Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch (6 page)

And that’s how Christopher Finchley was born.

I write the column for fun. I have to. I get paid in copies, not cash. And I do it under a pseudonym because I want to keep my job. Burke-Hart Publishing—and the
Chronicle
in particular—has strict rules governing how employees are allowed to communicate with outside media.

I also write my column because Fergus and I have less in common than we did fifteen years ago. If it wasn’t for our shared history and current proximity, I’m not sure we’d still be in touch with each other. And that scares me sometimes. Before Christopher Finchley came along, I used to imagine the day when our thoughts would diverge for the final time. We’d sit in silence, occasionally filling our cups of tea, having exhausted all of our shared memories and run out of mutually relevant topics through which our minds might reconnect.

“So how’s your next article coming along?” says Fergus at last.

“It’s coming,” I lie. “I’m thinking about Unicorns.”

“I’ve got a unicorn,” Beryl says absentmindedly.

“She loves them,” says Fergus.

I smile, playing for time. “I don’t really want to talk about it till it’s perfect. It’s a new take on how companies go about finding the leaders in their organization, how they’re fixated on building an A-team, on finding Unicorns among the Horses.”

“Sounds good,” says Fergus. “Just don’t miss your deadline again.”

“I’ll get it to you by tomorrow night,” I promise.

We’re silent for another little while. The tower Beryl is creating is already taller than she is.

“I want to write it from the Horse’s point of view,” I muse. “The kind of Horse who asks, ‘Why am I supposed to follow this idiotic creature? Just because of that dopey horn stuck on its head?’” I take a bite of a stale, damp cookie. “I had lunch with Henry yesterday. In the same restaurant as Larry Ghosh.”

“Ah. The evil Larry Ghosh.” Fergus despises Ghosh as much for the cultural impact of the Ghosh Corporation as for the hundreds of back-office jobs the company has sent to India. In the years between the grocery cart scandal and the Burke-Hart acquisition, Ghosh Films became famous for its low-budget “sick-flick” horror franchises, and the Ghosh Radio Network became home to a slew of trash-talking right-wing radio hosts. On the big screen, torture became entertainment. On the airwaves, the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was applauded as a necessary deterrent.

“How do you work for a guy like that?” asks Fergus.

“I don’t,” I say. “I work for the
Daily Business Chronicle
. I work for Henry. Henry works for Jack. Jack works for Connie. She’s the only one who actually talks to Larry Ghosh.”

“And you just follow orders?”

“I like to think I’m fighting the good fight from within.”

We pause. We’re getting into dangerous territory. I try and steer us back into the DMZ.

“Maybe you’re right,” I concede. “Maybe I should get out. Things have been crazy since Ghosh bought us. Everybody’s freaking out. We’ve been cutting costs so long it seems like that’s become our only strategy. The internet is killing us. But nobody has a plan to do anything about it.”

Beryl’s tower falls and she squeals delightedly. She looks to Angus for further instructions. He commands her to start building again, which she does.

“And now you have Larry Ghosh to deal with. The man who manages to poison everything he touches.”

“You’re right,” I say. “Except he doesn’t even have to touch us. Whatever it is, it travels through the air. And then it mutates like a crazy, unethical bird flu. Larry Ghosh is the only one infected with the original strain. When Connie Darwin catches it from him, it changes. It combines with her own ruthless, unpredictable, self-aggrandizing DNA. Then it mutates again through each of her direct reports. By the time Jack Tennant passes it on to Henry, it’s got a piece of Jack’s political savvy attached. But when that combines with Henry’s alcoholic paranoia, it creates a highly toxic strain—one that could kill us all.”

“Not the fire truck,” says Fergus sternly. He gets up and takes the metal toy from Beryl’s hand before she puts it on top of her Angus-designed tower. “Why not put your new monkey on top?” he says, handing her the stuffed animal Sam brought. “Doesn’t that look great? It’s King Kong.
Raaaaarrrrr!!!
How about some juice?” He tickles Beryl’s belly, then picks her up and heads to the kitchen. He holds Beryl sideways against him, still tickling her as she giggles and struggles.

“The Donald,” he says. “You want some too?”

“Sure,” says Angus, following his dad to the fridge.

“We call him The Donald,” Fergus informs me, pouring juice into two glasses. “He likes building things.”

Fergus sits back down and bunches his thick, rusty eyebrows, accentuating the deep crease on his forehead.

“With everything you tell me,” he says, “I don’t understand why you just don’t get out. Don’t you want to do something you feel passionate about?”

“Ha! Do you think I could deal with the frustrations, the politics, the backstabbing and the ineptitude if I was working toward something I really cared about? Banging my head against the wall trying to make the world a better place? That would be too heartbreaking. As long as I get paid well, I prefer to be good at something that has absolutely no value in the real world. We’re all going to die anyway. I can’t stop wars or global warming. I can’t stop AIDS in Africa or bring about peace in the Middle East.”

“Who knows what you could do? Doesn’t the individual still have the power to change the world?” The DVD that’s been playing ends. Fergus reaches for the remote control and starts the movie again.

“And what about you?” I ask. “How are you going to change the world if you keep turning down jobs at bigger magazines?”

“Maybe I just haven’t had the right offer yet,” he says.

Suddenly Beryl’s crying. Her tower has fallen again. Her juice has spilled. Angus is denying his alleged involvement in either incident.

Julie appears with a sponge and some paper towels, reassuring Beryl that everything will be OK.

“She needs her nap,” says Julie.

Fergus ruffles Beryl’s hair. “If Angus is being a pain, why don’t you go and hang out with Mommy and Auntie Sam?”

I update Fergus on my lunch at Fabrice, Henry’s latest schemes and my fears that Henry, no matter what ideas he comes up with, no matter how well he fights each battle, can no longer win. He’ll never be seen as the kind of next-generation leader the company now needs.

I tell him that more layoffs are coming. That Henry is ready to abandon his allegiance to Jack, the guy who’s taken care of him all these years. He’s pinning all his hopes, I say, on a new consultant who’s starting Monday, for whom I have to provide top-secret support.

“Fuck-rying out loud,” says Fergus, trying not to swear in front of the kids. “Why don’t you just get out now?”

“And miss all the fun?”

“I thought the good times were over for newspapers.”

“You’re right,” I say. “Something changed between the time Google went public and Craigslist ate all the classified ads.”

My big fear, I want to tell Fergus, is that Larry Ghosh realizes the
Chronicle
is not really in the newspaper business. It’s in the information business. He knows there’s no future being the number four newspaper in a market that can at best sustain three titles. If he were to shut the newspaper down and take the whole business online, he could give the
Chronicle
at least a fighting chance to become a profitable Web-based, multimedia brand. He’d have to replace Mark Sand, the idiot who runs our online group. But after that, things would be relatively easy. With the radio and TV resources of Ghosh Media behind it, and none of the newsprint, distribution and subscriber-acquisition costs, the
Daily Business Chronicle
might even regain its relevance and secure its future.

“Listen up,” says Julie. She has just emerged from the bathroom holding Beryl by the hand. She waits till she is sure of our attention. She has an announcement to make.

“Guess who did number twos in the grown-up toilet?”

Fergus, Julie, Angus, Sam and I all gather round to inspect one at a time the rodent-size pellets at the bottom of the toilet bowl.

“Wow,” says Fergus, sounding genuinely impressed.

“What a big girl,” says Julie.

“Great job,” says Sam.

“Is she getting enough fiber?” I ask.

Julie lifts Beryl up to have her flush the toilet. And as we watch the water swirl and Beryl’s poo-poo disappear, Fergus yells “Hooray!” and bursts into proud applause.

Beryl seems rejuvenated, but only briefly. After a little more running and shrieking, she starts getting grumpy. Meanwhile Angus, hungry now, insists on being allowed to microwave himself some macaroni and cheese for dinner. I call a car service to take Sam and me home.

In the car, Sam leans against her window, looking out at the brownstones going by. Neighborhood families and friends are sitting out in the late afternoon sun, chatting on their stoops.

One time, years ago, when Sam and I were first living together, we were driving back home from a party in a car just like this. We were both tipsy. Sam lay down suddenly on her back with her head in my lap, took my hand and guided it inside her panties. Before my hesitant fingers even had time to react, Sam was moaning loudly, as if she were putting on a show for the driver.

Today she seems more interested in the world beyond the backseat of our car.

“They seem so happy,” she says at last. “Julie wants another one, but Fergus isn’t sure they can afford it.”

“Having kids is tough on just one salary,” I say.

On Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays, Sam works from noon to six at Artyfacts, Park Slope’s “first-class, secondhand” store. The store’s run by her friend Shila Hawthorne. Sam makes fourteen bucks an hour, or $252 a week. That’s enough, theoretically, to allow her to cover her day-to-day expenses and even shop for some occasional groceries. In practice, though, she gets paid in merchandise. She’s unable to withstand the temptation to convert her salary into lightly used and slightly worn items from the store, taking advantage of the substantial employee discount Shila offers.

Sam’s schedule allows me to devote Sundays to researching and writing my Christopher Finchley columns. I make a pot of coffee. My home office is set up at a small desk in the corner of the living room. I get out my Leadership, Management-by-Magazine and Unicorn files. I skim some articles I’ve already read and highlighted, then lay them out in a semi-circle on the floor behind my chair. I open a new Word document. While I’m thinking of a great opening line, I log on to eMusic to select this month’s tunes. Some great independent stuff that, even as it’s downloading, I know I’ll never listen to. I take a quick look at YouTube and start clicking on all kinds of two-minute videos, each of which seems ninety seconds too long. After that, I skim the news, quickly getting entangled in the lives of the latest batch of celebutantes, tracking their drunken antics, nipple slips, anorexia denials and embarrassing emails all the way from TMZ to Defamer to Go Fug Yourself and back again. Suddenly I’m nauseous. Like a teenager drained by too much porn, I can’t look at this stuff anymore.

It’s already three fifteen. I need to get my day back on track. Fast.

I reach into the back of my file drawer for my AntiCrastination Workbook.

Last summer, Henry decided that his whole team was not getting things done fast enough. He made us sit through a half-day seminar on AntiCrastination. Boiled down, the training consisted of three steps to ensure we would never drag our feet, goof off, or make Henry look bad ever again.

THE SECRETS OF ANTICRASTINATION

1. List your Works in Progress (WIPs)
   . Now prioritize them!!
   
2. Complete your WIPs.
   Set yourself a deadline and don’t start new projects till your current WIPs are finished!!
   
3. Reward yourself.
   Do something fun to celebrate the completion of each project before moving on to the next!!
   

Not everyone found the seminar worthwhile. “Do you realize,” said Susan Trevor, “how much progress I could have been making instead of sitting through that shit?”

Maybe Susan was right at the time. But today, this shit is the best I’ve got. I’ve accomplished nothing today. I’m still wearing the clothes I slept in. I need to start AntiCrastinating…
immediately!!

I list my WIPs. I circle my top priorities. I give myself a deadline for each.

THIS AFTERNOON: Finish new Christopher Finchley column…
Email to Fergus!!

BY WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Seduce Sam…
Code Red Status: 27 days and counting!!

BY NOON ON FRIDAY: Livingston Kidd…
Deliver finished presentation to Henry!!

That was productive. I’ve finished my WIP list. To reward myself, I click on my Netflix bookmark and spend the next fifteen minutes rearranging the movies in my queue. As soon as I’m sure I’ve listed all my Ingmar Bergman movies in order of their original release date—safely in the mid-300s, with no chance they’ll ever rise to the top—I feel ready to attack my first project with gusto.

By five thirty I email a draft to Fergus.

“Is this a joke?” he says.

“Not at all,” I say. “Don’t you like it?”

“What happened to the Unicorns?”

“I need more time for that. This came out better.”

“‘Look at My Poopie!’” Fergus reads aloud. “‘Tracing the Origins of Workplace Competitiveness to Your Early Childhood Years.’”

“What can I tell you? Beryl inspired me.”

“OK. I’ll read it and call you back.”

I reread the article myself. A thousand words on our childish need to please our workplace mommies and daddies. How some of us never get beyond the need to be overly praised for every symbolic bowel movement we produce. How the most needy among us rush to our bosses once, twice, three times a day looking to be acknowledged for the unimpressive brown pellets we’re cupping in our trembling hands.