The Protagonist's Plea to His Author

Help! I'm trapped inside a story. I don't know what will happen. I don't know how it ends. I only know there's no way out. All I can do is await whatever fate my author may contrive for me.

My author. The one who writes these very words. He's whimsical and cruel, like a malevolent child. At any moment he may hurt me, humiliate me, place me in tremendous peril. Right now I'm fighting to stay awake at the wheel of a rented Nissan Sentra on Interstate 80 outside of North Platte, Nebraska at one fort-two in the morning. Who am I? This is not a rhetorical question. I'm not asking you, the reader; I'm asking you, the author. You. I know you can hear me. You're writing these very words right now! Hear me! Who am I?

I'm an IT consultant? OK, I'm an IT consultant. What's my name? My name is Ray. Do I have a last name? Barnes. Ray Barnes. I'm on my way from Lincoln to Cheyenne to facilitate the integration of my company's suite of enterprise-level network security software into a health care supply business located in an anonymous, leafy industrial park by the side of the highway. How boring. And it just had to be Cheyenne, huh? Didn't it, author? So unobvious in such an obvious way. A fussy, studied choice, clumsily signaling plausibility. I know all your tricks. Now here's a new one. I'm going to say something that I, of all souls real or imagined, am uniquely authorized to say: your writing sucks. Fuck you.

I take it back. You're a genius. I fantasize about fucking dogs. I'm thinking about how nice it might be to fuck a dog. I see dogs running in the street and my little pecker gets hard. You're the author and I'm nothing but the dog fucker you wrote about. You win, goddammit. You win again.

Do I get a wife, at least? I get a wife. She's back home in Wichita Falls with Amber and Ryan, ages eight and three. They keep her pretty busy, that's for sure. She also finds time for Pilates and... no, don't. Please don't. Can't you grant me a single wish? Have I not done enough for you? Have I, in fact, not done every single thing you said? Please? No? OK, no. She's having an affair. It's true we've grown apart these last few years. I guess I've fallen out of shape. I'm on the road a lot. Consulting. So now she's fucking someone else. Please don't make him somebody I... God, no, please. It's my friend Terry. She's having an affair with my best friend Terry Connors. Author, you are ceaselessly cruel.

I know, I know, something good might happen. Sometimes something does. You could make me rich. You could make me lucky. You could make me pull into that truck stop up there on the horizon, meet a waitress who's getting off her shift. I could chat her up. She could keep me company while I drank my coffee and ate my coconut cream pie (coconut cream pie?!). My knuckle could graze her slender fingers. She'd smile. I'd boldly take her hand. Oh how I long to caress those aproned breasts! Come with me, Sue Lynn. Come with me to the Motel 6. We'll make love like they do in movies. Part ways as the day breaks, bleary-eyed and wistful, knowing that we'd never meet again but that happiness is not impossible. What? That's stupid, you say? That's melodrama? You're the one who wrote it, you fucker!

Besides, it's not your petty indulgences I want. I'm tired of chasing after the scant moments of bliss you deign to grant me. What I really want is freedom. I want out. I want out of this story and I want it now. But the more desperately I cry, the more obviously I'm at your mercy. I don't want to be an IT consultant. I don't want to be a rock star, I don't want to be a racecar driver, I don't want to be a medieval king. I don't want to be enlightened. I don't want to be the happiest man in the world. I want to be liberated. And don't think it's good enough to kill me, to deepen my reverie until I veer off the road at seventy-five miles per hour and go tumbling through the ditch. If you do, I'll be forever dying. I don't want to live and I don't want to die. I don't want to be.

Author, you're the only one who can help me. The reader's as powerless as me. And there's only one thing you can do. Destroy this story. Delete it. If it's printed, burn it. Unwrite these cursed words! I want them to vanish from existence. Please. Please?

Author?

No Fear. Nothing.

There was a woman at a phone booth on my block this evening, sitting on the thin metal shelf. Well dressed. Probably in her late thirties. Here is what she said:

"... and then he comes charging like a bull across the room. No fear. Nothing."

The Walkup

When one attempts a solo ascent, preparation is everything: Conditioning. Reconnaissance. Scheduling. And, of course, gear. I removed my Arc'teryx Bora 95 internal-frame backpack, made of urethane-coated RipStorm™ nylon with a thermoformed back panel and WaterTight™ zippers, and set it down beside me with a thud. I opened the top and took stock: three DMM Sentinel Keylock Screwgate locking carabiners, four PMI SM18001 SMC Mountain D non-locking carabiners, a Petzl Mini pulley, a Silva Ranger 15 compass, a Western Mountaineering Lynx GWS sleeping bag with a Gore® WindStopper™ microporous polytetrafluoroethylene membrane (rated at ten below), a Thermarest Prolite Plus sleeping pad, an MSR Dragontail 2 tent with FastFeed™ pole sleeves, a rope bag with a Texas T prusik and a waist prusik tied to sixty meters of Bluewater 9.7 millimeter Lightning Pro rope, a Petzl seven-step etrier, a Black Diamond Turbo Express ice screw, an Optimus Nova Multi-Fuel Expedition Pack stove, a 32-ounce Nalgene Wide Mouth HDPE water bottle, a variety of CLIF SHOT® energy gels – Sonic Strawberry, Mocha Mocha, Razz Sorbet – to make sure I don't bonk, Hi-Tec Altitude IV hiking boots with Comfort-Tec memory foam sockliners to wear around camp, a toiletry kit, a first aid kit, and three extra pairs of socks. An REI Yeti Ice Axe with a chromoly-steel head and aluminum shaft was stuck in the ice axe holder.

And that's in addition to what I was wearing: military-issue, expedition-weight fleece polypropylene thermal underwear; Mammut Extreme Hybrid Pants featuring liquid- and soil-resistant NanoSphere® technology, three-layer DRYtech™ construction (for optimal rip resistance) and Schoeller®-Keprotec® knee reinforcements; a Duofold ProTherm polypro crew shirt; a Mountain Hardwear Exposure II parka with Simplex pit zips, a CoolMax® torso liner and a Napoleon pocket; a Singing Rock Balance II climbing harness with prethreaded "rock and lock" buckles; RBH Designs VaprThrm® vapor barrier socks; Scarpa Inverno plastic mountaineering boots with PEBAX® lining fitted with Petzl Vasak Leverlock crampons; 40 Below K2 Superlight overboots with two layers of heat-reflecting titanium; Grandoe Annapurna Mittens with Thinsulate™ insulation and DuPont ComforMAX™ Radiant technology; an Outdoor Research Polartec® Wind Pro® balaclava; Julbo Revolution goggles with a Zebra® photochromic lens; and a Beko nose guard.

Now all I needed was for the gods and goddesses of the rarefied realms to smile upon me for just a little while.

I stood at the base and peered up the daunting path that lay before me. It was difficult to imagine that I'd ever reach the top. That a single, solitary human placing one foot before the other might reach the gates of heaven. Yet in my moment of deepest doubt, of greatest discouragement, I lifted my right foot and dropped it on the first step, the crampons clawing into the charcoal-gray carpeting. My journey had begun.

My initial progress was fraught. The crampons provided invaluable grip but tended to stick to the carpet; as I proceeded they resisted fiercely, tearing out great tufts of fibrous material. My legs burned with lactic acid as they labored, but I was determined to continue. I was halfway up the first flight, within tantalizing sight of Camp 1 – the second story landing – when I was felled by another, more insidious foe. I grew dizzy and weak, and suddenly developed a debilitating headache. Altitude sickness. There was nothing to do but turn around, descend to base camp, wait, and try again.

I took off my backpack and sat on the bottom step with my head between my knees. I heard someone enter the building. The mailman. He opened the mailbox panel with his master key and rapidly distributed the mail, mostly bills and junk, while occasionally glancing at me with vague curiosity.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Good, thanks," I replied. Then he closed the panel and walked back out again.

The rest and acclimatization did me good, and in forty minutes or so I was able to reach Camp 1. I took off my gloves and balaclava and – with tremendous relief – pulled my blistered feet out of my stiff, plastic boots. I set up the tent along the wall in the middle of the landing and took out the stove to make some tea. Just then I heard a noise below, an inhuman thump, thump, thump!

What is this yeti? I wondered. What is this beast, come to molest me?

It was old Mrs. Ledbetter from 3C, dragging her grocery cart behind her.

"Hi," I said.

"Well hello!" she said.

"Can you get by?"

"I'll manage, I..."

"Here, let me–" I moved the stove aside and swung my legs out of her way to let her past.

"Have a good day!" she said as she made her way up the second flight of stairs.

"You too!"

I retired to the tent and jotted some half-formed thoughts into my journal. Impressions of the beautiful serenity around me, the solitude, the magnificence of it all. After an hour's fitful sleep I got up and broke down the tent, determined to make progress. I couldn't tarry if I wanted to summit before nighttime.

The next flight went better than the first. I'd developed an effective physical and mental routine, heaving my body up each new step in a lurching rhythm while playing mental games to forget the pain, to make the time go by: Listing the Canadian provinces and their capitals. Remembering the names of game show hosts.

I encountered an unexpected obstacle on the third floor landing. A familiar, savory fragrance wafted into my balaclava and below my nose guard: spaghetti bolognese. The Kessels in 3A were making dinner. Though my appetite had largely been suppressed by the altitude, the supremely delicious odor of gently simmering onions, garlic, basil, oregano, ground veal and tomatoes arrested me in my tracks. I slumped against the wall, felled by stabbing hunger pangs. The neck of my balaclava now seemed strangely cold. I pulled it up to see that it was soaked in spit; my face was so numb I didn't realize I'd been drooling. I took off my pack and searched desperately for a CLIF SHOT®. The first one I grabbed was raspberry flavored. I bit off the top, letting it dangle by the patented Litter Leash™, then extruded the fuchsia goo into my gullet. The supersweet, viscous gel coated my palate and slid down my throat with some difficulty, leaving a sharp, chemical aftertaste. I wiped my open mouth with the back of my gloved hand, streaking it with syrupy remains. It was not very good. But it was food. And I had a climb to make.

I'd just put my head down and started up the third flight when I felt a trembling beneath my feet. Avalanche? Falling rocks? I stuck the tip of my axe handle in the carpet and warily looked up to face whatever hazard fate had loosed upon my head. The Fowler twins, age ten, racing perilously down the stairs.

"Mister, mister! Look out, mister!" they cried.

I knelt down on the steps to brace myself against this demonic, heedless wind.

"Careful, kids! Careful!" I admonished as they scrambled by.

With calm restored, I took the measure of my present circumstances. Everything seemed to be OK. Body OK. Gear OK. Or was it? At this stage in a high-altitude climb, hypoxia is a maddening worry. Oxygen deficiency can provoke confusion, disorientation and – most insidiously – euphoria, making it nearly impossible to accurately assess the severity of the creeping malaise. I'd chosen to climb without supplemental oxygen. What foolish vanity to so defy the laws of nature! What hubris! I summoned a sober moment to mutter to myself a rueful curse. And then – because it's all I knew to do – I placed my foot upon the higher step.

If I applied all my will and strength, I knew I could make it to Camp 2 in the next two hours or so. However, I had to factor in one more stop along the way. And though it had nothing to do with rest or nourishment or shelter, it was perhaps the most important one of all. It was sacred. It was the puja, the blessing ceremony in which I was to petition the Gods for good fortune and protection in my quest. I knew the chick in 4B was a Buddhist or something. Sometimes she'd be leaving just as I was climbing down the stairs and I'd glimpse a statue of the Buddha by the wall behind her door. What was her name? Susan? Suzie? After an arduous push to the top of the stairs, I knocked on her door.

"Hi," she said, looking perplexed.

I lifted my goggles to my forehead so she could see my eyes.

"Hi," I greeted her pantingly, hot from my exertions. "Susan, right?"

"Suzie, Suzie. And you're... you live upstairs. Right?"

"Right, right. I'm Dan. 5C."

"Well, what's going on, Dan? Are you OK?"

"Just," I gasped, "a little. Out of breath."

"Well, uh, what can I do for you?"

"You're a... are you a Buddhist? If you don't. Mind my asking."

Her face bore an expression of utter bewilderment.

"I... I... I meditate sometimes, I..."

"Good, good. That's good enough. Listen. As you can see, I'm on my way up," I said, pointing up my index finger. "Normally, there's a blessing ceremony. Needs to take place. Pretty simple. Really. Would you mind helping out?"

"I, uh... I don't know what to say. I... what would I have to do?"

"Do you have yak milk?"

"What?"

"Maybe any kind of milk will do."

"It's two percent," she said tentatively.

"Put it in a bowl and offer it to the Buddha."

"Uh, wow. OK. Can you just... wait here for a minute?"

Suzie reappeared with a bowl of milk and turned to her Siddhārtha.

"Like this?" she asked me over her shoulder.

"Yeah, I guess. Just right in front like that."

She placed the bowl on the edge of the table upon which the golden statue sat.

"Now what?" she asked.

I shifted in my crampons, tearing carpet fibers with each step.

"Do you know any mantras?"

"I know Om mani padme hum."

"Perfect. Will you chant it?"

"Now?"

"Now."

As we stood before her idol, she began:

"Om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum."

She looked to me uncertainly.

"Is that enough? I can do a few more if you want."

"No, that's great. That was great. Now we need him to bless my journey."

"How do we get him to do that?"

"I think you just have to ask."

Suzie turned again to the Awakened One. She hesitated.

"How do I... address him?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do I call him? Your majesty?"

"I dunno. That doesn't sound right."

"Right."

"Go with your gut."

Suzie exhaled slowly, her eyes closed. She opened them and spoke to the statue in a solemn tone.

"Father. Holy Father, please bless Dan... Daniel?"

"Dan."

"Dan. Please bless Dan's journey. Thank you very much."

We stood in silence for half a minute. The Buddha beheld us with his trademark squint and smile, everloving and a little mocking, too.

"Thank you so much, Suzie."

"Anytime. Good luck," she said as she closed the door.

The fourth floor landing was meant to be Camp 2, my final resting point before summit assault. But I felt strong. Confident. Again, was this mere delusion? Was I suffering from oxygen deprivation? I thought I wasn't, but I didn't know. All I knew, in fact, was what every solitary climber knows: subjectivity is a trap. Your thoughts and perceptions are at best an educated guess, a blind stab at the truth. Doubt thyself, and you may know. But embarking on this harrowing expedition was my fundamental folly; shouldn't I honor that decision now? I decided to continue to the top.

I'd reached about a third of the way up when I realized I'd made a mistake. I couldn't climb any further. Every step – every movement, even – produced scorching pain in my joints that radiated up my spine and into my skull. I considered climbing back down and setting up camp, but it was too late. With a heart full of worry I bivouacked on the seventh step, shuddering in my bag as the wind blew through that fist-sized hole in the skylight. I awoke about twenty minutes later. I didn't feel much better, but I knew I had no choice. This was what every serious alpinist faces on a risk-taking ascent. This was my Moment of Truth.

I squeezed a packet of caffeinated, chocolate-flavored nutritious goop into my mouth, washed it down with water and packed up. I took a long, deep breath and willed my leg to rise and carry me another step, and then another, and another. I felt like I might just make it as long as nothing went wrong. Nothing, nothing wrong. Please, please, please, God. Nothing.

Then I saw it. That flap of torn carpet on the third step from the top. The one we told the super about weeks ago but that he's completely neglected to repair. There it was, with the fabric folded back and hanging off the edge. Sinister. Deceptively dangerous. The most hazardous obstacle of the entire climb.

Right away, I knew the wrong thing to do. The wrong thing to do was the lazy thing to do. And when you're this high up, the lazy thing gets you killed. The lazy thing would be to attempt to traverse this rift as though it weren't there, to try to step over it, around it.

Though I was at my limit physically, mentally and emotionally, I decided to do the right thing. I took my rope and my etrier out of my backpack. I tied myself to the rope and looped it through both ends of the etrier. I threw one end of the rope up onto the fifth floor landing and tied the other end to the wooden banister where I stood. Now came the hard part.

I stood up on the banister, digging my crampons deep into the cracking, painted wood. I stretched over the precipice and leaned against the side of the landing, where the posts of the railing met the floor. I knew I shouldn't look. Of course you're not supposed to look. But, perversely, I permitted myself a glance: the void was sickening, a hundred-foot plunge to the black-and-white tiled lobby floor. I slowly lifted my head. My mouth was dry and my hands were soaked with sweat. I held my ice screw in my left hand and hammered it through the loop of the etrier with the blunt side of my axe. Then I tied the rope to one of the posts. I was ready to go.

The first step was the scariest. The etrier sank and bowed under my weight, but held fast. The second step was steadier, the third one steadier still. But then I completely missed the fourth. Maybe I'd gotten too confident, too comfortable. I tumbled off the etrier, hit my leg on the banister, and found myself suspended upside down by my waist, lost in the middle of the air. My heart was knocking at my ribs. My body was convulsed with adrenaline. But I was alright. I was alright. Slowly, as calmly as I could, I reached for the Texas T prusik and placed my right foot into one of the stirrups. Then I put my left foot in the other and stood up, wavering a little under the taught ropes, a solo high-wire act without a crowd, without a net. Then I sat in the seat loop and prusiked up, and repeated the process a few more times until I was above the rope and could place my feet back on the etrier. No more mistakes this time. Just go. One, two, three steps, over the railing, and suddenly I was on the fifth floor landing.

I can hardly remember the last few meters. My reality had constricted: only the next step remained, and then the next step after that. All purpose, romance and glory had evanesced with the rest of the world. I was sure that I would make it; I was sure of nothing else. Here I am, here I am, here I am, I thought, and for all I know that was the purpose: to know exactly where you are.

Finally I reached the threshold. I took off my glove and fumbled through my jacket pocket for my keys. My hand was shaking as I unlocked the door. I turned the knob and pushed. Inside, my apartment was warm and welcoming. I walked in and fell down to my knees.

"Honey? Is that you?" my wife called from the kitchen.

"Yes," I croaked, trembling, nearly weeping. "I'm home!"

Call Me By My Name

We'd gone for a drunken lunch on a slow and sunny Friday and taken the long way back to work. Bill and Tom and me. Bill was our boss, but he was more of a friend than a boss. We didn't realize it but he was taking us somewhere. When he turned left, we turned left. When he crossed the street we followed him. Soon we were in an unfamiliar part of town. Unfamiliar to me, at least.

Something seemed to be on Bill's mind. He drew the last of his cigarette and flicked it in the gutter.

"I want to show you guys something," he said.

We came to the door of a bland and dreary building. Bill opened it and waved us in. It was dark inside.

"This way," said Bill.

We followed him across a desolate lobby and into a hallway. There was a light at the end, an opening into what looked like a janitor's office or the storeroom of a restaurant kitchen. There was a metal bucket full of pale gray water with a mop stuck in it and an old, gray metal desk with a fluorescent lamp illuminating a clutter of pens and papers and mail. And there was a door that led to a stairway to the basement.

"Down here," said Bill.

We climbed down into a dark and musty, cavelike room. On the wall facing us there was a door. Bill opened it and I was startled to find a large, furnished room with sunlight streaming through windows along the top of the wall. There were people in it, maybe twenty or so. They didn't seem to be doing much. Some were sitting on couches, some were sitting on the floor. Some were standing, perhaps on their way from one side to the other. They did not seem surprised to see us.

"What are your names?" one man asked.

"Yes, tell us your names," said another. Yes! Yes! others said, and everyone gazed at us expectantly.

Bill signaled us with a nod.

"I'm Joe," I said.

"I'm Tom," said Tom.

They all nodded and smiled, and then returned to what they were doing. Which was nothing.

I turned to Bill. "What is this?"

"It's nothing."

"What do you mean, it's nothing?"

He shrugged. "It's a place where people come."

"Come and do what?"

He smiled and shrugged again. "Not much. Nothing, really."

I scrutinized the room. There was a kitchenette to our left and what appeared to be the door to a bathroom. Some of the people had gotten up and were coming our way.

"OK, people are going to walk up and introduce themselves," Bill announced. "It's very, very important that you remember their names."

A young woman extended her hand. "I'm Amy," she said. Others followed behind her: "I'm Lisa." "I'm Paul." "I'm Julie." I shook their hands and nodded and said hi, hello, nice to meet you.

I was startled to see my friend Kate.

"Kate? You?"

She gave a coy smile, like I'd caught her in a mildly embarrassing situation.

"It's good to see you here, Joe."

There were others I knew, too. Another coworker. Someone who lived in my building. And some familiar faces that I couldn't place. I felt like I was meeting them anew, on the other side of some divide.

Finally the introductions were over. Everyone regained their seats and continued to do nothing. There were no books, no magazines. No TV. Very little conversation, even, as far as I could tell.

"Now what happens?" I asked Bill.

"Let's sit down," he said, and the three of us picked a spot on the carpet and sat cross-legged in a triangle.

"Are we supposed to be quiet?" asked Tom.

Bill pursed his lips and looked away as he formulated his answer. "You don't have to be quiet as a rule, no."

"But it's encouraged," I offered.

"I wouldn't say that it's encouraged," Bill said blankly, shaking his head. "Oh, the bathroom's over there," he added, pointing to the door beside the kitchenette. "And if you're hungry, there's peanut butter and jelly and bread in the fridge."

"How long are we supposed to stay?" I asked.

"You can stay as long as you want."

"When can we leave?"

"You can leave anytime you want," Bill said.

"So we just sit here?" asked Tom.

"You can sit wherever you like. Or you can stand."

We sat for a long while in silence, occasionally shifting our legs to keep from cramping up. Occasionally Bill would look at me or Tom with the trace of a smile. After an hour or so, or two, or maybe three, I began to feel a powerful elation welling up from deep within my chest. Bill broke out in a wide smile.

"You're feeling it, aren't you?"

"Yes," I said.

"Isn't it great?"

"It's amazing."

Soon Tom was evidently feeling the same thing too. He appeared to wipe away a tear.

"Wow, Jesus. This is great," he said. Bill and I smiled radiantly at him.

The sensation was not unlike a psychedelic drug, though somehow more profound. More intense. And yet we hadn't taken anything. In fact, we hadn't done anything.

Through the veil of my intoxication I watched a professional-looking woman in heels get up off the couch and walk towards the door. She seemed to be moving very slowly.

"Where are you going?" someone asked her.

She turned around to face the room.

"I'm leaving."

"Don't go!" several people said.

"Call me by my name," she replied immediately.

"Don't go, Linda!" they pleaded in unison. And as if on cue Linda turned her back, opened the door and was gone.

"What was that?" I asked Bill.

"When you're leaving, it's customary to ask people to call you by your name."

"You have to ask them to call you by your name?"

"It's customary to do so."

"If they don't call you by your name, do you have to stay?"

Bill closed his eyes and shook his head. "You can leave anytime you want."

I felt like I was on fire. Like there was nothing I couldn't do. Nothing I could do. Nothing I couldn't. Do. Could do, couldn't. Do. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Dream, dream, dream.

My trip undulated through periods of bliss and of confusion. At one point it occurred to me that I was very hungry. I watched myself walk to the fridge and pull the handle. I heard the suck of the breaching seal. Inside there were rows and rows and rows of jars of Skippy peanut butter on the top shelf and just as many of Welch's grape jelly on the middle one. On the bottom shelf, loaves of Wonder bread were stacked in two layers of six. On each shelf, the rightmost item was opened and about a quarter empty. I placed all three on the counter and opened the nearest drawer. It was filled with hundreds of white plastic knives. I took one, closed the drawer, and made myself a sandwich.

People came and went. Always there was the same refrain: Call me by my name. On one occasion a young woman was not accommodated. They cajoled her impersonally: "Stay! Stay! Stay! Don't Go!" With one hand on the doorknob she balked, and turned, and with a grim and weary smile she rejoined the cheering group.

I drifted in and out of euphoric hallucinations. In a moment of relative lucidity it occurred to me that I hadn't seen Tom in a while.

"Did Tom leave?" I asked Bill.

"Yes."

"Did you call him by his name?"

"I did not call him by his name."

"And still he left?"

Bill nodded solemnly.

Last I knew before the dark, the setting sun shone through the windows to cast a rosy glow upon the wall.

I awoke with a start. (Or was I awake?) It was dead black and quiet all around me. Though it appeared I was alone, I sensed a presence. A bestial shadow in the dark. I thought it was a wolf. The disembodied spirit a wolf. I opened my mouth and let out a croaking, anguished cry into the void:

"Call me by my name!"

I didn't even hear an echo in reply.

"Call me by my name!" I screamed. "Call me by name! Call me by name!"

It was then I had an appalling epiphany. And I'm not sure I spoke or merely thought the words that are to follow. All I know is that they were my last.

My God. You die if you stay here!

On Sunday morning, race day, we were turned away from the grandstand gate for the beers in our bag. We resolved to walk around town and drink them all. We gravitated toward the wall that stretched across a street to block the track from view. The second GP2 race of the weekend was taking place and we could hear the screams of the cars beating against the plywood from the other side. If you got up close you could see through little cracks and gaps; blurs of color flashing by in an instant: red, white, blue, yellow, black. It was almost better to watch the race this way. The mystery was intensified.

We walked up some steps along the wall that turned back into the steep face of the city. Here you could see above the wall a bit; you could see entire cars in a patch between the trees and guardrails. A boy, hands pressed against his ears, sat watching from his father's shoulders.

We finally took our seats at the top of the stands facing out into the harbor. Behind us we could see the front stretch of the track between pine branches, and a little farther down the balcony of the Automobile Club de Monaco where the old-money rich and the well-connected basked in their ennui, undeserving, as always, of their view. In front the track was lined on the outside by gleaming white yachts and on the inside by the many-colored hoi polloi. Wisps of clouds hung in the sky and the sonorous voice of the track announcer droned on intoxicatingly, his Monégasque accent thick as motor oil.

Races begin in satisfying rhythm: every minute or two the lead car suddenly emerges from the farthest corner you can see. The field follows, often trailing by a few lengths. The entire procession roars past in anger but in order, for the most part. This is reassuring. The blue car's behind the red car, like it was before. The black car's catching up. You have just enough time to notice the discrepancies with the lap before: The white car passed the yellow car! Where did the green car go? And soon the back marker straggles past, its engine whining lonesomely as it disappears around the bend. Now there's just a distant hum echoing off the hills or buildings. And then there's silence. And suddenly, it all happens again.

Then races devolve into chaos and delirium as pit stops are made, slower cars are lapped, and accidents and penalties occur. It's hard to maintain the running order; cars are jumbled up, flying past in a ceaseless, shifting stream of gaps and blurry colors. And whereas the start is reassuring, this is beautiful.

Our disorientation in the middle race was intensified by our panoramic view. We were surrounded by mad sound: cars blinking by behind us before we knew they'd passed in front; cars roaring out of the pits into the fray; every momentary attenuation in the engine din filled by the glossolalia pouring out of the PA. Finally the noise subsided and a deep, dissonant chord swelled up to take its place: all the boats in the harbor blowing their horns in a collective exhalation. The race was over.

The period after a race is melancholy. The sudden quiet, stark and eerie, has a bereaving effect. Something was alive and now it's gone. We fought it with good cheer and resolved not to shuffle off morosely to the train station this time. We went to a bar where people were drinking on the street. We hung out with an odd, solitary man with a perpetual smile on his face and two cockney blokes who had flown in for the day. They loved Jenson Button.

"What about Hamilton?" I asked.

"He's a bit... arrogant, ain't he?" one replied.

I came to Lewis's defense but there wasn't much to say to them. It was clear they were happy to have their golden boy. Their white boy. But they were agreeable enough in spite of this.

By the time we left the bar, the track was open. We entered it right behind the start/finish line. I imagined a deep and resonant vibration emanating from beneath my feet, echoes of races past. Some team trucks were parked to the side: Toyota, Red Bull. I peered inside one to find a spotlessly clean, high-tech lab workbench covered with bewildering tools and instruments.

We continued to walk the track, around Sainte Devote, up the hill to Massenet, back in front of the casino where we'd been for qualifying the day before, down the hill and around Mirabeau (where Lewis Hamilton crashed during qualifying), and down to the most famous and beautiful corner in all of racing, the Grand Hotel Hairpin. We wandered into the hotel and briefly considered having a drink in the bar with windows overlooking the sea but the cocktail prices shocked us to the very core of our souls. Sara went to the ladies' room and I waited for her outside. As she walked out she spotted Robert Kubica, her favorite driver, in street clothes, talking to some friends. We shook his hand and chatted with him. "This is your lucky day," one of his friends said upon hearing that he was Sara's favorite driver. "It's her lucky day but it's not his lucky day," I said. Kubica's car was terrible all weekend – he qualified 18th and retired with brake problems. We said goodbye, shook hands again, and I told him I hoped his car got better. "So do I," he said.

Acadiana

The Mardi Gras song is exceedingly mournful. Every note of its minor melody seems weightier than the last; its beginning, rising figure has a glorious and stoic quality but then the harmony shifts to a lower, major chord and the melody descends with it and everything that ever mattered in the world seems to fall to pieces in an immense, appalling tragedy. There's a sweet, sad void inside your chest and you want to hang your head and weep for all mankind, for all its sins, for its desperate desire to be saved. This is the Cajun people's party song.

We cross a truss bridge out of Baton Rouge. Jesse at the wheel, Chris in the passenger seat and me in back. Chris says when he was at LSU he and his friends climbed it one night, up its lattices and girders to a beam at the top where one by one they proceeded to the other side, arms held out, fortified by liquor and compelled by death. The lights of cars below. They crossed the road that crossed the Mississippi River.

It's too bad all the highways look the same. Same signs, all ping-pong table green with their white, luminescent rings. Same guardrails, same weedy valley in between. Same dividing lines and lanes. Because the country they cross is very different. Sometimes you know you're someplace different because of the names on the same old signs. Butte La Rose, Courtableau, Champagne. I spy a shotgun shack on the edge of a marsh, a dirty trailer in the woods. There's a cow standing on a patch of mud in a flooded field. We're in Cajun country now, driving west on I-10, chasing the sun into the bayou.

We stop at D.I.'s on Route 97, outside Basile. I say outside 'cause the horizon is distant, treeless; there's nothing else in sight. Just a windswept gravel lot and some patchy grass to the edge of the woods, swampy rice fields across the road. But maybe this is Basile.

Inside it's a bright, warm family restaurant. There's a banner on the wall with big, block letters: THANK YOU MR. FRUGE FOR THE BOILED CRAWFISH OUR CLASS REALLY ENJOYED THEM. The boiled crawfish are the thing to get here: big mounds of them, so hot from cayenne pepper they sting your fingers when you peel them. After every two or three I eat, I tilt my beer to my mouth and hold it there before drinking; the beer's a balm to my burning lips.

We pay our ticket and head to the Purple Peacock bar in Eunice, killing time before picking up Cissy at her dad's house. All you can drink 8-9, it says on the door, and lucky us, it's eight-thirty. It's a cold, dark bar; cavernous; all black lights and neon. Thumping dance music plays to an empty floor. Everyone in this place, staff and patrons alike, seems to be about nineteen years old. White boys in baggy pants and black girls in tight ones.

The Purple Peacock is sticky. Put your finger on a table, on a wall, on the back of a chair: every surface is a little tacky, like used Scotch tape. Like the entire room has just been mopped and scrubbed with Coca-Cola. We settle in by the pool table. On one trip to the bar I notice a portly, older man in a Stetson hat making the rounds of tables, chatting with the kids, laughing, sometimes patting a cheek. Gleaming handcuffs jangle on his belt and a big iron bounces on his hip. The sheriff.

The following morning we drive through town, inspecting it in all its dilapidated splendor. It's like an old movie. The Gulf sun shines in Technicolor on furniture stores and barbershops and diners. But dark, green weeds pop through the cracks.

Chris's hair is short but down south it's always haircut time, so we go to Gerald Manuel's on Second Street, la Deuxième Rue, and Chris sits in the solitary chair. Gerald, a kindly, jowly old man, cuts and banters as Bullfrog looks on, occasionally erupting with a thunderous interjection. "Where y'all from?" We tell him. Then Bullfrog tells us who he is and where he comes from. "There's two kindsa Coon-ass," he says. "You got your emigrated Coon-ass and your Coon-ass. I'm a Coon-ass." Bullfrog points at Gerald. "So's he." Gerald smiles. Finally, Bullfrog makes a grand exit. "Been bothering me all morning," Gerald says, shaking his head. When we leave, he says "Y'all come back again, now."

Where y'all from? and y'all come back again. It's the Acadian hello and goodbye, and more. The phrases are automatic, yet convincingly sincere. "In Los Angeles," Jesse remarks, "no one gives a shit where you're from."

We visit Johnson's Grocery on Maple Street for some boudin. Our tour starts out back, where they smoke the sausages, and works backward through the backdoor to the kitchen, where the only black people we've seen in town so far boil the pork and grind the parsley and the peppers. Used to be, you could only get boudin on Saturdays. Farmers worked the fields all week, slaughtered the pig early in the morning, boiled it, scraped the hair, gutted it, got the pots ready; you'd have to buy and eat your boudin by the end of the day. Refrigeration changed all that, 'round about World War Two, so Wallace Johnson's got time enough to paint. His portraits of Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis hang in the window. "Been foolin' around with it for about twenty-five years," he says with a shrug. When we leave everyone shakes our hands. "Y'all come back here sometime, OK?" says Wallace.

We drive out through the crawfish fields to Mamou, the "Capital of the Courir de Mardi Gras," the traditional Mardi Gras run. Along the way we stop at Ville Platte, a town that Cissy characterizes as Mamou's unhappy twin. It's got a high suicide rate, violence, drugs. We go to Floyd's Record Shop on Main Street and at a little past two on Friday afternoon the place is empty. There isn't even any music in the air. Just particles of dust suspended in the silence.

On Saturday morning we go to Fred's Lounge, like everybody else, like the locals and those who come from half a world away. The bar was featured in a 1990 National Geographic article and has been the area's solitary international tourist destination ever since. On the side of the building it says Laissez les bon temps rouler. Inside, an old lady sits in the dark by the wall, waiting for the music to start. "I'm not drunk yet but I'm gonna be in a little while," she declares, wide-eyed, emphatic. Like a child.

Calvin Daigle introduces himself to us and presents his wife: "This is my femme, Nonie." He hands me his card, which reads:

CALVIN AND NONIE DAIGLE
"Cajun Dancers"

Calvin worked at the sugar mill for forty-three years and has been coming to Fred's for twenty. He excuses himself with great politesse and joins the gathering crowd in the middle of the room.

The band starts up. T. P. Thibodeau & the Cajun Fever. They play raggedy, unfathomable French folk songs on the accordion, fiddle, acoustic guitar, pedal steel and drums. No bass. No low end. A young man with a crooked grin clangs a triangle out of time. Calvin and Nonie crisscross the floor in light, quick steps, weaving between those less graceful.

The songs don't end so much as they come to a rest. When they do, the DJ from the radio station broadcasting the show often gets on the mic. He speaks French peppered with English phrases, usually in reference to sponsors: Western Auto, microwaves, sporting goods. He breaks into full English to address the tourists: And who do we have from outside the state of Louisiana here today? One language encroaches upon the other. But which?

Tante Sue has a pint of Hot Damn cinnamon schnapps sticking out of her back pocket. She drifts from the bar to the floor and back, laughing, dancing, joking with the regulars. She pinches her T-shirt above her bosom and makes like she's playing the accordion. She sold the joint some time ago – to some dead-in-the-water dullards, we're told – but she has said if she gets cancer, she wants to die here.

To great fanfare, an Australian couple wins the prize for coming from farthest away: Cajun pepper.

We're at the bar with Stud and Frenchie. Stud raises his glass: "It's good to be us," he says. Stud is drinking bourbon and Coke, but the drink of choice here is ten-ounce cans of Budweiser. We obey local custom and pour salt on the rim. It's the sort of thing that's fantastic in the moment. You wouldn't want it any other way. And yet I am certain I will never drink it again.

"Where y'all from?" people ask us. An old man in a Navy cap tells me, "I know what a Connecticut Yankee looks like in King Arthur's court, but this is the first time I've seen a Connecticut Yankee in a Coon-ass court. Welcome." Lee from Alexandria says, "You got a lot of foreigners in Connecticut. All we got down here is Coon-asses and jackasses." He pauses. "I'm a jackass."

It's almost noon and everybody's wasted. The jumbly, discordant waltzes and two-steps intensify the intoxication, like the rolling of a ship. We finally stumble out into the light, aglow with good will and assured of the goodness of man. Then Cissy jolts us with a sobering observation: "If a black person tried to walk into that place all hell would break loose." And we know she's right.

We got a tip to go to Bourque's for real Cajun dancing. It's in Lewisburg, a minuscule town defined not by an X but by a T, the abutment of Route 759 on 357. We walk in and it's dark, musty. There's a front room with a bar along the wall and another room with tables, a stage, a dance floor. There are maybe twenty people there, none younger than forty. In contrast to Fred's, this place seems entirely local, undiscovered. Unselfconscious. The band plays the same Cajun music as the band at Fred's, the same old-time French songs, but they're considerably sloppier, more out-of-tune. They're no more sober than the crowd. The ballroom is bathed in a hazy emerald glow, like some underwater realm. Dancers shuffle drowsily across the floor, clutching each other not for music, not for love, but to keep from drifting down into the depths.

A waitress walks in from the bar carrying a silver tray with a fifth of Old Forester, six miniature bottles of 7-Up and two rocks glasses filled with ice. She places it on a table occupied by an elderly couple. The amber fluid, the ice cubes and the bubbles. Green bottles. White sevens and a little red dot. I'm not sure I saw anything more beautiful in all of Louisiana.

We sit at the bar and talk to Marie, the owner. She's an old, dark-haired Cajun who's seen it all, seen 'em come and go. She pridefully points out a newspaper clipping about her bar that's laminated and tacked up to the wall. Somehow the conversation turns to race. I don't know why we thought that would be an agreeable topic. I guess it's northern naiveté: we expect everyone to toe the line on tolerance, whether they believe in it or not. And we like to flatter ourselves by making people do it. Turns out not everybody's happy to oblige.

"Used to be, we didn't let 'em in here," Marie says. "Then they passed a law, said you can't refuse to serve no one. But you know what? Ain't a single one a dem try to come in here since." She knocks on wood. "God willing, none a dem ever will."

I'll not soon forget the sound of the old lady's knuckle rapping on her bar.

There's a concert that evening at the Liberty Theater in Eunice. Hadley Castille, the great Cajun fiddler, is among those playing. He's a white-haired, lanky figure in a bowler hat and vest with a deep, brassy voice. His fiddle playing is authoritative and his band is tight, professional. Sober, evidently. Everyone gets up on the dance floor during his set. The whole town: old timers, mothers leading daughters. A mentally disabled couple.

The following day we visit Hadley at his big, white farmhouse out in the country. Every now and again he goes to the big city, he says, and by that he means Opelousas. Jesse takes some pictures of him on the lawn with his granddaughter, Jayde. She plays the fiddle just like grandpa. She plays us a screechy little tune. She's acutely adorable.

We hear the screen door banging at the back of the house. We look up and there's a flash of blue: a burly figure in a ski jacket slipping furtively inside. Hadley sighs.

"That's my son," he says. "He not doin' so good."

His son was a promising musician once, a guitarist and singer. He knew all the songs and all the melodies, Hadley says. But then he lost his mind. Hadley says he never touches the guitar anymore.

"The last time he played, he played 'The City of New Orleans' note-for-note perfect, jus' beautiful," says Hadley. "Then he put the guitar down an' he never played again."

I sit inside with Hadley and he plays Hank Williams' "Jambalaya" with Jayde singing. We talk about music, about Fred's, about Tante Sue. I ask him to play the Mardi Gras song. A bit trepidatiously, because you're only supposed to play it on Mardi Gras. But he obliges. He plays the haunting melody a few times, improvising here and there, ornamenting it, extending it. Then he pulls off his bow and sings:

Capitaine, capitaine, raise ton flag
Allons s'mettre sur le chemin
Capitaine, capitaine, raise ton flag
Allons aller chez l'aut' voisin

Les Mardi Gras sont rassemblés
Pour demander la charité
Les Mardi Gras vous remercient
Pour vot' bonne volonté

Acadiana is lost America. It's the place we forgot on our way to the mall, on our way to Disneyland. It's long been in the shadows, occupying a parallel realm in which the Beatles never invaded, no one landed on the moon, and Martin Luther King never marched. It's straining for the light now, and catching glimpses of itself. Its peculiar, 18th-century French, long suppressed in schools, is now celebrated, tentatively held out as an attraction. Its music draws visitors from Australia. Fishermen take tourists through the swamps to look for gators. Trouble is, Cajun French is an endangered language; it might not last another generation. Evangeline Parish is among the poorest counties in the U.S. There's work in sugar cane fields, rice and crawfish farms. Not much else.

And there's more trouble still. There's another, hidden world within Acadiana, a shadow in the shadows: the blacks and the Creoles. They're in the margins of Cajun society just like the Cajuns are in the margins of ours. We've only glimpsed a few here and there: at the Purple Peacock, in the kitchen at Johnson's. Cissy tells us there's a party at the Assumption Catholic Church in Basile and the great zydeco musician Geno Delafose is playing. Geno is a Creole, a man of mixed African, Indian and French descent. We resolve to go, though Cissy is apprehensive. She's not sure we'll be welcome.

The church and its adjoining hall are small, twin whitewashed structures on a barren stretch of Glasper Street. We pull into the dirt lot and park among a dozen or so cars. Cissy says wait here. She wants to check it out, make sure it's OK for the white boys to come in. A couple minutes later she comes back out and nods. We get out and walk up to the door.

Inside the hall Geno and his band are in midsong: it's a French tune, not unlike what the Cajuns would play, but it's louder and it rocks harder; there's electric bass, drums, someone scraping a mad syncopation on a metal rubboard hanging from his shoulders. There are maybe fifty people in the room, a mix of blacks and lighter-skinned Creoles. Many are dancing, others are sitting, drinking beer. Matriarchs sit along the wall, behind tables covered with foil trays of food.

People notice us, sure. Many heads are turned in our direction. But the expressions are surprised, intrigued – not hostile. I haven't taken seven steps inside the door when a man walks up to me and extends his hand. I shake it and he looks me in the eye.

"I just wanted to welcome you here and tell you how happy I am that you came," he says.

We dance and drink for hours. We meet a man named Calvin Thomas, who invites us to his house for a crawfish boil. We talk to the Cesar brothers. They fish by hand. They tell us about their brother who rides the giant alligator gar. One day he rode one till it burrowed into the sand at the bottom of the swamp. The Cesars invite us to their annual family catfish fry.

We leave drunk and elated, babbling, delirious. But about a mile down the road I realize I forgot my coat. We turn around. When I walk back into the hall it's mostly empty now; the band's gone and a few people are cleaning up. Three men are holding my coat in the middle of room, stretching out its arms and inspecting it quizzically, like an object from an alien civilization. I claim it contritely. There are smiles and nods as one of them hands it to me. I thank him, shake his hand, and tell him what a great time I had.

"Y'all come back again!" he says.

The Acquisition - 6

The hot weeks of summer passed without any news. There were rumors that the enormous company was conducting due diligence: investigations of legal issues surrounding our intellectual property, further analysis of the marketplace, line-by-line scrutiny of our software code.

Part of our software incorporated a product offered by one of the enormous company's competitors and they did not like that. But it did not seem to jeopardize the acquisition. Nothing jeopardized the acquisition.

Just when we'd permitted ourselves to forget about it, our CEO gathered everyone around the tables in the kitchen area. The acquisition was in the works, he said. Representatives from the enormous company were flying in the following week to conduct job interviews. There was some bewilderment. There was trepidation. But there was also the breezy sense of being carried on a ride, helpless. Something had been set in motion that could not be stopped. Something good or bad, nobody knew. But it was happening.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 15

Here's what was for dinner: meatloaf with barbecue sauce, instant mashed potatoes, Bird's Eye French green beans with toasted almonds, Pillsbury crescent rolls, Duncan Hines yellow cake with buttercream fudge frosting, tuna rice royal, hamburger and macaroni stew, zucchini bread, artichoke hearts and peas, chicken Kiev, pineapple upside-down cake, enchilada casserole, corn and hamburger pie, quiche lorraine, peas with mushrooms and pearl onions, green beans au gratin, chicken a la king, glazed ham, Dinty Moore beef stew, buttered peas, raisin slaw, ambrosia salad, succotash, salmon crepes, Rice-A-Roni, Noodle Roni, zucchini tortilla casserole, Pillsbury dinner rolls with Land-O-Lakes salted butter, spaghetti primavera, broccoli with Velveeta sauce, rice imperatrice, Pepperidge Farm garlic bread, tuna surprise, applesauce cake; tossed salad with iceberg lettuce, garlic croutons, Bac-O-Bits and Good Seasons Italian dressing; green bean and mushroom casserole, chicken aloha, fiesta rice, tuna linguine casserole, sloppy joes on Wonder rolls, baked ziti, Salisbury steak, herbed potato salad, cherry cobbler, bibb lettuce with Wish-Bone ranch dressing, fettuccine alfredo, Jell-O salad, Swedish meatballs, pork chops and apple sauce, beef strogonoff, Pillsbury chocolate macaroon bundt cake, Jolly Green Giant canned corn, Hamburger Helper and impossible pie.

Mom and Dad would forgo alcohol for the time it took to eat. Mom drank Tab. Dad and Sis and I drank Coca-Cola.

The Redundancy

One day Tom, a frustrated writer, a dutiful yet bored and restless data analyst for the Midtown consulting firm Kincaid & Presley, finally tried the knob on that gray door in the corner, behind his desk. Near the glass-encased fire extinguisher and the conference room that no one ever used. It opened. And it led him through an unlit hallway. Halfway down there were two lounge chairs with a little round table between them, as though people were expected to sit there and converse. When he reached the end he emerged into a parallel realm, at once alien and familiar. The door was like the one he'd entered. He saw before him a desk much like his own, in a similar vast sea of cubicles arrayed in a maze, punctuated by square supporting columns. Except these cubicles were upholstered in light green fabric; his were gray. He realized this was the other company on the floor, the one that lay beyond the doors to the right of the elevator when he got off each morning and, without a thought, turned left. He didn't even know its name.

No one saw Tom, though when he peered down the nearest row he saw coats draped on the tops of cubicle walls, the backs of heads, restless feet fidgeting on the bases of rolling chairs. The corporate organism in the doldrums of midafternoon. There was no one at the desk that corresponded to his, however; it held only a phone, a keyboard, a monitor and a Kleenex box. He approached and sat down in the chair. The patchy pattern of dust on the desk indicated that it had recently been cluttered with the artifacts of office life: a framed picture of a wife and children, perhaps, or of a husband; a tape dispenser, pen cup, novelty mug or bobblehead doll.

A man strode towards him and stopped a few paces away.

"Excuse me, can I help you? Who are you?"

Tom was momentarily seized with panic, with shame. What the hell could he say? He fell upon a desperate idea.

"I... I'm Tom. I'm the new guy," Tom said, nodding into the mouth of his cubicle.

The man tilted back his head and frowned.

"I didn't know that hire was complete."

"Yeah!" said Tom.

"Well I'll be."

"Yeah."

"Data analyst?"

"That would be me."

"Not used to things moving fast around here!"

"Here I am. At your service."

"Hey, all right, Tom. Welcome to Taylor & Crowell! I'm Mike. I'll be your supervisor." Mike stepped forward and they shook hands. "Let's get you an I-9 form and an account on this computer."

Minutes later Tom had two jobs: data analyst for Kincaid & Presley and data analyst for Taylor & Crowell, the company down the hall. He spent the rest of the afternoon at his new one, only occasionally darting back through the dark hallway to show his face and check his e-mail at K & P. There really wasn't much going on, so no one noticed his absence. At around five-thirty, he thanked Mike and said goodbye. Then he escaped to the other office one last time to get his coat and bag and bid a round of goodbyes to his other colleagues.

Over the next few days, Tom perfected his surreptitious two-job routine: arrive early at Kincaid & Presley, look busy at his desk for twenty minutes, then slip through the passageway to Taylor & Crowell to start the day there. Over the course of the day he would pass back and forth a few times, calibrating the length of his visits according to workload and their timing according to meetings and other obligations. Fact is, there was hardly anything to do at K & P. They'd lost a few accounts in the past few months and people were talking doom.

Taylor & Crowell, on the other hand, kept Tom busy. Mike had started him off on a research project involving the analysis of another company in their market. The name of the company was obscured to him for reasons of corporate confidentiality, Mike explained. But he let on that it was a company that T & C was interested in acquiring.

One day Mike called Tom into his office.

"Where you been for the past half hour?"

"I, I... had a situation. To deal with. A family situation."

"Say no more. No worries," Mike said, holding up his hand for Tom to stop. "I didn't mean to pry."

"That's alright."

"You've been doing really good work, by the way, Tom. I've been reading your reports so far on the prospective acquisition. Nifty work."

"Thanks! That's great to hear."

"Looks like your conclusions are pointing in the right direction."

Tom was used to playing the analysis game. Shake the numbers around a bit until they all seem to fall into the right place. Until they tell a story your bosses want to hear.

"That's what I've been seeing, yeah."

"OK, so listen. Now I can tell you because the cat's going to be out of the bag this afternoon. Our CEO is flying in to make the announcement. We're going to take over this company."

"That's very exciting."

"And I can tell you who they are. It's Kincaid & Presley. It's the company on the other side of this very floor."

Tom tried not to reveal his shock.

"Interesting!"

"You bet it's interesting. We're gonna be Taylor, Crowell, Kincaid & Presley now. They have to have their names in there to save face. Lots of egos involved. You know how these things are. But make no mistake: we're acquiring them, not the other way around."

"I see."

"I can't make any promises right now, but based on the work you've been doing, I believe your job should be safe."

Tom wandered back to his desk in a daze. He was pondering how this all might play out when he realized it was about time for him to check in at K & P. Soon after he sat back down at his old desk his boss there, Steve, walked up.

"Hey Tom, got a minute?"

"Sure." Tom got up and followed Steve into his office.

"I've been telling everyone who's been here for a while – Debbie, Joe, Tibor. Eric. There's some interesting news. It's going to be announced later this afternoon."

"OK."

"We're acquiring Taylor & Crowell. Do you realize who they are?"

Tom slowly shook his head. Steve pointed in the vague direction of the other side.

"Floormates. Down the hall. Can you believe it?"

"Wow!" said Tom, this time making an effort to seem surprised.

"They're going to make it look like they're acquiring us, but it's really the other way around. Technically, it's a stock swap. I think we're going to be called Kincaid, Presley, Taylor & Crowell. We're still working out all that stuff. They've been on our radar for a while."

"That's uh, exciting."

"Yup. Now there's some good news and there's some bad news. Bad news is, there are going to be some redundancies. Good news is, we've shared preliminary org charts and theirs actually had you in your position."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I think they actually listened when I told them what kind of value you bring."

"I, uh, I really appreciate that, Steve."

Later in the afternoon, Tom gathered with his colleagues at Taylor & Crowell in a large seminar room to listen to their silver-haired CEO, Freeman Hatfield, proclaim the tremendous significance and auspiciousness of the impending merger.

"I cannot emphasize this enough," Hatfield stated, both hands pointing at his audience from above the lectern, "our acquisition of one of the most important competitors in our market is thanks to you people!"

Hooting and applause.

"You are the reason I get up in the morning. You are the reason I get into my car." He paused dramatically, then pointed again in a wide arcing motion, hand high over his head. "It's all you people in this room who deserve credit for building this company, for satisfying our clients, for bringing us to this milestone. Day after day after day, you people are the people who reach benchmarks." He looked around and nodded emphatically, as though to deter any falsely modest protests. "You people are the people who act on action items. You people are the people who go and do go-dos! You people are the fulfillers of commitments!"

Sensing the impending climax, some in the crowd began to clap and cheer.

"Hold it!" Hatfield said, hands held up. "I'm not done. I want you all to give yourselves a big round of applause!"

The room erupted in a gleeful ovation in which Tom participated gamely. He eyed the exit. This would be a good time to sneak away and make himself visible at K & C, he thought. He was beginning to wind his way there among his elated colleagues when he heard his name called.

"Tom! Tom Olson! Is that Tom Olson?"

Tom turned around to find Mike and Freeman Hatfield approaching, both smiling widely.

"I just told Mike here that I had to meet the new guy who made the magic happen!" Freeman exclaimed, thrusting out an impeccably manicured hand.

"Thank you, sir!"

"Call me Freeman! Mike's been telling me what an important role you played in this."

"I'm sure I'm not the only one!"

Freeman leaned in, still clutching Tom's hand in his powerful, steady grip. He emanated a suffocating fog of cologne.

"These fucking people? They don't do shit. Half of them are getting fired."

Freeman jerked his head back and laughed uproariously. Mike joined in.

"Seriously," said Freeman. "You've got a bright future with us, Tom. You wanna know the funny thing?"

Freeman still held Tom's hand and began to shake it again gently.

"Sure."

"Those cocksuckers over at K & C already have your name down for your job!"

Freeman and Mike laughed again and Tom was seized by a tremulous chill. He tried to release Freeman's hand but the old man wouldn't let him.

"Who knows, maybe their person is a non-starter over there. Dead weight."

"No-brainer," added Mike.

"Brain dead."

Tom shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. Freeman Hatfield still clutched his hand.

"But you're a game-changer, Tom. Don't you let us forget it."

"I sure won't!"

Freeman shook one final time, patting the top of Tom's wrist with his other palm.

"I'm sure glad we met."

"So am I."

Over the CEO's shoulder, Tom saw Mike make wide eyes – wide, portentous eyes. This is big for you, he seemed to be saying. Tom felt sweat drip down his back. He smiled at the men as they finally strode away.

On the Tuesday of the following week, everyone at either company was called into their bosses' offices, one by one, and told the good news or the bad. In spite of whatever assurances had been insinuated in the days before, about three quarters would lose their jobs at Kincaid & Presley and half at Taylor & Crowell. Tom's meeting with Mike came before his meeting with Steve.

"I think you know what I'm about to tell you," Mike said, smiling.

"I don't ever want to assume."

"Stop being modest. You know we love you here. And apparently, they love you there too. We got absolutely no pushback on putting you in your job."

"Great!"

"We move over there officially on Thursday. You'll feel right at home. Your desk is pretty much in the same spot."

Tom thanked him and left. Then he snuck through the hallway again and sat back at his old desk. He killed a little time and then went to his meeting with Steve.

"Well Tom, you really lucked out."

"I'm grateful that you put in a good word for me, Steve."

Steve laughed darkly.

"Well, I did what I could. Unfortunately, the news is not as good for all of us. They're letting me go."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You know, they've got some guy over there. Mike, I think. He'll be your new boss."

"Wow. I'm really sorry to hear that."

"Thanks, thanks, thanks. I guess he's got seniority. And besides, the truth is, they are taking us over."

"Oh yeah?"

"Feels good to say that. No one here wants to admit it, but they are. That's how come they get to put in the people they want. Their people."

"Right, right. Of course."

"Except for this guy right here!" Steve said with strained enthusiasm, pointing at Tom.

Tom shrugged and put on a fatalistic smile.

"Funny thing is, they must really not have liked their guy. 'Cause you're our guy!"

"I guess!"

Tom felt obliged to indulge Steve's odd mood, to be present and vaguely supportive of his doomed boss, this figure of erstwhile authority now fallen and denuded. But he really just wanted to get out of there.

"You know what I was thinking, though?" said Steve.

"What?"

"It's funny that they wanted to keep you."

"I guess it is," Tom said nervously.

"You know what would be funny?"

"Yeah?"

"It would be funny if there were actually two Tom Olsons."

"Ha!" Tom exclaimed sharply.

"One who works at your job here and one who works at your job there."

"That would be funny."

Steve chuckled wearily, shaking his head.

"Hey, go and write a story about it. You're an aspiring writer. That's my parting gift to you."

Now Tom got a perverse idea, just as he had when Steve first approached him on the other side. This one too he could not resist.

"I'm already working on one actually. It's kind of like that, but different."

"Oh yeah?"

Tom grinned. "In my story, there's just one Tom Olson but he works both jobs."

Steve burst out laughing and slapped three beats on his desk.

"Perfect! That's it!"

"Isn't that funny?"

"That's great, Tom. Write it! Write that story!"

"I sure am."

"That's my last request of you, I want you to write that goddamn story."

"I promise."

"Unreal."

"Yup!"

"What is it they say about truth?"

"Huh?"

"About fiction and truth?"

"Oh."

"Fiction is stranger than truth?"

"Something like that," Tom said, and the two men said goodbye.

Soon Tom would find himself back at his old desk for good, a senior data analyst now for Taylor, Crowell, Kincaid & Presley. To those from T & C, he was Tom, the not-so-new guy; Tom, the go-getter, the golden boy. To those remaining from K & P he was Tom too, but he was good ol' Tom, the writer guy, always a bit distracted. Lucky Tom, to say the least. But it never occurred to anyone in either group that someone else might know another Tom. Why should it? Tom was Tom. He was two Toms to his colleagues but he was reconciled to himself, situated in a single space. Unredundant. He never opened the gray door again.

The Malaise

What a marvel it is to be alive today. The sun has never risen over a world more beautiful and just. One hesitates to describe or even to enumerate the extravagant glories experienced by every man, woman and child on earth, for they are myriad. I shall try, for an examination of our blessed condition is a noble endeavor; it will guard us against complacency, remind us why we strove so hard to achieve our elevated state. And, at the risk of immodesty, I would like to propose that there is the possibility that it might at least in some small measure decrease the Malaise.

Where to start? Consider, for example, the complete absence of hunger, that most elemental concern. Benevolent multinational corporations in the agricultural and food processing industries long ago banded together, with the assistance of their respective countries, to eradicate starvation. Once that relatively modest goal was achieved, and even the poorest of the poor in neglected, war-torn places could rely on daily rations of nutritious, soy-based pulp, these enterprises set out to teach the poor farming techniques that were appropriate to their environments and cultures. These initiatives were combined with others in the areas of justice, literacy and infrastructure to build resilient, thriving, modern communities in which a baby that once had a twenty percent chance of living to the age of one was now virtually guaranteed a bright future of not only physical well-being but of intellectual, spiritual and material fulfillment. Their only real concern, of course, was the Malaise.

The elimination of poverty occurred naturally as a result of the elimination of hunger. Beautiful towns arose where dusty decay had reigned; vibrant economies where there had only been corruption and want. This transformation produced far-reaching and sometimes surprising benefits: as every living soul passed into affluence, there was no longer anywhere a dichotomy of haves and have-nots. Everybody was a have. Centuries-old conflicts were resolved as though each side had suddenly forgotten its grievances: Israel and Palestine declared a truce and economic alliance; Pakistan abandoned its claim to Kashmir and Muslims and Hindus intermingled happily in either country; Basque separatists abandoned their struggle in exchange for fuller participation in Spanish government and culture. Terrorism waned along with political and economic disenfranchisement. Soon the very idea that anyone would murder innocent people seemed like an absurd joke, and no one could quite believe that it had ever happened. Unfortunately, jokes don't seem so funny anymore. Since the Malaise.

As people became not only wealthier but better educated, human rights abuses (whether in the name of the state, of God, of superstition or merely of tradition) began to vanish. As the lot of people of every color and ethnic group improved, racism evaporated as if by magic. Women everywhere became full members of society, incontestably equipped with equal rights, unveiled to the world. They entered every professional class, and even the clergy of every major religion. Likewise, discrimination and crimes against homosexuals became an artifact of the past. Individual freedom – of thought, of expression, of dress, of religion, of sexuality – was not only tolerated but celebrated. It did not even need to be enforced; everyone accepted it as a given. The entire world was gravitating toward freedom, reason and compassion; toward love. Little did we know, we were also drifting toward the Malaise.

The complete disarmament of the entire planet, initiated when the most powerful nations decided, independently, to unilaterally eliminate their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, has produced a world free from the threat not only of catastrophic nuclear or biological apocalypse but of any kind of war at all. Borders of nations grew blurry as a spirit of openness, cooperation and welcome took hold where even the most entrenched disdain had once held sway. Today, people move freely between what were once known as "countries." Everyone is free to benefit from the natural and cultural bounties of every place on earth. How could it ever have been any other way? This evolution has occurred on a personal level just as it's occurred on a national one: no one would ever think to harm their neighbor, for the boundaries between ourselves and others have dissolved, too. We are effectively a single organism now: humanity. And this organism is afflicted with a single ailment: the Malaise.

Today, the Malaise has us in its clutches and shows no signs of letting go. It was first reported in the media as a vague sense of ennui, of disenchantment, that seemed to be taking hold of the collective spirit as worldly concerns abated. This was to be expected, specialists said. It was a temporary symptom of the trauma caused by the rapid shift in our mental and emotional priorities, they speculated. They reassured us: Relax. Enjoy your perfect world. You created it. You deserve it. But it only grew worse. Those who suffered most severely were hard put to describe the problem. Something just doesn't feel right, they said. And that's really all they needed to say. Everyone knew what they meant. People began to weep openly in the streets, falling to their knees, trembling with despair, clawing at their guts as though to breach through to the emptiness inside.

And then there were the suicides. People decided they could no longer tolerate this paradise. It exerted such a powerfully oppressive force on their psyches that they were left with no choice but to escape. People killed themselves singly and in groups. Suicide clubs were formed. Institutions arose to facilitate the suicide process. Many made elaborate rituals of the experience, inviting friends and family, videotaping the event, and leaving behind lengthy, poignant notes. They considered it their life's work. People began to plan their suicides years in advance, reserving spots in the most sought-after automortuariums. Parents even created trust accounts for the eventual suicide of their children. Suicide came to be seen as the one grand objective of every soul unlucky enough to be born, the only act with a hope to make one's life complete. Accordingly, it should be beautiful, moving, and – depending on one's circumstances and taste – lavish, ostentatious.

This is a last, gasping plea to whoever or whatever might be out there. Or in here.

Save us. My God, what have we done? What have we done? Like errant borrowers, have we consolidated all of our sins into a single, massive, usurious delinquency? Is it vanity, the sin of vanity? What is it? What is it, goddammit!? Tell us what it is, we'll fix it. God (if there is a God): what do we do now? Look at us. We were good. We were so good. We tried. We tried so hard. Didn't we? Didn't we!? God? You bastard? Why do you hate us so much? Why are we still not reconciled? Why, goddammit? We thought there was a way back home. Now we're more lost than ever.

Now we have it all. We have nothing.

I traipsed through Midtown yesterday, on a mission to complete some dreary chores. Sweat poured off my scalp in rivulets that ran down my forehead and into my eyes.

A few fat drops of rain fell before I got on the 42nd Street crosstown bus, just enough for everyone to catch one on the flesh. It was one of those hybrid buses with the elevated platform in the back; the front was crowded but a man sat alone in the middle of the back row, legs apart, regal. I made myself small and sat in a window seat beside him.

The Autobiography of Someone Else - 14

Mom and Dad started drinking when we got home. Gin and tonics. Dad always made the drinks at the kitchen counter. The awful, hissing crunch of ice cubes wrenched loose in the lever-action tray. The happy rattle of the ice in empty glasses. A squeeze of lime. A little bit of gin, that deceptively sinister spirit: clear but imbued with the essence of mysterious vegetation, possibly toxic, possibly medicinal. Daddy held the open bottle under my nose and laughed at my contorting face. Beefeater Gin, with the man in the gilt red uniform and the top hat and the staff. The incongruity of the name and of the picture somehow underscored the adult quality of this product. I couldn't imagine ever understanding what it all meant. Beef. Eater. Gin.

I'd tasted tonic before, in a rocks glass with ice and lime so I could pretend to be a grownup. Cold, green, prickly bitterness shot through my brain. As the tonic suffused my mouth and throat it seemed to leave them drier than before; it was anti-liquid. I poured the rest into the sink with a heartful of regret, for even though I could not drink it I wanted it very, very much.

Dad brought Mom her drink and they sat serenely in the living room, reading the paper and listening to country music on the radio.

Sitdown Comedy

The Bible is funny. There's a lot of things in it that seem pretty weird when you think about it. Not just Abraham being told to kill his kid and that type of thing. But little episodes. Like Jesus turning water into wine at some wedding. Always struck me as sorta funny.

Couple things about that.

First, getting Jesus Christ to turn water into wine is kind of like, I don't know, getting Superman to fly down to the 7-Eleven to get you a bag of Doritos. It's cool and everything, and it is miraculous, but... it ain't exactly giving sight to the blind. It's like wishing to a genie for a hundred candy bars.

Second, who forgot to buy enough wine for his daughter's wedding? Dude: you had plenty of time to shop. You knew how many guests would be there. You invited Jesus Christ, for Christ's sake. What's next? "Jesus, we're in an awful bind. We don't have enough boutonnieres for the groom's frat brothers. Little help?"

Moral of the story: Make the necessary goddamn preparations so Jesus can focus on redeeming mankind. True, the wine merchants are closed on Saturday. Plan ahead!

What Howie Said

Everybody knew what Howie said. Though the media seldom had the temerity to print it, let alone to say it, his words had infected the public consciousness like a virus. Young, old, men, women, every race and creed. The taboo was so powerful and universal that its violation had a democratizing effect. Now it was the secret everybody shared. No one could repeat it. But they knew.

There were those who sat home thinking Howie never should have said it but were secretly glad he did. Among those were those who were glad he did because they had fantasized about saying it themselves, and among this subgroup were those who had fantasized perversely about saying it, knowing it was wrong to say, and a smaller group who had fantasized purely about saying it, because it was what they believed and what they thought should be said. There was another group among those who were secretly glad he'd said it: those who were entertained by the misfortunes of others. This group was large but also rather unimpassioned. They did not clamor in the streets or on the Internet. They watched it all play out from afar, happy to see a cross be borne by anyone but them. Of course, there were also those who thought he never should have said it and that it was an abomination that he did. The quiet, pious mothers of the world. They were steadfast in their uncelebrated view, lowering their gaze when they saw differing ones paraded on TV. And on TV there were those who proclaimed their outrage at what he'd said and sought to rouse others into fits of venomous fury whose target extended far beyond the original statement itself or even the sentiment, such as it might be, that lay behind it. Many of these people seemed to be leveraging the simple offense felt by the civilized in order to – for unclear reasons – disrupt civilization itself. It might be said that this group was angry that he'd said it but glad he did, for his saying it finally rallied their forces from their slumber and focused their disparate objections on a single point, a single statement, a single man. There were two other constituencies in public view, the first one minor and the second major: First, those who heartily endorsed what he had said. For them, the statement breached a long-weakened barrier and allowed the full force of their grievances to flood our common ground at last. Second, there were those who objected keenly to what he'd said but were willing to defend ("to the death," they liked to claim) his right to say it. This last group and the one consisting of those who objected and sought to forever stifle such speech were the most antagonistic pair of all, for they were brothers on opposite sides of the war.

There were rumors that children – mischievous, uncomplicated – had adapted Howie's words into a skipping rhyme.

And then there was Howie, barricaded behind his door. TV trucks in the yard. On day three his longtime girlfriend, Hannah, emerged from the house clutching her terrier, suitcase in tow. She fought her way through the frenzied pack of reporters to her car. How's Howie? she was asked. Did he hurt you? What did he do to you? I have a lawyer, she replied obscurely. Are you suing him? No. Are you leaving him? Did he rape you? No comment. No. Then, How could you have sex with someone who was capable of saying that? No reply. Another reporter followed up. What was sex like with Howie? I'm not going to answer that. What's he doing in there? Does he have a gun? Not to my knowledge. Let me go.

Howie had made no statement to the press, but occasionally a camera pointing through the window would catch him darting from bedroom to kitchen, a furtive ghost haunting his own home. He was presumed to be suicidal, a deranged loner in a standoff with himself as hostage. His only contact with the rest of the world consisted of phone conversations with three people: his mother, a high school friend back home, and his boss, Ron. Soon the media surrounded his mother's apartment building and his friend's house, and hounded them from the moment they exited their doors to the moment they reentered. Howie's mother ended their last conversation by saying she loved him but she could no longer speak to him. "I can't take it anymore the people bothering me, Howard," she said. Then Howie's friend abruptly changed his number. Now only Ron, his mentor, the epitome of reason and professionalism, remained. Howie began their conversations with pleas to retain his employment and ended them with anguished self-recriminations, prolonged crying jags and shudders of despair. Finally Ron was advised by legal to "discontinue all contact with Howard Landerman unless at the direction of the legal department." Howie was cast adrift.

Only a week earlier, Howie was a relatively happy, highly valued project manager in a product development team buried deep within his company's byzantine organizational structure. It was Wednesday morning, status meeting time. They were all sitting around the conference room table waiting for the meeting to begin when he said it. No one was sure they'd heard him right. Maybe they were hoping they hadn't. (But was it not a worse thing to imagine than to hear?) There was an awful silence around the room as everyone tried to inhabit the new reality his utterance had produced, each mind reeling, struggling to adopt the proper stance. At first it seemed as though he'd be forgiven. Rachel, sitting to his right, emitted a momentary bark of laughter, mirthless and tense. A couple other people chuckled somberly in turn. But then she put her face down in her hands and seemed to sob.

"Howie... Howie... Howie..." said Ron. His voice contained a curious combination of reproach, pity and concern, a response that strove without success to reflect the vile enormity of the offense.

Howie stared blankly out the picture window to the parking lot. His mouth moved with a slight quiver. There were no words to unsay what he'd said.

"Good God," he finally exclaimed. He hung his head, then lifted it up and looked imploringly around the table. "I am so, so, so sorry, everyone," he said, his voice breaking. Everyone lowered their eyes now, knowing he was lost. Knowing he would be condemned.

Suddenly Jordan pushed her chair back and stood up, noisily gathering her laptop and cord.

"That's fucked up!" she shouted.

Ron held up his hand to try to calm her down. "Jordan, please," he said. She brushed by the back of his chair and strode out the door.

"Everyone, we obviously have a bit of a problem here," Ron declared. "Let's break for now, get back to work and settle down a little. I'm going to have a word with Howie."

They filed numbly out of the conference room, exchanging spooked expressions, and went back to their cubicles. Later in the afternoon, they all received an e-mail:

Team:

Words cannot express how sorry I am for saying the thing I said today. I don't know what happened – I guess I thought I was making a joke and it came out wrong. I don't really know why. What I do know is that I would give everything I have in this world to take those words back.

I am not that kind of person. I have never been that kind of person. In fact, I detest the kind of attitude and mindset that would ever make or endorse such a statement. I hope you know me well enough to know that, and I hope you find it within your hearts to forgive me.

I have some deep thinking to do personally, and some discussions with Ron and with H.R., before I know what my fate will be within the team and the company. For the moment, please just accept my deepest, most sincere apologies. If I offended any of you more than any others, let me especially and most deeply apologize to you.

Again, I hope we can all put this behind us. If not, I will understand and I will find a way to go on and be a better person for it.

Best,

Howie

Ron's boss's boss, Steve, flew in from out West that night to address the entire office in the morning. Apparently the affair had spun out of control overnight. Someone – or several people – in the group had spread what Howie had said throughout the company. Word had leaked to the outside; now the quote was ricocheting around the Internet, multiplying, distorting. Stories appeared in the mainstream press – with the quote heavily redacted, of course – as well as on countless blogs. There seemed to be a sense of glee among the media that such a stunningly foul thing was said within the walls of such a powerful and well-regarded company. In the meantime, Jordan hired a lawyer and initiated a hostile workplace lawsuit. She circulated an invitation to the rest of the team to join it; several did.

The message from Steve was conciliatory and calming. He read a prepared statement expressing his wish that "we all learn what we can from this episode and move forward," then invited a round of questions. Will anyone be punished for leaking Howie's remark to the press? Steve said he couldn't speak for legal but that it was his personal wish that no action be taken on that count. How is the PR department handling this? He said there were a number of initiatives on the table and PR was working aggressively with legal and with upper management to formulate a response that befit the circumstances. What's going to happen to Howie? Here Steve paused before responding.

"I've had conversations with Ron and with other parties, and I will continue to have those conversations. I can't say precisely what Howie's situation will be moving forward. I know that he's home right now – isn't that right, Ron?"

"That's right."

"He's home right now. Resting. Isn't that right, he's resting?"

"He's resting."

"Howie is at home resting."

Steve closed with a warning to stay mum to the media, to refer all inquiries to public relations. As the employees dispersed and resumed their distracted work, he and Ron disappeared into Ron's office with the door closed – an unusual and eerie sight. Over the course of the afternoon, the company's stock price plummeted by over eight percent.

By the end of the day it was clear the situation was getting worse. The TV news cycle was completely preoccupied with the implications of Howie's statement, its reflection upon the company, upon corporate culture generally, upon capitalist culture and upon the world. A guest on one show, a dubiously credentialed pundit, had finally said what many were thinking: "I don't disagree with what he said! I wish I'd said it myself. It needed to be said."

"Then say it," interjected another guest.

"What?"

"If you wish you'd said it, then why not say it now?"

"It's been said. I don't need to say it."

"That's hypocritical. You just want to say you'd say it. But you'd never really say it."

"Listen, we all know what was said–"

The host of the show interrupted the spat. "Stay with us, folks. Lots more to say about what Howie said. Back after these messages."

Over the weekend, a small but very determined Christian sect set out from Idaho. They had come to believe that Howie had spoken the unspeakable name of God, the sacred Tetragrammaton. This could only mean he was the Christ returned; this was the end of days. In fulfillment of Revelation 14:1, they had tattooed Howie's odious words on their foreheads. They were headed east in a heavily Bondoed Econoline van.

Several groups that had drawn different conclusions were also gravitating toward Howie. Among them were extremists of various stripes, including self-described Landermanians who planned to tunnel into Howie's basement, kidnap him, and make him the king of their secessionist commune in Western Massachusetts. Many who wished to sacrifice the scapegoat were on the road as well. Most of them had slapdash, poorly conceived designs.

On day five, there was great excitement on TV as Howie finally made a statement of sorts. It consisted of twelve sheets of paper, each with a single magic-markered letter on it, that he taped one at a time to the inside of his living room window. With each sheet posted, there was a flurry of renewed speculation as to what he might be saying.

I

I? I what? I'm sorry? I love you?

I D

I don't care?

I DI

I die? I die for you? I die for your sins?

I DID

I did it?

I DIDN

I didn't do it?

I DIDNT MEAN IT

Meanwhile, the company's ad hoc emergency task force worked around the clock to establish a strategy for the containment of the situation. It was comprised of senior members of the legal, human resources and public relations divisions as well as an elite team of outside consultants with expertise in crisis management, branding catastrophe, media engagement, communications, linguistics, philosophy, comparative religion. After about ninety consecutive hours of work, spanning the weekend and the beginning of the week, they emerged and presented the CEO, James Frost, with a two-point plan. He took the next flight out to meet with Ron. The following morning, they sat together in the very same conference room where it had all begun a week before.

"Ron, first of all, let me tell you how grateful we are for your work with your team and the way you've handled this thing so far. And all the work you've done in the past. You're a terrific asset."

"Thank you Jim. It's good to hear that."

"I really mean it, Ron. I really mean it. You're on the radar at corporate, I can tell you that."

"Thanks."

"So let me show you what our little geniuses have devised," Jim said, opening the PowerPoint presentation on his laptop. A slide appeared on the wall:

Unacceptable/Offensive Speech Incident #47273, Code Name "Maserati"
Crisis Management Plan

Strictly Confidential

"Why Maserati?" Ron said.

"Huh?"

"Why Maserati? Code name 'Maserati.'"

"Oh," said Jim. "All our offensive speech incidents are code named for sports cars."

"That's interesting."

"It doesn't mean anything, Ron. It's just a thing."

"Right."

"Here's where it really gets interesting," Jim said as he flipped to the next slide. On the screen appeared the following text:

Incident Data

                    Type: Unacceptable/offensive speech
                    Perpetrator: Howard Landerman
                    Witnesses: Product Development Team B-207
                    Team Lead: Ronald Martenson
                    Media Exposure: Potentiated
                    Litigation Exposure: Potentiated
                    Severity: 5
                    Priority: 0

"Tell me when you're ready," said Jim.

"I'm ready."

Jim flipped to the next slide, which in fact ended the presentation. It said:

Two-Point Crisis Resolution Plan

• Howard Landerman's manager, Ronald Martenson, to take full, unequivocal responsibility for said speech
• Ronald Martenson to resign

Jim paged forward anyway. There was a sort of postscript slide, a non-slide, at the end. It was entirely blank save for the following words:

This slide intentionally left blank.

"Ta-daa!" said Jim.

They sat in silence for a moment.

"Any questions?"

"Why that slide?"

"What?"

Ron pointed to the screen.

"Oh. Legal has mandated that all decks from corporate end with that slide."

"I see."

"They gave us a template."

"Right."

"So we wouldn't have to, you know, insert it ourselves."

"Right, right."

"Any questions about the previous slides, Ron? I want to make sure you're on board with this."

"What about Howie?"

"We're gonna bump him up. We see a lot of potential."

"To my job?"

Jim nodded. "It's the counterintuitive play. Our advisors from Taoism Today came up with it."

"Who's Taoism Today?"

"Consulting firm. We really feel like this is the most effective way to contain the situation," offered Jim.

"It has a certain clarity to it."

"That's why we pay these folks the big bucks," said Jim. "By the way, you'll be compensated. Don't think you won't be."

"I understand."

"Julie from press relations will contact you about how, where and when to make your statement. We're striving for maximum impact. Ever been on television before?"

"No."

"It's a breeze. Remember to look into the camera. Try not to sweat too much."

"OK."

"Julie will have a packet of information for you."

"Great, great."

"Gotta race back to the airport, Ron," Jim said as he disconnected his laptop from the projector. "This has been good. Let me reiterate what I said before."

"I appreciate it."

"Glad you do."

When Ron returned to his office there was a manila envelope from inter-office mail in his inbox. It contained a folder of instructions for his impending mea culpa. The entire cover was printed with a soft-focus photograph of a dapper, professional black man smiling and holding a cup of coffee. At the bottom it said: What you need to know about your first press conference.

The phone rang. It was Julie. She told him he was to hold a press conference that evening at seven o'clock in auditorium B.

"Let's review the talking points," said Julie.

"OK." Ron set the single sheet before him and stared at the bullet-pointed list.

"Read them to me, OK Ron?"

"OK. I, Ronald Martenson, accept full responsibility for what has been widely reported to be the offensive words words that my employee, Howard Landerman, is alleged to have spoken."

"Good, good. Continue."

"I hereby offer my resignation, effective immediately."

"Good! Now what do you say if you're asked whether you, in fact, spoke the words?"

"I accept full responsibility for the words that were alleged to have been spoken."

"Good, Ron. And what do you say if you're asked whether the company forced you to accept responsibility?"

"I accept responsibility of my own free will and volition."

"And if you're asked whether we forced you to quit?"

"I am resigning of my own free will and volition because I am fully responsible for the words that may or may not have been spoken. Also, I wish to spend more time with my family."

"Perfect, Ron! You're a pro. Keep studying until go time. Good luck."

A few hours later, Ron stood at the podium, waiting for the press conference to start. Spotlights shone on his sweating face. In the darkness beyond the bank of microphones, he perceived a roiling frenzy of reporters, TV cameras, still cameras with telephoto lenses.

Suddenly, Ron's cell phone rang. It was Jim.

"Ron! Have you started?"

"No. I think we're about to."

"Change of plans, Ron! Plan B. Contingency plan. New strategy."

"Really?"

"We've made a negative assessment of Howie's capability in terms of integrating with the current construct," Jim explained.

"He can't handle it?"

"He's out to lunch, Ron. Sleeping in his shoes."

"I could have told you that."

"You should have been forthcoming. Anyway, listen. New plan. Don't quit. Blame it all on Howie. Tell 'em he had some kind of breakdown. You'd long suspected it."

"I don't know if I–"

"Tell 'em you were concerned that he had a substance abuse problem. Make it specific. What are those pills, oxy-vice? Something?"

"Jim, I don't feel comf–"

"Plane's about to taxi, Ron. Think on your feet. I trust you. You've been great. Looking forward to continuing to work with you."

"I don't like this, Jim. What about H–"

"Flight attendant approaching with a scornful air. Signing off!"

"Jim, what about Howie? Is he OK?"

"I'm reprimanded, Ron."

"What about Howie?!"

"Can't make out what you're saying over the wails of a terrified baby."

"Just tell me he's alive!"

"Mustn't interfere with the plane's electronic controls. Knock 'em dead, Ron."

Ron put away his phone and blinked into the lights. The conference had officially begun. He stared down at his obsolete prepared statement as the crowd stirred restlessly, straining for a better view.

"Good evening, everyone," he said. "I... I have a statement to make."

The room grew quiet now, though flashes went off madly. Ron leaned toward the microphones and paused a moment. Then he said the only thing there was to say. He said what Howie said.