Eric Dimbleby - White Out

Throughout the morning, while they fed themselves the remaining bits of food they could uncover in coworkers’ desks, Annie tried to talk Tony out of leaving. She thought they could wait one more day, but he wasn’t having it, not with the heat and food supplies fully cashed out. There was an underlying excitement in his actions—in his every gesture and sweeping declaration of their game plan—that came from this deadly challenge. Annie wasn’t sure if it was the element of protection he was providing her, or if it was the perilous nature of their oncoming journey. She suspected it might be a little bit of both.

Annie clutched the edges of the wheelbarrow’s plasticized hull, trying to look straight ahead. As they slid down the hill, she prayed that the contraption would stay together. She kept picturing Charlie Brown inside of her mind’s eye; putting together a go-cart and having it break down into rubble on its maiden voyage. It was unfair to Tony, but it made her feel better privately to deprecate him in that way. When all was said and done, he turned out to be handier than he looked. As the incline leveled off and their transportation remained intact, Annie felt a new comfort settle into her gut. Maybe Tony had some value after all, slimy intentions aside.

She cursed the unrelenting cold that crept through the scarf she’d wrapped around her face and neck. Only her eyes were exposed to the cold, and even that was enough to terrify the hell out of her, feeling a glassiness pervading her sensitive eyeballs. Tony warned her to keep her eyes pinched together as much as possible, to avoid any damage. He’d brought along a pair of goggles from Eddie’s office, but he needed those so that he could see where to steer their ship. Annie had the luxury of closing her eyes, though part of her wondered if she’d ever open them again if something awful happened to them. It was better that way, she decided. If you can’t see death coming, then there’s no time to worry about it… it just takes you when it’s damn well ready.

As their momentum diminished to null, she turned to look back at the steep grade of the snow drift that had plastered itself up against their building. Now Tony was chugging along, putting all of his upper body strength into the ski poles, bending his knees to reduce any resistance from the wind. Almost right away, he was working his ass off, and for that, Annie appreciated him, no matter what their history looked like—both personally and intimately.

They couldn’t have been moving more than one quarter a mile an hour, but they weren’t sinking in and drowning in the icy tomb either. She tried not to think of Winnie. Annie clenched her eyes shut again. Better that way. Much better.

Tony shouted something as they lunged, inch by inch, through the snowy deep of the parking lot. She couldn’t make out his voice, for all the blasting wind that was attacking their front side, but she caught the word “cars” somewhere in that distant mumble. She presumed that he was observing the fact that all the cars were buried right beneath them, completely useless to them.

Annie pictured her vehicle, buried far below her.

She still had an iced coffee sitting in the cup holder, and the irony of that seemed to tickle her for a moment. Closing her eyes tightly, she could envision all the trash on the floor of her little hatchback—fast food wrappers, unread mail, a magazine or two, stained coffee mugs, and cough drop wrappers. This winter had brought her the nastiest chest cold she could ever remember experiencing, and she still hadn’t cleaned up the remnants of that delirious spell. In fact, her breath still tasted like cough medicine, even after more than four weeks’ abstaining from the bloody rotten stuff.

She hated the car, and so she showed it as little respect as possible. In fact, the damn car had caused all these issues for her. Not the storm. Not Tony. Not Christian. Not herself. She’d be home with Christian and Paulie if it wasn’t for the car completely screwing her over.

Annie couldn’t help but relive that first day, wishing she had picked out a different path. That wouldn’t help her, obviously, but she could still replay it, if only to learn something for next time. Assuming that is, if there was a next time.

It started snowing on a Monday morning, right after Annie arrived for the day. It was a typical Monday morning, wintry and bleak. But this was northern New England, so snow was just a part of everyday life during the winter. On that particular morning, she went about her usual routine; running weekly numbers for the sales staff, checking in on some of the larger clients with her charming demeanor, and brewing coffee in the kitchenette. She did a little of everything on Monday mornings. By Wednesday afternoon, she usually attained more clearly defined tasks that would spring up during the first half of the week. Every week started with a whimper and ended with a bang.

By noon, Annie noticed that most of the staff had slithered out for an early lunch. Many of them didn’t bother returning, as a couple additional inches accumulated in the next hour. If their supervisors were okay with them sneaking out on a regular work day, regardless of the weather, she wasn’t going to stop them. It wasn’t her place, anyway. Someday, it would be, but not on that day.

Annie had bigger fish to fry, so she’d wait right up until the last minute to escape the storm. She’d secured a meeting with the Chief Financial Officer for four o’clock. He was a difficult man to pin down, and when you did achieve that success, one had to make the best of it. Annie had been working on a side project with her cube-neighbor, Freddie Hanson, since early July. The project had all but fallen apart after some early hurdles in their data collection (mostly due to some technical issues at one of the associate firms on the west coast), but Annie adeptly figured out a way to right the ship and keep the project in motion.

Garrett, the CFO since the Reagan administration, was willing to hear her out, to observe her findings and act if necessary. Annie was secretly certain that this would be the notch she needed, to propel herself to a new position. If she could show old Garrett Johnson the very “creative” and perfectly legal accounting she’d contrived, it might just be her ticket to ride. It was all based on a legal loophole that the tricky brains at the IRS had failed to close. It was clearly stated and well documented, completely on the up-and-up, and if it was as solid as she believed it to be, it could save the company a hundred thousand dollars in the first year alone, with even larger windfalls in later years.

Two o’clock came, and she stared out the window, chatting briefly with Tony about how she needed to get some better snow tires over the weekend. They observed the grim parking lot, growing anxious with every flake that descended. There were only a handful of cars remaining. One of them belonged to Garrett, so her meeting wasn’t canceled just yet. She emailed him, asking for an earlier audience due the inclement weather, but he hadn’t responded.

Three o’clock came and Annie was pretty sure she wasn’t going to make it home without a lift from somebody. Tony offered to stay behind in case she needed him, but she was averse to that scenario, as she was aware of the way he looked at her when she passed by. He was most certainly an “ass man,” tried and true. Something in that was flattering.

Winnie was still in the office. Her station wagon parked right next to Annie’s car. Good old Winnie was always good for a favor. That is, if Winnie’s car was any better at traversing the snow. She’d been bragging about her new snow tires recently, something that Annie took note of. Always take note of any and all options, her father used to say.