Maliciously Obedient

Mike watched as Lydia’s cheeks flushed, her back straightened, knowing exactly where this was going but still staring Dave down. “And I think,” Dave continued, “in more sophisticated hands, you might have a great idea here. It just don't think it will fly. You’ve micro sliced too much. A smaller boutique firm that wants to take on something like this, a good mid-six figures kind of an account that you could create by going out, doing cold calls, working the network...alright,” Dave mugged, an expression as if he was considering the pros and cons of something.



“But, you know, we’re not one of those. We’re Bournham Industries and I just can’t imagine that Michael Bournham, the ultimate corporate alpha male,” he chuckled, “the kind of guy who would be a hero in one of these cute little romance novels, would go for it.”



A preternatural calmness seeped into Mike’s lungs, over his chest, up his neck, down his biceps and into his forearms, tingling his fingers as he looked at Dave and said, “How do you know what Mike Bournham might be thinking?”



Whatever tone of voice he used, Lydia and Dave snapped to attention and stared at him. Lydia narrowed her eyes, the flush gone from her cheeks, the shake gone from her fingers, her body more composed, turning to face him with her shoulders straight. Mike’s jaw felt about as tight as a reconstructed virgin on her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary – a trend he’d been alarmed to learn from one of his last dates was gaining popularity in his city.



A pinched smile from Dave. “Well, I can’t claim to speak for him, but why don’t you go ask him, Matt?”



“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave,” Mike said. Lydia’s hand flew to her mouth, suppressing a chuckle. Ahh, so she got the cultural reference. Dave clearly didn’t, eyes flashing in anger at her laughter, at Mike’s face. Whatever anger he was transmitting, he realized it wasn’t enough. He had to be...no. Dammit.



He couldn't be Michael Bournham right now.



Role play for the cameras. He had to be Matt Jones; he had to be this asshole’s subordinate. This was the part he was playing. This hidden boss for the sake of the cameras, for the sake of the drama, for the sake of those profits. And even if Dave was wrong, Matt had to back down. Even if Mike wanted to roar up.



Quickly, he calculated the best next step.



Meanwhile, Dave answered, “That’s right. You can’t do that because you don’t have a direct line or even an indirect line to Michael Bournham. I do. I’m the Director of Communications.” He used his hand to gesture for importance, for emphasis, as if somehow that hand using an “okay” sign spun about, the palm being used to emphasize boundaries, as if it made a difference.



As if it made him more important.



Mike wanted to crush this guy like the bug that he was, yet Matt had to defer. That didn’t mean that Mike wouldn’t act later. It just meant that it was time for Matt to be the good guy in a different way.



“This has been a great meeting,” Mike said, speaking with as much sincerity as he could muster. “And Lydia, I would love to watch the rest of the presentation. You’ve got some innovative ideas there but I,” he choked out, “have to defer to the boss – because he’s the boss, right?”



Her eyes sparkled with panic. Mike knew what she was feeling. This was going down, down, down the drain and he flashed back to his own presentation upon which his entire career had hinged. Except that he had been eighteen, nervous, geeky, a code jockey, and telling his dad about the importance of data mining and using these new technology techniques in the mid 90’s to help raise the business profile, to help gain customers and market share and new clients. He hadn’t been taken seriously at first either.



His father's reaction had been the opposite of Dave’s. He’d simply told him go for it. “Do whatever you wanna do kid, just have fun doing it.” Oh, how Mike had – helping his father quintuple the size of the company in a handful of years.



Lydia didn’t have that luxury. He didn’t have the authority as Matt Jones of saying, “Go for it, Lydia. Here’s a budget – run with it and show me what you can do.”



As Mike Bournham he could. Just not yet.



She began stuffing papers and pulling thumb drives out of the company laptop, head down, clearly too upset to speak but remaining professional. She gave Dave a very tight, wide-eyed, overwrought, but restrained look and said, “Thank you for giving me an opportunity to show you what I’m capable of.”



Mike jumped in and said, “Seriously, I’d like to see the rest of that,” gesturing to the thumb drive.



She tossed it to him and he caught it with a practiced hand. “It’s all yours,” she said.



Yeah it is, he thought. It is all mine. But she didn’t know that.



Dave stood, looked at his watch again, pulled out his Blackberry and started thumbing a text. Without even looking at either of them he said, “See you guys later. And by the way, Lydia, I sent you an email and I need you to email that out for me to the Borden account.”



Lydia bit her lip, clenched her fists behind her back, closed her eyes and said in a fake, cheery voice, “Will do Dave. Don’t worry about it. I got it covered.”



“You always do,” he called back, then quietly closed the door.



She was about to break down. The way that her fingers snapped quickly to grab at the papers, how her wrists flicked with the ever-efficient motions that her body used to control what he imagined to be a chaotic mind right now, furious, fuming and indignant. Most of all, hurt.



He reached out and put a gentle hand on top of hers, staring at her face. She paused, then looked up. Oh, man, she was barely holding it together but he had to say something, had to do something – because right now it was either comfort her or kill Dave.



“Lydia, he’s an ass,” he said quietly. Her eyes widened and she looked at him, roaming up and down his face. He could feel her not just surveying him, not just sizing him up, not just figuring out his level of sincerity and whether this was a ploy to get her in bed, but really taking him in.



“You figured that out in your first week, huh, Matt?” she said, a veil floating swiftly down her face, covering everything. She snatched her hand away as if he’d burned her. “You're a real go-getter.”



He held out the thumb drive. “I mean it. I’m going to take a look at this.”



Sweeping all the rest of her papers into her arms, she marched toward the door. “You do that, Matt. Thanks. Appreciate it. Bye.”



A shaky tone in her voice told him that she was trying, desperately, to get somewhere before she broke down in tears. Unctuous Dave, cutting her down so quickly, without a thought, brought her to this. How many times had he done that to people, male or female? As if his brain worked faster than everyone else's, calibrating, measuring, weighing and making a snap decision on the spot, thumbs up or thumbs down, and then not caring about any of the other details that had gone into this distilled moment where he was apparently the master of someone else’s fate. Who lets someone like that thrive in a company?



He did. Mike sighed, the sound more of disgust than relief.



And that...that just went along with being the CEO of a major corporation. Being Matt Jones meant that he got to see how the sausage was made. The inner workings of his company, each worker, each office, all the way down to expensing a travel request. He’d noticed that the people who cleaned the bathrooms were no longer Bournham Industries employees. They were subcontractors, contracted out from a company that Bournham paid.



He had noticed that the bathrooms were clean on the surface, but not really clean if you looked behind the toilets or under the sinks. You saw dirt built up in the corners. Cheap, scratchy paper towels and toilet paper, filth gunked up around the nuts and bolts that anchored the toilets to the ground, and a general sense of a rush job prevailed. It made him wonder what else he was missing.



Funny how he wasn’t a detail kind of guy. Not anymore. The programmer who used to fret over a misplaced comma now found himself noticing all sorts of specifics, from the weird scent in his office to the nonsensical supply ordering system that his procurement office had where, in order to have a corporate account to buy supplies, you had to go to the procurement website, download a form, print it, sign it, have your supervisor sign it, and then fax or scan or email it and send it back to procurement for them to open an online account for you.



These were just details, but they were important details, things he should have been paying attention to long ago. He wondered how many Daves were there, really, in his company. And how many Lydias? Because what he needed were more Lydias. More people with spirit. More people with verve, with that go-to-it, can-do attitude – and he needed to weed out the Daves.



Jonah came to mind and he found himself appreciating this entire, bizarre scenario because it meant that he really did have more insight. Not just into Bournham Industries and not just as the CEO, but as Mike Bournham. Not the media darling, the silver-haired playboy, known by his signature phrase that had popped into his mind and out of his mouth (“bespoke or be naked”? Ugh), unfortunately, on Oprah. As he looked down at his wingtips paired with cheap dockers, a business shirt and a jacket of undetermined fiber, what he really wanted to be wearing was a pair of shorts, some Merrills, and an old t-shirt, and be hiking in the woods.



He hadn’t been on a hike in years unless it was to do a business deal. His idea of outdoor exercise these days was golf. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t eighteen holes of tapping the ball around and following up with drinks. It was cold, hard, calculated figures in his head, discussions with clients and with competitors in many cases, all to get the upper hand. Maybe Dave wasn’t so different from Mike Bournham then, doing all the same things and stepping on all the little people who were in his path.



Watching it happen, though, in slow motion second by second, in real-time, and seeing what it did to someone he was coming to care for meant only one thing. He needed to go find Lydia.



No, it meant two things.



He needed to fire Dave.



Way back in eighth grade, Lydia had asked Joe Stillman to go to the Valentine’s Day dance with her. She was thirteen and had a mouth full of silver and a little bit of pudge around her waist that later became more pudge, and a bright smile, with an eager attitude of optimism. It was a Sadie Hawkins dance, so girls had to ask guys and Sandy and Pete had spent the better part of two weeks helping to shore up her confidence because of course Joey Stillman would say “yes”.



Of course he would.



Walking down the hallway to her office, holding it together so she could go find some quiet little dark cave burrowed out in the middle of steel and carpet corporate land, this moment reminded her of how it felt after Joey had pointed at her and laughed in front of all his friends and said, “Why would I want to go to a dance with you, Lydia chlamydia?” How she’d had to run past all the other kids at recess, lined up and laughing at her, sprinting as fast as she could for the safety of the girls room.



Hold it together Lydia, hold it together, she told herself and overall, she was. She was breathing in, she was breathing out, left foot forward, right foot forward. Body was in check, her emotions were held at bay, she was carrying her professional supplies and had the countenance of someone who was composed, who was calm, who had had a meeting that went poorly, right?