Despite best laid plans, Marc's idle Monday had become a wreck. Aside
from catching up on the gossip on Amanda’s Friday night party, his lunch
meeting with Trent proved to be of little value. Trent was able to bring
him up to speed on some of the reasons for his boss’s latest round of
panic attacks. Still, this was of no comfort once Marc returned to the
office from lunch. Not only was Marc juggling each of Sandra’s impossible
demands, he was tied down with endless amounts of “change request” paper
work and an endless supply of voicemails which required his attention and
response. Marc quickly glanced at the clock and realized it was past 5pm,
and the bulk of the staff on the 26th floor we readying themselves to go
home. After a quick assessment of the list of handwritten tasks stuck to
his computer monitor across 3 post-it notes, Marc realized he wouldn’t be
calling it a day for hours.
Once an employee is required to work past the normal call of duty and
begin to work on their own time, things change. During the 9 to 5pm shift,
one might be more inclined to weight through an issue, and explore all the
options. But now, as Marc looked out his office door across an empty
office floor, he wasn’t about to spend his evening coming up with the
perfect answer to all his boss’s questions. He was flying through his
analysis, with only the need to present Sandra with an answer. It didn’t
have to be perfect, or polished. It just had to be good enough. And Marc
needed to get to the hell out of the office tower, out of the cold
downtown core, back to his modest apartment, and out of the "goddammed
tie" wrapped around his neck.
Even though Marc cursed his bad luck between endless reviews of legal
files, he realized he had a job to do, and wanted to do it well. Even
though the episode he was going through at the moment was horrific, he
knew it would put him in a better place, at least career-wise, down the
road. He was angry at his situation, but not himself. After a bit of
internal dialoguing with himself, Marc justified the late stay and
realized that he could get through this and deliver for his boss… who
appeared to be walking rather rapidly to Marc’s office with her patented
faux-smile and yet another stack of thick file folders.
Sandra cruised into the office and hurriedly presented the materials to
Marc. “I need you to review these 10 contracts before you go home today,
if you act diligently, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two”.
Marc tried his best to hide his disgust as she walked away without waiting
for his confirmation of understanding.
“Fuck”, he bit his lip and cursed under his breath. Marc knew that the
contract files wouldn’t take an hour or two to review, but rather would
take the bulk of the evening, leaving him just enough time to get home for
a few hours of tortured sleep, only to return back to his desk promptly
for a 7am meeting tomorrow morning.
“Fuck”, Marc cursed again. In frustration, he fired up the CD player on
his computer. To his surprise an old Beatles CD began to play. Marc
focused on the speakers attached to the PC as the opening chords of “The
End” began to pour out. Marc began to snarl, the sugary-pop riffs simply
did not fit the mood or urgency of his situation. He lashed at the CD
player, and fumbled with the console buttons as the disk ejected. He
scanned around his desk and shelf area, he noticed his clock radio which
was doubling as a paper weight. Marc snatched up the radio, and dialed the
tuning knob to the local rock station. He prayed for some decent music to
keep himself sane. As the dial locked in the signal the chorus to
Nirvana’s “Rape Me” screamed out. His snarl became a snicker. Marc
purposefully and slightly turned up the volume with hopes of the
controversial sentiment from the song catching Sandra’s ears.
As time went on, the sun had set on the city skyline. Marc had finished
feeling sorry for himself ages ago, and in turn had torn through a
reasonable number of files for analysis. The problem was that his efforts
weren’t actually creating progress, he still couldn’t answer Sandra’s
queries. Marc looked up from his legal files and his computer monitor. He
realized his finger tips were stained from the dry erase markers he had
used to map out his findings on the whiteboard. He looked across his
wrinkled white shirt and realized the marker was also on the cuffs of his
shirtsleeves. Marc realized he was sleepy and hungry, and had minimal
options. He stood up, and began to stretch. As he stepped away from the
desk his phone rang out.
Marc looked at the phone with a puzzled look. Who would call him here, at
this hour? He reached for the receiver.
“Hello? Marc, here…”
“What the hell are you doing at work at this hour?!”, It was Sara.
“Darling, don’t even get me started… I’m in over my head right now, my ass
is on the line, and at the rate I’m going… I’ll be sleeping under my desk
tonight.”
“Oh come on”, Sara laughed as she responded.
“No… I’m serious. I’ve been putting out fires since lunch time. I’m a
fucking wreck, my stomach hurts.”
“Ahhh, that explains a lot.”
“Huh?”, Marc’s fingers began playing with the cord between the receiver to
the phone.
“That why you didn’t return my voicemail this afternoon, and that’s why
I’m calling now… I was wondering what the hell you were getting up to.”
“Yeah, sorry about that… I haven’t even had a second to think in non-work
terms for the last 8 hours. Like I said, I’m having a hell of a day…”
Sara cut Marc off, “Yeah it sure sounds like it. You need to get the hell
out of the office, it’s just not healthy. Look, here’s the plan, I’m
coming to get you. You need to call it a day… plus, I’m buying us dinner
and drinks.”
Marc chimed in, “No way… if I don’t get this done, I’m gonna be in so much
shit! Hell my boss is 3 offices down, and unless I can explain to her how
our project costs are going to change if we tell our supplier to rebuild a
compressor we designed, I’m gonna be trapped here until the year 2010.”
“Come on, let it go… you’re useless to the company right now. You’re
exhausted and thinking with a narrow mind. I’m coming to get you. I’ll be
there in 15 minutes.”
“No,” Marc was firm, “I have to get this Martin Construction re-order
sorted out”.
“Martin… what?” Sara uncharacteristically inquired.
“Oh never mind,” Marc paused, breathed slowly, and then continued, “Martin
Construction, I helped set up a contract with them to build some materials
for us last year, we need them to re-do their work… ‘cause it sucks… and I
have to figure out how much that’s gonna cost us”.
Sara began to laugh, “It’s gonna cost nothing.”
Marc was now confused and brimming with sarcasm, “Sara, are you totally
drunk?”
“No, I’m not, but apparently you’re totally forgetful.”
“Huh”
“Marc… you jerk… do you not remember my birthday last summer?”
“Yeah… the trip out to your uncle’s cabin on the lake.”
“Right. And do you remember how your stupid boss wouldn’t let you skip
that Friday before the weekend, and I had to wait for you to finish work?
And then you and I and drove up to the cabin together… which took almost 5
hours?”
“Yeah…?”, Marc was still confused.
“Marc, when we were in that car you were so wound up that you rambled on
about work for the first hour and a half. You went on and on about a
stupid deal you had made with Martin Construction… the only reason I
remember it, is because the company’s name reminded me of Martin Short,
the comedian.”
Sara paused to catch her breath and then continued, “You also
painstakingly told me that the agreement with that company was done on a
flat rate basis – a flat rate, you told me like your phone bill, where you
just pay one price no matter how much or little you use.”
Marc was amazed, “Holy fuck! I can’t believe you thought that… ‘cause I
didn’t. I’m sure it’s a little more complicated than just handing Sandra a
napkin with the phrase ‘flat-rate’ scribbled across it, but this is
probably gonna save my ass tonight.”
Marc kept Sara on the line as he searched his old emails, “Christ, there
it is… there are the summary terms of the agreement… from last summer, in
an email dated July 10th… the day of your birthday.”
Sara quietly reveled in her ability to save the day, “Excellent, so are we
on or what?! You really should be buying me dinner… but I’ll let it slide,
because you sound like some Goth Kid who calls himself the Prince of
Sorrow right now. I’m getting into my car and will be in front of your
office in 15 minutes. Don’t’ keep me waiting.”
“Ok. Deal!”, Marc hung up the phone as he attempted to focus on forwarding
relevant emails to Sandra. As he pressed the send button on his PC, he put
on his coat, and began walking out the office door. He over-dramatically
scanned the empty office floor as he waited for the elevator to arrive.
The elevator door opened and 2 members of the building cleaning staff
attempted to navigate out of the elevator as Marc blindly pushed his way
in. Marc apologized as he stumbled around their cleaning dolly. He hit the
ground floor button, leaned back against the mirrored wall and felt
gravity pull against his knees as the elevator plummeted down 26 floors.
Marc pushed the front doors of the building open he couldn’t help but
notice the air was particularly sharp and chilled. Before Marc could begin
an internal monologue about the pending winter, he heard a car horn cut
across the sound of outside traffic. It was Sara, double parked, causing a
minor traffic jam.
“Come on!”, she hollered out the open car window.
Marc darted between on-coming traffic, and hopped into the passenger side
of her silver Accord. As he shut the door, he was greeted by James Taylor
cranking out of the front stereo speakers. He eyed the volume dial on the
car stereo, and before he could move to adjust the volume down to a
semi-sane level, Sara reached across, muting the music.
“Wow… you look like… shit!”
“Thank you, darling”, Marc was too worn to smile.
“Don’t worry, my boy… we’ll fix you up in no time. Did you get things
sorted out with your boss?”
“Yeah… I think so. I hope so. I kinda didn’t tell her I was leaving.”
“Sounds smart, business man.”, Sara was now focused and driving a mile a
minute, darting between 3 lanes of one-way traffic, her eyes rhythmically
shifted between looking ahead, and looking out her rear view mirror.
Marc buckled up, “Yeah… it might not have been my best move, but I think
you were on the right track about that flat-rate stuff. If I lose my job
tomorrow morning, I’m becoming your cabana boy, and you’ll be my sugar
mama.”
Sara took her focus from the road and looked at Marc with a warm smile,
“Oh my, you’re making jokes again… does this mean you’ll be semi tolerable
to be around tonight?”
“Of course… as long as that whole sugar mama deal still stands.”
Sara’s attention was again focusing on exiting the freeway, she still
grinned as she spoke to Marc, “Sorry darling… I swore to Trent on Friday
night that I’d be his sugar mama if his career ever fell apart at the
seams. I’d love to take care of all my boys, but I can only bank roll one
of you.”
“Dammit” Marc feigned his resentment, “Fine. Can we just go get some food
then, I’m going to eat my hand if we don’t find a restaurant soon”.
“Not a problem, my boy, we’re not even a minute away from where we’re
going”.
Marc surveyed the landscape and realized that they were at the Southfalls
Shopping complex. Southfalls was massive circular series of strip malls,
full of chain stores and outlet centres, void of the soul that Sara and
Marc’s usual the hangouts thrived on.
With a puzzled look on his face Marc enquired, “Uhh. What are we doing
here?”
“Oh, quit complaining. You’re starving, and I want a drink. This is the
quick and easy solution.”
Sara routed the car across the mall parking lot, around the parked cars,
she pulled up in front of Dixie’s Restaurant. The green glow from the neon
sign radiated across the dashboard of the car.
“Dixie’s?!”
Dixie’s was a strange place. A chain restaurant that tried it’s best to
pretend it wasn’t. There was a Dixie’s in every neighborhood, each with
the same framed pictures on the wall, the same middle-of-the-road
contemporary music piped in by satellite, the same late teenage / early
20-something serving staff, all of whom wore the same casual blue jean and
while t-shirt uniform. It was the kind of place Marc and Sara thought was
wonderful, even elegant, while they were in school together, but after any
small taste of the real world they soon saw what the restaurant really
was.
“Fiiiiiiine. Dixie’s it is.” Marc realized Sara had already left the car
and was walking to the front door. She stopped, looked at Marc and held
out her hand to him, as if to say “hurry up”. Marc, locked his door and
scurried to Sara’s call. They met up and connected as they entered through
the glass rotary door. They were greeted by a server who didn’t look a day
over 17.
“Hi, welcome to Dixies guys. What’ll it be tonight? Would you like to sit
in the bar section or the restaurant section?”
Sara looked to Marc to settle on where to sit. Her efforts were in vain,
Marc was already walking to the left hand side of the room towards the
bar. Sara tried her best to smile politely.
“It appears, we’ll be sitting in your lounge tonight”, she quickly caught
up to Marc who had already found a tall table for two.
Marc began to make himself at home as he draped his brown leather jacket
across the back of his chair. He fumbled around in his pant pockets,
placing the contents on the table. His wallet rested near the centre of
the circular table. On top of his wallet he placed his cell phone and
apartment keys with military precision. Sara followed suit neatly placing
her jean jacket on her chair and her petit purse next to Marc’s belongings
on the table. Sara passed the menu to Marc, as he began to browse the
laminated pages they were quickly approached by a pretty girl in blue
jeans and a white t-shirt.
“Hi guys! My name is Natalie, I’ll be your server tonight. Can I start you
off with some drinks? Our margaritas on special tonight for $2.50”
The pair playfully curled their noses at each other, Sara chimed in,
“Uhhhh… No let’s pass on the slurpie drinks. Let’s keep it real. I’d like
a double gin and soda please, Natalie.”
“Sure”, Natalie shifted her attention to Marc, who was feverishly yanking
at his tie with hopes of loosening the Windsor knot around his neck. His
frustrated motions sent his body jerking and, in turn, his dark hair fell
forward across his forehead. Marc paused and realized he was now the
centre of attention.
“Oh, me?… Yeah. I’ll tell you my entire order right now. Can you bring me
a chicken burger, with a big-ass order of fries? And to drink… uhhh… just
bring me a Bud”
Natalie looked at Marc with obvious frustration, “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t
carry Budweiser at Dixie’s. We have our own brand of beer. I can offer you
a ‘summer ale’… it’s a lot like a Bud. It’s got a mellow after-taste and…”
Marc cut Natalie off, “Yeah… good… summer ale… beer… whatever, I’ll take
that.”
“Ok.”, Natalie’s tone was now curt. She spun around quickly and walked
away. As she moved Marc subtly checked her out from head to toe, and then
back toe to head. He realized she was nothing short of beautiful and
perhaps a bit young. He quietly watched her move towards the bar as she
placed their order. With each step he watched her firm ass move in her
pair of company sanctioned denim jeans. He savored the moment only in a
way a boy could, until Sara completely killed his daydream.
“Whoa. Marc, you’re being a huge pervert right now!”
Marc came-to and countered with a weak defense, “What? What are you
talking about?”
“Seriously, your eyes are glued to Natalie, or whatever her name is. Or
rather, your eyes are glued to the rounder parts of her body. You’re being
anything but sly about it.”
Marc began to blush. Even though his romantic relationship with Sara ended
years ago, he still felt awkward when the topic of sex, or lust, or women
in general came up. There was no logic to this emotional response, and he
was certain that Sara didn’t feel the same. But for some reason, maybe
respect for her or their old love, he tried to act like he didn’t have
desires for females… in the most hetero-sexual way possible.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be a creep.”
“Oh no worries, Marc. She’s a looker alright. I just didn’t want you to
get slapped… or worse get my drink short-poured”, Sara laughed and Marc
quickly realized he was far too wound up and began to chuckle.
The duo became caught up in their moment, Natalie the server returned with
drinks in hand. She moved at a hurried pace, slapping the two glasses on
the table, only pausing to announce the drinks by name.
“Beer! Gin!”
“Thank you, Natalie” Marc sheepishly stated.
Sara shook her head, “Anyways, since you’ve pissed her off for the night.
Let’s forget about her.”
“Sure”, Marc reclined back in his chair.
Without missing a beat Sara continued, “Tell me about Friday night. What
happened with Rachel Miller’s little sister, Lauren?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Marc yet again found himself on the defensive. “Why
does everyone think some sort of wonderful exchange happened between me
and this Lauren girl? Honestly, are we that hard up for gossip?”
Playing apprehensively with the paper napkins on the table he continued,
“Look, while you were going off like a Girls Gone Wild video with Amanda,
and while Trent was following the two of you around, I ended up making
pleasant conversation with Lauren. We were just catching up. She’s a cool
girl. Didn’t you ever meet her though her sister?”
Sara was to the point, “No. What’s she like?”
Marc mumbled to himself, “This is weird”, he looked up at Sara and resumed
discussion, “Like I said, we just chatted politely and caught up.”
“For almost an hour? Hell, I see my grandparents every 5 years or so, and
I can bring them up to speed about my life during a commercial break as we
watch TV.”
Marc rolled his eyes as he finished a deep sip of his beer. Before he
could counter Sara’s point, Natalie returned to the table and presented
Marc with his dinner.
“Chicken burger… with an ass-load of fires.”
Marc was elbows deep in his meal before Natalie could finish. Further fed
up, Natalie looked back at Sara.
“Another gin?”
“Of course. Thank you.”
Sara lingered to finish her drink as she witnessed Marc devour the
contents of his plate. She looked at Marc, and despite the fact he was
disheveled from a 12 hour day at work, he looked attractive to her. It
wasn’t what he was wearing, and it certainly wasn’t his smooth behavior
this evening. But his wrinkled shirt and messy hair made him come across
as ambitious. As this young hot shot, who really was capable of being
excellent at anything he chose to do. Someone who could take on any
obstacle or hurdle that entered his path. Someone who was driven, with
goals and the ability to meet them. That was, until Marc looked up from
his nearly empty plate and began to speak.
“Fuuuuuck! That was good.”
Sara could do nothing but laugh, “Feel better, darling?”
“You know it! Man, that was good”, Marc neatly gathered the cutlery and
loose napkins around the table and placed them on his dinner plate. As the
silverware hit the dish, Natalie returned with a fresh gin. With the
precision of a magician she presented the drink to Sara as she snatched up
Marc’s plate. Marc felt obligated to place an order for a second beer.
During the chaos, Marc looked around the half filled bar, and realized
that “Semi-charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind was beginning to play from the
restaurant stereo system. Marc raised an eye brow, looked at Sara and
pointed at a near by speaker.
“How many times a day must I hear this crap?”
Completely ignoring Marc’s music fixation Sara began to speak, “So back to
the party. And Lauren! Tell me more.”
“Jesus, must we beat this point up? Can we talk about something else?”
“It’s either this or the day you had at work, my love. What do you want to
discuss?”
“I want to talk about anything but me.”
“No way, you’re far too fascinating?”
“Really, I’m far too fascinating?”
Sara laughed as she reached for Marc’s hand, “No darling, I’m kidding. But
I really want to know about this Lauren girl… and what happened. I think
you hide things from me when it comes to women.”
“You drive me insane!… but you did save my ass today, and so I guess
you’re allowed steer the conversation. But look… nothing happened. We just
caught up. We talked shit… and that’s it.”
“Tell me what you talked shit about.”
“Oh… I don’t know. Haven’t you ever had one of those conversations where
you talk about all kinds of things, but neither of you pay attention to
the details, and you both walk away with a good feeling?”
“You’re a liar”, Sara removed the floating red straw from her cocktail.
“Tell me more.”
“I don’t know… we talked about her sister and stuff. Lauren’s taking
journalism at school, and we got into that, I gave her some pointers, some
advice.”
“You… the engineer? Gave advice… on journalism?”
“Well not so much journalism, but writing and composition in general. And
the power of persuasion, and how I wanted to study that stuff when I was
in school.”
Sara’s eyes lit up and then became narrow, “Dammit, I nearly forgot!”
“What?”, Marc questioned as Natalie hurried by dropping off a new beer for
Marc. This time she chose not to announce the drink by name.
Sara continued, “I’m mad at you!”
“Why on earth?!”
“We have unfinished issues to deal with… remember those guys from Diageo
Publishing? The guys I contacted for you, and you never called?”
“Yep.”
“They called me… again!”, Sara pulled her chair close to the table as she
inhaled a mouthful of her gin and soda. “Wanting to know more about you.
They liked your portfolio. They’re looking for a junior editor and you
might be able to take the job.”
“Are you kidding me… a junior editor?”, Marc unconsciously mimicked Sara’s
actions and pulled his chair closer to the table, “a junior editor is a
job that someone who went to high school could get. I’m a fucking
engineer!”
“Yeah, a fucking miserable engineer. Why don’t you just take a risk?”
“There’s a difference between a risk and career suicide. You know this.”
“That’s bullshit. Marc, I’m sick of this. I’m sick of you acting like a
tortured soul; Like someone who’s caught between two worlds of doing the
right thing or the safe thing. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if you
took some course… any course… of action. Instead you have this civil war
that goes on in your head, and when things get especially bloody in this
war, you take it out on the rest of us. That’s not cool.”
Sara waited for a response from Marc, but didn’t get one. She continued,
“This is stupid, you won scholarships for your writing in school, you
ignored the accolades, and continued your engineering work, and now the
rest of your graduating class is getting into their careers, moving
forward, and you wait in limbo”.
“You sound like my mom”, Marc countered.
“Shut up! You’re not listening. I don’t care what you do with your life, I
just want you to be happy, and working late nights at Morrison Elliot
isn’t it. As a friend, I’m trying to help you keep some perspective.
There’s more than one way to make money and have a career. You’re playing
it safe, and you know it’s wrong. Just meet with these publishing guys,
what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“This is stupid, Sara.”
“No, it’s not!”
“Yes. It is. There’s a difference between what someone likes to do, versus
what someone is qualified to do. For me to pursue writing… communicating…
broadcasting my creative ideas and thoughts… whatever… as a career is like
an armchair quarter back trying out for the NFL.”
“You’re not a hobbyist. You’ve had people pay to publish your material in
the past.”
“That was the local paper, while we were at university. They just wanted
an easy way to cover the campus tuition protests.”
“So. That’s real. There’s no armchair in that!”
“Fuck, whatever.”
“No. Not whatever.”, Sara reached in her jacket pocket and pulled out a
neatly folder piece of paper, and handed it to her dinner date.
“What’s this?”
“When I talked further with the publishing guys today, they gave me 10
contacts from their rolodex for you to call. You should set up meeting
these people, and learn more about the industry.”
“Are you kidding me!?! You want me to just randomly call these guys up and
tell them my story. They wouldn’t even give me time of day”, Marc took the
list and crumpled it in his front pocket.
“It’s either that, or staying at work past sundown, poring over legal
files for your asshole boss.”
“If only it were that simple. It’s easy to compress others lives into a
black and white, yes or no scenarios.”
“And it’s easy to be scared, and complacent. Look, if you want change you
have to actively pursue it. You have to set your targets… all that Tony
Robins stuff. You can’t wait for someone to figure you out and lead you to
victory.” Sara reached for her purse and pulled out $40, throwing it
across the table to cover the dinner and drinks.
“Are we leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Are you mad?”
“I have no idea.”, Sara stumbled forward as she tried to walk away from
the table. She stopped to pull her dark hair back in place.
“Sara, do you want me to drive your car?”
“Maybe.”
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