Addie Lacoe: Mona

“Why haven’t these people quit before now?” Mona asked.

“Too old, some of them,” Enrique said. “Most are too specialized. Even if they managed to outrun their reputations, it’s not easy to uproot a family and start over.”

“And you?”

“Too stubborn,” he said, “with too many years invested in the company to see it all destroyed by Al Tingley.”

The vice-president? “It’s a personal thing between the two of you?”

“Sort of. I showed a client how to save seven million dollars, but Tingley saw it as losing seven million for the company. He thought I should have kept my mouth shut; I thought I was generating good will. The fact that the client has since spent over nine hundred million with us and been one of our best word-of-mouth advertisers doesn’t impress him.”

“So you’ve been effectively retired.”

“And Tingley has either reassigned or scrapped all my projects and locked me out of the database.”

“Mr. Stone, too?”

Enrique nodded. “Mr. Stone underestimated Tingley’s power and his temper. The man went into a rage over some design flaw that Mr. Stone said had to be fixed for safety reasons. Tingley’s unstable.”

“You’re afraid of him?” Mona asked.

“I wouldn’t want to be caught alone with him in a dark alley.”

“And you’re expecting me to face him?” Mona didn’t see herself as the hero type.

“He’ll never know until it’s too late. Once you tell the president what’s going on, Tingley’ll be history.”

“Mr. Bartlett?” She could just imagine sending the president of the company a memo, “Dear Mr. Worthington, Your fair-haired boy, Al Tingley, has blackballed several of your best qualified engineers, and they’ve sent me to tattle on him.” Her message would be intercepted, and, even if Tingley didn’t have a vindictive temper, she’d be out on her ear before the ink was dry; she was still on probation, after all, until her first annual review. “Impossible,” she said.

“You’d have to do it discreetly, of course,” Enrique said. “We have a précis on fiche. You’ll need to get it to him in person, though. In private.”

“Nobody sees the president in private.” Who did Enrique think he was kidding? If she so much as sent Mr. Bartlett a calling card, everybody in the company would know about it within the hour.

“You were introduced to him, weren’t you?”

“Sure, the first day. It doesn’t mean a thing.” She felt sorry for Enrique and his people, but she had to think of her own career. “There are five managers between me and the president.”

“He’ll be at this party.”

“What, I’m supposed to drag him off to the cloak room?” At this level, she didn’t dare speak until spoken to, and then only in carefully-considered, politically-correct, value-neutral phrases until the recorders went off and the consent forms were signed in duplicate. “Why don’t you do it? Or Mr. Stone?”

“We’ve tried. If Mr. Bartlett knows anything at all, Tingley has probably convinced him that this is just an easy way to get rid of a few troublemakers without the union objecting too much. Even if Mr. Bartlett wanted to know all about it, he couldn’t afford to get involved. If he did, upper management would lose their shield of deniability. So Tingley has free rein. If anybody objects to Mr. Stone being axed, too, Tingley’ll just say he was trying to make the deal look more legitimate.”

“I can’t help you.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Enrique said.

“What do you mean?” Was he going to try to force her? “Does Tingley know I’m meeting with you?” She was ready to be furious again. “Is he going to transfer me into Special Projects, too?”

“He already has,” Enrique said.

“Without my knowing?”

“Check your personnel file.”

“But why?”

“You must have made him mad,” Enrique said. “He’s been bragging how you’re so in lust with him that he might have to file charges.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“We have a tape.”

Mona was so enraged that for the first time in her life her telemetry was virtually useless. She’d had to physically phone her computer to verify her file. It was slowly coming back, but her hands were still shaking so much Enrique had to insert her invitation into the slot.

It had taken her an entire year since graduation to land a decent job, to prove to some company that her physical limitations were no “handicap” in doing the work she’d trained for. Tomorrow she’d be eliminated with the rest of them. Being fired from her very first position ever wouldn’t exactly look great on her resume. She’d have to go back to living with her parents.

“Take my arm,” Enrique said.

She laid her hand on his forearm and felt his muscles flex inside the fabric of his jacket, as if her touch were electric. Don’t go jumping to conclusions again, she told herself. This rare exception to etiquette was a concession, the way they used to allow guide dogs in restaurants. But the warmth of his body radiated through to her. She felt giddy. It must be the heat of so many people in one place. The hum of a hundred conversations blended with the hum of a hundred recorders. “Where’s Mr. Bartlett?” she whispered to Enrique. “Let’s get this over with.”

“He’s with Tingley,” Enrique said. “We’ll have to wait.”

She felt Enrique turn away. “If we wait, I’ll lose what little nerve I’ve got,” she said, pulling him back. “I feel like a sacrificial lamb.”

Enrique paused. She could feel him staring again. “When the time comes, you’ll do fine. How could he reject you? You’re beautiful.”

She couldn’t believe he’d said that. People simply didn’t comment on physical attributes. Suits had been filed on flimsier grounds. Maybe he did trust her—and not just to save his job. “I don’t feel beautiful,” she said. In fact, she felt sullied after hearing what Tingley had said about her. She’d only spoken to the man half a dozen times. She thought they’d only talked about positions he wanted to fill, but now she realized she knew more about his marital problems than she should. Once he’d seemed irritated when she rescheduled a lunch meeting to the next morning. Did he have more in mind than lunch that day? “Is Tingley handsome?” she asked.

“Tingley?”

“Well, does he think he is?” Since she obviously couldn’t judge his physical assets the way other women could, he might have been doubly sensitive, assuming she’d rejected his personality, his basic ego.

“Forget Tingley.”

“I can’t. If he told one person, he told more.”

“Nobody believed him,” Enrique said. “Just stick to the script, and the problem with Tingley will take care of itself.”

Right. But she let Enrique drag her away from a premature confrontation and plunge her into a round of forced mingling. At last Enrique paused. “What is it?”

“Mr. Bartlett’s headed this way. I think he’s getting ready to leave. He’s passing the far end of the buffet. Can you pick him out?”

“Yes.” Her telemetry had finally regained full power. “And Tingley?”

“He’s still hanging on, but we’ll have to risk it. We won’t get another shot at Bartlett tonight.” He nudged her onto an intercept course with the president.

Large parties had their own set of rules. Just by being here, a person was announcing that he could be spoken to, although he wasn’t obliged to do more than nod in exchange. Mona tried to appear unaware of Mr. Bartlett’s progress, but by straining, she could hear bits and pieces of his greetings, as he made his way through the crowd. Then he was upon her.

“Mr. Bartlett.” She jerked her head in his direction. Too eager, too eager!