David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

“Marcus, you old so-and-so.”

“Mr. Pope. Pardon me, I was trying to reach Tessa Bright, your assistant.”

“She doesn’t go in for what you got, Mark.” Then he did his fake Indian—“I thought you were understanding that”—and roared down the phone.

Mark cringed but laughed. “Right you are, sir. No, but I just wanted to uh…well, anyway, no matter, I’ll drop her an e-mail.”

“Did you just want to uh…well say, ‘Thank you, Tessa, for bailing my ass outta TSA jail’?”

Shit. “Yes. Yes, actually that is exactly what I wanted to say to her, sir.”

“Well, then, you can say it to me, boy”—fake Indian—“because it is I who am making it happen.”

“Then thank you, Mr. Pope. I am very happy to be out of that spot. Your man is very…competent.”

“That he is, Marcus. That he is. Hey look, don’t mention it. No problem. That’s the kind of help friends offer each other, you know?”

Mark used the beat to take a huge swig of whiskey.

“Just, tell me this, Marcus,” Pope demanded, “why, why, why have you not come to work beside my good friend James?”

Mark swallowed. Too much rye in one go; it rather steamed his head with its sugary rank. His eyes watered.

“Marcus?”

“You mean, sir, why haven’t I started as SineCo’s storyteller-in-chief?”

“Nyyyuhhhhh-huh.”

“James — I mean, Mr. Straw — and I were just still trying to, you know, tweak the position’s, um, scope of work, so that I can be my most effective, you know, self…” Mark should be able to bullshit Pope. Why was he getting all wobbly? “And, you know, we’re just not sure we have it where it needs to be.”

Pope leaped: “Scope’s not where it needs to be? Is that about it?”

See, it was the cheeriness that made Pope present as a psychopath, thought Mark. “Yes. I think that’s a fair assessment.”

“Okay, look, you little shitbag.” Now it was like his voice was crawling out of the holes on the phone — ants from a rotten log. “James Straw wants you to take this job. He is going to pay you lots of money. Now, you apparently think that you deserve more than what’s on the table—”

“It’s not like that, Mr. Pope. We’re not negotiating about money—”

“Oh, it’s not about the money? Is that it? Yeah, it never is with you people.” Mark was lost; what people did Pope think he was? “Whatever the problem is, then, get over it. Immediately. This is a good job, and we want you to take it.”

Mark gathered what courage he had. “Why?”

“What?” barked Pope.

“Why do you want me to take this job?”

“Oh, don’t big yourself up. We’re gonna have a thousand of you. We want you now because Straw wants you near him. As far as I’m concerned, your book is grade-A bunk. But that man thinks you shit cotton candy, and whatever you do in your little sessions, it works. I haven’t seen him this focused in twenty years. And I need him to stay focused. So it is most certainly in my interest to see that he gets what he wants. And right now, what he wants is you behind some glass desk no more than a thousand yards from him. So that whenever he gets the shakes, you’ll be there to fan him with a hat or show him your dick or tell him a riddle or whatever the hell it is you do.”

“Right. Well. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Pope. As soon as I see James—”

“No, Marcus.” Pope sounded almost kind here. “ I’ll tell you what you’ll do. You will call Mr. Straw today or tomorrow or maaaaybe the day after that, and you will tell him, Yes, thank you, please, I would love to be the SIC of SineCo under the generous terms you outlined, and I can start immediately .”

Mark drained his glass. He cradled his phone in the crook of his shoulder.

“We clear?” asked Pope.

“Yeah. We’re clear,” Mark heard himself say.

Given a minute to think about it, Mark would probably have allowed that in Newark Airport that afternoon, his neuro-slurry was maybe looking for trouble. What with the Leo-meeting anxiety and the high stakes of the Nike presentation and the thrill of the TSA tangle and the ticktock of the SineCo ultimatum.

But by the time Mark even thought to have these thoughts, the ride had started. The one banana he’d eaten at seven a.m. fought bravely against the double whiskey, the two chardonnays, and the Xanax. Or what he’d thought was a Xanax. But when he didn’t fall into a dry-mouthed slumber, he’d realized that, in his stupid drunk, he had fished out the wrong pill — a Nuvigil — from the bottom of his Dopp kit, and he went into a kind of fugue, and his mind kept running, and he kept drinking (the Nuvigil in valiant neurochemical conflict with airplane whiskey) until the flight attendant cut him off, and then he and the ghoul driving his body deplaned together, and the turquoise carpet in the Portland airport nearly made him ill, and the beach-themed restaurant in the concourse had quit serving so his ghoul got them a taxi and got them to the hotel and there was a fridge in the room and more pills in Mark’s Dopp kit and then they went out together, his ghoul and he, Mark as blank as a bodhisattva, but also gross and reeling.

He woke — if that was the word — in a dark hallway of his hotel. A tiny Latina chambermaid was whispering, You okay? You need help? Trying to stand up, he almost pulled her housekeeping cart down on himself. She steadied him and let him into his room with the key that he held in his hand. He thanked her, his voice a surprise to him, then leaned his head against the cool metal of the door frame. He took some breaths. In three minutes, he would vomit. On the upside, he seemed without injury, save for a mild carpet rash. He tried to savor his relief that his body had once again delivered itself home and apparently avoided the most basic disasters.

No idea. He had no idea about last night. Zero. A movie he never saw. In two minutes he would vomit.

He searched his pockets: wadded cash, a menthol cigarette, a swizzle stick, and…come on, come on, come on… yesssss, his passport and Node. Relief.

But then he checked his Node screen.

14 Missed Calls. 7 New Messages.

And the time! With a clench, he realized that he had been due seven minutes ago at Nike World Headquarters, where he was to address a passel of HR supervisors about Fostering a Prideful Environment and about the cross-platform-lifestyle delivery potential of SineLife. In one minute he would vomit.

The red light on his bedside phone was pumping. He dialed the front desk.

“Mr. Deveraux,” chirped the desk. “There’s a gentleman here from Nike. He’s very anxious that you come downstairs.”

“Of course. Tell him I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

Then Mark vomited.

Twenty minutes later, he had assembled himself into a functioning replica of a human. He would claim food poisoning, he would apologize, he would handle this somehow — Never Give Up! — he would come through it.

And at first it seemed he would. He shut off most of his higher-order cognition and concentrated on his breathing and the very immediate environment. In this way, he managed the tense drive to Beaverton with his Nike minder, a guy called Dave. Dave said, “You sure you’re okay?” Mark said, “It’ll pass.” But he rolled his window all the way down, which kept conversation to a minimum and cool air storming around his sour, pounding head.

But once they got to Nike and he had to get out of the car, Mark found that his condition was dire. At a grueling clip, Dave led him into an absolutely enormous building and then into a room where fifteen people had been waiting an hour for him. A big bank of windows looked out onto the fields beyond and the gorgeous late-summer Saturday morning he was keeping them from.