“Continuing the exemplary leadership…”
I catch Lacey’s eyes. She’s exhausted. She looks like she’s going to cry. She has the most to lose of anybody here.
All at once, I’ve had enough. I’ve hit my limit.
I don’t know what possesses me, but I start to mouth along, pretending to say the words that the pompous son is saying.
“Soldier on through thick and thin,” I mouth along to the speakerphone—badly. I clap on a dorky expression.
Lacey snorts and claps a hand over her mouth.
Actual laughter. It’s music to my ears. When did I last hear laughter at SportyGoCo?
I mouth along some more, and suddenly everyone is laughing. I’m sure it’s a shock to them—it’s so unlike me to show my fun side at work.
Still. I haven’t heard laughter in this office for too long. It’s like the life and camaraderie are rushing back into people. I glance over at the closed door. Well, what’s the harm in a little bit of morale-boosting silliness to take the edge off of today’s devastating Target debacle?
The son drones on.
I stick my pointer finger up into the air and rock my head from side to side. It’s stupid, but who cares! The speech is stupid! I’m making a face; I’m flapping my jaw.
People are laughing. Shondrella is practically rolling on the floor.
It’s almost sad when the fancy-pants owner ends his fancy-pants conference call.
The team is still looking at me, wanting more. So I keep it going, outright impersonating the guy now, saying all the rich-person things I can think of. “What’s more, as reward for you to soldier on, I shall send each and every office a jar of Grey Poupon mustard!” I’m fully channeling my inner actress now, right down to the baritone.
“Please square your shoulders and wash away adversity as I wash my teeth with my silver toothbrush!” I’ve added a foofy accent. The son has a nice voice, but the dad had an upper-crust accent, and the accent is funnier.
“Please do not despair,” I continue. “I shall indeed hire the worst people to oversee you and even that won’t stop you from your awesomeness.” I look all around. “Wait, where is my Grey Poupon? I’m a billionaire, I must have my Grey Poupon!”
It’s so dorky, but people are laughing their heads off. Dave is lying faceup on the conference table.
I rack my brain, trying to think of more rich-person things to say. “Please bring me my silver and diamond-studded nose hair device. I shall lead this company through thick and thin, but not without my nose hair device!”
Renata hits me in the shoulder. “What is that, even?”
I have no idea, but that isn’t stopping me. “Quiet, peasant!”
She hits me again—hard. She does this rockabilly roller derby on the weekends and has more strength than she knows.
“Quick, fetch the servants, I now need some smelling salts. Where is my cravat? Where is my Foppish Ascot?”
I can literally feel the togetherness in the laughter. I can feel the love, the camaraderie. This is why we stayed. We are a family.
“If I cannot drive my Foppish Ascot 3000 in the NASCAR race, I will truly despair!” I continue.
“What’s a Foppish Ascot 3000?” Lacey asks.
“It’s a race car,” I emote. “That I shall drive to joint prosperity.”
Right then a voice breaks through the speakerphone. “What the hell?”
We all freeze.
The voice is Jaxon Harcourt Eadsburg von Henningsly.
“I don’t know,” somebody on the owner’s end says.
“Shit!” Dave whisper-yells as he lunges for the table and stabs the speakerphone buttons.
We all freeze. We’re a conference room full of statues.
“Did that just happen?” Renata whispers, barely moving her lips. “Because I think that was the new owner.”
I swallow. There’s no sound except for the buzzing in my ears and everybody’s horrible silence.
“I must’ve sat on the speakerphone when I sat on the table,” Dave says.
“Wait! We’re okay, though!” Lacey says. “It didn’t go company-wide. There’s no way.”
“Oh, good, just the owner and his people heard it,” Dave says.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“We were all laughing,” Renata says. “We’re all in trouble.”
Two dozen eyes turn toward the door. Bert’ll hear about it and come in any minute to fire somebody.
“We are so screwed,” somebody says.
“I’ll confess,” I say. “I’ll take the blame. I won’t let you guys go down for this.”
“No, listen,” Lacey says. “There is no way they can pin it on us—that’s not how this phone system works.” She sits back down—she tires easily these days. “A callback to Europe will say the SportyGoCo Inc. main number on the caller ID. They can’t tell the department. There are ten departments and five hundred employees in this building. They’ll never know it was us.”
“They’re gonna figure it out,” Renata says. “That call was so us.”
I wrap my arms around myself. “God, what have I done?”
“It was the funniest thing ever!” Renata says.
“Also, I mean, that accent!” Lacey says.
“Screw them. Nobody’s gonna tell,” Dave says. “We got your back, Jada.”
“Pact!” Renata says. “Solemn pact. We never tell. It never leaves this conference room that it was Jada.”
I groan.
Shondrella gets in my face here. “You are always so professional and positive, Bert’ll never guess it. Nobody here will tell. Nobody will guess—got it?”
“All we have to do is nothing,” Renata reminds everyone. She pulls out her bloodred lipstick and applies a nice, thick coat. “It’ll drive them nuts. It’ll be fun.” She snicks the little tube shut, like punctuation.
Four
Jaxon
The PR people are overjoyed with the speech; everybody is—even Arnold and Charley.
Barclay looks on approvingly, thinking, perhaps, that the bad seed son has decided to change his ways and pretend to be good.
Because you never want to show you care, I stare down at my phone, scrolling a lot of nothing, but really, I’d like to put an ice pick through my ears. One for each ear, preferably continuing on into whatever part of my brain remembers things. Or maybe a good old-fashioned frontal lobotomy would do the trick.
It’s that Türenbourg lawn photograph all over again.
One moment of weakness. I shouldn’t have agreed to it—not any of it. Letting myself get boxed in like this.
It’s then that the feed fires back up with a series of clicks and an overseas-sounding ring. Voices blare out over the speaker.
Specifically, a woman’s voice.
“Please square your shoulders and wash away adversity as I wash my teeth with my silver toothbrush!”
Barclay’s looking around the room, confused.
The voice goes on about Grey Poupon. Is somebody making a comedy routine out of the speech?
The voice has an accent now, going on and on.