Damon Won't Stop Believin' (Cont.)

Part One of this story appeared on Jan. 13, 2011.

Separate Ways

Ann Tilden Smith had carved a moment out of her breakfast schedule to give her husband his quarterly performance review. Now the polite clapping of the Golf Channel was the only sound breaking the mausoleum-like silence of the kitchen. Jim stared into his bowl of cereal. Ann nibbled her Power Bar and put straight edges on the stack of pages between them.

            “I know you’re disappointed,” she began.

            “You gave me a ‘Room for Growth,’ Ann,” he snapped. “So, yes, I’m a little disappointed.”
            An anguished moan came from the TV.
            “I’m your husband, for Christ’s sake, not one of those drones you order around at work.”

He looked at the dingy carpet beneath his feet and felt the chill their walls were too thin to keep from slipping in. They’d begun renting the crumbling bungalow from Ann’s learning group leader when Ann had started graduate studies in business administration at USC. It was five long years ago that she’d finished at the top of her class.

“This isn’t your office, Ann. This is our home,” he said. “Such as it is.”

Ann sought to assuage Jim’s fears. “You know you’re my top direct report,” she said.

Jim reddened and kicked at the rug. “I love you, too. But, see, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Take off the suit for a second. Put down the executive coaching manual. Jesus, can’t you just be you?”

“This is me being me. Myself, rather.”

“No, this is you being them.”

A cheer erupted as a putt found the cup.

“Besides,” Jim said after a moment, “my cleaning of the car port on Saturday gave me reason to expect an ‘Ahead of the Pack.’”

This managing was going to take more than one minute. “You crushed that initiative, honey,” Ann said. “But there’s a gigantic golf-swing analyzer taking up our living room. Last night we had microwaved noodles again for supper. On my night to cook, we had a nice salad.”

            “You bought that salad.”

            Ann shook her head. Jim knew better than this. When receiving challenging news, the winning executive never wanted to appear antagonistic. He or she nodded, thanked those speaking for their input, and announced that a correcting “solve” would be quickly rolled out. With a sigh, Ann affixed her signature to the last page of the deck.

            “Don’t think I won’t file an appeal,” Jim said, scooting his chair away from her and closer to the television.

            Ann had three briefcases stacked in descending order of size at the door. She strapped them across her shoulders, saddling up.

“Where are you going?” asked Jim.

            “To work, Jim. Someone’s got to make a decent living around here.”

            “It’s Saturday, Ann.”

            She checked her BlackBerry. “Shit,” she said. “What am I going to do now?”

           

Ann’s announcement that she’d ordered a bagel tray from the cafeteria was a big win at work on Monday. Everyone to whom she hard-lined had shown up. It was the perfect event for the showcasing of her robust team-building skills.

            “Beat it, Opie,” she said, eyeing a man she didn’t recognize. The bespectacled little fellow looked at her with pupils the size of saucers. He helped himself to a double dose of cream cheese and scurried down the hall.

            She elbowed Damon in the ribs. “That guy’s not from our business unit,” she said. “I saw him on floor 23 at Natalie’s going away. And I saw him on 31, at the baby shower for Meagan.”

            “’Vulture,’” answered Damon, rubbing his side. “A tech from the I.T. group. I guarantee you he’s never even spoken to either woman. Or any woman, for that matter.”

            Ann, with slits for eyes, watched the man skid around a corner and out of sight. “I.T., eh? Their offices are across the street."

            “They make regular rounds throughout the building, swooping down on food set out for meetings, raiding candy jars. I’ve heard stories of their picking a whole conference room table clean in a matter of minutes.”

“Not on my cost center,” Ann said.

Damon couldn’t explain the emotions tearing through his body. There was the pain in his side where Ann had jabbed him. For a woman just over 5 feet in height, she packed quite a wallop. But there was something else, too. Damon felt warm all over.

Little Ann Tilden Smith was big news at Alliance Entertainment. When she’d applied, the human resources recruiter had only cracked her novella-length resume, scanning just the page chronicling her birth, before pronouncing her a“hi-po.” This was the term Human Resources workers used to separate the sheep from the goats; to flag persons of high potential. Even so, the recruiter had had only lower-level management positions to offer.

            “Not to worry,” she said, grasping the signed contract and shaking Ann’s hand, “I have no doubt you’ll make vice president by cocktail hour.”

Ann had risen four pay levels in as many months. It was unprecedented, meteoric. But she had been stuck for a year, now, at director level, the rung on the corporate ladder just below that of vice president. She commanded a high six-figure income, received a substantial yearly bonus and, when flying to meet business partners or re-charge creative batteries on junkets to Rio or Rome, never got near an airport or four-star hotel without a company-paid limousine’s whisking her there.

The humiliation was killing her.

Damon’s eyes welled with tears. By God, he loved this brave woman! How did she stand it? He promised himself he would see her avenged. Even though his computing system was due for an upgrade, he vowed that the scavenging I.T. tech would never again hunt these halls.

            It would turn out to be of little matter for the analyst, for there were thousands of other corridors from which to choose. The Alliance Entertainment company was, in reality, some 300 companies rolled into one. Its influence was literally worldwide, felt as far east of its Los Angeles headquarters as Kyoto and as far west as Osaka – cities situated a pebble’s toss from each other at the other end of the globe. The sun never sets on Alliance empire, the company boasted, and for the second time in history such a thing had been said and was true.

            There were movie studios, television and radio networks, a consumer products division, recording companies, sports teams, cruise lines and restaurants. Were its many communication satellites dispatched to the same reach of outer space at the same time, a goodly portion of the sun could be plunged into eclipse.

            It had a theme park doing boffo business in every country with a stable democracy. But even its parks in Sarevjo and the Gaza Strip did well.

            A workforce totaling 150,000 happy souls, assets in excess of $600 trillion, a name synonymous with all that is good, honest and true – and at the head of it all sat a kindly honey badger named Gus.

            Gus was not a real badger, of course. A real badger would have run the company into the ground moments after incorporation. Gus was a cartoon character, an entertainer, the star of screens both big and small for more than half a century. He had a tender, generous way that children loved. He would not cheat. He never lied. And for this parents loved him, too.

            He was loyal to his pals, a winsome crew that included a misunderstood great white shark and a stinky athletic-sock puppet shunned by others. He had had the same girl for 50 years, a comely musk ox named Francine, and had gone no further with her than to peck her sweetly on the jowl.