Magnolia Room

Magnolia Room

(4,960 words)

by Jack Thrift



Marvin Feaster, director of human resources and highest-ranking among them since the violent demise of President and CEO Hank Leake, called the meeting to order by tapping a spoon against the side of his coffee mug. He was sitting at one of the straight edges of the oval table, oval being a shape that conveys round-table equality while still allowing for two ends. Once all eyes were on him, Marvin said, “I’m afraid I have some terrible news. We have run through our supply of doughnuts and bagels. There are no more.”
         
Around the table, faces went stricken. Aside from Marvin and Charles Mox, there were five of them in attendance this afternoon, five managers from five different departments.

Marvin removed his glasses and heaved a sigh. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

“Jesus,” Skip Foreman, head of IT, said. “That’s it then, huh?”

“I’m afraid so. I’ve looked everywhere. Believe me.”

“I knew it would happen eventually,” Skip said. “Just not, you know, so soon.”

“Are you sure about this, Marvin?” asked Susan Pembroke, director of marketing, who’d been looking forward all day to doughnuts and had even brought a packet of wet-wipes in anticipation of glazed, sticky fingers. “Have you looked everywhere?”

“Of course I have. Do you think I would bring you news of this nature without first investigating every possibility?”

They were meeting in the Magnolia Room today because the ceiling of the Daylily Room, their usual meeting place, had collapsed sometime over the weekend, dumping heaps of debris on the conference table and creating a mess nobody had yet taken the initiative to clean up.

“Also,” Marvin said, putting his glasses back on, “and maybe I should have mentioned this first. Lindsay Jorgensen took an unfortunate spill off the roof last night, and, well…she didn’t make it.”

The others glanced at one another, puzzled faces all around. Carter, the controller, cleared his throat and said, “Marvin, I’m sorry. Who?”

“Lindsay Jorgensen,” Marvin said.

Nobody spoke.

“You know. Lindsay?” Marvin said. “From quality control?”

Blank stares from everyone.

“Wait a second,” Skip said. “Good-looking gal? Super skinny? Black hair? Kind of tall?”
         
“Yes, Skip, thank you.” Marvin nodded, then cocked his head and squinted. “Well, except she was kind of chunky. And gray-haired. And short. Extremely short.”
         
“Like, midget-short?” Carter asked.

“Not that short.”
         
“I know who you’re thinking of,” Tom, director of customer service, told Carter. “The midget who works in the mail room.”
         
“That midget!” Susan said. “He’s the one who’s always hitting on me.”
         
“Really?” Skip asked, somewhat skeptically.
         
Susan, who was beautiful but self-conscious, said, “What – is that so hard to believe?”
         
Tom said, “That midget is black, if memory serves.”

Carter, who was black, said, “What’s his color got to do with anything?”

“What?” Tom looked at him, startled.

“I’m curious why you feel the need to mention he’s black.”
         
“African American,” Susan told Carter.
         
Carter stared at her.
         
“Black midget, African-American midget, whatever,” Skip said.
         
“Yes, really, let’s move on,” Marvin said.
         
Everything went quiet for a moment. Then, to get things rolling again, Tom said, “You say she jumped off the roof?”
         
“Who did what now?” said Marvin.
         
“Lindsay Jorgensen,” said Tom.
         
“Oh, right, right.” Marvin nodded rapidly.
         
“She jumped?” Susan asked.
         
“Who said anything about jumping?” Marvin said.
         
“Well, was she pushed?”
         
“Of course not,” Marvin said. “There isn’t just jumping or being pushed. There’s also a little thing called falling? Hello?”
         
“She fell?” Tom asked.
         
“I would assume so.” Marvin shrugged. “No one was there to witness it.”

“Poor thing,” Susan said.

“Yes, tragic, no doubt about it.” Marvin lowered his head solemnly, then snapped it back in place. “So, moving on. We have some things to discuss. Important matters.” He turned to Charles Mox, sitting just off his elbow. “Right, Charles?”
         
Charles Mox, with his usual inscrutable expression, nodded once, his head moving a micro-inch. Charles was Marvin’s number two man. He rarely spoke during these meetings – rarely moved, in fact. Mostly he just observed. Whenever somebody spoke, he would watch them, expressionless, sometimes scribbling something into a legal pad, sometimes leaning back with his fingers tented beneath his nose. Nobody knew for sure what Charles did for the company. But you couldn’t miss the way Marvin deferred to him, routinely asking Charles’s opinion over even the smallest of matters, which Charles would bestow with a curt nod or shake of his head or by whispering a syllable or two in Marvin’s ear. Was he a lawyer? He seemed like a lawyer. But he didn’t reside in the legal department, and his name was not listed among their numbers in the departmental directory, or anywhere else for that matter. And there was this mystery about him, too, this gravity he carried in his eyes that lent him an air of authority, so that it wasn’t unusual in these meetings for the managers to find themselves addressing Charles even when answering a question posed by Marvin.
         
“We should talk about security,” Susan said. “That should be the first order of business.”
         
“Really?” Marvin exhaled noisily to show his irritation, then turned to the head of security: “Very well. Edgar, what’ve we got?”
         
Edgar Exley, silent until now, his attention wholly absorbed in an ancient issue of Modern Woman, folded his magazine closed and said, “A breech at the southwest gate, yesterday afternoon. Twelve villagers broke through.”
         
“They’re organizing,” Carter said.
         
“Please, Carter. Okay?” Marvin shut his eyes and huffed. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
         
“I’m just saying.” Carter gave a shrug.
         
“They didn’t make it far,” Edgar said. “Our team on the ground took care of them. Sent a message to their friends. A little something for the villagers camping out on the other side of the wall, ’case any of them happened to be contemplating another breech.”
         
“Dude, I heard about that.” Skip laughed and clapped his hands once. “You catapulted their heads over the wall.”
         
“Whoa, seriously?” Tom took a moment to ponder the image. “Whoa.”
         
“No, no, no,” said Marvin, for whom such talk of violence struck an unseemly note. “People – ”
         
“What I want to know,” Skip said, “is where the hell you got the catapult.”

“I’m not hearing this,” Marvin said in a singsong voice, closing his eyes and plugging his ears with his fingers.
         
“We built it from dogwood trees and office supplies.” Edgar shrugged. “Wasn’t hard.”

“Can I see it?” Skip asked. “The catapult?”

“And me, too?” Tom asked.

“Sure, sure.”
                             
A silence settled in as they waited for Marvin to emerge from his improvised cone of isolation. Carter checked his watch a half dozen times. Susan chewed a thumbnail past the quick. Tom pondered the framed motivational posters around the room: the rock climber reaching for the next hold on a desert cliff, “PERSEVERANCE” written in the border below him; the brace of helmeted rafters bouncing down whitewater rapids, their faces seized by rapturous smiles, this one titled “TEAMWORK”; the solitary hiker victorious after a deadly wildlife encounter, holding aloft in one hand a machete and in the other the dripping, severed head of a grizzly, over whose flyblown corpse the hiker was resting a foot, this one “VICTORY”.

Finally, Charles Mox nudged Marvin, who cracked one eye open, rolled it around, and pulled his fingers from his ears. “Okay then,” he said. “Next order of business. Did everyone bring their calendars?”
         
They looked at their calendars, everyone but Susan, who said, “But we haven’t finished talking about security.”

“The Christmas party is in two weeks, folks,” Marvin said, pointedly ignoring her. “As we know from experience, we’d better start the preparations as early as possible. Now, last year we had a Winter Wonderland theme. This year I was thinking – ”
         
“One second,” Carter said. “We’re actually going to have the party?”
         
“Of course,” Marvin said. “It’s an annual party. As in – hello? – every year?”
         
“I guess I thought, you know, what with all that’s happened in the last six months – the Great Catastrophe, the outbreak, the riots – ”
         
“Show of hands,” Marvin said. He raised his own. “All those in favor of having the party.”
         
Thinking there might be liquor at this party, Tom raised his hand. So did Skip. Carter and Susan and Edgar kept theirs down. Charles Mox demurred.
         
“Three to three, Carter,” Marvin said. “Tie goes to the house, ha! So let’s look at our calendars and choose a date.”
         
They looked at their calendars and chose a date.
         
“Good, let’s move on.” Marvin flipped through his notes. When he next spoke, he leaned in and glanced around, as if preparing to impart news of a delicate nature:  “You may or may not have noticed, but we have an issue of employee morale, or lack thereof.” He lifted his chin at Tom. “Tom, you’re the customer service guy, you have the most contact with our subordinates, right?”
         
Tom’s pulse ratcheted up a few notches. “I guess.”
         
“How are things down there? How’s everybody holding up?”
         
Before Tom could answer, Charles jumped in – a true rarity in these meetings: “You have a fellow in customer service, right, Tom? What’s his name?”
         
“Ernie,” Tom said tightly, uncomfortable talking about this in the presence of the other managers.
         
“What’s Ernie saying these days?” Charles asked.

Ernie was a kid in customer service whom Tom had groomed as a confidential informant. He’d chosen Ernie for this role not because Ernie was smart or dependable or loyal; in point of fact, it was the very lack of these qualities that made Ernie an effective mole. He was lazy and dumb and liable to turn against his fellow customer service reps without a moment’s hesitation if it meant the chance of a raise or promotion or the opportunity to shirk his duties without reprisal.
         
“Have you debriefed Ernie recently?” Charles asked.
         
“A few days ago,” Tom replied. “He says there’s some dissension. And that they’re beginning to question the point of it all.”
         
“What point of what all?” Charles asked.
         
“Oh, you know.” Tom chuckled to show what little he thought of the petty complaints of his subordinates. “Some old stuff. They’re saying the phones don’t work. They’re right, of course. They don’t work. And even if the phones did work, it wouldn’t matter since we don’t have any customers.”
         
“What else do they say, Tom?” Charles’s face had grown dour.
         
“Well, their computers don’t work either, obviously, since there’s no electricity.” Tom swallowed, breaking into a sweat. He’d never had a conversation with Charles before, and it was doing a number on his insides. “And they’re hungry. And some of them are pretty sick and wondering why we removed all the medicine and the first aid kits from their floor and brought them up here for our exclusive access. Plus, they’re wondering what exists beyond the gates and whether we’ll ever let them leave the building...”
         
“Do they not have eyes?” Marvin asked, incensed. He extended an arm toward the floor-to-ceiling window to his side, indicating the world of ashes that stretched to the horizon, everything below three stories having been leveled by the series of concussive waves from the bombs. “Would they rather we turn them out? It’s a charred wasteland out there. They should thank their lucky stars we’re sheltering them at all. Feeding them and whatnot.”
         
“I’m just telling you what Ernie told me.”
                             
“Is there a ringleader?” Charles asked. “An agitator? Someone fomenting discontent?”
         
“I don’t know.”
         
“There usually is in these kinds of things. Find out.”
         
“Yes, find out,” Marvin echoed.

“I think we can all agree,” Charles said, looking around the table at them, “in light of what Tom just said, that it’s time we turned the screws on our subordinates a bit. Tighten our controls on them.”
                   
“How do we do that?” asked Susan.                    
                   
“Marvin and I haven been banging our heads around about that very question, Susan. And we came up with an idea.” He paused for effect. “What if we could create a system that would allow us greater control over our subordinates while simultaneously convincing them they are acting on their own free will and towards their own self-interests? Sounds like a fairy tale, right?”
                   
“Sure does, Charles,” Marvin said. “How would it even be possible?”

Marvin’s question seemed strange, given that Charles had just stated that the two of them had come up with this solution together. And the ersatz sincerity of its tone sounded suspiciously similar to the kind used by “skeptical” infomercial hosts when questioning the inventor of whatever product was being advertised.
         
“There might be some tool,” Charles said. “An instrument that gives them leverage – perceived leverage – with which to pursue their own agendas.”
         
“You mean like a suggestion box?” Marvin asked.
         
“Exactly, Marvin,” Charles said. He leaned back, his eyebrows sliding up, impressed. “That’s exactly what I was referring to.”
                   
“But Charles, hold on a second.” Marvin raised his hand as if she had a question. “How is that a good idea? Won’t a suggestion box simply allow our workers a place to centralize their unreasonable demands? Won’t that make it harder to ignore them?”
         
“Good point, Marvin,” Charles said. He turned to the managers. “Each of you will take a locked suggestion box to your respective departments and instruct your subordinates to write down their little gripes and grievances on pieces of paper, which they will then slide through the slit in the box. Periodically, we’ll assemble our workers, open all the boxes, and dump the suggestions into one large bin. Then one of us managers will draw three suggestions blindly, at random, with the understanding that we will be beholden to whatever those suggestions require – whether that be fixing something they don’t like or allowing them some type of privilege or what have you.”

“I still don’t see how that helps us,” Marvin said, with an exaggerated shrug, complete with upturned palms.

By now, a degree of discomfort and vague embarrassment tinged the air around the managers, who couldn’t overlook, try as they might, the obvious degree to which this exchange between Marvin and Charles was scripted and rehearsed.

“There will, of course, be some things going on behind closed doors that our workers will not be privy to,” Charles said. “Namely, we will stuff the boxes with our own suggestions, which will be on paper of a heavy stock that our fingers will be able to recognize. In other words, whichever of us does the drawing will be able find our own suggestions by touch. And those suggestions will specify something that we, their managers, want them to do.”
         
“Like what?” Marvin asked.
         
“Like clean up their work stations. Or do an extra hour of work.”
         
“You really think they’ll fall for that?”
         
“Well, Marvin, we’ll have to get creative with it, for purposes of verisimilitude.”

“I see.” Marvin rubbed his chin and wrinkled his brow, an approximation of deep thought. “Hey, Charles, here’s an idea. What if during the drawing we act like we’re aggrieved by the suggestions we draw, even though secretly they’re our own. Might that not help to sell the impression that our subordinates are scoring points against us?”

“I think you’re getting it, Marv. Nice job.”

Marvin beamed and looked around the table at everyone.

“Everybody got that?” Charles asked them.

“Here’s another thought,” Marvin said.

“Wow, Marv, you’re on a roll.” Charles smiled at him.

“Maybe we can convince our subordinates that the whole suggestion box was their idea. We could, say, instruct our moles to mention the box while using words like ‘grass roots’ and ‘worker’s initiative,’ to further the impression that the idea is coming from their level and not ours. Workers go apeshit over stuff like that.”

“Terrific idea, Marvin. Anything else?”

“Not right now, Charles. But thank you.”

“Good. More on this later.” Charles looked around the table at each of their blank faces. “Anyone with any last business?”

No one spoke.
                             
“I have one last thing,” Marvin said, checking his watch. “I want progress reports on my desk by EOD Friday. No excuses. We’re still backlogged, folks, and need to be caught up by the time all of this sorts itself out.”
         
This “sorts itself out” bit was part of Marvin Feaster’s Campaign for Positive Thinking, which implied a certainty that civilization, having gone to shit, would somehow, in some indeterminable future, right itself again.

*    *    *

After the meeting was adjourned, Marvin and Charles told Tom to hold back. Marvin asked the last person out of the room, Susan, to close the door behind her, and as the door made its efficient, oiled click in the frame, the sweat pores in Tom’s armpits opened up and released a humid breath.
         
“So, Tom.” Marvin asked. “You doing all right?”
         
“Oh, you know,” Tom said. “Pretty good.”

“Pretty good? Or fantastic.”

“Fantastic.”
         
“Fantastic, Tom? Or super-fantastic.”
         
“The latter.”
         
“Interesting. Because lately you’ve been looking a little…” Marvin wiggled in his seat, searching himself.
         
“Tired?” Charles offered.
         
“Okay, but I was thinking more…”
         
“Strained? Overtaxed? Harried?”
         
“Well, but…”
         
“Lethargic? Burned out?”
         
Marvin snapped his fingers. “Burned out. Thank you, Charles.”
         
Charles nodded and grinned at Tom.
         
“I’m not burned out,” Tom said.
                   
“You look it,” Marvin said.
         
Charles touched Marvin’s shirt sleeve. “Marvin, if I may.”
         
Marvin twirled his hand in Tom’s direction, a “proceed, by all means,” gesture.
                   
“Are you aware, Tom,” Charles said, “of the subliminal role your physical appearance plays on the attitudes and behaviors of your subordinates? Do you grasp the significance of this?”
         
After several seconds of silence, when Tom suddenly realized Charles’s question was not rhetorical, he said, “I’m sorry?”
         
Marvin cleared his throat. “What we’re saying, Tom, is that the image you project of yourself is absorbed and digested by your people, if only subconsciously. It becomes the reference by which they determine how to present themselves. If you look sloppy, so will they.”
         
“And once self-image loses its luster, one’s work ethic is sure to follow,” Charles said.
         
“Physical appearance is but an outward manifestation of inner equilibrium,” Marvin said.
         
“We cannot expect our people to display the behaviors we desire if we, their managers, are not doing so ourselves.”
         
“A decline in one’s grooming and sartorial pride is the harbinger of shoddy workmanship, or vice versa.”

“Excellent, Marvin,” Charles said, stamping his fist on the desk. “You really hit the nail with that one.”
                             
“So, uh, I guess you’re saying I should…” Tom trailed off, hoping one of them would jump in and fill the void. When neither did, Tom said, “I’m sorry, are you saying I should dress better? I’m not sure what you want me to do.”
         
“Fair enough,” Marvin said. “Honesty is a good thing, Tom.”
         
“Tom,” Charles said. “When was the last time you showered?”
         
Tom hesitated a beat. “I don’t know.”
         
“A while, I bet?” Charles nodded encouragingly.
         
“Yeah, but how…” Tom began. He started over: “We don’t have running water.”
         
“Tom, let’s try something.” Charles went to the dry-erase board and drew a square on it. He stepped aside and tapped the square with his wedding band. “What’s this look like to you?”
         
“Uh…” Tom swallowed. “A square?”
         
Charles turned back to his drawing, examined it, then added another square slightly off center with the first and drew extensions connecting the two, which caused the drawing to take on a third dimension. “Now what do you see?”
         
“A cube?” Tom said, with slightly more confidence.
         
“A box,” Charles said.
         
“I was going to say box,” Marvin blurted. He went red in the face, realizing he’d said this out loud.
         
“Now look at this.” Charles drew something kidney-shaped inside the box and put squiggle marks all over it, the marker making little baby-bird chirping noises.
         
“What do you see, Tom,” Marvin asked. “What did Charles just draw?”
         
Tom screwed up his face and squinted at the picture, attempting by force of will to squeeze meaning out of Charles’s picture. He came up short.
         
Charles turned to Marvin, who was grinning over these proceedings. “Marvin, you want to jump in here, help Tom out?”
         
Marvin’s smile withered. “Huh?”

“Help Tom out.”

“Oh, uh…you go ahead.”
         
“You sure?”
         
Marvin nodded.
         
“You can see it, can’t you, Marvin?” Charles asked. “You can see what I’ve drawn?”
         
“Of course,” Marvin said. “I just think that we should, you know” – swallow – “let Tom figure it out on his own. After all, this isn’t about me.”
         
Charles pursed his lips, considering, then nodded. “Okay, Tom. Last call, buddy. What is this?”
         
Tom closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and when he opened his eyes, he seemed to see the picture in a new light. “Is it a brain?”
         
“Excellent!” Charles clapped his hands. The marker fell, and he bent down to retrieve it, then clapped some more.

“So...a brain in a box?” Tom said.          
         
“Correct,” Charles said. “But specifically, your brain in your box.”
         
“Why is my brain in a box?”
         
“Because that’s where your thinking is.” Charles tapped a finger against his temple. “You must take your thinking out of its box, Tom, in order to succeed with regard to our rapidly changing business climate.”

“It’s that simple, Tom.” Marvin spread his hands.          
         
“So, to back up and recap,” Charles said, sitting beside Marvin. “When you say to me that you cannot shower because there’s no running water, I tell you your brain is in a box.”
         
“Get your brain out of that box, Tom,” Marvin said.

“Uh, okay.”          
         
“You want an example? Look at Charles.”
         
Charles straightened his posture, rolled his head around his shoulders, and tugged at his jacket’s lapels to make them crisp and aligned.
         
“Does Charles have access to running water?” Marvin asked.
         
“I don’t know,” Tom said.
         
“The answer is no,” Charles said.
         
“And yet, look how clean he is,” Marvin said. “Note the trouble he has taken with his hair. See by the smoothness of his cheeks that he is clean-shaven.”
         
Charles ran the back of a hand over both cheeks to demonstrate the smoothness.
         
“And you’re not sitting beside him as I am, but let me tell you something.” Marvin dropped his voice to a reverent whisper. “He smells wonderful.”
                   
“How do I do it, you ask?” Charles held up his palm at Tom like a stop sign. “Don’t answer that. Don’t even venture a guess. I won’t tell you. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”
         
“Suffice it to say,” Marvin said, “Charles represents the look we want our managers to project. His is a look that says he’s holding things together, even as the rest of the world is falling apart. You look at Charles and you see a man in control. And consequently, you listen to him. You respect him. You let him lead. You give him your full attention.”
         
“You want me to take a shower,” Tom said.
         
“Jesus, Tom.” Charles sighed, planted his elbows on the table, and pressed his face into his hands. He expelled a long breath, then dropped his hands. “We want you to be the kind of manager who doesn’t have to be told these things. We want you, Tom, to be the kind who keeps himself well-groomed as a matter of course, of routine, and not because one of his superiors points out it needs doing.”
         
“But incidentally, yeah, you could use a shower,” Marvin said.
         
“And a little deodorant wouldn’t kill you either,” Charles added.
         
“I understand.” Tom curled his hands around the chair’s armrests, his elbows jutting to his sides like grasshopper legs, a posture that spoke of a readiness to stand and a willingness to wait for permission to do so.
         
“You in a hurry to go somewhere?” Charles asked him.
         
Tom let his weight settle back into his seat.
         
Charles laughed. “I’m just messing with you, Tom.” He stood up. “Come on, we have something to show you.”
         
“A little something to express our appreciation for all you’ve done,” Marvin said.
         
A pleasant tingling sensation went up Tom’s spine as he followed them out the room and down the hall to a door that opened onto the stairs. He was surprised, but not really alarmed, to see them going up the steps rather than down – they were already on the top floor.
         
When they reached the landing, Marvin used a key to open a metal door with the word “Roof” stenciled on it. He pushed open the door to reveal, predictably, a roof. Tom followed them outside. It was cold here, with scraps of gray clouds hovering above them almost low enough to touch.
         
“Guys, do you think we should really be out here?” Tom asked them, nervously. “You know, what with the fallout and everything?”
         
“Perfectly safe, Tom,” Charles assured him. “Perfectly safe. I brought the dosimeter out here yesterday and got a very low reading. Besides, we won’t be out here for long.”
         
Tom looked around and saw nothing remarkable, just the flat, pebbly roof under his feet, the raised vestibule he’d just stepped out of, and some exhaust stacks for the air conditioners. A chilled breeze went by. Tom noticed a clutch of villagers standing at the gated entrance, looking filthy even from this distance, their skin dark to black from nuclear tanning. Farther out, past the gates and the ruins of office complexes, was the suburb known as Glencove Village. Its houses had for the most part crumbled into dust, leaving only their brick chimneys still standing, alone, forlorn, and lousy with radionuclides.

Charles lifted his nose and breathed in the air. Then he turned and regarded the horizon, where the setting sun, a livid flare of red and purple, was like an epic blood blister. “It’s so beautiful up here,” Charles said. He smiled at Tom. “I come up here now and again, just to...” He shrugged, shook his head. “I don’t know, to clear my mind, I guess.”
         
“It is beautiful,” Marvin agreed. “Absolutely.”
         
“Tom,” Charles said, placing a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. We’re reorganizing a bit, and it looks like your services will no longer be required.”
         
For a moment, Tom thought his knees would buckle. “Excuse me?”
         
“You’ve been terrific, Tom,” Marvin said. “A real asset. A team player and a go-getter and so on and so forth. But I’m afraid the future of this company just doesn’t have a place in it for someone of your...abilities.”
         
“You’re firing me?”
         
“No, no,” Charles said. “We’re letting you go.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.”
         
Tom began to tremble.
         
“Hey, but Tom? We totally wish you the best in all your future endeavors,” Marvin said.
         
“And now, if you’d be so kind...” Charles motioned with both arms towards the two-foot berm that went around the perimeter of the roof.
         
Tom took a step back. “What – you want me to jump?”
         
“Don’t think of it as jumping,” Charles said. “Think of it as stepping into the unknown.”
         
“But we’re seven stories up.”
         
“That’s true.”
         
Tom racked his brain for something to say, anything that might forestall his termination. “You can’t do this to me.”
         
“Can. Will. Are.” Marvin grinned.
         
“But what was all that in the conference room? About how I should think outside the box and clean myself up and the rest. Why would you lecture me like that if you were planning all along to do this to me?”
         
Charles rolled his eyes. “Because it needed to be said, duh. And Marvin and I would be remiss if we didn’t address it with you.”
         
“Feedback, Tom, is the name of the game.” Marvin stepped toward him, making ushering motions towards the edge. “Now, kindly...”
         
“But I don’t understand!”
         
“That’s okay,” Charles said. “Your understanding isn’t necessary.”
                   
“But – but who will replace me as the customer service manager?”
         
“Ernie will,” Marvin said. “He’s been after your job for quite some time, actually.”
         
Tom made a dash for the door, but Charles, ready for this, expecting it, reached behind his back, pulled out a pistol, and shot Tom in the thigh. Tom screamed and fell to the ground. He was still screaming during the few seconds it took for Marvin and Charles grab him under the arms and haul him over the side of the building.
         
Marvin and Charles looked over the edge. Tom had landed on the body of Lindsay Jorgensen. There were several others corpses lying around in various stages of decay.
         
Marvin turned to Charles. “Just once, you know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see someone handle his or her termination with some dignity.”
         
“Well, put yourself in their shoes, Marv. Being fired is a traumatic event.”

“Is it? I’ve never been fired.”
         
They laughed as they headed for the stairwell. Over their shoulders, the festering sunset swelled and burst, spraying oily red light on the bellies of the clouds stacked above it.
         
“You know,” Charles said, “I do hope we’re right about Ernie.”
         
“Oh?”
         
“Yeah. Tom was a lightweight, I think we can both agree. But he was tractable.”
         
“Oh, no doubt.” Marvin made a mental note to look up “tractable” in the dictionary. He held the door open for Charles and said, “Join me for a doughnut?”

“I thought there weren’t any.”

“There are hundreds. I keep them locked away in my desk.”

At the gates, the villagers were going wild. Seeing people thrown from the roof did that to them, for some reason. They tried to climb over one another in an effort to scale the fence, and almost made it over. But then Edgar materialized with a couple of his crew and began shooting at them with bows and arrows made from office supplies, picking them off one by one.