“Congrats, man. That’s really great.” Jake was genuinely happy for him.
“Thanks! I’m giving my notice next week. But hey—what about you? You doing okay down there?”
Jake told him a little about the problems. Just like he did with Maya, he left out some pesky details. He hadn’t told anyone in his family the full extent of the loans he’d taken. Zach had been on scholarship at Stanford, and their parents assumed that Cal State’s lower tuition meant that Jake was able to pay his way through without borrowing.
Still, he trusted Zach. He told him about his upcoming eviction, and about the fact that he didn’t exactly have a lot of cash on hand.
“Anything I can help with?” Zach looked concerned.
For a moment, Jake thought about asking for a loan. But he held back. Visiting the high-powered campus where his brother worked always brought up mixed emotions. Part of him felt rejected by the fact that Zach had been recruited by Titan and not him. Another part of him knew that he didn’t belong here.
“Well, you probably can’t get me an unlimited pass to the Titan cafeteria once you don’t work here anymore. But seriously, it’s just good to know you’re around if I need to talk things through.”
“Of course,” Zach said. “By the way, how’s Maya?”
“She’s good!” Jake said automatically. “We just went to dinner last night, and I’m planning to meet her family at Thanksgiving.”
Now that he thought of it, he realized he hadn’t heard from Maya since her message early that morning. They usually made plans for Sunday after she’d had brunch with friends from her college sorority. He reminded himself to call her when he was driving back after lunch.
On the way out, Jake found his old Mazda parked where he left it between a long line of low-mileage German cars. He glanced at the backseat as he unlocked the door.
I wonder if there’s enough room to sleep there.
Better not cancel that gym membership after all. If he started living out of his car, he’d need a place to shower.
He called out to Zach as his brother walked back toward the campus. “Hey, one more thing! On your last day here, can you bring me some of those cookies?”
5.
When Monday morning rolled around, Jake was ready to shake it off. He still wasn’t sure what to do about the apartment—the countdown to eviction now stood at T-minus fifteen days—but he decided to defer that worry in favor of making up for his poor performance at work on Friday.
Running his miles on the track that morning, he’d thought more about Avery Tech’s problems. Sales were down . . . and not by a little. Looking at the company’s analytics to see what customers were searching for wasn’t a bad idea, but it wouldn’t solve everything. He used his daydreaming time to consider a number of different ideas for how they could turn things around. This was, after all, what he was supposed to be good at.
After he’d showered and got settled at work, he planned to type up his notes and wrangle a second chance to make a better impression. The first item on his schedule was a conference call with Magnate, the larger agency in Philadelphia that was “sort of merging” with Brightside. Since the call wasn’t until eleven, he didn’t think much about it while he was running his laps.
As soon as he arrived at the office, though, he knew something wasn’t right. Preena, Sloan, and several other colleagues were nowhere to be seen. Was he really the first one here? He couldn’t be late . . . he’d double-checked the call invitation that morning and confirmed it started at eleven a.m. It wasn’t even eight thirty yet.
He poked his head into Jan’s office and saw them all sitting there, focused on a speakerphone positioned in the middle of the table. Sloan looked up and flashed a fake smile. “He’s awake! Good of you to join us, Jake.”
“What are you guys doing? I thought we weren’t starting until—”
“Eleven a.m. Eastern time, Jake,” Preena mouthed at him while looking up. “It’s three hours later over there.”
Eastern time, of course. How could he have missed that?
“Wow, I’m really sorry, everyone. I must have misread the invite . . .” He tried to rally. “But I did have some ideas to share, whenever the group is ready.”
“Jake, we’re just in the middle of something.” Jan spoke up. “Take a seat, or—” She looked around, but all the chairs were taken. “Or just stand over there until we finish.”
For the rest of the call, he stood in the corner. The metaphor was obvious. All he needed was a time-out chair and for Jan to take away his phone for the rest of the week.
The CEO of Magnate was talking about a new assessment tool the whole company would be using during the transition. Jake didn’t catch all the references, but he noticed everyone else was paying close attention and taking notes. When the call ended, Jan asked her assistant to step out so that Jake could take her chair.
“Hey,” he started to say, “I just want to apologize to everyone again. I really thought the call was later.”
Jan waved it off. “To be honest, this one wasn’t that important. Client work matters more. But here’s what is important,” she continued. “There’s good news and bad news coming out of the merger-nonmerger. Good news is, they’re keeping the West Coast office, at least in some form.” She paused. “The bad news is, there won’t be room for everyone. As part of the consolidation effort, you’ll all be assessed on your performance.”
“That’s what everyone was taking notes on when you came in,” Preena said. “The system is totally automated. Basically, it ranks everyone according to their performance, and then automatically recommends the lowest-ranked people for dismissal.”
“It sounds like The Office meets Game of Thrones,” Jake said, and a few people chuckled.
“I know, isn’t it great? You never know who’s going to get an ax to the skull.” That was from Sloan, who seemed truly excited about the idea.
“Alright, let’s get to work,” said Jan, drawing the meeting to a close. “We need to put on a good show this week.”
* * *
—
Jake tailed Preena out of Jan’s office again as they walked back to their desks. He was determined to regroup on yet another failure in front of the team, and this time he had an idea—but it turned out that she had one, too.
“Hey, Jake.” She stopped him before they split off to work on separate tasks. “There’s something I wanted to talk with you about on Friday. With your housing crisis and those loans coming due, I figured you’re in need of extra money.”