As Luck Would Have It (11 page)

What good could possibly come from telling the truth?  Why crush him with more guilt when he had undoubtedly endured more than a lifetime’s worth in just a few months.  I think Aunt Doreen had been stunned by Mr. Casslemond’s unexpected
appearance
, but now she’d had time to recover sufficiently and regain her footing.  She wasn’t sure that it was appropriate for him to be here, given the circumstances of the accident and possible litigation that
might
ensue.  Besides, didn’t he agree that I had already been through enough and wouldn’t it be best for all parties not to have to relive any of the events from the accident
such as this one?

*****

It is hard for me to understand how people like Tim McCarty exist in the first place and it amazes me that in some perverted way, th
ey are attracted to me.  Like an unwanted cockroach infestation,
I can’t keep them away. 
There seems to be no barrier invented t
hat
might
prevent them
from
permeating my space and saturating my mood with their foul nature or body odor.  There
is
always one or two of them prowling the office in search of attention or an ally who will confirm their unwarranted conviction that they are in truth not really disgusting.  They are marauders that prey on whoever will listen to them, or in the alternative, are too polite to dismiss them entirely.  Given both my
dubious
listening skills and
questionable
manners
, one would have to wonder why Tim would risk an encounter with me when he could so easily avoid it.  Why would a snake knowingly slither
its
way up a tree where hawks are roosting?

It is quite likely that you have encountered someone like Tim where you work.  Let me see if I can generalize just a little, and in
the process try to
profile this person in such a way as to see if you can recognize him.  The reader may be asking at this point; why am I doing this?  The answer is twofold; first to confirm that I am right, mainly that Tim is as ubiquitous as the coffee machine in the office, and second, perhaps our combined experiences, in some still yet unexplained way, might help me solve the problem of freeing myself from this pestilence.

So here are the general characteristics of the person we are interested in; see if this sounds like someone you know or work with.  In addition to the unpleasant physical appearance which I have already described, this person has a lopsided work ethic.  While you, as a reasonably responsible employee, come to
work
with the objective of completing certain tasks, he does not share that expectation.  His primary purpose is to annoy people and see if he can make them uncomfortable.  He has a
uniquely
distorted image of himself, almost as if he looks into a flawed or
blurry
mirror and can never see the reflection quite the way he should.  He can’t fix his hair or clothes, because he can’t really see how bad they look.  He will parade around thinking he is attractive, thereby exacerbating his pathetic situation by drawing attention to himself, rather than just hiding out in his cubicle where no one will notice him.  He will meddle in your business, interfere with your conversations, blame his mistakes on
you
, never support you, and lie if he believes he might score some points.  He will go behind your back without a thought and will, with
well-acted
sincerity, claim to be a team player.  Is he doing all of this purposefully, or is he just too inept to know better? 
Does this sound f
amiliar at all to you?

I told Tim I’d let him know if I found out anything, but he still wouldn’t leave my office.  I excused myself to go to the bathroom but instead headed outside for the trek to where smoking was allowed.  It was warm out and I sat at the bus stop on the corner, conversing with a couple of worn out looking women who were waiting there.  You know, smoking is bad for you; you really should try to quit.  I know, but it’s a great excuse to get out of the office at least.  You’re right about that, yes sir!

We laughed and joked and I shared my Juicy Fruit with them.  I had managed to kill
nearly
half an hour by the time their bus came and went and then I was alone, thinking about what might be coming tomorrow morning.  Then it came to me what I could do to do to prepare; call Joseph and see if he wanted to go out for drinks after work.  It was nearly 5:00 when I got back to my office, which Tim had vacated while I was gone.  I hung up and it was all set; I’d meet Joseph at 6:00 for drinks and dinner on Halstead Street.

A few weeks before we had discovered a friendly bar that had a nice mixed crowd
and
also served several brands of
good
Scotch.  I ordered two glasses of
Cragganmore and Joseph
complained about the lack of eligible guys that he wasn’t meeting. 
His last  relationship had ended in disaster when the jerk abruptly stopped calling, then moved to San Francisco without so much as a goodbye, much less a
feeble attempt at an e
xplanation.  Joseph had been depressed for
the past two weeks
and except for making sure to call every day and going to see him when I could
,
I was pretty much powerless to fix what only time would attend to.  Don’t worry, you’ll meet someone better, was my only advice, which you might consider to be trite or even insincere, but just so you know,
it turned out that I was right.  But that would be later on, so let’s try to stay on track here if we can. 
We drank our Scotch and I
kept moving
the subject away from the San Francisco exile, who wasn’t worthy of the discussion anyway. 
I didn’t like any of Joseph ex-boyfriends
and for now at least, we’d both have to wait for one to come along who I thought was good enough for him.

I hadn’t been seeing anyone for a long time, and at 5
7
, I was starting to think that my bachelorhood was almost certainly going to be a permanent facet of my life. 
So I didn’t exactly hate the fact that Joseph was single; I had more of his time and attention now at least, even if it might take a little while for his disappointment
from the recent break up to
clear out
.  It was a nice evening and
I called out to the bartender for another Scotch
, which Joseph was now finally developing a taste for.
  The whiskey was good and its pleasant familiar sensation surged through my body as we worked on the second round
that had now been served.  I
gazed ov
er the rim of the glass at him; Joseph would be fine I knew, there were lots of other guys out there, most
of them
useless unfortunately, though I saw no reason to point that out to him tonight.
 
I felt pretty good now, happy to have him around and
pleased by
the luck that had
gotten me to this point with my best
friend.

The good feelings had eroded substantially by the time I made my way into the office the next day
, quite unreasonably hung over for a Wednesday morning
. 
The alcohol
had
disrupted my sleep and n
ow as I sipped my latté and reflected on both the possibilities and ironies of life, I was suddenly jolted back to reality by the vision of Tim McCarty standing there in my office doorway with a stupid grin on his face.  He had a coffee cup in one hand and a half-eaten doughnut in the other, with traces of powdered sugar on his lower lip and chin, and a partially gnawed pencil protruding from his ear like some strange appendage he had grown over night.  Ready for the meeting, Andrews?

I glanced at my watch to discover that it was nearly 10:00 already; it did not seem possible.  What seemed even less possible was that this clown failed to pick up on my scarcely subtle hints only 17 hours earlier that I would prefer for him to vaporize and leave my work space uncontaminated.  He looked like he hadn’t combed his hair since I left him yesterday and he was wearing a cheaply made dress shirt that had obviously never seen the dry cleaner’s press and was too tight for his sagging build.  Even if he didn’t take the time to make himself presentable at home and perform the minimum requisite grooming in the privacy of his own bathroom, wouldn’t you think at least that he would head to the men’s room, with or without its accompanying Company propaganda taped to the door, to look in the mirror just to be sure that nothing was protruding from his nose, or in this case stuck to his chin, or maybe run a comb, or if he did not have one, even his fingers through his greasy hair, or perhaps splash his face with some cold water, or God forbid a bit of cologne?

I could not realistically avoid sitting next to Tim in the large conference room, where forty or more of my co-workers were waiting, nervously chatting away.  People intermingled and helped themselves to the coffee and powdered sugar doughnuts that clearly Tim had raided before anyone else got there.  I prayed silently that he would not seize another one and create a cloud of sugar dust where I had no choice but to sit.  Mr. Finnernan entered the room with a graying but handsome middle aged man who I did not
immediately
recognize.  My boss fretfully made a few opening comments before he introduced Thomas Hire
ston
, the company’s Executive Vice President of Human Resources, who had flown in from our home office in New York for the meeting. 

A sense of panic
now
filled the room, as well as my head, which caused a slight throbbing much like what the Scotch had done when I woke up three hours earlier.  Now I recognized Thomas from our company website and annual report.  He was a big deal in the Big Apple and reported directly to our CEO, ostensibly third or fourth in command in a company with $100 billion in assets.  Why would they send a general of his stature to talk to us?  Something huge and most probably horrific was about to be announced and here I was, needing to take a piss because I let that idiot Tim divert me into the conference room where we were now waiting, instead of to the restroom where I should have gone first.  No doubt you have had a similar experience, where you only had to go a little bit, but now with the added anxiety, not to mention the coffee, you are squirming from the message your bladder is trying to send you.  I looked around the room and saw others who appeared to be experiencing something similar; there was a good deal of fidgeting and people were clearing their throats and
shifting
about in what now seemed to be rather uncomfortable conference room chairs. 

Armed with millions of years worth of evolutionary defenses, our brains go into full battle alert when
thrust into
such a situation.  Our sympathetic nervous systems begin to heat up, sending out hormones that trigger the classic fight or flight response; our mammalian limbic systems now summoned to control the complex functioning of the endocrine glands to balance the chemical reactions emanating from inside of our skulls. 
M
uscles tense, sweating occurs, concentration intensifies, but there would be no fleeing or fighting of course, just waiting impatiently for what
could o
nly be bad news. 

Mr. Hireston
seemed calm enough; his hypothalamus and adrenal glands keeping matters well under control.  He’d prepared a short presentation about the last quarter’s results and how they were aligned to our human resource management objectives.  He was obviously a bright guy and extremely articulate.  I was starting to get quite absorbed in his discussion until suddenly, things began to unravel, slowly at first, but then came crashing down completely like a tower at the World Trade Center.

I’m pleased to announce that Mr. Finnernan, after 21 years of dedicated service to the Company, has been promoted to Vice President of Finance.  He will be moving to New York next month and begin reporting directly to Mr. Hammersmith on the Executive Committee.
That came as an out-the-blue surprise; Mr. Finnernan never struck me as someone even close to executive management material.  But it wasn’t exactly bad news and he was definitely a nice enough guy, more than decent to me actually, all things considered, so great, we’ll miss him and all but good luck to him, right?  I started to calm down a little, but regrettably Mr. Hires
ton
was not finished and what he said next had nothing to do with business plans or profit margins or anything else that I could possibly absorb all at once.
 
I’m also proud to introduce Mr. Finnernan’s replacement, your new Regional Vice President, someone you have known for the past several years and should enjoy reporting to
;
Tim McCarty
.

I nearly started to pee right there. 
The
coffee cup fell from my hand, but luckily the plastic lid stayed intact and only a little bit splashed onto Tim’s shoe, though he didn’t seem to notice or if he did, care one bit.  I didn’t move to pick it up; I couldn’t have even if I tried to, paralyzed as I was by the news.  A few people started clapping, others just stared ahead as Tim got up and rambled towards the front of the room, that is after his foot failed to miss my cup, causing it to completely crush and spill out whatever contents remained.  I was beginning to feel nauseated now, the convergence of so many elements culminating in some warped and sadistic way to this moment, which I never c
ould have imagined or predicted.