Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

I arrived early, took the spiral staircase down to the storage room that had been converted into my office, and after a couple of hours went to get lunch. I brought it back to my desk and ate it while reading an article on my phone. I had just leaned back with a drink in hand when I was startled by Candace. She stood waiting for me by the coat rack. She wore her peacoat because she tended to get cold easily. She always said it was on account of her minimal body fat.

“You scared me,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“What can we do for you in the Underdark?”

“In the what?”

“It’s what Mark calls this area.”

“That’s weird. Anyway, I just came in to tell you that George stopped by my cube asking where you were. He told me to bring you to him when you got back.”

“George Gabriel?”

“The one and only.”

I tossed my food in the trash and headed up. Candace came up behind me and grabbed my bag from the desk.

“He said you should bring your stuff.”

I wondered what George wanted. Did he want to go somewhere for lunch? Put me in a different office? Was there a meeting at the Sheraton, perhaps? For a brief moment I let myself imagine that my party had engendered such goodwill in him that he had a new team for me.

I made my way toward George Gabriel’s office. It required passing through the firm’s vast central area, where the cubicles were spread about in the shape of a chessboard. I remembered when Richard Konigsberg and I had come up with the idea, back when I had been an essential part of Plutus. Some of the workers had said that the design likened them to pawns. Richard had replied that for every pawn there were multiple bishops, queens, knights, and kings. “And you can be that one day, if you want to be.” It had made the chessboard much more palatable. We were even able to get Ingrid Glass, the architecture critic from the Philadelphia Inquirer , to come and write about our unique offices.

Maybe it was the way people looked at me, or the vibrations in the air, but with each additional step toward George there was an upwell of something hard and edgy in my throat. It filled my larynx. I slowed. A part of me wanted to ignore this invite, to just go back to my office and pretend I hadn’t heard.

I turned to Candace to take my mind off this meeting. “Any word on what the guerrilla guy is up to?”

“Ken Lulu?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Didn’t you say you knew the guy?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So what is he up to?”

“Nothing. Not since he came back from doing the thing with the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.”

“So this can’t be about Ken then. ”

I reached George’s office and slid past the secretary. George was at his desk, a pencil in hand, but without a pad or paper, as if he was just trying to appear busy.

He wasn’t alone. Two women, one from legal and the other from human resources, both in pinstripe suits and wearing dour maquillage, stood on either side of him, like mummified cats around a pharaoh.

I knew I had trouble when it wasn’t George who spoke. The tall white brunette to his right, with a sunken chest and wide hips, cleared her throat and started saying things that were all legalese and sophistry. She went on for a while. George remained expressionless the whole time, his arms on the desk, still, except for an occasional lifting of his palms from the surface. Sweat made the skin squeak.

“So I am being let go?” I asked the woman when she was finished. The statement was more for effect than confirmation. My eyes were focused on George. I wanted to make him speak.

“Yes,” he said.

“I didn’t hear a reason in there.”

He was about to say something when the women put their hands on his shoulders. He sawed at the table with the edge of his palms and grew quiet.

“Business decision,” said the brunette.

“This is all very mysterious,” I said. “Just tell me the reason.”

The brunette wasn’t having it. “Thank you,” she said, and gestured toward the door with her neck. George remained still and silent. I wondered what part he had to play in this. Was he the messenger? Was he the instigator? Had he been aware that I was going to be fired when he’d come to my house? This last possibility frightened me the most. Had he thought that I was a kiss-ass? Had I not kissed his ass enough? Did it have anything to do with Marie-Anne?

“I have been with this firm for a long time,” I said. “I deserve to be told the specific reason why I am getting laid off.”

The brunette ignored my request. She simply repeated how I should go about filing for unemployment benefits and how long my health insurance would remain in effect. I kept observing George, but for some reason his stony and severe face only added to my helplessness.

“Can I give you a little unsolicited advice?” he said at last, ignoring the cautionary looks given to him by the women.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been in this business a long time,” he said. “Seen a lot of changes.”

I nodded.

“And you know what I found, at the end of the day, that a person needs for success? Mind you, I am not suggesting you haven’t had success. I have read your reports. You have done some good things in your time. ”

“Thank you.”

“But, as I was saying, the thing that really puts a person over the top, that gives them longevity, is being an advocate for your clients.” He raised his hand to squash my immediate protestation. “I know what you’re going to say — that you are an advocate. Yes, you probably are, but having gone over all the work you did for the past few years, you are not an advocate to the degree I want.” He paused and ran his hand over his head. “It’s almost like you are restrained in your advocacy; like you keep a part of you close to your chest. ”

“Like, afraid?”

“Like, concealed,” he said. “Dormant. Latent. Mysterious.”

“What am I keeping dormant?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just that I have a different vision for the kind of culture I want to incubate here. A more collaborative relationship between client and advocate. Democratic. And a freer exchange between all the coworkers too. Where your associates don’t have to be careful around you, to be cautious about your inclinations. This is purely a business-culture decision, as you can see.”

“You are entitled to your opinion,” I said, still sitting.

George received a nod from the women and stood to extend his hand. I looked at it and back at him. I didn’t want to shake it. He had taken something from me. I wanted to take something from him in return. Deny him closure. Deny him my acceptance. But that was not what I did. Hammurabian acts — deny for a deny — required a certain hardness that I didn’t possess. I was too much a man of this age. When I was declared unwanted, I accepted it.

I gave the handshake and left the office, bag in hand, head hanging, toward the elevator. The people around me, still working, had no idea what had happened. Life went on within the chessboard. I had always thought that upon the playing surface of Plutus, I was a back-row power, perhaps even a grandmaster who got to move the pieces. But if I had been once, I wasn’t anymore. That was the violence at the heart of chess. Anyone could be overturned at any moment.

I couldn’t get out with my dignity. Candace was standing at the elevator, trying to appear casual. She was actually whistling with her hands in her pockets and rocking on the balls of her feet. But her face showed even more worry than before.

I told her point-blank what had happened.

“That’s so shocking,” she said, reaching forward to keep the elevator door open.