Partners: Part Two

Part One of this story appeared on Feb. 14, 2011.

The day Chelsea turned 40, her co-workers crowded around her cubicle to sing. They even presented her with a cake they’d had decorated to read, “Things only go downhill from her.”

“It’s supposed to say ‘here,’” they explained, glaring at the temp they’d sent to pick up the dessert.

“It’s perfect. I love it,” she said. Then the birthday girl made her wish. It was the same incantation she recited to herself every year. As she prayed this time, however, tears appeared at the corners of her eyes. She’d knocked down but one flame before the screech of the Old Vulture came ringing down the hall.

            “Secretary!”

            Chelsea pushed apologetically through the gathering

“Doors,” Winterstone bellowed, motioning for her to exit and, in so doing, wrestle closed the great mahogany planks.

            She returned to her desk to find her friends had fled. Her cake was running with wax. Chelsea blew out the rest of her candles. She began gathering up the unused plates, napkins and forks.

            That night, with a long holiday weekend stretching empty and vast before her, Chelsea allowed herself to feel what she told herself would only be a few minutes of self pity. She put on some Sarah McLachlan. She pulled a bottle of pinot grigio from the fridge. She plopped herself on the floor and ate every last bite of the cake she’d been given that morning, candle wax and all.

            The pastry turned out to be as prescient as it was delicious. Indeed, hours later, it seemed that things really did only go downhill from her. Even with vision blurred, she could see the wish she’d made that afternoon wasn’t going to come true. The fire trucks weren’t coming. There would be no policeman at her door. Superman was dead.

            She raised her empty bottle. “To you, Mr. Winterstone, you horrible old toad,” she announced. “And me.”

The morning after the long weekend, Chelsea didn’t feel much like flying up any staircases. She was on her way to the elevator when she spied the Old Man’s Wall Street Journal at reception, unclaimed. Odd, she thought. He was in each day just after dawn. The one thing he did himself was to pick up the paper.

            Stranger still, when she got upstairs, Winterstone’s den was dark. Its draperies were drawn.

            She put down her coffee to check her BlackBerry. Nothing. As much as the prospect of the Iron Horse’s taking an unannounced sick day cheered her, she knew such an idea was preposterous. Winterstone hadn’t missed a chance to put in his 12 or 13 hours for decades. In Chelsea’s own tenure with the man, he’d survived three massive heart attacks by simply shouting them into submission and, in each case, been in by breakfast. Yes, this was most puzzling, indeed.

            Just as intriguing was the Journal headline she noticed: “Lightning Storm Pounds Regatta: Leading Financial Figure Struck, Missing.” I hope it was him, she thought, scanning the lead but reading no farther. “A story that lurid seems better suited for the Los Angeles Times,” she said, pleased with herself. Switching from morning zoo radio to NPR for the drive to work was beginning to pay off.

            Chelsea picked up her coffee, tucked the paper beneath her arm and stepped into the void. She was making her way toward the curtains behind her boss’s desk when she was assaulted by the stench of sulfur. No, it was worse than that. What she smelled was the odor of something like burned flesh.

            A figure moved in the inkiness before her. She froze in her tracks. Not a foot from Chelsea’s face, someone or something was breathing. Her hand darted out for Winterstone’s antique desk lamp. To her horror, she found she grasped not the fixture’s chain, but the clammy hand of another.

            Fire roared through her veins. She pulled. By God, she would see her attacker. Suddenly, the suite burst into light and there was the Great Man himself, seated behind his desk in a dollar-green leotard and Mexican wrestler’s mask.

            “Secretary,” he croaked.

            “Holy Christ!” Chelsea cried, leaping into the air. She spun, sent a roundhouse kick across the width of the desk, and landed. The CFO tumbled backward, head over heels. Coffee flew everywhere.

Chelsea scurried back out to her cubicle, returning with fistfuls of napkins. She dropped to her knees and began dabbing madly at the carpet. Winterstone rolled about the floor, making gurgling sounds.

            “Sir!” Chelsea shouted. “My language. I am so sorry.”

            Winterstone fought the chair off his back and struggled to his knees. “Your language? Dear girl,” he said, breath ragged, “you laid your boot to me.”

            “Well, you startled me,” she fired back, as unable to rein in her tongue as she had been her foot. “Why were you sitting in the dark, dressed as a pickle?”

            There came no apology, of course. There never had. He made no answer. Gradually, though, Chelsea became aware of a whimpering. She crawled quietly to the desk and peeked above its edge. Winterstone was seated once again. He had his big, currency-colored head in his hands and was rocking back and forth. He smelled something awful.

            Chelsea ducked back down. This couldn’t be happening. She read her job description daily and was completely sure this, whatever this was, wasn’t in it. She pondered backing out. Even on all fours, she reckoned she could cross the office’s Berber expanse in little more than seconds. The trip downstairs to Human Resources wouldn’t take much longer.