Day 136: Sunday, February 21, 2010: You like to spell fat “p-h-a-t”, just to feel more hip. Lots and lots of hip.
Severance Pay: Continued from Day 135 . . .
“There’s a woman here to see you, sir.”
“Does she have an appointment?” Rourke checked scrawled notes on his desk calendar.
“It doesn’t matter, sir.”
Rourke froze for a second, not quite certain what he just heard.
“Listen up, Doreen . . .”
His office door opened, and Janelle walked in wearing her Boston Bruins jersey and taking a seat, maintaining the most stunning, radiant smile he’d ever seen.
Rourke’s hand slowly hung the phone up.
“Do I know you?”
“The meeting was hectic.”
“Meeting.”
“Preston College. Contracts and due diligence.”
“Of course.”
“Of course, what?”
“Of course I remember you.”
“We never met.”
“Huh?”
“I wasn’t there. It was too hectic.”
“Oh.”
“Uncle Fiddles.”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“What did he do now?”
“He lost you the contract.”
Rourke slowly reached for his phone and punched a number, never taking his eyes off Janelle, and loving every second.
“In my office Rick, and don’t grab a coffee on the way.”
He hung up the phone, Janelle asking, “Rick from Survey.”
“This is his boy.”
“Yes,” Janelle said. “Speaking of . . . is the fat perverted fuck in today?”
“Oh.”
“You have an outside shot, if I can talk to him.”
“Really.”
“The more the merrier.”
Rourke stared, uncertain.
“You were going to tell me he was out, but now you have to backtrack, and it hurts your little head. Lies are so much easier.”
“I’m sorry. Who are you?”
“Janette Preston.”
He had trouble speaking, saying, “Of Preston College.”
“The middle kid.”
“Yes. I know there’s three of you.”
“There’s five.”
“So you can’t be in the middle.”
“I have a half brother.”
Rourke stared as Janelle continued. “You know about my father, though; from the Irish American Club in Glastonbury.”
“That was horrible, what happened.”
“Well . . . you shouldn’t have a refrigerator in a small plane like that, when you’re an alcoholic.”
“He was so excited when he got the pilot’s license.”
“Bought everyone drinks, anyway.”
“The man loved to drink.”
“And from what he used to tell me, your brother followed in my old man’s footsteps.”
“Sean.”
“That was from the army, wasn’t it? Army Rangers?”
Something flashed across Rourke’s eyes, like he was just hit in the head.
“It’s why you have to lie so much now, trying to be the legend that was Sean.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yeah,” Janelle was holding his eyes with her own. “You built this beautiful tapestry of lies starting to bury everything around you, and now people are finding out, and sleep comes hard at night, as your German wife cries alone in the basement.”
There was a knock on the door that Rourke didn’t acknowledge, and Rick Sanforth stepped gingerly in, afraid to enter without permission.
“Or is that a dungeon?” Janelle asked, turning from the dumbfounded manager to address Rick. “Tell Doreen we want to see Uncle Fiddles right now, and take a seat over there in the corner.”
Rick turned back to Doreen and repeated the request, and then took his seat as Rourke turned toward him like a faltering robot.
“How you doing?” Rick asked, turning very slowly from the fizzling manager to face Janelle.
“Have we met before?”
Janelle stunned him with her smile. “Preston College.”
“I remember you!”
“No,” Rourke said, competing for her attention now. “She was never at the meeting.”
Janelle went to work on both men as a waddling shadow found its way slowly to Rourke’s office, sending every other employee’s eyes down to pretend they were working on something – anything – as he ambled on by like some kind of crooked-beaked vulture. With a mind so foul and twisted, Fiddles would prove to be Janelle’s biggest challenge yet; there were just too many issues and avenues to exploit.
By the time she strolled out of Victory, it was as if a powerful virus had been introduced to a very large organism, injecting genetic material into exposed cells to undergo lyses and infect the entire system. When she casually walked out of that office and pumped a small fist, three people were exploding with radical ideas, and by the time she got home, that number had increased to thirty.
Victory Engineering was officially infected.
To be continued . . .
