Andrew Price - Without A Hitch

“Should we throw a couple punches or would you rather slam the door and one of us runs off down the hallway?”

Corbin laughed. His entire manner changed instantly, and he became the old Corbin again. “What does Miss Manners recommend?”

“Mediation.”

“Let’s just throw the punches.”

“Ok.”

“Or we could just go to lunch?” Corbin suggested.

“Better yet.”

“You know, the next time Molly and Theresa end up in here together, we might want to search them for shivs first.”

“Isn’t that the truth.”

“You should have seen the grin on Molly’s face when she walked past me in the hallway to slam her door.”

“Honestly, I’m glad I missed it. Are you going to check on Theresa?”

“Something tells me that would be a horrible idea. Let’s go to lunch.”

An eerie silence settled over the office the following morning. Theresa didn’t emerge from her office and didn’t respond to e-mails. Corbin and Beckett spent the morning working in silence. Even Molly kept to herself, at least until Beckett was called away from his desk.

“Hey,” Molly said from Corbin’s doorway. “You look tired.”

“I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“What? Your co-conspirator do something to keep you awake all night, huddled in the corner. . crying?”

“Always playing the dick aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?!”

“Private detective.”

“Yeah, you better explain that!” Molly drifted over to Beckett’s desk and scanned the items Beckett left lying around. “What kept you awake?”

“An old movie. I started watching it and then couldn’t get myself to go to bed. Then they ran another one that pretty much kept me up until just before dawn.”

“What was all the yelling about yesterday?”

“You tell me. I was under the impression you two just don’t like each other.”

Molly gave Corbin a sour look. “You know what I mean. The minute I left here, you and your little friend started yelling at each other.”

“Did we really? Somehow I missed that.”

“Fine, I don’t care.” Molly crashed down into Beckett’s chair. “What were you watching last night?”

“ Night at the Opera .”

“I don’t know it.”

“It’s old.”

“I’m not into opera.”

“I am, but that’s not why I watched the movie.”

Molly picked up Beckett’s stapler and rolled it in her hands. “I had an ok night.” Molly obviously wanted Corbin to ask for further details about her night, but Corbin was in no mood to make this easy on her.

“Good, glad to hear it.”

“Of course, it could have gone better.”

“Usually can. Have you heard if it’s going to rain today?”

Molly exhaled loudly. “Do I look like the weather channel?”

“You didn’t see anything in the paper?”

“Stop asking me!” Molly said in her well-practiced exasperated tone. “Do you want to hear what happened last night or not?”

Corbin shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, do I?”

Molly stood up. “I hear my phone,” she said bitterly, and she left.

Corbin laughed. “Score one for the home team.”

Two days later, Corbin sat in the middle of the main conference room at the Maria de Santo Hotel in Washington. Beckett sat on his left, Molly on his right. By coincidence, all three wore light-gray suits. Around them, nearly two hundred people watched speech after speech with feigned professional interest.

Theresa was nowhere to be seen. She secluded herself since the fight with Molly and even refused Corbin’s offer to help with Wilson’s speech.

Wilson began his speech with a joke that received only polite laughter and quickly moved on to outlining the difficulties of running the office. He spoke in rambling, complex sentences and used much larger words than were needed. Though the speech may have looked erudite on paper, it sounded confused and pretentious when spoken. Without a doubt, Corbin knew Theresa had sabotaged it. He smiled.

“What’s so funny?” Molly and Beckett asked in unison.

Corbin waved them off as Wilson droned on, having moved on to the lack of attention the office received in the media: We’re often called the forgotten office because we rarely end up in the newspapers. In fact, I can’t think of the last time we made the papers.

“Too bad the papers didn’t ignore his last divorce,” Molly whispered in Corbin’s ear.

“It’s hard to ignore allegations of a naked car chase.”

“What did she say?” Beckett whispered, nodding toward Molly. Owing to the ambient noise of the room, neither Beckett nor Molly could hear the other when they whispered to Corbin. Thus, Corbin found himself passing along each comment.

“Wilson’s last divorce.”

“Oh, right,” Beckett snickered.

. . because our function is so specialized, many people don’t even know precisely what it is that we do.

“Hell, I don’t know what we do,” Corbin grumbled.

My goal for the coming year, a year that may result in consequential changes to the manner in which we operate, is to introduce a new paradigm to the office that is both forward looking, pragmatic, and goal oriented, though consistent with our core mission.

“What the heck does that mean?” Beckett asked.

Notwithstanding recent changes in our enacting legislation, I expect we will see significant alterations to our regulations. As many of you have recognized in the past, our regulations are some of the most complex in the world, and are not easily understood.

“Did he just say our regulations suck?” Molly asked, as a smile crept across her face.

“That’s how I took it. Maybe this is his mea culpa ?”

“Can’t wait to see what he confesses next. My money’s on erectile dysfunction.”

Corbin let out a surprised laugh, which he immediately covered with a phony cough.

Consequently, I am normally hesitant to discuss alterations to our regulations with an audience of this size. Yet, I am confident that the people in this room are some of the brightest in our industry. Thus, I am confident that I can address these matters without fear of giving an impenetrable speech.

“Bingo!” Molly whispered.

“Bingo?”

“‘Impenetrable’. I also would have accepted ‘flaccid’ or ‘impotent’.”

The concerns many commentators raised in response to our requests for comments notwithstanding, significant pressure has been building for the issuance of new regulations.

“This is boring,” Molly said, as she began kicking the empty seat in front of her.

It has been said that achieving the right level of regulation is the most difficult balancing act one can perform because you never know if the regulations are correct until after they are implemented. It is like the problem of knowing when you are in love. You may think you are in love a dozen times, and each time you believe with absolute certainty that you are correct. But it is not until you truly are in love that you realize that each of the prior times was not love, but something lesser.

“What the heck does love have to do with our regulations?” Molly whispered. She wrinkled her nose. “Do you think our regs might be worth reading?”

Corbin shook his head and mouthed the word “no.”

The process of regulation is much the same as figuring out whether you’re in love. You create regulations that appear to be correct, only to discover later that you were not correct, although with each passing attempt, you ultimately draw closer. This time, with our new proposed regulations, I believe that our regulations finally truly are correct.