by Brian Olsen
They all sat in silence for a moment – it seemed Dakota wasn’t in any hurry to talk.
“Okay,” Alan started. “While you smell your drink, can I tell my story?”
“Did you quit another temp job?” Dakota asked.
This stopped Alan in his tracks. “Uh...kind of?”
“What?” Caitlin asked. “That’s the big emergency? You walked out on your job again?”
Dakota smirked at her. “Did you think it was going to be something else? Really?”
It was true, Alan had a habit of walking out on jobs. Since he had moved to New York almost four years ago, he had held an uncountable slew of minor positions of employment. He usually went back and forth between administrative assistant temp jobs and waiting tables, but he had also handed out fliers, worked the cash register at a bookstore, carried equipment for a photographer at a bar mitzvah, read stories to children at a library, coached high school students for the SAT, and even ran publicity for a show Caitlin was in (nobody came to see it). There had been more, many more, most of which he had difficulty remembering.
He had always secretly felt that he was destined for greatness, but he knew that on top of being unattractively arrogant this was also a terrible cliché, so he never said it out loud. He would start a new job with the greatest of enthusiasm, sure that he had, finally, found a career that would lead to extreme wealth, personal fulfillment and eternal happiness. He was always disappointed. If the job had a set endpoint, and it was only a week away or maybe two, he would usually stick it out, keeping the thought of unpaid bills and unbought booze in his mind as motivation. But if the assignment was scheduled for longer, or was, even worse, open-ended, he would invariably make up some excuse and quit as soon as the inevitable ennui set in. This had not endeared him to employers – he had no usable references and was on his sixth temp agency. His roommates, too, had little sympathy remaining.
“I can not lend you rent again this month, Alan,” Dakota said. “I’m sorry. I’m behind on my student loans and I need to get caught up.”
“I’m fine for money,” Alan protested. “Well, not fine, exactly, but I have rent.”
“What happened?” Caitlin asked. “Did something happen or did you just get bored?”
“I...neither. Well, yes, okay, I got bored, and the people were awful, and the work was killing my soul.”
“Oh, please,” Dakota said. “You’ve said that about every job you’ve ever had. You can’t have much soul left to kill.”
“Guys, come on, I know, I know, I do this all the time, okay, I know that. But really, this time was different. I don’t know how, or why, but...there were these pictures, of the woman I was filling in for, and she was all alone. She does the job, the type of job, that I’m supposed to be aspiring to, but I see this smiling woman on vacation all alone and I just couldn’t bring myself to want that, you know? I mean, why is she smiling? She has nothing to smile about, and neither do I. I’m twenty-six years old and I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. I have no goal. I have no dream. I live day to day and I’m neither particularly sad nor particularly happy, I just exist. My life has no meaning, and I mean that in a very grounded, literal sense. That’s my existential crisis.” He paused. “And I am almost ninety percent sure that I am using that phrase correctly.”
Caitlin reached out and gently took his hands in hers. “I don’t want to make light of what you’re going through, sweetie. I mean, I do, a little, because that’s my nature, but I won’t. Still, haven’t you been going through this as long as I’ve known you? You were complaining about not knowing what you wanted to do with your life when we were in college.”
“That’s my point! I was so jealous of you, you knew from the first day of school that you were going to move to New York and become an actor. And I got through four years with nothing but a useless degree and a mountain of debt, and I graduated still not knowing what I wanted to do so I just...followed you here. You were so certain New York was the ultimate answer for you that I thought maybe it would be for me too. Instead...four years later I’m in the exact same place.”
“You won’t find yourself by following somebody else’s dream,” Caitlin responded. “You need one of your own. I sound like a Disney sidekick but it’s true.”
“You’ve tried a lot of different things,” Mark said. “Like, a lot. Has anything felt even close to right?”
Alan thought. “Not really. No. I guess there have been some jobs that didn’t make me want to kill myself...”
“You can probably have a better career-objective than ‘not suicide inducing,’” Dakota put in. “What do you like doing? Do what you love, right? That’s what they say.”
“I love playing video games, I guess, but I don’t know anything about making them. I like hanging out and drinking, but I tried party promoting and I was terrible.”
“That party was the worst!” Caitlin laughed. “People were staying away because of your promotion! I think that bar is closed now.” She noticed them all staring at her. “That was counterproductive. I apologize.”
“Sorry for the freak-out, guys,” Alan said. “I’ll figure it out. I need to find something that motivates me as much as video games do. Real life should come with achievement badges.”
“It does,” Dakota pointed out. “They’re called paychecks.”
“Ooh! Speaking of,” Caitlin said, “I picked up my shift pay this morning, so I’ve got the next round.”
She started to rise, but Dakota stopped her. “Just a second. Before we get all liquored up, let me tell you about my shitty day. Then we can drink ourselves into unconsciousness.”
Dakota polished off her scotch and launched into her story. She had been complaining to them since her first week about how little there was for her to do at Amalgamated Synergy, but Alan was amazed to hear that doing work seemed to actually be forbidden. As she finished her story, he tried to focus on what was important and slapped a concerned look on his face. Dakota was staring incredulously at him.
“You asshole,” she said. “You’re thinking about how awesome my job sounds, aren’t you?”
“No!” Alan protested, “Not at all! I mean, yes, the whole ‘getting a paycheck for nothing’ thing has its appeal. A little. For me. But I understand why, for you, it’s a bad thing apparently. I totally kind of get that.”
“And,” Caitlin interrupted, punching him in the shoulder, “your boss’s threats, which were the actual point of the story, Alan, are freaking insane.”
“The guy’s a douche,” Mark agreed. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know what I can do,” Dakota said. “I can’t talk to the CFO without Richard finding out and firing me. I could try and ambush him when he’s leaving the building, or I could go to his home, but then I’d look like a crazy person.”
“Can you talk to anybody else?” Caitlin asked. “Somebody besides the...C...what?”
“CFO. Chief Financial Officer.”
“Yeah. Is there anybody easier to get in to see? Someone who isn’t a chief?”
“I thought about that. There’s Richard’s boss, she’s the Senior Vice President for our division. But Richard would find out. He probably has my whole department spying for him by now. And even if I met with her, I don’t see how she couldn’t know about this already. An entire useless department materialized underneath her, she must have noticed. No. Best thing for me to do is to do nothing. I’m going to get very drunk, and on Monday I’ll go back to the office and...try to find something productive to do. I’ll try writing, I could write for a business blog or a magazine or something. That’ll look good on the CV.”
Alan looked at her skeptically. “Are you really going to do that?”
“Fuck no. I’m going to get that asshole. I just need to figure out how. Maybe I should try and meet up with his boss outside of work, find out where she goes to lunch and pretend it’s an accident. It’s worth a shot, she might not know what’s going on – t
he woman’s name is Pickle, for god’s sake, how bright can she be?”
Alan and Caitlin laughed. Mark didn’t. “Uh...what’s her name?”
“Pickle,” Dakota answered. “Can you believe it? Her name’s Elizabeth Dundersfield, but I guess that didn’t scream ‘rich WASP bitch from Connecticut’ quite enough so she has a cutesy nickname too.”
Mark was staring at her with his mouth wide open.
“What? What’s the matter?” she asked him.
“I think,” he said slowly, “I might have a way for you to talk to her without anybody finding out...”
Chapter Seven
David resigning
David Myers cursed loudly as he read the latest email from his immediate supervisor. “Are you kidding me?” he yelled. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He pulled at his thinning brown hair in frustration, a few wispy strands tumbling free.
Grace, his assistant, looked over at him from her desk outside his office on the seventeenth floor of the main New York branch of Amalgamated Synergy. She had been his admin since he had started working in AmSyn’s Mergers and Acquisitions Department almost five years ago, and knew him well enough to be surprised by such a vulgar exclamation from her usually mild-mannered boss.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him, stumbling to his doorway. She had been halfway through changing from her sneakers into her work shoes when he had shouted, and was wearing one of each. It was early on Thursday morning and she had only just arrived.
“Flush it all down the toilet, Grace,” he responded, slamming his laptop shut. “Everything we’ve been working on for the past two days. Throw it all away.”
“We’re not buying Dutton Foster?” she asked him, lowering herself slowly into the seat opposite him.
“Apparently not.”
“Isn’t that a good thing? I thought you were against it.”
“I was,” he said. “I am. That’s not the point!”
“All right. Then tell me what’s the point.”
David felt his blood pressure returning to normal. Grace had that effect on him. She was nearing retirement age, having worked for Amalgamated Synergy for many years. David was only thirty when they had been matched up, and he had been somewhat intimidated to have an assistant with literally decades more experience than him, but Grace acted more like a wise, kindly grandmother than an administrative assistant and David had quickly taken to her. It was an odd business relationship, but it worked for them both.
He took a breath. “I’m angry because of all the wasted work. Tuesday morning I’m told to drop everything and buy some random penny-ante accounting firm nobody’s ever heard of, and that I need to hurry the deal through and have it finalized by the end of the week. The last two nights I’ve worked until almost sunrise, going home to shower and sleep for an hour before coming back here, running on nothing but coffee and energy drinks...”
“I knew I should have stayed!” Grace interrupted, wringing her hands. “I shouldn’t have let you send me home. I would have made sure you were eating properly, at least.”
“I know you would have, I know. It’s fine, it’s not the late nights I begrudge, it’s this email I just got telling me to scrap the whole deal without so much as an explanation. Now I have to call the Dutton Foster people and tell them we’re not going to make them rich after all, sorry, some other time. I just wish I knew what had changed.”
“Maybe someone listened to your concerns?” Grace suggested. “You told them we shouldn’t buy it, didn’t you?”
“I told them that on Tuesday. I’ve told them that every time...” He trailed off.
“Go on,” Grace said.
“You don’t need to hear this again.”
“But you need to say it. Go on.”
“I’ve told them that about almost every deal I’ve brokered lately, Grace. We’re acquiring businesses willy-nilly without time for proper valuation. Some of them are clearly unprofitable or so small they’re not worth the effort, but nobody besides me seems to care.”
“I care if you care, David.”
“But you disagree.”
“Well, what do I know?” she replied, leaning forward to straighten the papers in his inbox. “I’m just an administrative assistant.”
“Oh, that’s bull-hockey, Grace. You’ve worked here since this was plain old American Synergy, you worked on the Kurihara deal, you understand mergers and acquisitions better than half the people here. You can honestly sit there and tell me you haven’t noticed how poorly this department has been managed for the last year?”
Grace reached across the desk and took David’s hands in hers. “Amalgamated Synergy has been very good to me over the years, David. I trust that the people here know what they’re doing, even if I don’t always understand. I know you’ve had one foot out the door for some time now...” He started to protest, but she gripped his hands tighter and cut him off. “I haven’t said anything because I know you didn’t want me to find out, but I’m not a fool. Did you think I wouldn’t figure out that the man from Jensen-Keystone who keeps leaving you messages is a headhunter?”
He squeezed her hands. “You could come with me. They’re letting me choose my own assistant and I got them to match your obscene salary.”
She let go of his hands and sat back. “I appreciate the thought, David, I do. But no. I know you’ve never given much credence to the idea of Amalgamated Synergy as a family, but I’ve worked here my entire adult life, and that’s a considerable length of time. I’m not about to start over now.”
He sighed. “I’ll miss you.”
“When are you leaving?”
“They want me to start August fifth, so there’s time. I haven’t given notice yet. I was hoping to get somebody here to listen to me about all the nonsense going on first, but everyone I talk to about it either feels the same way you do or just can’t seem to understand my point. It’s infuriating.”
“Leave it, David,” she said gently. “Let it go. It won’t be your problem for much longer and in the meantime it’s causing you far too much stress. It’s not healthy.”
“If I could just get one person to understand,” he said, ignoring her. He sat still for a moment, his mind racing. “Hey,” he said at last, “who was that woman who was here a few weeks ago?”
Grace laughed. “You’re going to need to be a little more specific, David.”
“She works here, some other department. Young, African-American, curly hair, pretty.”
“I’m not sure...”
“I only talked to her for a few minutes, I was right in the middle of some other urgent pointless acquisition...what was she talking about?”
David had been too wrapped up in his own worries to pay much attention to the woman at the time, but his brain was telling him that something she said then was relevant to his situation now...if he could only remember.
“She was working on an organizational chart for some reason. She wanted information on recent deals and somebody pointed her towards me. We chatted a bit, I sent her the link to the non-confidential folder on our server, and then I sort of brushed her off.”
“Probably wasn’t important then,” Grace said firmly.
“I think it was important, Grace, that’s why I’m trying so hard to remember. She made an off-hand comment about working on a chart because she had nothing to do...no. Because her whole department had nothing to do, that’s what she said!”
“I’m getting you some breakfast,” Grace said, rising decisively. “You’re getting overexcited, you need some food in you.”
“Grace...” he called after her, but she ignored him as she wobbled off-balance towards the kitchenette. “I can wait until you finish changing your shoes!” he said with a laugh.
He opened up his laptop, excited. He regretted not making the connection at the time, but if another department was having problems maybe there was more going on at AmSyn than just poor decision-making in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department. Maybe this woman co
uld help him understand.
He looked through his calendar, trying to find the woman’s name. She had showed up without an appointment, but Grace always added unscheduled meetings to his calendar retroactively. He browsed through the past couple of weeks, but found no sign of his meeting with her.
A sudden thud drew his attention away from the computer. Grace had dropped a tray of food on his desk.
“Eat,” she commanded.
“Grace, did you...” he started.
“Eat, David! Breakfast first, questions after.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Grace’s expression was humorless, so he knew she meant business. He kept his eyes locked on hers as he shoveled a few spoonfuls of cereal down his throat, then drained the lukewarm cup of tea in two swallows. “Eee-yugh!” he exclaimed. “Grace, that tea is awful! There were chunks in it. What is it?”
“Some fancy new herbal thing somebody bought. There were loose leaves, sorry. It’s caffeine-free, that’s what’s important.” She picked up the tray and started out of the office.
“Grace, wait! When was that woman here? I can’t find her in the calendar.”
Grace paused, her back to him. “I’m sure I added her. I put all of your meetings in, David. Keep looking.” She headed back in the direction of the kitchenette with the tray.
With an exasperated grunt David returned to his calendar. He had gotten back to March but he was sure it hadn’t been that long ago. What the hell was her name?
“Dakota Bell.”
David looked up in surprise at the deep voice. “Mr. Ackerman!”
Walter Ackerman, CEO of Amalgamated Synergy, stood in David’s doorway. Ackerman was a handsome silver-haired titan of business in his late sixties, and David was completely dumbfounded to see him. In David’s five years at AmSyn they had only met twice before in passing, when Mr. Ackerman was meeting with David’s boss, and there was no reason for David to believe that the multi-billionaire had even the slightest inkling of who he was.
