The Graveyard Shift (19 page)

As his wife and his two daughters sat at the table, glaring up at the television with spoons perched below gaping mouths, William shoved another spoonful of cereal into his mouth begrudgingly and forced himself to eat, even though his stomach was protesting every mouthful. Had he looked up, he would have seen the headline, “
Local CEO Busted For International Child Pornography Ring”
along with Chris Rodriguez’s mug shot. But he was too preoccupied with the feeling not unlike a boulder sinking to the bottom of his intestines, dragging both his stomach and his heart into the depths of his bowels.

“You knew he was… into little kids?” Grace asked, the latter of her sentence said in a hushed tone.

William shook his head, and glanced up at the screen. There was Rodriguez’s face, being projected in his modest dining room, but the expression was unlike he’d ever seen it before. Chris’s hair, something he often spent hours preening just to get right, was greasy and disheveled. His eyes were heavily creased and bloodshot and his mouth limp, looking utterly defeated and devoid of its usual smugness.

William wanted nothing more than to savor that expression, to know that soon his life might change for the better, were it not for the churning in his stomach that told him otherwise.

“Oh. No,” he corrected, “I didn’t know he was… you know, into kids. I thought you meant the money laundering.”

“Of course I knew about that,” Grace said, and placed a hand on his. She uttered a laugh. “It’s all you could talk about for months, Bill, and I hated hearing about it. I know how much it stressed you out. But it’s over now. It’s… it’s like God answered our prayers.”

William’s eyes trailed up toward his wife’s, honey-brown pools framed by chin-length hair of the same color and bright purple cat glasses. She was smiling. Happy. Relieved. William smirked and held his tongue, though he did grasp his wife’s hand and give it a firm squeeze. The sourness in his gut only continued to pool.

“I guess you could say that, dear.”

“What’s
child pornography
?” their youngest daughter asked, after slurping up the last of her milk.

“It means he likes to diddle little eight year olds like
you
,” snapped Dana, their elder daughter, a spitfire of raging hormones and teenage angst.

“
What’s diddle?” Lynette asked.

“Nothing,” Grace said, standing from the table and collecting her bowl. “And Dana, don’t talk to her like that. She’s too young to be hearing about that kind of thing.”

Dana shook her spoon at her mother. “I always knew there was something weird about him, the way he looked at Lynny while we were at those company picnics. The way he always wanted to play with her. That’s sick, mom.”

“Yes it is,” Grace said, as she dropped her dishes into the dishwasher, “but she still doesn’t need to know about it.”

“So what happens now, Dad?” Dana asked. At fifteen, she was the spitting image of her father. She was also very pretty, and many liked to joke that William made for a better woman than he did a man. “They gonna make you CEO or something? You’re next in line and Mr. Rodriguez is probably gonna be in jail for the rest of his life.”

Grace stood up from the dishwasher. “Hey, she’s right. What do you think’s going to happen when you go into work today?”

“I don’t know,” William said, as he pushed his half-full bowl aside. “And that’s what I’m worried about.”

*

“If you become the CEO,” Dana said, fifteen minutes later, from the backseat of William’s Volvo S80, “will you buy me a car when I turn sixteen?”

William grimaced. “That was what got Chris in trouble in the first place.
Spending money that wasn’t his.”

“Funny, I thought it was diddling little kids.”

From the passenger seat, Grace threw her head over her shoulder and shot her daughter a glance. “Dana! I said to stop using that word. You’re going to make her start saying it.”

But Lynette, squirming in her seat with her book bag cradled on her lap, paid her elder sister no mind. “When I get to school, I’m
gonna tell everyone that my daddy’s in charge of a big company, and he’s really important, and I’m so proud of him.”

That statement couldn’t help but tug a smile out of William’s lips, and it held in place even after he dropped her off at school and she hugged him and Grace
goodbye. Only after he kissed his wife goodbye and dropped her off at her office did he feel it starting to slip.

“Dad, seriously, why do you look so worried?” Dana asked, now in the front seat with her arms crossed over her chest. “You’re freaking me out.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” William lied.

“I’m not stupid, Dad. You look anxious.
Scared, even. You keep checking the rearview mirror like you’re expecting someone to slam into us from behind. I’m not stupid.”

As William peeled his eyes away from the rearview mirror, which still held nothing more than a boxed view of the side street behind them, he sighed.

“Your mother and your sister seem so convinced that I’m going to just waltz in there and be given the key to the city like I’m the new mayor of Cityscape,” William said, finding himself unable to meet his daughter’s steel glance. His eyes remained locked on the road, even if they weren’t really paying much attention to anything. “But this is a business, and a floundering one at that. There are protocols. Chains of command. For all I know, I could walk in there and find out that I’m unemployed because they decided to liquidate the company. And it doesn’t help that whatever happened, decisions have already been made. As of right now, I might already be unemployed. I just don’t know it yet. Thus, unbeknownst to me, I’m right now driving to my own firing squad.”

He glanced again into the rearview mirror and saw nothing.

“Look, Dad,” Dana said, as the Volvo came to a gentle stop along the sidewalk; all around them teenagers gabbed and giggled on their way to class. “I know I give you a lot of shit, okay? But you’re really good at your job, and they have to see that. If anyone can turn Cityscape around, it’ll be you. You’re a good guy. Everyone there knows that.”

Those words, ‘
a good guy
,’ stirred William’s heart. He turned to face Dana, soaking in her freckled face and auburn hair, and smiled. “Thanks, Dana. That means a lot. Keep your fingers crossed for me, I guess.”

“You’ll be fine,” she said, as she pulled the door open. “I’ll see you later. Oh and hey, can you give me a ride to youth group tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, thanks,
Dad! Good luck!” She let the door fall shut, and as she turned to walk away, William pulled his car out into the street. He checked his rearview mirror once more, and again he saw nothing.

Was it all a bad dream? Had he just imagined everything last night? Or was the demon merely ignoring him, finding himself not obligated to babysit the accountant and hold his hand through this task?

Shifting in his seat, William felt the weight of the stone knife perched against his pelvic bone; he knew it to be the latter.

*

When he pulled into the parking lot ten minutes later, William was surprised to see his name still on the placard above his parking space. He was also surprised to see the lights within Cityscape’s building alive on every floor, and a bustle of people walking in and out of the front doors.

But what had he been expecting? A condemned
building, abandoned and covered in boarded up windows? A crime scene, flooded with lines of yellow tape and police officers with notepads scritch-scratching down information? Cityscape still up and running meant nothing, not until William stepped inside, gave a sheepish hello to Marissa the front desk receptionist, and walked to his desk, which he found to not be holding a packed-up cardboard box of his belongings.

As the assembly workers were punching in at the time clock against the far wall, it all seemed to be business as usual.

William settled into his chair and brought his laptop out of hibernation. No one else that worked in the cubicles was here yet, but that wasn’t unusual, as he was often one of the first into the office. And the assembly workers who worked in the production area (who passed him quickly and threw him odd glances today) did not often talk to him, partly because of his job title and partly because of language barriers.

William frantically went to open his e-mail and double clicked the wrong icon. After Xing out of a spreadsheet, he opened his e-mail and scanned the bolded titles that popped up hastily.

2013 Fiscal Report.

FWD: Expense Sheet.

Changes Coming.

William clicked on that last e-mail, sent from the head of HR, and was struggling to absorb the huge wall of text that greeted him. It had been dictated by Chris Rodriguez himself, it said, and that, more than anything, brought that familiar, sour boulder plummeting back into William’s gut.

As he began to read a ledger that started with “you may have heard some rumors by now” and was filled with such corporate bullshit as “our employees are our most valuable asset” and “taking things in a bold new direction,” he saw a dark figure approaching him from behind in the reflection of the monitor. He saw only a blank face, indistinguishable and blurred out by the black letters pasted across the screen, and gasped.

He spun around in his chair and saw Steve Lopez, office manager and trusted friend, wide eyed and laughing.

“Shit, Bill, you look like you just seen a ghost,” Steve said, lips spread out in a smile between a thick black mustache and goatee. “You okay, Gingerbread Man?”

Started, founded, and run by the Rodriguez family some twenty years ago, Cityscape was a mostly Latino company, and as such, the family had always been amused by how well they got along with the pleasant but somewhat quiet, red-haired, red-stubbled, pasty-faced accountant. And so they affectionately deemed him ‘Gingerbread Man’, because he was a ginger and because he was in charge of getting everyone their ‘bread.’ It was a name that William typically greeted with a smile, but today he was in no mood for joking.

“I… I’m fine. You just startled me. Did you read this?” William asked, thumbing over his shoulder at the two page memo on his laptop.

“Yeah, man, that’s why I’m here.”

William shifted in his seat, and only now did Steve notice the bead of sweat slipping from William’s wrinkled brow. “Well, what does it say, Steve? I’m on the edge of my seat. I can’t concentrate. I can’t read all of this. What the hell does it say?”

Steve laughed, placing his hands on the sides of his cream colored button up shirt. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Chill out. You know what that thing says? It says you’re the boss man now, homie. It says the white man’s finally in charge.” He grinned. “And honestly, I’m glad to hear it. I think you’re gonna run things more like Miguel did. You know, more like a company and less like a personal ATM.”

“I…” William blinked his eyes in confusion. “I… am? But this memo, this was dictated by
Chris
.”
Steve chuckled. “Yeah, it was.”

“And Chris hated me.” William leaned in close to Steve and whispered, “I think he was always jealous of me. You know, like I was the son Miguel always wanted.”

“You don’t have to whisper,” Steve whispered back. “Everyone here knows that, man. And I don’t know if he had some last minute change of heart about his dad’s company, but he said you’re the best man for the job. His own words. And he’s right. The family held an emergency meeting and they all agreed. Cityscape’s still in their name, but you’re gonna be acting CEO.” He clapped William on the shoulder. “Congratulations, my friend. They’re holding a meeting in about ten minutes and they expect you to say something. ‘Thank you’ would be a good start. And me? I expect a big fucking raise now that you’re the big cheese.”

William said something joking in reply, but no sooner had he said it than it was flushed from his memory. The next thirty minutes was a blur, in which he finally read the e-mail (though he barely absorbed a word of it), and then was escorted by Steve to see the family. His walk to the boardroom felt a lot like a walk to the electric chair, with offices, or maybe cells, lining him on each side as he was gawked at by rows of men and women pressing their faces to the glass in unabashed curiosity.

What greeted him in the boardroom was a table full of Rodriguez family members in suits and ties, blazers, and pantsuits, gathered around a stack of papers like a grieving family hovering over a casket. William’s hand was shook by all, and he fumbled through a quiet, uncomfortable speech (in which he took Steve’s advice and offered his deepest gratitude). From there he signed a slew of papers that bestowed him the title of CEO, and allowed him to jump from a modest salary of $58,000 a year to a whopping $200,000, with bonuses that looked like a salary all on its own. He filled out page after page of initials and signatures, and just when he thought it might never end, he flipped over the last page and cast the red pen aside.

“Look at this contract,” Steve said later, after the Rodriguez family had filed out of the board room.
“So final. So official. Like it was signed in blood.”

William chuckled, and said, “Yeah, right. Excuse me for a moment, will you?”