Termination Man: a novel (29 page)

“Fine. If you aren’t going to tell me the truth, then I’ll call him and ask him.”

“I don’t think that would be a very good use of your time. Alan has signed a non-disclosure agreement. He is prohibited from contact with current employees at UP&S.”

“What are you talking about?” Lucy sputtered. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! I—”

“I’m not going to discuss the details of Alan’s separation from the company with you,” Beth interrupted. “There are confidential matters that must be observed from all sides—including Alan’s side. My purpose here is partly to protect Alan’s privacy.”

“Oh, give me a break!” Lucy said. “I can call Alan tonight, if I want to.”

“Yes,” Beth admitted. “That’s true. But you will be placing Alan’s financial situation in jeopardy if you do. His severance arrangements included a confidentiality agreement. The company would technically have the right to revoke his severance payment in the event of a breach of that contract. You would also be placing yourself in danger.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’m being pretty clear with you here: The company doesn't want you to contact Alan Ferguson. If you insist on doing so, you will be in violation of the company’s trust.”

“’
Trust
?’” Lucy asked. “How can you mandate that two employees—one of them no longer with the company—are forbidden to talk?”

“You make the decision regarding what you’re willing to risk, Lucy. But keep in mind that when you do so, you’re also deciding for Alan—and he has two children to think about.”

Lucy couldn’t have known if this last remark was a veiled jab at her spinsterhood. She probably also didn’t know that Beth Fisk was employing a standard operating tactic of senior management and HR: Divide and conquer.

The idea is simple, really: If white-collar employees talk among themselves about an unpopular policy or manager, they might possibly orchestrate some collective action to counteract the situation. Management therefore keeps the rank-and-file in individual, isolated silos, so that no single one of them can grasp the entire picture. Like the blind Hindus laying hands on an elephant, each one forms an incomplete—and often contradictory—assessment of the forces arrayed against them.

Divide and conquer doesn't work in the blue-collar world; and it isn’t just because of unions. Blue-collar workers were staging strikes and organizing boycotts long before anyone had ever heard of the United Auto Workers or the AFL-CIO. But blue-collar workers are different. The key difference is that blue-collar workers have a sense of solidarity—imperfect and rife with division as it so often is.

Say the word “solidarity” to an accountant or an engineer, and he’ll roll his eyes. White-collar workers see themselves as locked in an ongoing competition for the next promotion, the next pat on the back, the next advantage over the man or woman in the adjacent cubicle. The perpetual war of all against all. This is one of the factors that makes white-collar workers so easy to manipulate. The average blue-collar worker knows all to well where he stands in the company’s hierarchy. The white-collar folks are far less realistic. Every twenty-four-year-old staff professional with a business administration degree is convinced that the executive boardroom is only a few lucky breaks away.

“Listen, Lucy,” Beth said, taking a more conciliatory tone. “I don't want you to think of me as the enemy here. You and I have more in common than you might think.”

“
Really?
And what would that be?”

“Think about it, Lucy: We’re both women in a man’s world. I’d like to think that this fact makes it a little easier for you to take my advice.”

This a ploy that women in senior management will often resort to: the notion that they have the unquestioned support of women who are lower on the totem pole. It is a sort of tokenism in reverse. And Lucy’s response indicated that she was not going along with it.

“I don’t believe this.
You think you can appeal to the sisterhood here?
Why do you think that you have a right to speak for me, simply because you’re a woman? You and I—we’re nothing alike: You’re a tall, beautiful woman on the fast track of a large corporation. I’m overweight, a nobody; and it sounds like my job is being threatened—just like the job of the only coworker whom I really felt a connection with. You people have fired my best friend—a man who contributed to the formation of this company. And you expect
me
to betray Alan because you’re asking me to, and we’re both
women
?”

By now Beth was exasperated. She had tried to make Lucy see the light; and her attempt had failed. Perhaps Beth had even been toying with the idea of pleading for a last-minute reprieve for Alan’s female confidant. Clearly there would be no reprieves now.

“I’ve explained the situation to you, Lucy. You decide what you want to do next. But remember: your actions will have consequences.”

It was 6:30 p.m., and Shawn Myers was sitting at his desk, brooding. He had a great deal to think about—none of it good.

Only three days had passed since the disaster of the monthly meeting. After his humiliating treatment at the hands of his father, he had been forced to endure further humiliation when following through on his old man’s order to apologize to Tom Galloway. Galloway had made a pretense of being gracious, all the while treating Shawn to that infuriating smirk of his. Not for the first time Shawn had imagined how it would feel to slam his fist into the front row of Tom Galloway’s teeth. That would teach the little prick to smirk!

But he would never do that. He would never take action against Tom Galloway, because such a step would be the ultimate defiance of his father. And so he would continue to bow and scrape before Galloway and the other worthless fools of TP Automotive’s senior management team.

He could feel a bruise in the spot where his back had collided with the wall during his confrontation with Craig Walker. Shawn could still not completely believe that the hired consultant had dared to lay hands on him. Like his father and Tom Galloway, Craig Walker had stolen his manhood and humiliated him.
And in front of the girl.

Walker was also clever: It would be difficult for Shawn to retaliate through official channels without exposing his own weakness for Alyssa. He had not yet told his father, Beth, or Bernie about the outrage. Eventually he would tell them. But first he would have to find a way to spin the story to his advantage. The facts as they now stood would not make him look good.

It had been a horrible week. A horrible,
humiliating
week.

He had also been humiliated by the Alyssa Chalmers. The cleaning woman’s daughter had walked in with her mother about half an hour ago, and the girl had disappeared down one of the adjacent hallways without giving him so much as a nod.

It was one thing to be pushed around by his father or Tom Galloway—
or even Craig Walker, for that matter
—but what sort of a man would he be if he let a fifteen-year-old girl humiliate him?
And wasn't that exactly what she was doing?
He had gone out of his way to be nice to her on numerous occasions, and she had repaid his interest only with indifference.

It was time to teach that girl a lesson.
But how?
So far Alyssa had been impervious to every attempt at verbal persuasion.

Maybe that’s the problem
, Shawn thought.
You’ve been
all talk, when you should be a little more about action.

Shaw
n had long recognized that some women did not say yes when they really wanted to say yes. What these women
really
wanted was some help in saying yes.

On a handful of occasions since his early twenties, he had occasionally “helped” women to say yes. There were usually no repercussions. Most had been either too frightened or intimidated to retaliate. (
Or perhaps they had been honest with themselves about what they really wanted
, he thought.)

But one of them had called him the next morning, screaming that what Shawn had done was “date rape,” and threatening to go to the police. Shawn had shown up at her apartment an hour later with a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, and a rope. He had surprised her at her door, knocking her down and forcing her into the handcuffs before duct-taping her mouth shut. Then he had looped one coil of the rope around her neck. Tightening the rope, Shawn had told her that he could easily snap her neck, and that was exactly what he would do if she went to the police. Then he raped her again on the floor of her living room, without removing either the duct tape or the handcuffs.

“You see what you made me do?” Shawn had asked, pulling up his pants after the act. And there was some truth in this: He had gone to her apartment with the intention of scaring her, but not necessarily of taking her again. But the sight of her helpless, handcuffed and gagged with the rope around her neck—well, that had been too arousing for him to pass up. She had brought that on herself.

As he removed his handcuffs from the woman’s wrists, he had neglected to tell her how lucky she really was: He had not told her that far worse had once befallen two women who had dared to humiliate him.

Shawn stared overhead at the florescent lights of the UP&S office. It all seemed so long ago—that night he had surprised that woman in her apartment with the handcuffs. Looking back, it seemed almost like a dream or a movie that he had once seen. How old had he been then?
Twenty-five? Twenty-six?

This remembrance brought back a memory of an even earlier vintage, about the Really Bad Thing that he had done during his student days at the Ohio State University.
But hadn’t those two women also had it coming? 

Shawn shuddered. Yes, they
had
had it coming; but that did not make it any less of a mistake. He still recalled the feeling of utter isolation he had felt so many years ago, as he stood in the doorway of that student apartment in Columbus with the bloody crowbar in his hand. But that feeling of isolation had been almost immediately accompanied by a sense of superhuman power.

An odd mix of emotions, to be sure.

The two dead young women had lain on the floor with their heads bashed in, having paid the ultimate price for their bitchiness only hours after they had spoken so rudely to him in the off-campus bar.

Why had he done that
—beyond the obvious reasons
?
Even now there were elements of the incident that remained a mystery to him. It had been a youthful indiscretion, to be sure, but one that had nearly cost him everything.

That was all in the past—the woman he had handcuffed, as well as the two women who had been dead for fifteen years now.
But what about Alyssa?
She was his immediate concern. Alyssa wasn't yet deserving of a crowbar;
but that didn’t mean that he could let her defy him at will, either, did it?

Shawn leaned over in his chair and removed a flask from his
attaché case
. It was an engraved Tommy Bahama flask with a leather cover. The flask contained about six ounces of 12-year-old Dalmore scotch whiskey. After checking to make sure that he was completely alone in the front office area, Shawn permitted himself a discreet sip.

He screwed the flask shut and returned it to his briefcase, feeling a bit guilty. This was exactly the sort of thing that would set his father off. The old man had spent so many years of his life in the button-down conformity of TP Automotive, that he now no longer understood how to have a good time.

Well
, Shawn thought.
I do. And I’m not going to let some fifteen year-old girl push me around.

He stood up and noted with satisfaction that Craig Walker had gone home for the evening—along with the other office staff. His father, Beth, and Bernie were also gone. The girl’s mother was in the far hallway.

This meant that he would be able to talk to the girl alone.

But was that really all he was intending to do? Surely he wasn't intending to lay hands on her, was he?

Shawn was acutely aware of the combination of the heat of his desire, his anger, and the whiskey. It was a combination that had proved to be unpredictable in the past, for himself as well as for others.

He told himself that a talk was all he wanted—but this time a talk in which Alyssa treated him respectfully, as was his due.

Donna was in one of
UP&S’s
utility closets
,
using a hose to fill
a ten-gallon rolling bucket that was equipped with a mop and wringer. As the hot water gurgled
from the hose
into the bucket, it emitted a corrosive steam, vaporizing traces of the industrial-strength cleaning powder that she had scooped into the bucket before turning on the water.

Donna’s next task was to clean the floor in the north corridor hall between the office and the production area. She turned off the faucet just as she heard her daughter cry out.

She poked her head out of the closet. Alyssa and Shawn Myers were down the hall a short ways, within shouting distance of her. Concealed as she was within the closet, neither one of them had likely been aware of her presence.