Turncoat
Nick
The news never broke. I was waiting for my phone to explode with phone calls. I was even prepared for the unflattering yearbook photos of me as a teenager for the sake of twisting the blade, but it didn’t happen.
I got to the hotel after everything fell apart at Ellie’s shop, but there was only one hastily-penned message waiting for me at the desk.
“Marly called. Says it’s urgent.”
Twice in one day, dealing with Marly: That was too much. The next day passed, and even if she had the secret to existence, I wasn’t ready to hear her voice. It takes about a week of hearing every day how I’m already a ghost at my own company on top of the fact Ellie won’t return my calls before I pick up the phone and punch in Marly’s number.
“You’re an idiot.” That’s how she greets me.
“I was right on the verge of starting to miss you again,” I chuckle. “You called,” I say. “What do you want?”
“It’s not going to matter now,” she says. “You blew it by blowing me off.”
“Oh come on,” I say as I look at myself in the hotel bathroom mirror, searching for my self-respect. I haven’t spotted it yet, but I’ll keep looking. “You can’t stay mad at me,” I tell her. “Now is this actually important or did you just want to rehash everything for the millionth time?”
“It’s good to see you’re taking this seriously,” she says. “If you took your company seriously, you would have returned the call within five seconds of getting the message. I was even kind enough to call the hotel so I wouldn’t chance to interrupt whatever stupid gesture you were in the middle of with your stranger.”
“If this is another conversation where you go on and on about how I’m betraying the soul of the company, I think I can make do with the ones we’ve already had,” I tell her.
“Funny you should mention the soul of the company,” she says. “First off, there’s no way you can save your position. It’s not going to happen. Maybe if you’d called me back earlier, we could have done something, but that’s done and over and we need to start looking ahead.”
“Ahead to what?” I ask. “And what do you mean I can’t save my position?”
“It was never about the girl,” she says. “It was never even about taking the company to Mulholland. They’ve been looking for a way to get you out of there for years, Nick.”
“Is there a part of this conversation I didn’t have figured out the first time we sat down in the room with them?” I ask.
“You know not everyone’s been on board with your approach to your employees,” she says.
“This again?” I ask. “We’re a multibillion dollar company. Everyone in that room could retire off the salary they make in six months. The reason we’re so successful is people who come to work with us want to keep working with us.”
“Yeah,” she says, “I saw the employee training video. You came into money so fast you never learned to think the way they think and they hate you for it, Nick. They hate it for what they think it’s done to the company and they hate it because it hasn’t blown up in your face yet.”
“So it’s about profits?” I ask. “Of course it is, everything’s about profits. They think if we drop employee pay, that’s somehow going to—”
“They don’t want to drop employee pay, Nick,” she says. “Jesus, how did you ever get by without me standing next to you? They want to lay off everyone and move the company overseas. You have to start thinking like them or you’re never going to be able to beat them. If they think fifteen bucks an hour for the guy that sprays the plants is too much, why do you think minimum wage would sound better? Once you’re gone, so is every one of the employees that helped build Stingray.”
“You want to know what I find most surprising about that?” I ask.
Marly sighs. “Nick, if you’re actually going to do something about this, we really don’t have time to—”
“We have a guy who goes around the office spraying the plants, and yet I have never seen him,” I say. “I have a warneck dracaena, a weeping fig, and an umbrella tree in my office, but I have never once seen the guy that comes around to water the plants. I knew we had a guy because we asked about it, but the guy must be a ninja or something.”
“Are you done?” she asks.
“So they want to move the company overseas,” I say. “Isn’t there something in the board’s bylaws forbidding such an action?”
“Nick, it won’t matter—” Marly starts.
“I helped write the bylaws; you’d think I’d be more certain about that,” I muse. “They might be able to kick me out, but they can’t move the company out of the country. You’re a lawyer. If I remember right, you were there when we finalized the language. Are you telling me there’s a loophole?”
“It’s less of a loophole and more of an enormous gap in the fence,” she says. “The bylaws state that amendment of said bylaws could only happen with both the unanimous consent of the board and the approval of the CEO. They’re not mad you want to move the company’s headquarters, Nick. They’re mad you won’t move it further.”
“If I’m not the CEO, the bylaws may as well not exist,” I say. It helps to say the words out loud. “What was the last employee count?” I ask.
“Headquarters, nationwide or worldwide?” she asks.
“Are they just laying off US workers?” I ask.
“It won’t matter,” she says. “If anyone in our stores or factories overseas keeps their job, they won’t keep getting the same pay and benefits as their American counterparts. Basically, everyone outside of upper management will make as little as possible. This is the way it works in every other company, Nick. Now, are you ready to get over your stupid pride and your blind idealism and start listening to me?”
I pace slowly into the main area of my hotel room. “I’m listening now,” I tell her. “What do we do?”
“First off, you need to hire me back and in my old position, otherwise I won’t have the authority to do a lot of the things I’ll need to do if this is going to work,” she says. “You can keep Malcolm on if you want. He’s a bit cuddly for my tastes, but he’s not totally incompetent.”
I sit on the edge of the bed. “You’re asking me to trust—”
“I’m not asking,” Marly interrupts. “I’m demanding that you trust me. If that doesn’t happen, there’s nothing I can do for you. I crossed the line spilling the beans about Ellie’s little shopping trip, but you know I’ve bled for this company just as much as you have.”
I think about it a moment. At this point, what do I really have to lose?
“All right,” I say, “you’re hired. What now?”
“Now, you come back to New York and our little cabal can have its first meeting,” she says. “In addition to you and me, I think we can get by with just Malcolm and about half a dozen lawyers. We don’t want too many people in on this.”
“Why don’t we just leak this is what the board is trying to do?” I ask. “The employees wouldn’t stand for it. Why keep them out of the loop?”
“The employees don’t matter,” she says. “They matter to you and they matter to me and maybe a few other people with minimal roles in upper management, but you break the news and all the shareholders are going to hear is that record profits are headed into their bank accounts. You’ll get plenty of sympathy from the public and even some outrage from the employees, but in the end, all anyone’s going to remember is that your company went back on its platform. They’ll hate you for a while, but the only people who are even going to care in a year are the ones taking their fancy new yachts out for a spin.”
“I can’t go to New York,” I tell her. “Not right now.”
She snaps, “Nick, this isn’t the time—”
“I’ll fly you all out here,” I tell her. “Say it’s something about the Mulholland office, that we’re having trouble getting permits or something.”
“Didn’t they finish building the thing yet?” she asks.
“They’re working on it,” I tell her. “Just make something up and make it good. I want you, Malcolm, and however many lawyers—ones we can trust—it’ll take to fix this, and I want you sitting across from me before the sun goes down.”
“I’ll make the calls,” she says.
I look out the window of my hotel room at the town that hated me, then loved me, and now wants to punish Ellie for having known me. “While you’re at it,” I tell her, “maybe you can start thinking of any last-ditch efforts to save my job.”
Her laughter isn’t a comforting sound.
It’s only a few hours before Marly’s leading what she called our little cabal into the hotel. I tell the few people still working in the conference room to take the day and we sit down together.
“Nick, I think you know everyone here,” Marly says. “I’m sure it won’t surprise you to find out there are no secrets between anyone in this group. You’re among friends.”
“How do we keep them from moving the company?” I ask.
“Frankly,” Shel Avery, one of the only lawyers in the room whose name I can remember offhand, starts, “we can’t keep them from moving it.”
I remember Shel’s name because at the very first company party we ever had, she ended up wasted and puking all over the front of Daniel Reeves’s formalwear. It was love at first vomit. I don’t think I ever liked that smarmy bastard.
“Then why are we sitting here?” I ask.
“What she means,” Marly says, “is that we don’t have executive powers and once you’re gone, we can’t prevent the board from choosing whoever they want to replace you.”
“Oh,” I say. “That sounds a lot better.”
“Will you shut up and listen instead of blurting out your stupid comments for once?” Marly asks with a beautiful smile cemented to her face.
The lawyers try to keep their eyes from popping out of their heads, and even Malcolm slinks down a little in his seat.
“Come on, people,” I say. “This is grownup time. What are you telling me that I’m not getting?”
“What we have to do is replace you with someone who shares your opinion on moving the company to a low-wage, low-working-standards model,” Marly says. “We need someone who’d be just as outraged as we are.”
“You just said we couldn’t do that,” I observe.
“There’s one person they couldn’t overrule to replace you,” Marly says. “Even if they fire you, he can still take the company if he wants it.”
“Jacque,” I mutter. “It’s not going to work,” I tell Marly. “He was pretty clear how much interest he had in the company when he sold all his shares after we started making a profit and quit.”
“I think this might change his mind,” Marly says. “He believed everything you believed once. Don’t let whatever history the two of you have together get in the way of saving thousands and thousands of jobs.”
“I don’t know what bad blood you think there is between him and I, but that was never the problem,” I tell her. “He never wanted anything to do with the business itself. The last thing he said to me before he left for good was that he’d only stuck around that long to make sure I wasn’t going to let the board do what they’re trying to do now.”
“That’s kind of the point, wouldn’t you say?” Marly asks.
“I imagine he sees the news just like anyone else,” I respond. “If he was going to come in and be hero of the day, he would have made a phone call by now. I’m assuming that hasn’t happened to anyone in this room?” I ask. “He sure hasn’t contacted me.”
“We need you back in New York,” Marly says. “He’s still in Manhattan. You need to go talk to him and let him know what these people are trying to do.”
“You think I can convince him that easily?” I ask.
“You’re the one that convinced him to take the company public in the first place and nobody else could get him to sit down and talk about it,” Marly says.
I glance at the lawyers and I glance at Malcolm. Even though Marly’s only been back at the company a few hours, the people, at least the ones in this room, look to her for guidance.
“What about you?” I ask.
“I’m not Jacque,” she says. “He’s the only one. He’s one of the founders and the wording’s right there in the bylaws.”
“I can’t leave yet,” I say.
“This can’t wait,” Marly says. “The board is already drafting a letter to the shareholders requesting their support in having you removed on the grounds of incompetence. They send that letter and Jacque’s not ready to step in, that’s the ballgame.”
“Give me the night,” I say. “I’ll try calling him after we’re done here and I’ll get on a plane in the morning, but I can’t leave tonight.”
Things may already be over between Ellie and me, but there are some things I need to tell her before I give up entirely.
The skin on one side of Marly’s cheek sucks in as she bites it from the inside. She doesn’t say anything, but she nods.
“Can the rest of you give us the room for a minute?” I ask. “Thank you all for coming out. I appreciate it. We’re going to do everything we can to keep the company right where it is.”
I stand and shake everyone’s hand before they file out of the room. As soon as it’s just Marly left in the room with me, I resume my seat.
“Why didn’t you do it?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” she returns.
I say, “Don’t do that. When you left my office that night, you told me you were on your way to make your phone calls, and I know it wasn’t the board that held back the information. You never told them. I want to know why.”
“When I found out what they want to do—” she says.
“I’m serious, stop it,” I tell her. “You couldn’t have found out the board wanted to fire everyone and move the company overseas before you had a chance to make a few phone calls. Either you’ve got a relationship with the people on the board to a degree I don’t know about, or you never called them in the first place.”
Marly stands and adjusts the jacket of her pantsuit. “It didn’t feel right,” she says. “As pissed as I was—as angry as I still am you dropped this present in the board’s lap—I guess I realized that you can’t fix one wrong with another. Just get your head out of your ass and do what you need to do while you still can. If you can agree to that, you won’t hear another word about Ellie from me.”
Now all I have to do is get Ellie to speak to me for five seconds. The way it’s going so far, though, I have a better shot convincing Jacque to give up his life as a playboy.
* * *
“I’m not talking to you,” Ellie says through the crack in her front door.
“I know I shouldn’t have gone off like Naomi like that, but something’s happened. I need to tell you a few things,” I say. “If you decide you’re done after you’ve heard what I have to say, that’s fine. There’s some stuff I need to get off my chest, and I don’t want to do it through the crack in your doorway.”
“What stuff?” she asks.
“I’ll tell you here if that’s what has to happen,” I tell her, “but I kind of had a whole thing planned out.”
“You’re kidding, right?” she asks.
“It’ll all make sense,” I tell her. “I have to leave for New York in the morning, and I might not come back as CEO. Before anything else happens, though, I need to do this.”
I can hear her sigh through the gap, the brass chain between the door and jamb pulled taut. “What did you have in mind?” she asks.
“We have the dinner we never had that first night I asked you out,” I tell her.
She waits for a beat before answering. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you apologize to Naomi,” she says.
I hope she can’t see me gritting my teeth when I say, “Of course. I think that’s only right.”
The door closes. After the sound of metal sliding on metal, it opens again, this time, all the way.
“She’s in her room,” Ellie says. “She locked herself in there when she looked through the peephole and saw it was you standing there.”
I force a smile. “I’ll knock on her door,” I tell her.
In about twenty minutes, she’ll know why this is so hard for me.
I knock on the door across the hall from Ellie’s.
“What do you want?” Naomi’s voice calls from inside the room.
“Naomi,” I say, “it’s Nick.”
“Go away!” she shouts, and I try to keep my eyes from rolling.
“I’m sorry for speaking to you the way I did,” I call through the door. “It was wrong of me, and I apologize.”
Naomi’s door swings open, and she’s standing there beaming. “You mean it?” she asks. “You’re not just saying that to get back in Ellie’s pants or anything?”
This is one of the many reasons it’s impossible for me to take Naomi seriously.
“I mean it,” I tell her. “I was upset, but that’s no excuse for acting the way I did.”
My upper lip twitches when she pulls me in for a hug, but I go with it.
“Maybe you could make it up to me somehow,” Naomi says, and I look at Ellie.
“Yeah,” Ellie says, “we’re done here. Let me grab my jacket.”
Ellie and I arrive at Carne Celeste and the way the hostess is eyeing me, I’m nervous about what’s going to come with our food. Still, she manages a smile and escorts us to an empty table near the back of the restaurant.
By the time Ellie and I sit, the hostess is halfway back to the front of the restaurant, and suddenly this is all too real.
“Okay,” she says, “we’re here. What did you want to tell me?”
“I’m sorry, would you mind if we just talk for a few minutes?” I ask. “I just need a few moments to build up to it.”
Ellie raises an eyebrow. She says, “Okay, but I hope you know you’re paying for dinner.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say quickly, my throat devoid of moisture. “Of course, I’ve got dinner.”
She cracks a smile. “What do you want to talk about before we can talk about what we’re here to talk about?” she asks.
I make decisions every day that affect a lot of people, but sitting here in this red booth with its splitting vinyl upholstery, I don’t think I can remember my name. I know it has something to do with Rome and the Second Punic War. Maybe we can talk about that.
“Did you know,” I start, “the Roman General Cornelius Scipio was the one who finally defeated Hannibal when it looked like Carthage was poised to conquer the empire?”
How I thought that was a good topic for conversation is beyond me.
“Yeah,” she says. “I took history in high school.”
“Everyone remembers the crossing of the Alps, but most people don’t remember that it was by using Hannibal’s strategy that Scipio was able to defeat the Carthaginian finally,” I continue. Why am I continuing?
Thankfully, the waiter comes over to the table before I have to explain why I’m going through ancient Roman history. Yeah, it’s my last name, but come on, Nick.
“Have you had an opportunity to look at the menus, or do you need a few minutes?” the young, pimpled man with the paper hat says.
“You know,” Ellie says, “I haven’t even had a chance to look at the menu.”
“I’ll have the veggie enchilada with the green sauce,” I tell the waiter. “Could I get that with sour cream on the side instead of on top? Also, a side of black beans instead of refried, if you don’t mind, and maybe some shredded lettuce in a bowl?”
I don’t look at Ellie. That was me testing the waters.
“I’ll have the same,” Ellie says slowly. The waiter walks away, writing, and Ellie leans over the table. “That is what I’ve ordered every time I’ve been in here since I was like five years old,” she says.
“I know,” I tell her.
“What do you mean you know?” she asks.
“This is what I wanted to talk to you about,” I start.
“What, that you’re having me followed? Did you hire a private investigator or did you just bribe someone in town to spill a few of my likes and dislikes?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her. “I know it the same way I know you never wanted to work at Rory’s Treasures. A long time ago, at least, you wanted to be a teacher, but the way Grant has a stranglehold over the hiring in this town like it’s sixteenth-century Puritan America and everyone wants to be a blacksmith, you always knew it wasn’t going to happen. Still, you’re never going to leave Mulholland because this is where your parents are and where your grandparents are. You like new experiences, maybe more than Naomi, but when it comes right down to it, you’re a sucker for tradition.”
“How do you know all this?” she asks.
“I know it the same way I know you always wanted to have dinner on some exotic beach, that you wanted to drink champagne as the sun set over the water before you’d ever tasted alcohol,” I tell her.
“Stop,” she says.
I continue, “I know it the same way I am aware that in eighth grade, you once—”
“I said stop!” Ellie shouts as her fist comes down hard on the table. Her hands go up to her face and then she’s getting out of her chair.
“Ellie, please,” I say, getting up from the booth to follow her. “Just let me explain.”
She’s out of here so fast I can’t tell her how when I was in eighth grade, I was sick of moving from town to town only to be picked on by a revolving cast of assholes. I can’t tell her that when I was at my lowest, that when I about to end it all before my life had even begun, that she’s who saved me even though we’d never had a conversation before that day
She’s out of here so fast I can’t tell her how she saved my life or how, if it weren’t for her, I never would have had the motivation to work as hard as I did to get as far as I’ve gotten.
I don’t get the chance to tell her that I am where I am, the good parts at least, because of those two weeks back in the eighth grade when she became the first friend I ever had. I wish I could have at least told her how gutting it was when my dad came home with new orders and why I had to leave before she could have known how completely she changed everything.
So I don’t wait for the morning. If she hasn’t figured out exactly who I am yet, she will soon enough. Maybe she’ll call, but probably she won’t. If I’d told her at the start, it might have been different.
All I know is when I get on the plane, I’m not thinking about my company.