Last Summer at Mars Hill (27 page)

“—calling Chicago right now before this gets loose—”

“—would
die
for that suit, just
die
for it!”

The office manager swept from the group and leaned over the console, her face flushed. “Not a word!” she hissed to Rebecca. “I’ll be back by three—”

Everyone took a long lunch that afternoon, except for Rebecca. They began straggling back into the office after four, the VPs rosy-cheeked from their lunch at Priazzi Inferno, the brokers and analysts laden with shopping bags and hatboxes, hand-marbled Venetian pencil-cases and gilt panniers of chocolate-glazed nasturtium blossoms.

It was too much for her. Rebecca nearly tripped as she ran out of the office at five and raced into the first express elevator that stopped on her floor.

She arrived home hours later, after charging a nutria-rimmed
faux
Chanel suit and a three-hundred-dollar silk moiré evening burnoose from Bedouin Outfitters. Among the stack of bills at the door of her efficiency was a disconnect notice from the telephone company. Rebecca burst into tears.

In the weeks following, the office telephone wailed nonstop. Rebecca’s ears rang with its shrieks long after she left. Every evening the entire staff worked until midnight, feverishly following recommendations the Engels phoned almost hourly. The
Wall Street Journal
did a front-page piece on the firm. Lorimer Brothers had a second phone system installed to handle all the new client calls.

After the Engels’ next visit the VPs flew to Val d’Isere and the Pyrenees for a weekend of skiing. Three of the female analysts threw political correctness to the winds and bought full-length lynx-belly coats and sashayed into work on Monday morning, giggling like parochial schoolgirls skipping Mass. The office manager began scheduling crushed-pearl defoliating body scrubs during her lunch hours. Even Rebecca found herself visiting The Body Electric for placenta hair-wraps and an electrolytic platinum rinse that left her with chemical burns over most of her scalp.

Lorimer Brothers’ clients began to do business with the Engels as well. Rebecca screened referrals every day, and once spoke to a television reporter regarding the siblings’ cyclonic influence upon the street. She even saw the Engels leaving the World Business Forum early one morning, Avaratia and Grædig shaking hands with Mr. Lancaster in the doorway.

As Christmas grew nearer Rebecca guiltily surveyed the heaps of unworn new clothes beside her futon, the designer bath linens and vicuna napkins still in their original packing. She swore not to charge another thing before she started her Christmas shopping, and wondered if her grandmother would enjoy the Valencia oranges poached in Armagnac she’d ordered for herself from Rabelaisian Delights. Each evening she spent in darkness now, since they had cut off her electricity. But the efficiency looked nice lit by hand-dipped beeswax candles. And she didn’t feel so bad when she saw the collection notices that had begun to arrive at Lorimer Brothers for various staff members.

A week before Christmas it snowed. Rebecca slogged to work, ruining her new silk spring-weight trenchcoat and wondering again why she hadn’t bought an umbrella, or maybe a down parka. Or warm boots, or gloves. In the glittering lobby she threaded her way through the crowd to the glass elevator. It had been weeks since she’d taken it; but she wanted to see the snow from above. When the door opened she laughed, delighted.

“Mr. Lancaster!”

The old man stepped gingerly into the lobby, staring at her puzzled.

“Miss Strunk!” he exclaimed, drawing back a little. “I didn’t recognize you.”

“It’s my hair,” Rebecca said ruefully. “It fell out after the last conditioning treatment.”

Mr. Lancaster nodded sympathetically, then peered at her more closely. “Something else though, too,” he murmured, and shook his head knowingly. “Ah, well, it’s a busy season, and we all have lots to do before the big day.” He smiled, tipping his hat. “I hope to see you before the holidays, Miss Strunk. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Lancaster.” Waving, she stepped backwards into the elevator, catching a heel in the door and tearing it from her new mock-ocelot pumps.

The office manager sat rigidly at Rebecca’s console when she arrived. “Chicago’s just notified us of a major loss on the Skam account,” she said curtly. “I’ve been ordered to start making staff cutbacks. Tomorrow will be your last day.”

“But—” stammered Rebecca, clutching her broken heel as she dripped on the aubergine carpet.

“Sorry. I called your agency. They said contact them after New Year’s for possible new assignments.”

“Possible!” exclaimed Rebecca.

“I haven’t got
time
for this now,” the office manager shrilled.

“Things are crazy enough this morning—” And she stormed into the back offices.

Rebecca stared after her in shock, then through tearing eyes glanced at her empty desk. No messages. No assignments. Someone had switched off the Nuzak. Even the phones were oddly silent. And then—

“Get me Sheared Young & Lamb!” a voice boomed from her intercom.
“Now!”

Rebecca jumped, then placed the call. Afterward she leaned back, curious. From the back offices drifted strained whispers. An analyst fled through the reception area in tears. Suddenly the Nuzak barked back on—

“London Exchange plummeting to oh point nine seven four—”

And then the intercom started buzzing.

“I want Avaratia Engel—”

“Get me Grædig!”

“The Engels!”

At the Engels’ number an answering machine played the opening notes of Pachelbel’s Canon in D before requesting a message. After Rebecca had called several times she could no longer get through. Their line remained busy for the rest of the morning.

She stopped taking messages for the Vice Presidents and analysts and brokers. “They’re unavailable,” Rebecca told anxious callers until she was hoarse. Two more analysts fled the office, one of them carrying a large box from which dangled computer cables. A hysterical VP ordered Rebecca to phone his ex-wife, burst into tears and hung up before she could place the call.

“New York plummeting to a record oh oh three seven oh six oh points—” the Nuzak droned.

“Cancel my one-thirty at LOrdure,” the Office Manager ordered Rebecca over the intercom.

Rebecca started getting nervous.

She hung up on a man from the
Tokyo Times
and canceled seventeen lunches and one American Express Titanium Account. She was thinking about leaving early when through the door staggered a young woman in a disheveled sueded-silk suit.

“I want to see my broker,” she commanded Rebecca, gripping the console’s edge so tightly that blood seamed the cracks between her fingers.

“I’m sorry, he’s unavailable right now,” Rebecca gulped.

“He recommended the Engels to me. I want to see him
now
,” the woman repeated, her palms streaking the glass with crimson.

“I’m sorry no one can see you right now. You can leave a business card with me and I’ll be happy to—” Rebecca started, when the woman yanked a Blush Micron Uzi from her pocket and pointed it at the ceiling.

“
Here’s
my business card!” she shrieked. Glass shattered as she emptied a cartridge and ran towards the back offices. Rebecca fainted.

But came to a moment later when the office manager stumbled past, blood staining her mango lambswool coatdress a sullen purple.

“No one without an appointment,”
she gasped, and staggered into the hallway.

Rebecca raised herself to her knees, then quickly ducked beneath the console as a tattoo of bullets shuddered through the walls. Muffled screams from the back offices; an answering volley of gunfire. She heard a soft spurt of sound, like a bulb blowing. Then a louder explosion shook the suite. Glancing up she saw smoke trailing from beneath the keys of her tiny word processor. A moment later it burst into flames.

Rebecca lurched to her feet, heedless of the shrieks and thuds raging behind her. Smoke seeped into the reception area. Gagging she fumbled for the telephone, punched in the emergency code and listened: a recording. Several figures reeled past her, coughing and weeping. Silently a VP settled on the sofa in the reception area, staring bemused at a small perfect hole in her thigh before stretching out as though to nap. Rebecca watched, frozen. Not until a fleeing analyst knocked against her as he raced for the door did she stir.

Behind her flames tore through the office, their roar nearly drowning the wail of smoke detectors and the clack of circuit breakers. The halogen lights guttered and went out. Screams rent the fire-lit rooms, and Rebecca fled blindly towards the door, choking as she stepped over bodies and burning heaps of paper.

In the corridor emergency lights flickered hellishly through the haze. A recorded message urged workers to be calm and use the fire stairs. Rebecca huddled against the wall, wiping her streaming eyes as she vainly tried to locate the stairwell. Knots of people clawed past her, moaning as they stumbled in front of the express elevators. Pale fingers stabbed at the elevator buttons. A door opened; inside she glimpsed a twisted mass of bodies gasping and screaming as they fled the upper stories. Then the doors slid shut and the elevator plunged down once more. Sobbing, Rebecca wrenched her eyes away.

At the end of the hallway glowed the glass elevator, its empty crystal booth spangled with reflected flames. Rebecca floundered towards it, inching past the crowd still futilely pounding at the express elevator doors. Someone kicked her to the floor. Rebecca crept the rest of the way, breathing through her sleeve. The carpet scorched her knees; her stockings melted in fiery tatters about her legs. Chemical fumes mingled with the smells of charred wood and hot steel. With a gasp she stood, flung herself against the glass door and pounded the button with her fist. With a soft chime the door slid open and Rebecca staggered into the tiny chamber. As the door shut behind her she glimpsed livid faces pressed against the steaming glass, mouths twisted and gasping soundlessly. Crying, Rebecca stabbed buttons over and over and over, until slowly the elevator began to descend. Then she leaned exhausted against the wall and stared spellbound at the scene outside.

Flames engulfed the financial district. From steel towers erupted sheets of gold as entire stories blazed like immense glass furnaces. Rebecca covered her ears against their gleeful roar, but she could not look away. She cowered against the wall, watching in horror as she passed flaming windows where black figures seethed behind molten glass, fighting to break through. Until the glass elevator itself trembled as one window exploded, and shrieking Rebecca covered her eyes to blot out the brilliant parhelion that sent scattered sparks and burning shadows plummeting to the street below.

When she looked up again the elevator had stalled. Trembling she reached for the control panel, but with a cry snatched her hand back: the metal buttons were too hot to touch. Whimpering she turned back to the glass wall. And saw them.

Silhouetted in a great arched window, side by side they stood and watched the inferno all around them. As she stared transfixed, Rebecca could see their clothes burning away in glittering ribbons of gold and black, but still they waited, unmoving, wreathed in flames until it seemed that vast burning wings sprang from their shoulders and fanned the glowing air.

Then one of them stirred. Very slowly she turned her head, as if seeking a small sound, her unblinking gaze sweeping across broken windows and shattered stone until it struck the small glass cell. And pinned Rebecca there, so that she dropped to her knees, whining softly in her throat as she read the names written across their brows in streaming letters—

Avaratia and Grædig.

Greed and Avarice.

Crying out, Rebecca had started to her feet when with a groan of emerald cables the elevator shuddered and dropped once more. She fell back against the wall. When she turned and desperately sought them again, the shining figures were gone.

With a grating clang the elevator stopped. The inner doors remained shut, but the outer set chimed and opened smoothly onto the building’s courtyard. Freezing wind slashed through Rebecca’s thin blouse as she stumbled onto the sidewalk.

Everywhere the knell of sirens rent the air. Black-helmeted figures raced through the street from hydrant to hydrant, and spumes of water froze as they dragged huge coils behind them. Ambulances and police cars choked the alleys. In a daze Rebecca wandered along the curb, heedless of slush soaking her burned legs.

At the corner she stopped, leaned against a broken traffic light that blinked madly from green to red. Cold numbed her fingers, and she drew her shaking hands to her face to warm them. A dark and narrow side street stretched beside her. As she stood trying to catch her breath, she saw twin headlights piercing the gloom. They grew nearer, and Rebecca stared dully as a long dove-gray limousine pulled up to her corner. Its smoky black window reflected her face, scorched raw and blackened with soot. Very slowly the window slid down.

“Miss Strunk!” a gentle voice exclaimed, soft with concern. Trembling, Rebecca stepped towards the car. Through the open window she glimpsed two figures, tall and golden-haired, clad in thick furs. They were smiling and toasting each other with long-stemmed crystal flutes. But next to the window sat another figure, smaller, white-haired, and his warm hands enveloped hers as he drew her to the opening door.

“My dear Miss Strunk,” he murmured as he drew her in and the door hissed shut behind her. “Would you like a new job?”

My yuppie-bashing Black Monday story, this was written while I was working as an office slave for various D.C. temporary agencies. Can you tell?

S
HE GOT INTO THE
elevator with him, the young woman from down the hall, the one he’d last seen at the annual Coop Meeting a week before. Around her shoulders hung something soft that brushed his cheek as Gordon moved aside to let her in: a fur cape, or pelt, or no, something else. The flayed skin of an animal, an animal that when she shouldered past him to the corner of the elevator proved to be her Rottweiler, Leopold. He could smell it now: the honeyed stench of uncured flesh, a pink and scarlet veil still clinging to the pelt’s ragged fringe of coarse black hair. It had left a crimson streak down the back of her skirt, and stippled her legs with pink rosettes.