John Scalzi - Agent to the Stars

"I'm terribly sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to bring up any painful memories."

Carl waved it off. "No reason you should know. I never talk about it and no one ever talks about it around me. One of the advantages of being the sort of boss that scares the Hell out of the subordinates. Susan was a wonderful woman — but so is Elise. I've been very lucky."

"Yes, sir." We ate our corn dogs in silence.

"Come on," Carl said, after he had finished his dog. "I haven't walked on the beach for weeks. We can chat while we walk." We walked off the pier, stopped off at Carl's car to drop off our shoes and socks, and then walked into the sand towards the surf.

"So," he said, when we walked to the water. "How is Joshua doing?"

I swallowed and saw my career flash before my eyes. "He's missing at the moment, Carl," I said.

"Missing? Explain."

"He and Ralph — my neighbor's dog — went out for a walk in the woods yesterday, while I was off seeing Elliot Young. When I got back into the office, Miranda had a message from him, saying that something had happened, and that he'd be late. That's the last I've heard of him. I went looking for him last night, but I didn't find him. I stayed up until six this morning, and he hadn't returned."

"Where would he go?" Carl said. "He's not exactly inconspicuous."

"The Angeles National Forest starts more or less in my backyard," I said. "They went into the woods."

If I were Carl, this would have been the point where I would have fired me. Instead, Carl changed the subject. "I hear you flattened Ben Fleck's nose yesterday."

"I did," I admitted. "He pinched Elliot Young off of me. He's also the 'Lupo Associates insider' in that damned story in The Biz. Punching him seemed the only alternative to breaking his neck. Although I'm feeling guilty about it now. I think I may have broken his nose."

"It's not broken," Carl said. "We had some x-rays done at Cedars Sinai. It's merely 'severely bruised.'"

"Well, that's good," I said. "I mean, relatively speaking."

"It is," Carl agreed. "Be that as it may, Tom, I would prefer in the future that you find some less dramatic way to resolve your issues with Ben. Ben may have been asking for it, but that sort of thing isn't very good for company morale. Also, all things considered, it's drawing unwanted attention to you at the moment."

Carl was referring to the blurb in the Times' "Company Town" column — one of the office spectators had leaked to the paper, and the paper did the legwork and found out that Ben had snaked one of my clients. It also mentioned the article in The Biz as a contributing factor, giving the article credence in the process. For even more fun, the Times had called my office this morning as well, looking for a comment on The Biz and its editorial practices. It felt like the media had pried up a floorboard looking for a bug, and that bug was me. I just wanted to fade back into the darkness.

I laughed. Carl look at me oddly. "What's so funny?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was just thinking about it. This week I was ditched by two of my clients, was labeled insane by a magazine, assaulted a colleague and let an alien walk off into the woods, where he's probably been eaten by a coyote. I'm trying to imagine how this week can get any worse. I don't think it can."

"We could have an earthquake," Carl said.

"An earthquake would be wonderful," I said. "It would give everyone else something to think about. A nice big one, 7 or 8 on the Richter scale. Major structural damage. That'd work."

Carl stood there a moment, seemingly preoccupied. I followed his line of sight down to his toes. He was busily squelching sand through them. After a few seconds of this, he stepped out of his footprints and let the tide wash into them, partially erasing them. Then he put his feet back into them.

"Tom," Carl said, "Don't worry too much about Joshua at the moment. He'll be fine. The Yherajk are pretty much indestructible by our standards, and I doubt that the coyotes or whatever are going to get a bite out of him. Joshua can make a skunk seem like a bed of roses. He and ...Ralph?" — He looked for confirmation; I nodded — "are probably just roughing it or something. You didn't tell me that he had made friends with a dog."

"They get along great," I said. "They're the solution to each other's boredom. I think Joshua likes Ralph better than he likes me."

"Well, that's good news, at the very least. Anyway, I expect Joshua will be back soon enough. Try to relax a bit."

I snorted just a little. "Now if I could just get The Biz off my back, I'd be set."

"Some of that's been taken care of," Carl said. "The Times is doing a story on The Biz, you know."

"They called me this morning," I admitted, "I've been sort of dreading calling them back."

"I've already talked to them," Carl said. "Gave them a nice long chat about how The Biz took our company's innovative mentoring policy and made it look like you were having a nervous breakdown. I said that if you were having a nervous breakdown, then I and several of the senior agents were also having them, since we've also started mentoring some of our newer agents."

"Thanks," I said. "You didn't have to do that."

"Actually, I did," Carl said. "It keeps the bad press to a minimum. I'm not blaming you about it — this Van Doren character was already working on something, and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with him. Anyway, the mentoring idea is not a bad one; we've been a sink-or-swim agency long enough. It might do some good to do things the other way for a while."

"I'm surprised you found out about it," I said.

"I asked Miranda," Carl said. "She seems to think highly of it and you."

"I think highly of her as well," I said. "Actually, I'm hoping to get her a raise."

"Give her a ten percent hike," Carl said, "but tell her to keep quiet about it. We've been cracking down on raises recently. But I figure she deserves it, or will by the time this whole thing is through. Which reminds me, since you thought of the mentoring program, you've won our Annual Innovation in Agenting Award. Congratulations."

"That's great," I said. "I've never heard of this award before."

"It's the first annual," Carl said. "Don't get too excited. I've already told the Times you've donated the cash award to the City of Hope."

"That was very nice of me," I said.

"It was," Carl agreed. "The point of all this is that now, rather than being looked upon as someone who is cracking up, which is interesting and creates press, you look like someone whose eye is on the ball and whose heart is in the right place, which is boring and no one gives a damn about. The Biz, properly, looks like a rag filled with poor reporting. And Ben Fleck looks to have gotten his. Everything works out."

"Wow," I said. "I thought I was fired for sure."

"Well, I'll be honest with you, Tom," Carl said. "It's not exactly the way I wanted it. We've cleared most of these distractions away this time. Now do me the favor of not requiring me to pull another Deus Ex Machina. I don't really like it, and it brings more attention to us than I want. Fair enough?"

I sensed the extreme irritation that lay directly under Carl's placid statement. He may not have been blaming me for anything that had happened, but that didn't mean that it didn't reflect on me. I was now going to have to work twice as hard to keep from pissing him off in the future. I figured, sooner or later, given the way things had gone so far, I was doomed.

"Fair enough," I said.

"Good," Carl said. He clapped his hands together. "You like ice cream? There's this place nearby that has the best soft-serve ice cream in L.A. Let's go get some."