Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch (22 page)

I delete a number and something goes wrong with Judd’s formula. A whole column of numbers gets replaced with the message “VALUE!!!!!###.”

I give up and go home for the weekend.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It’s already been more than three weeks since Sam and I last had sex. But I’ve decided to tough it out. If I’m a Unicorn at the office, I can be one at home too. It’s her turn to take the lead, to demonstrate some interest. Of course, she hasn’t cracked yet. Saturday comes and goes without any fireworks. On Sunday, in a burst of AntiCrastination, I finish a draft of my next Christopher Finchley column. I’ve titled it “Sometimes a Unicorn Points You in the Right Direction (and Sometimes He’s Just Turning His Head).” I think it’s good. But I don’t send it to Fergus yet. I’ve still got another week to refine it based on additional workplace observations.

On Monday, I summon Angela into my office. I’m pleased to see she’s wearing a sweater.

“Did you need me for something?” she says like an actress in a bad porn movie.

“Close the door,” I say, vaguely aware that I am ignoring certain advice in the human resources manual.

Angela shuts the door and stands facing me across my desk. She is breathing deeply through her nose. I lean back in my chair and grip the armrests. I clear my throat and say, “Angela, do you know how to use Excel?”

“I think so,” she says, swaying slightly from side to side. “Is that the spreadsheet one?”

“Great. Perhaps you have time to take on an additional project?” I say, opening a manila folder on my desk.

As I spread out my papers, Angela skips around the desk and stands next to my chair, so close I can smell her deodorant. I hand her a typed list of line item cost estimates and explain how and where I need these data points added into Judd’s more complex spreadsheet. As Angela leans forward to study the numbers, her breast hovers inches from my face.

“You understand what I’m looking for?” I ask, not looking up from my desk.

“Oh yes,” she says.

I rearrange the papers back into the folder.

“That will be all for now,” I say. “Perhaps you can have that ready by lunchtime?”

“No problem,” she says, picking up the folder. She walks slinkily to the door as if she expects I would be watching her.

“Angela,” I say.

She turns and smiles again.

“If things ever get slow, please come and see me. I’m sure we can find something to keep you busy.”

After Angela leaves I stare out of my window for several minutes. Today, basketball guy’s office is empty. From the position of his door, I can’t even tell if his hoop is still there.

Susan Trevor interrupts my reverie. She wants to warn me about Judd. She wants me to know he’s got Henry duped. She wants to inform me he had a one-on-one breakfast with Jack last week. She wants to reiterate that he doesn’t know anything about our business, that he’s picking our brains one by one, that if we tell him everything we know he’ll end up smarter than any one of us.

“Plus, he’s already told Sally he’s planning on being around for a while. He thinks Henry might hire him full-time.”

I nod and make a small huffing sound. I’ve no idea why Judd would share this information with Sally, but I don’t want to get into any long discussions with Susan.

She leans forward just enough to show some cleavage and reminds me that we’ve all looked at the D-SAW project before. We already know it makes no sense. It’s a waste of time for everyone.

Worse, she reminds me, bringing an outsider like Judd in creates more work for everyone, especially her. We have to lead him by the nose, hold his hand, wipe his ass the whole way.

Worse still, we now know he’s trying to dress up all the information we give him to sell Henry on the project, to create a full-time job for himself.

And then, if he does get the project approved, God help us. We’ll be the ones who have to do all the work. We’ll all be held accountable because we’ve all had input. We’ll be expected to make the project succeed even though we know in advance it’s doomed to fail.

“That’s the art of Rainbow Painting,” I remind her, glancing discreetly at my watch, wondering if I’ll have time to complete and email my weekly report to Henry before catching another lunchtime movie.

Judd comes in five minutes after Susan. He’s concerned she’s not fully invested in the success of the D-SAW project. That she doesn’t realize how committed Henry is to making this work. That perhaps she doesn’t quite “get it.”

I wonder what Henry has told Judd about each of us—and what personal observations Judd will be delivering back to Henry once the project is over.

“Susan likes to speak her mind,” I tell him. “She’s got strong opinions. But she’s been doing this a long time. She’s definitely committed to the best possible outcome for this project. Trust me.”

Half an hour later, I check in with Angela, who’s crying in her cubicle. Her face is puffy. I realize there’s a bruise on the left side of her face. She’s tried to hide it with makeup, but it’s starting to show through.

“Is everything OK?” I ask.

She tries to compose herself, straightening in her chair, wiping the snot from her nose with a pink tissue.

“Yes, Mr. Wiley.”

“Russell.”

The cell phone on her desk starts to play a loud, jingly tune.

“Do you think you could email me that spreadsheet by eleven thirty?”

“Yes, Russell.”

“That’s great,” I say and walk away.

“I’m at work,” she whispers into her cell phone. “I told you to stop calling me here.”

At eleven thirty, Angela appears at my door. She’s still visibly upset. Nervous. Vulnerable.

“I just wanted to check that the spreadsheet I sent you was OK.”

“Oh yes,” I say. “The spreadsheet was fine.”

She hovers in the doorway, needing something more. She’s taken off her sweater. The white top she’s wearing has half sleeves that reach just below her elbows, so her dark-caramel forearms are bare. I realize I have no idea about her family history, no knowledge of the ethnic combinations that have produced her.

“I’m sorry about before,” she says. “It was unprofessional.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I say, thinking this will set her mind at ease. “There’s certainly nothing to apologize for.”

I wonder for a moment how she has constructed this six-week internship in her mind. How much it means to her that she’s been working at such a well-known company. Perhaps for the past five weeks she’s drawn something meaningful from her walk-on part as an office worker.

If I were playing my own role better, I would have discovered more about Angela’s goals and aspirations. I would have taken her under my wing, imparted some adult wisdom, guided her toward her most appropriate career choices.

But I’ve been distracted. I haven’t taken the time to get to know her. After five weeks, my knowledge of Angela begins and ends with her supple body and her glowing brown skin.

“Angela,” I say, “are you interested in photography?”

I open the email Angela sent me. I download the spreadsheet onto my desktop and print out two copies. I study the numbers on the page, feeling strangely excited. Angela and I have arranged to meet in the downstairs lobby at twelve thirty.

The data it contains may be suspect, but the spreadsheet Angela has created looks highly professional. I turn back to the open document on my computer, changing a number randomly and watching all the totals recalculate. I’m impressed. Angela has formatted the file as expertly as an accountant. I try again. It’s perfect.

Dave Douglas knocks, walks into my office, and closes the door behind him. No doubt he wants to vent about the D-SAW project and tell me again what a pain in the ass Judd is.

“Hold on, Dave,” I say. I re-input the original numbers and save the file before I screw anything up.

Dave’s here to tell me that Judd has asked him to cost out the whole project again based on a new set of assumptions. He’s red-faced, spitting vitriol. He wants me to know he’s got better things to do than take orders from some arrogant fuck-pig who doesn’t know a thing about production.

“Why not just work with him?” I say. “He’ll be out of here soon enough.”

“Don’t be so sure,” says Dave. “I heard he was having breakfast with Jack last week.”

Two minutes after Dave leaves, Judd walks in to offer his own complaints. He’s getting frustrated that Dave isn’t taking his project seriously enough, that he’s already missed one of his deliverables.

“Why not just work with him?” I say. “He has his own way of doing things. But he knows his stuff.”

“Don’t be so sure,” says Judd. “I’m starting to think he’s coming at this with a different agenda.”

“Hey,” I say. “Don’t forget that Dave’s under a lot of pressure already. But he’s trying to help. We all are.” As if to prove it, I hand him a copy of the freshly minted spreadsheet and promise to email him the file too.

I get to the lobby at 12:25. I don’t want Angela to be there first. She’ll only attract attention.

She steps out of the elevator bank wearing dark glasses and a tan raincoat cinched around her waist.

She smiles and waves at me. I nod at her discreetly and wave back with a hand that stays glued to my side.

I start walking toward the revolving doors slowly, hoping she’ll fall into stride with me in a way that will look super casual—the way that it looks when two colleagues of the opposite sex, with a significant difference in age and responsibility, just happen to be leaving the building at the same time.

It’s all perfectly innocent, I tell myself. We’re just having lunch. It’s not as if I called an escort service and asked them to send a dusky, barely legal teen dressed in a Cold War–era spy outfit.

“Hey, Angela,” says a youngish, balding guy on his way back into the building.

“Hi, Bryan,” she says.

“Who’s he?” I ask.

“Bryan? He works in corporate finance. He helped me one day when I was lost on the seventh floor.”

“Let’s go,” I say.

We head to the International Center of Photography on Sixth Avenue. My company ID gets us in free, without any pressure to make the suggested contribution. The main exhibit is a retrospective of a well-known and highly perverted German fashion photographer.

We stand in the middle of the main floor, surrounded by twelve-foot-tall images of seminude blonde women striking aggressive poses. There are a lot of nipples and high-heeled leather boots on display. It makes me wonder how different life would be if the Germans of my grandfather’s generation had succeeded in their plans to dominate the world.

Angela stands quietly in the midst of it all. She’s about five-three in her own buckled-but-flat-heeled leather boots. She has taken off her sunglasses. A strand of her long black hair is caught in her left eyelash. I reach out my hand to gently disentangle it. She flinches.

“It’s OK,” I say softly. I lift the single hair with the tip of my finger and let my hand fall back to my side.

We eat lunch at a deli near Times Square, sitting at a table in the upstairs seating area. Even though we’re at the “crossroads of the world,” this is a low-traffic spot. The room is large and spare, with the feel of a bus station. I come here occasionally when I want to read the paper and not be disturbed. It’s not the kind of place where I’m likely to run into anyone else from the office. Now, at the tail-end of the lunch hour, there are only five other people scattered around the room.

We set our trays down and take off our coats. There’s a lone guy by the window who has put down his plastic fork and is watching Angela’s every move. She folds her coat over the back of a chair and sits down opposite me.

“So what did you think of the exhibit?” I say.

“I loved it,” she says. “I love everything to do with fashion.” She smiles at me. It’s the sweet, innocent, trusting smile of a young woman who knows she’s safe in the presence of a highly professional—and happily married—authority figure. Either that, or she’s waiting for me to suggest we take the afternoon off and check into a room at the Novotel.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize there was going to be quite so much skin on display. I thought the models would be wearing a few more clothes.”

She laughs.

“That’s OK. I thought they were beautiful.”

It has been several days since I said good-bye to “Erika Fallon.” Now, looking into Angela’s round brown eyes, a whole different fantasy plays out. I can’t help imagining a simple yet visually vibrant life that involves beaches, sunshine, energetic sex, adequate sleep and abundant quantities of fresh fruit to consume. In this world, there are no arguments, no responsibilities, no deadlines, no household chores to perform. It’s just me and Angela, cut off from the world, ensconced in a happiness cocoon. Fantasy Angela always dresses seductively. She laughs at all my jokes. She craves the physical contact that only I can provide. But she also knows instinctively when to leave me alone.

“What kind of music are you into?” I ask.

She mentions the names of a couple of different rappers and hip-hop artists.

I’ve heard of one of them, I tell her. “I hear he’s pretty good.”

She picks at her salad with her plastic fork.

“What kind of music do you like?” she asks.

I mention a couple of the Britpop bands Sam and I fell in love with when we were in London. Angela pushes out her lower lip and shrugs. I tell her the names of the singers from those bands who went on to solo careers. Some of them are still big in England. When they pass through New York, Sam and I faithfully join the small crowds who gather to see them play. I mention a couple of the young, New York–based retro-new-wave-pseudo-punk-rock bands I’ve been listening to recently. She hasn’t heard those names either.

We talk about movies and TV and books.

“So your favorite movie is
The Fast and The Furious
?”