up to something. She wasn’t the sort of girl who liked to take things standing up (or lying down either for that matter).
“Something’s not right. For starters everyone looks at me as if I just had sex with their cat and no one laughs at my Knock Knock jokes anymore,” Rick frowned.
“That’s because they’re not funny.”
“So? Whether they’re funny or not is beside the point. People used to laugh at them, people used to treat me like I was a human being. Is a bit of courtesy and respect too much to ask for? ”
“Don’t think so,” Markie replied, thinking secretly to himself: well at least people talk to you. The staff had been ignoring him, turning their heads in the hallways to conceal what: their pity? Their smirks? What silly crap had Lola being planting in their heads lately?”
“Lola.” Markie called, clearing his throat and assuming his most authoritative position.
He watched as the boobs came to a standstill and decided it was about time he put a stop to this. He most certainly wasn’t about to have his kingdom toppled by a floozy who was bad in bed.
“Yes sir?”
She had taken to calling Markie sir about ten minutes after his first reprimand and it had succeeded in making him feel like the old fogey who cradle-snatched a preteen. But for the sake of formality he was prepared to endure the discomfort.
“Take a seat,” Markie said, motioning to the chair in his office. He on the other hand would stand; anything to stay concentrated and not to lose his nerve.
“Look,” he began, clearing his throat again.
Where did he begin? He felt like a nerd in sixth grade asking the cool kids how to get ‘in’ again. But Lola’s not the cool kid, I am, I’m the school bloody captain.
Markie opted for his consultant/observer approach.
“Lola, it’s come to my attention that over the past few weeks the company’s dynamics have undergone dramatic changes for the worse and I have a sneaking suspicion you are entirely responsible for it.”
“You have a suspicion?” Lola replied, trying hard not to stifle a laugh. Everything about her demeanor said why don’t you suck my pussy and do it properly this time. “That wouldn’t hold up very well in court you know.”
“But we’re not in court,” Markie sighed, well aware of her tactics. “You’re sitting in an office, having light conversation with the person who helps you pay your bills.”
Lola shifted in her seat. “Go on then.”
“Okay it’s like this. Rick and I have noticed lately the staff’s morale has shifted. People do not seem to be as motivated to work and as a result the company’s productivity is suffering. I want you to get to the bottom of this.” Markie lifted a pen and paper off his desk and passed it to Lola. “You may want to write this down, considering it is your assignment for today.”
Taking the paper and pen, Lola looked entirely pissed off. “What about the filing? I have a stack of filing to do.”
“No filing today, you can forget about your usual duties,” Markie insisted. “By 4pm I want some form of detailed report outlining the catalyst for the company’s downward turn - be it gossip or a rumor or stupid employee whatever, and an even more detailed strategy plan on how Rick and I can remedy the situation.”
“I… I have no idea how you expect me to do that,” Lola stuttered. And she wasn’t the stuttering kind.
“Use your imagination then. I’m sure you’re pretty good at it.”
Markie nodded his head.
“You’re free to go now.”
When she left, Markie felt for the first time in ages like he really had some balls.
But in the hours after that, his balls got substantially smaller and smaller.
“What in the world do you think she’s going to write in that report?” Rick pondered on during their midday break.
It had been eons since the boys had let down their executive laurels and embraced the real reason they got into advertising: long lunches. Lunches made up of lobsters and Caesar salad and too many glasses of wine, all courtesy of the company’s expense account.
“Damned if I know,” Markie shrugged. “She’ll probably come up with some bullcrap about how everyone is dissatisfied with their pay and wants a fifty per cent raise in order to stay.”
“No way!” Rick shook his head. “That’s my worst nightmare come true; waking up to a crap load of resignation letters all handed in at once.
“Hang on, I ordered Lola to come up with brainstorm solutions to our problem. Which means she better not have any bad news in that report without a pleasant ending.”
Rick did not look convinced.
“I think it’s time to get rid of that bitch. You had her and now no-one else wants to touch her with a ten-foot pole. What’s the point then of keeping Lola anymore?”
“She’s supposed to be my secretary.”
“Secretary, shmecketary. She knows how to use the computer about as well as I know how to use a tampon.”
“She actually minored in…” Markie was about to comment on Lola’s straight A’s in computer science but decided instead to let the argument drop.
Who was he kidding? Lola did have to go. If the fact that he slept with her wasn’t a good enough reason then her bitchy reactive attitude and Serena were. Serena! Markie had forgotten all about what she would think. Maybe once this game and her movie thing were over she’d like to come and work for him as an assistant, on top pay of course. That way they could spend more time together, have long leisurely lunches. He wasn’t sure if Serena could even type but there were plenty of night schools to train her up on those skills.
Markie entertained those heavenly thoughts until finally, at about a quarter to four, Rick interrupted the fun with:
“Do you think it’s time we got back to the office?”
He and Rick had been playing the waiting game. The rules were simple: one waits until the other says go and he waits until you say go first. It was the adult version of the staring game; first one to blink was out. Not that Rick really gave a crap for losing; curiosity just got the better of him. By the time the boys got back to the of
fice, it would be spot on four and a richly exciting document should be sitting on Markie’s desk.
And it was there, it was actually there!
Markie and Rick tiptoed lightly into the office, as if the folder was a mouse that might quickly flee. A blood red folder it was, as opposed to the usual fuchsia pink Lola preferred. Was that a sign of the terror to come?
“So what does it say?” Rick asked, as Markie took the folder into his hands, sat down and opened it, leaning deep into his chair.
Markie didn’t respond right away. He couldn’t; he was waiting, trying to regain his breath.
“Markie, what the hell is it? “ Rick demanded. Seeing that Markie was still shell-shocked, he stormed straight over and attempted to grab the folder out of his hands. But during the scuffle, all that was inside - a piece of photo-thick paper - floated facedown to the ground. Rick reached down to pick it up and upon flipping it over quickly released it, as if it contained a millions volts of deadly electricity.
Markie and Rick stared down at the photo and then at each other, mouths open wide.
Staring back at them was a photograph of two naked homosexuals, one kneeling on his hands and knees and enchained by a spiky dog collar; the other in standing position, with a whip in hand and his willy flopping out of the cutout hole in his leather bondage costume. But it wasn’t the gear that really intrigued them, more the faces. Markie stared at his face superimposed on the doggy-style lover and Rick stared at his own superimposed on the dominatrix.
Then there was the note, a paper clipped to the right hand corner, which terrifyingly said: AS DOWNLOADED FROM GUERILLA ZOO’S WEBSITE FRONT PAGE. SOLUTION: I RECOMMEND YOU HAVE IT UPDATED.
Now who was the monkey?
That night, amidst all the panic and dread, Markie and Rick found the quiet resolve to sit down and think of a tactical battle plan.
“Quit,” was Rick’s first suggestion. “Quit right now, sell the house and run off to Mexico where I can peacefully spend my last few years as a fully-fledged straight sex maniac.”
“That’s a start.” Markie acknowledged, aware they had to begin somewhere. So what if it was a stupid, irrational plan? “But why don’t we leave that as a last resort?”
“Okay, okay.” Rick kept pacing back and forth across the living room. “But just so you know, that’s what I’m doing. If you don’t come up with a better plan I’m on the first plane out tomorrow.”
“Yeah, right,” Markie replied, rolling his eyes. Drastic measures always came from drastic men. “You don’t even have a valid passport.”
At least Markie was keeping his cool. After the initial state of shock had passed (he was catatonic for about an hour) he picked up the pieces and put on his manager’s cap. How did this happen? How in the world did someone get access to making alterations on their website? As far as he knew that was the realm of their part-time IT guy, Yin and he couldn’t even speak English. Plus given that Yin bowed to kiss Markie and Rick’s feet every time his substantial weekly pay check was deposited into his account, he didn’t seem like a likely candidate to create fracas. It wasn’t as if the website’s password was something easy one could guess, like a birthday or 12345. Rather it was a fourteen digit code made up of both numerals and digits; the chances of guessing it were a trillion to one.
“Lola!” Markie had cried. She was the only other person with access to the safe, and thus the code, having requested a copy of the key after she annoyed the hell out of Markie with her petty cash tin obsession.
“The tin cannot be kept in my drawer,” she had explained, “even if it does have a lock on it. All professionals know it stays in the safe.”
Yes but not all secretaries trampled back and forth to it a million times a day. Once she took it out in the morning, couldn’t she keep it with her until home time?
“The frigging bitch!” Rick enraged, suddenly remembering the fancy computer science degree, “That frigging, bloody bitch! Tomorrow you’re firing her ass. You send those tits back to Silicon Valley where they belong, you hear me?”
Markie heard him all right. But whether they were going to fire Lola or not wasn’t the problem. Because they were firing her. The real dilemma was how to face their staff again and reclaim some of that lost dignity.
“For starters we have to tell them what happened. That someone, without naming any names, played a sick early April Fool’s Joke that got them fired.”
“Yeah, yeah do that,” Rick enthused. “Make sure they then understand the consequences of such bloody brainless actions.”
“Wait, I hope you’re not expecting me to do all the dirty work. You’re in this as much as I am, you know.”
“How can I forget?” Rick grimaced, “I’m the one who was holding the whip. Though when you think about it, it’s really all your fault. All that ‘please let’s ride into work together and go home together, hold my hand because I’m scared Lola will eat me up’. Oh and let’s not forget the fact you’re about to move in with me either. Doesn’t exactly take away from the homo image, does it?”
“Fine,” Markie conceded, “I’ll do all the talking, but you have to be there with me. Otherwise they’ll think you’re out hanging with your boy band.”
“All right, all right, I’ll be there. Let’s just put this crap to rest.”
The next day thus entailed three tasks: firing Lola was number one; instructing Yin to fix up the website was number two and addressing the staff was the final chore. None would be easy but at least firing Lola would give him pleasure, so Markie decided to tackle that one first. It made sense to kill the perpetrator before attempting to remedy the infection she had spread.
“Are you looking for me?” Lola purred, spinning around in the visitor’s chair as Markie walked into his office.
To be honest, at the time he wasn’t even thinking “fire Lola” yet; his briefcase was still in hand and the spiky dog collar picture in his head. But if she was going to make it that simple for him, why not eat the bait?
“As a matter of fact, I do need to speak to you Lola,” he said, setting down his stuff.
Markie looked at his watch and saw that it read seven forty five. A good majority of his staff wouldn’t start shuffling their feet in for another thirty minutes. Maybe if he was lucky, Lola would be packed and out of here by then.
“The photo…” he started.
“Yes the photo,” Lola smiled.
“You may not realize Lola but you left one rather important detail off your report yesterday.”
“I did?” She turned her mouth into a big O suited better to those clown machines that swallowed balls at funfairs.
“Yes you did. You failed to mention who the genius that constructed such a hilarious photograph was.”
“Oh.” Lola smiled again.
“Would you prefer that I make incorrect assumptions, or that you tell me instead?”
“You can make incorrect assumptions if you like…”
“Yes I could except that isn’t my preference.” This time Markie smiled. “So…”
“What do you want me to say?” Lola smirked, “That I did it? Would that make you happy?”
“Having you tell me the truth in this instance would indeed make me very happy.”
“Good then I plead guilty,” she laughed. Just like that, as if she hadn’t totally humiliated Rick and Markie beyond belief!
“I did it; I pulled you and your wanker boyfriend out of the closet for the whole world to see; so that you both now have the pleasure of being free. Really you should be thanking me.”
“I should be? I should be what?” Markie spluttered the words all over the table. If truth be told it took all his energy, all his control to stayed seated and keep his arms by his side.
“I gather that you know you’re fired, right? Instant dismissal.”
“No, I’m afraid you can’t fire me,” Lola sneered.
For a moment there, Markie thought he was really truly going to have a cardiac arrest. The muscles
around his heart tightened; his breathing became shallow and constricted. Oh feck he was gonna die, he was gonna die right here, right now in his office and the whole company still thought he was a homosexual who tried to screw Lola in order to cross to the other side.
He clutched his chest as Lola got up to leave the room.
“That’s my retrenchment letter you’re leaning on,” she said, reaching to shut the door behind her. “I must thank you for being so utterly generous with my redundancy package. Deposit it today and I’ll make sure to stay out of The Guerrilla Zoo and harm’s way forever.”
So that was how it eventually went; one down, but another two hurdles to go.
Chapter 19
At eight eleven on Sunday night, a door bell ringing at Tabitha’s place sent the place into total chaos.
“Yippee, it’s PARTY TIME! Tabitha squealed, running through the house like a maniac. Along the way she swallowed a few more potent vodka jelly cubes (penis shaped of course) and slipped on a pair of impossibly high stilettos. With them on she hovered at way over six feet tall.
“Our first guest, our first guest, he’s bound to be the very best,” she sang as she skipped down to the door. Secretly she had been hoping to be a lot more drunk by this time but seeing as she wasn’t (fuelling Serena had taken up much of her effort) she had to depend on juvenile enthusiasm instead.
Speaking of Serena, the girl was right now spying from the upstairs platform, calling out a paranoid “Who is it?” to Tabitha over unfamiliar hysterical screams. Not that Tabitha bothered to reply, she was too busy playing the perfect hostess role.
“Argh! Look at you guys, I don’t believe it; you look like real down and out whores. Your tits, they look so authentic!”
“That’s because they are,” the voice insisted and Serena relaxed immediately.
Champagne, owner of the two breasts that sat as naturally as rocks on her chest; one had to give her credit - Serena decided after popping her head around the corner once more that her tits did go awfully well with the spider web bra and g-string. As for Violet, she wasn’t surprised to hear her blabbing about being one degree away from sex with the little napkin she was wearing.
The Numbers Game Page 19
