The Supervisor didn’t say anything. She just stood there.
He slowed his typing and turned his head. She wasn’t nearly as terrifying as he’d assumed, but he’d never looked at her directly before. She was a short, stout woman. Her plain gray suit was wrinkle-free, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She didn’t smile, but she wasn’t frowning either. She was inscrutable.
“Phillip Robinson.” It wasn’t a question, but there was a pleasant lilt in her voice, even if her face remained uncommitted. “I’d like you to come with me.”
He suppressed a gulp.
She gave him just enough time to save his work before turning and marching away. He ran after her. Elliot shot him a questioning, vaguely frightened glance, and Phil shrugged. She led him to the special elevator. It wasn’t different from any other elevator, but it still filled him with dread.
He didn’t ask what this was about, and she didn’t say. He watched the floor numbers light up until the elevator reached seven. Not all the way to nine, but closer than he’d been before.
“This way, please.”
He ended up in an office. A secretary guarded the door, but she made no attempt to stop them from entering. The office was more like a small apartment with all the amenities of an art deco living space. Not to Phil’s tastes, but impressive if only because he knew how others valued something like this.
The Supervisor vanished without another word. She closed the double doors behind her and left him to his fate.
A heavyset man sat behind the large desk. He was big, but not fat, brimming with physical power. His haircut probably cost more than Phil made in a month. Phil didn’t know who he was, but he assumed this was someone important.
The man stood, spread his arms wide, and offered a boisterous greeting. “Phil, so good of you to make it! Welcome, welcome!”
Phil ventured closer with visions of the giant desk rolling over and crushing him beneath it. He decided to invoke the first rule of corporate survival. Humor the boss.
“Hello”-he read the nameplate on the desk-“Mr. Rosenquist.”
“Oh, please. Why so formal? Call me Van.” Rosenquist smiled, revealing perfectly white teeth. Everything about the man, from his tan to his trimmed mustache and square jaw, was a model of the subjective perfection that so many spent thousands of dollars achieving.
Rosenquist began the journey around his desk. By the time he rounded the second corner, a nameless dread had fallen on Phil. He didn’t expect the boss to pounce and devour him, but his gut reaction was much the same as if he had. These were dangerous territories for an employee of his position, and not everyone who ventured into these lands made it out intact.
The boss seized Phil’s sweaty hand and squeezed.
“Can I interest you in a cup of coffee? Great stuff here. Imported. I think it might even be from a country we have a trade embargo with, but I don’t ask. Plausible deniability.”
Phil drank coffee only in the morning, and that he liked strong and black. Anything else didn’t interest him. But Rosenquist was already pouring the cup from an hourglass-shaped carafe. He handed it to Phil, who held the mug in both hands, unsure of what to do with it.
“Smell that,” said Van. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Phil went through the act of inhaling the aroma. He found it unpleasant, but he kept that to himself.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you up here.”
“Yes, sir… Van.”
Rosenquist poured a cup of his own, sniffed it, then set it down on his desk. “The truth of the matter is that you’re doing a hell of a job for us down there, Phil.” He slapped Phil’s shoulder. “Just one hell of a job.”
Phil braced himself for the next part. The”… but we’re making layoffs” part or the”… but corporate restructuring renders you redundant” part.
“We could use a man like you on the seventh floor.”
“Me?” Phil tried not to sound too surprised.
“Yes, you. We have a new position opening soon. Executive vice president in charge of complicated government paperwork. Not the final job title, but that’s the gist of it. And you’ve made the short list of candidates.”
“Me?” This time he utterly failed to hide his disbelief.
Rosenquist chuckled. “It’s not guaranteed at this stage, you understand. We’re feeling out some others. But I don’t think there’s any harm in telling you that you’re the front-runner at this point.”
“But why me?”
“Why not you? Can I be honest? Sure I can. You look like the kind of man who appreciates honesty. Am I right?”
Phil nodded. As if he could answer no to the question.
“If you get this position, it really won’t be much different than what you’re doing now. But our lawyers tell us that we need someone in a more official position. Legal reasons. Don’t ask me to explain it. So we sent down a memo asking for each department to send us possible candidates based on paperwork error ratios.”
“They keep track of how many mistakes we make?”
“Oh, it’s all monitored somewhere. The list was sent up to us, and it was quite a long list. We trimmed it to the top ten candidates via a selection of PER reports and seniority indexing. It was still a fairly long list. Then a computer error ate most of the data and only four were left. So it looks as if you had a stroke of luck there.”
Phil smiled. Lucky had come through again.
“It’s not glamorous. You’ll move out of your cubicle, but your office won’t be much better. You’ll be an executive in pay only. Can you accept that?”
“Same job,” paraphrased Phil, “more money.”
“A lot more money,” added Rosenquist.
“I can live with that.”
The intercom buzzed. The boss had a short exchange with his secretary. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me a moment, Phil. Have to put out some fires. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
Phil put his coffee down and walked to the window. The equally tall building across the way obscured the view, but if he stood close enough to the glass, he could almost see the street below.
Movement on the outside caught his attention. A red pigeon with black dots perched on the ledge. The bird stared back with its bright blue eyes and pecked the window twice. Hard enough to leave a long crack in the glass. He was worried it might break through and dive-bomb his eye. Instead, it flew away.
He backed away but kept watching for it to return. It didn’t, and after a minute, he was comfortable enough to take his eyes off the glass. Though he kept it in his peripheral vision.
He reached for a mug, but since his attention was split, he ended up knocking it off the desk. He scrambled to pick it up, but the coffee had all spilled out on the carpet. He found some paper towels in the wet bar and tried dabbing up the spill with only mild success.
“Son of a…”
There wasn’t enough in the carafe to refill the mug all the way. Phil took the half-filled beverage. That way, his boss still had a full cup and Phil would have less to drink. He congratulated himself on his cleverness when Rosenquist returned.
“Van, I’m sorry, but I spilled some coffee on-”
“Don’t worry about that. Housekeeping will take care of it.” Rosenquist slapped Phil between the shoulder blades hard enough to put a permanent bend in his spine. “You’re an executive now.”
“I have the job?”
“Practically.” He picked up his mug and waited for Phil to do the same. He obliged, and they tapped them together.
Rosenquist took a hearty gulp of his beverage while Phil took a sip. It wasn’t very good, but right now, it tasted like nectar from Olympus.
“Now it’ll take a few days to get everything in order,” explained Rosenquist. “All the normal bureaucratic hoop-jumping. But I am confident in saying, unofficially, welcome to the seventh floor.”
“Thank you, Van.”
The boss seized Phil in another painful handshake. He caught Phil glancing over his shoulder at the window.