Author’s Note
You will not be surprised to learn that I like all my stories. I do have my favorites, however, and “Virus” is among them. It originated with a single character: the security guard. Once I dreamed him up, however, I wasn’t sure what to do with the guy, so he loitered in the waiting room of my imagination until Harry Kaufman and the rest of the gang showed up, along with the memory of a backyard clam boil that my father put on when I was eleven or twelve. And Harington & Associates? It’s a smudgy copy of an ad agency for which I once worked.
“Virus” is included in my second short story collection, The Double: Twelves Stories and a Poem, which is available on Amazon as a Kindle edition and a paperback edition. If you read and enjoy this story, I hope you’ll share it with family and friends, and perhaps even go on to read the other tales that comprise The Double.
Virus
A Short Story by Thomas Gregg
People ask me what happened to Harry Kaufman and what I think of telling them is that he was felled by a viral infection of the soul. Like HIV it lay dormant for years. Then Harry entered upon the midlife crisis that lies in wait for men of our station, and the virus claimed its rights. I think of saying that, but instead I just shrug and say, Well, you remember what Harry was like.
No one saw it coming—not even me, who among the partners knew him best. Harry was sardonic and slightly sour by nature; you soon learned to discount his needling, sometimes disagreeable, remarks. So at first I merely smiled over his vendetta against the security guard.
“What is with that bastard?” Harry muttered to me one Monday morning in October as the elevator door closed.
“Who?”
“As if you don’t know.” Harry grimaced. “The guy at the reception desk.”
“The security guard?”
“Yeah, him,” Harry nodded as the elevator came to a stop at the twenty-eighth floor: the domain of Harrington & Associates Advertising.
“So what about the security guard?” I asked.
The doors hissed open. We stepped out of the elevator, nodded to the receptionist, and headed for our offices.
“I mean, who does the guy think he is?” Harry asked rhetorically. “Come on, Steve. Did you see him just now?”
“Sure I saw him.”
“Right. So who does he think he is?”
I shrugged, leaving it at that.
Building Security was the butt of many jokes. Half of the guards were glaze-eyed thirtysomething stoners and most of the rest were elderly gents supplementing their Social Security. The stoners had thick shaggy hair that came down over their ears and their uniforms were unkempt. The retirees were mostly bald and paunchy; their uniforms, though neater, tended to be too loose at the neck and too snug around the midsection. The day shift supervisor was Clarice Barron: a stout black woman with sergeant’s stripes on her sleeves who rarely left her tiny office behind Main Reception.
But the security guard on duty at Reception that day was a new man and he was different from his colleagues—noticeably so. Though he wore the same uniform as they, his light blue shirt was pressed and sharply creased. So were his dark blue trousers, which broke just slightly over well-polished black shoes. His black leather duty belt was polished too, and the white metal badge over his left breast pocket gleamed. I’d also noticed that the man’s necktie wasn’t the cheap clip-on model favored by his colleagues but a real one, neatly knotted and pulled up, secured by a tie bar.
In age the new guard was closer to the retirees than to the stoners but unlike the majority of the former he had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, cut short. A certain slackness of the skin beneath his chin was perceptible, and a slight thickening around the waist, but that was all. Most people would have guessed his age to be fifty or so, but I suspected that the man was a bit older than that.
“Beh,” Harry complained as we stopped at my office. “You’d think he was guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier instead of an office building.”
“I take it that the pitch to Devine, Donnelly didn’t go too well,” I said with an unsympathetic smile as he unlocked his office door.
“Clients.” Harry shrugged. “Be a great business without them, right?”
“Right.”
“It’s this nosebleed Mason,” said Harry later that day as we took our seats around the table in Conference One. The other partners sighed. They knew what was coming.
As managing partner, it was my unenviable duty to field Harry’s foul balls. “Look,” I said, “we all realize that Mason can be a bit…abrasive…but the man’s damned good at his job.”
“So are lots of other people,” Harry said, and Paul Rossi nodded. He’d had a disagreeable clash with Mason several weeks back and apparently the memory still rankled. “Mason can be replaced,” Harry went on. “Yeah, sure, it’s a pain in the neck to terminate a senior account exec and his clients might bitch about it but I’m at the end of my rope with the guy.”
“Have you talked to him?” asked Frank Noonan.
“He and I are past that point, I’m afraid.” Harry leaned back in his opulent chair. “Bottom line, I can’t work with him any longer.”
There was a brief silence. Then Barbara Harrington said, “Let’s defer this matter for the moment, shall we?” She looked around the table, making eye contact with each partner in turn. We all, even Harry, nodded our agreement. “Very well, then,” she said. “Now, Harry, how are things progressing with Devine, Donnelly…?”
But later that day Barbara slipped into my office. We took seats on either side of the coffee table that stood against the wall under the large watercolor landscape that my ex-wife had picked out for my new office when I’d been named a partner. After Joan and I split I’d thought of getting rid of the thing. But then I’d have had to replace it, and with what? In its way the watercolor was perfect for an office: bland and pastel and inoffensive, rather like the woman who’d chosen it.
Barbara Harrington happened to be the reason that I was now divorced. We’d had a discreet, very civilized affair around the time I made partner—an affair that like a slow-acting acid dissolved the residue of my commitment to a marriage from which passion and interest had long since departed. Though Joan gave no sign that she suspected infidelity, she raised no objection when I announced my intention of seeking a divorce. Like the affair with Barbara, it was all quite civilized. The kids were out of the house by then and no difficulties arose concerning the financial settlement. It proved surprisingly easy, indeed, to dissolve our marriage of twenty-two years.
But as often happens in such cases, the dissolution of my marriage proved fatal to my affair with Barbara. Perhaps she blamed herself for my estrangement from Joan. Or perhaps she feared the opprobrium that would fall on her head if the facts became public knowledge in the wake of my divorce. Barbara was the firm’s senior partner and majority shareholder, the daughter of its late founder. Never marrying, she’d dedicated her life to her father’s legacy. When she told me that given our business relationship the affair was inappropriate and should be terminated, I could only agree. We remained friends, however, and it was usually me to whom she turned when some particularly troublesome work-related issue was vexing her.
“I’m a bit worried about Harry,” she said now. “The way he was talking about Mason in the meeting this morning, well…”
Barbara was slender, dark-haired, a couple of years on the high side of fifty but looking ten years younger. She was not tall, nor assertive in manner, nor given to displays of emotion or temper. But she had presence; she was a force. Seeing her now, sitting there calmly, legs crossed, hands folded in her lap, features composed, I experienced a brief pang of regret. The suit she wore—dark blue pinstripes over a scarlet silk blouse—reminded me of the one she’d worn on the day I’d made partner, when she’d taken my hand and pressed it warmly…
“Harry’s just, well, he’s being Harry,” I said. “You know what he’s like.”
“I do and that’s what worries me.” Barbara essayed a slight smile. “Usually he’s bitching and complaining about this art director or that copywriter and sometimes he has a point and sometimes he doesn’t, and we put up with it because Harry’s a partner and he’s pretty good at what he does.”
“Sure.”
“But this seems different to me,” she said. “It seems personal. Be honest with me now, Stephen. You and Harry are friends. In the last year or so he seems to have become more irritable than ever. Have you any idea what the problem is?”
“I honestly don’t,” I replied with a shrug, wondering if it was really true that Harry Kaufman and I were friends.
“I shouldn’t like to lose Brian Mason,” Barbara said. “Since he joined us I’ve been very impressed with the quality of his work.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “He’s certainly an up and comer. And he knows it, too.” I paused, uncertain how to put it. “It’s not that he’s impolite, rude, insubordinate…”
But Mason had no use for tact. If he thought you were wrong he would say so, straight out, and it didn’t matter whether you were a junior copywriter or a senior partner. Personally I found this bracing; it saved time. Not everyone agreed, however. Harry for one was notoriously prickly and might not appreciate Mason’s bluntness. I explained this to Barbara, choosing my words carefully. “Harry’ll get over it in a week or two,” I concluded.
Barbara sat silently for a moment, considering. “You’re probably right,” she said finally. “I’d like some reassurance on that point, though. Look, Stephen, will you talk to him? Harry, I mean.”
“Must I?”
“No, of course not.” She smiled. “But as a favor to me I hope you will.”
“All right,” I sighed.
“You know, it’s odd,” Barbara said as she pushed back her chair and stood. “About Brian Mason. You say he lacks tact, but his clients seem very satisfied with him. There’s never been a complaint from them about rudeness or tactlessness.”
I thought about it. “He’s dedicated to his clients,” I said at last. “That’s how Mason sees his job: He’s their advocate. It’s him and them against—”
“The rest of us?” she broke in with a smile. “So our star account exec has a bit of a blind spot.”
“That’s why we’re partners and he isn’t,” I said. “You and I and even Harry know who we’re really working for…”
I procrastinated but finally, two days after the meeting with Barbara, I walked down the corridor to Harry Kaufman’s office. As usual the door was half-open so I went right in.
Harry was on the phone and he waved me into a chair as he talked. Thirty seconds later he ended the call and leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “Fucking printers,” he growled. His responsibilities included supervision of outside vendors whom he watched like a hawk, ever vigilant for inefficiency, waste, and suspect billings. “You can’t trust those bastards an inch. Well, what can I do for you this morning?”
“It’s about Mason,” I said.
“Mason. So what about him?” Harry stood. “Want some coffee?”
Harry’s morning coffee, brewed from some exotic, ridiculously expensive bean, was always excellent. “Black, isn’t it?” he asked, lifting the carafe.
“That’s fine.” Normally I added a dash of sweetener to my coffee but Harry disapproved of such embellishments.
He handed me a steaming mug and sat back down behind his desk. No invitation to move to the comfortable chairs around the coffee table, I noted; this was to be a formal occasion.
“So okay,” Harry said. “Now, what about Mason?
“Barbara’s a bit concerned,” Carter began. “She asked me to—”
“Probe me,” Harry broke in. “Placate me. Smooth my ruffled feathers, etcetera and so forth.”
He hadn’t raised his voice nor altered his expression but something in the man’s tone, something in the straight-backed stillness of his posture behind the gleaming mahogany desk, put me on my guard.
“Barbara,” Harry growled. “Don’t you ever get fed up with running these errands for her, Steve?”
“It’s not like that,” I replied. “We’re all concerned, all the partners,” I went on, compromising with the strict truth. “This kind of personal animosity—”
“Oh, you think that’s what it is?” Harry asked. “Personal?”
“Well, a personality clash, I suppose.” I shrugged. “Sometimes people just rub one another the wrong way. Now, Mason—”
“I get it,” Harry nodded, interrupting again. “Mason’s a valued member of the agency team. Okay, fine, I have no problem with that. You’re right about that, Barbara’s right, everybody’s right, the fucker’s good at his job. But Steve: That is not the point.”
Harry’s voice had risen slightly with his last words and his lips twisted up into a bitter smile.
“All right.” I took a polite sip of coffee. “Then what is the point? What’s going on, Harry?”
“You don’t know?” Harry shrugged. “Well, why would you know? Why would you ever spot it, a Methodist like you?”
“Episcopalian,” I said. “But what’s that got to do with—”
“Fucking Mason,” Harry cut in, lowering his voice. “Fucking blonde-haired, blue-eyed Mason. Looking like he stepped right out of some SS recruiting poster.”
“What?”
“It’s not that he’s tactless, Steve. It’s not that he’s insubordinate.” Harry was sitting very still with his hands clasped around his coffee mug. “It’s because of me. What I am. A Jew.”
I had no idea what to say.
“Listen,” Harry said, leaning across the desk, “I’ve been up against this shit all my life. You know how it goes, Steve. Don’t pretend you don’t. Jews. They’re smart, sure. They’re hard workers. But they’re pushy. Cash sticks to their fingers. They have bad manners. No class. Clannish. Look down on the goyim.”
“Harry,” I said. “Harry, for Chri—for God’s sake.”
“From the clients, from the vendors, I put up with this crap,” Harry went on. “Cost of doing business. It even helps with the vendors, those crooked bastards. The Jew, they think. We’ll never slip one past the Jew. But I’m supposed to put up with it from Mason? From a fucking employee? I’m supposed to be polite and not notice when he looks down his flawless Teutonic nose at me?”
“Harry, come on. Nobody in the firm thinks that way,” I set my mug of coffee, which I no longer wanted, on a corner of the desk. “But has Mason ever…made a comment against Jews? Because if he has…”
“That would be the easy way,” Harry said. “I could tell you, sure, I overheard him calling me a kike, something like that, and the partners would unload him. Am I right?”
“Probably.”
“That I won’t do, Steve.” Harry shook his head. “Why should I need to lie? I’m a partner in this firm and I’m telling you what’s what. You, Barbara, the others, you wouldn’t take my word on this? Wouldn’t believe me when I say that I know a Jew hater when I meet one? Is my word good or isn’t it?”
“Of course your word is good,” I said, realizing that there was nothing else to say in the moment, nothing that could bring this conversation to a satisfactory close.
“Well, then.” Harry relaxed, leaning back in his plush executive chair. “Thanks for stopping by, Steve.”
The next day I lunched with Barbara. She had us seated in a corner booth toward the back of the restaurant, as in the days of our affair. After ordering we talked of this and that until the food came. Then I related my conversation with Harry Kaufman.
“And that was it?” she asked when I was finished. “You pursued it no farther, Stephen?”
“Look, I was blindsided.” I grimaced, recalling Harry’s indictment of Brian Mason. “Honestly, I couldn’t think of what to say.”
“You might have said that he’s imagining things,” she replied, taking up a tidy forkful of salad.
I nodded but I didn’t really agree. Maybe Harry wasn’t imagining things. “I’ve been thinking about how this should be handled,” I said. “All things considered it might be best to cut Brian Mason loose—”
“Certainly not,” Barbara snapped.
“With excellent recommendations, of course, and a generous severance package—”
“Stephen.” Her voice was cold. “If this…charge…turns out to be true then of course Brian will be terminated. But he will not be terminated on Harry’s say-so and nothing more.”
“He expects us to back him up,” I reminded her.
“And Brian Mason, like all our employees, deserves to be treated fairly.”
I hadn’t realized it before, but I saw now that Barbara had a personal stake in Mason’s career at the agency. Thinking back, I recalled that he’d come aboard after Valerie Wagner’s cancer diagnosis opened up a position on the account management team. Had Barbara herself recruited him? It was certainly possible; she’d always had an eye for talent. And now a partner was accusing her protegee of being a bigot.
“You’re right, of course,” I said. “So how should we proceed? A conversation with Brian…?”
“Say, Brian, it’s come to our attention that you have a problem with Jews. Would you care to comment on that?” Barbara shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. That wouldn’t do at all, would it?”
“No,” I agreed with a rueful smile. “I don’t suppose that it would.”
“It’s so strange,” Barbara said. “Of course I’ve always known that Harry’s Jewish but he’s never made a business of it. One doesn’t think of him in that way.”
“What way is that?” I asked quietly.
“I’m sorry,” she said at once, having read my mind as usual. “That was… a thoughtless thing to say.”
“But I see what you mean.” I pushed my plate away. “It knocked me for a loop.”
“Then will you look into this?”
I sighed.
“Stephen, I know it’s distasteful but who else can I rely on?” Barbara raised an eyebrow. “I know from experience that I can trust your discretion.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, you can.”
“Then it’s settled. And I believe I’ll have a glass of wine. Will you join me, Stephen?”
“I believe I will.” And in fact we had two.
There was a copywriter on staff, David Eisner, who was Jewish. So there I began, calling him to my office on some pretext. When we were seated together under the watercolor I went straight to the point.
“You’ve worked with Brain Mason on quite a few projects,” I began.
“That’s right,” said David, eyeing me warily.
“This isn’t about the quality of your work, David, so relax.” I leaned forward. “It deals, however, with a matter of some sensitivity. So the conversation we’re about to have needs to remain strictly confidential.”
“Mr. Carter—”
“Please. Call me Stephen.”
“Stephen, then. And of course, whatever it is stays under four eyes.” He smiled a little. “My grandfather used to say that.”
David listened with an expression that evolved from quizzical to incredulous as I put the question, seeming momentarily at a loss for words. But then he shook his head.
“Look…Stephen,” he said. “It’s true that Brian Mason isn’t the easiest person to work with. He’s a perfectionist and, yeah, he can be pretty blunt. But I’ll say this. I’ve been here nearly three years and the work I’ve done on his accounts has been my best work by far. And never, not once, have I gotten the feeling that he had it in for me as a Jew. As far as I can see he treats everybody the same.”
“It sounds as though you admire the guy,” I said.
“I suppose I do,” David admitted. “Though how much I like him…as I said, he’s not the easiest person in the firm to work with. But he’s the type of person you want to work with, if you’re looking to get ahead in this business.”
“Fair enough,” I nodded.
“And I simply don’t believe that Brian’s an anti-Semite. I’d have picked up on it.”
“You’re sure of that?” I asked.
David gave me a look. “I think you can trust me there, Stephen.”
I was about to end the meeting when he spoke again.
“But can I tell you something else?”
“Of course.”
“This thing,” David said. “I mean the thing with Mr. Kaufman. It’s a thing I’ve seen before.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“My father,” David said. “He was…well…”
His voice had trailed off but something in the set of his mouth deterred me from prompting him to go on. He sat there for a minute, eyes down, perhaps deciding whether to say more, perhaps just arranging his thoughts. Then he told me the story of his father.
David Eisner’s fraternal grandparents had been German Jews. Wiser than many, they’d left Germany for the United States in 1934; thus they and their two children, a son and daughter, survived. A second son, who was to become David’s father, was born in 1936. And as the years passed and the Jews of Europe were systematically exterminated, young Robert Eisner lived with his family in a safe, peaceful Newark, New Jersey neighborhood, growing up as an American in America.
But a long shadow, cast from ruined, prostrate Europe, lay over the Eisner family. Their relatives and friends in Germany had all vanished into the abyss of the Final Solution. Though the Eisners lived on and eventually achieved a modest American prosperity, their German past was erased. Nothing remained of the old life that the parents remembered so well. And though they guarded their emotions, speaking seldom of that lost past, their younger son took his parents’ grief into his own heart.
“It was so strange,” said David Eisner. “My aunt and uncle, they were born in Germany. My aunt even remembers Berlin a little. But neither of them ever…it was Dad who lived in that past…”
And the looming specter of that past came to blight Bob Eisner’s life. “He saw it in every setback, every little slight,” David recalled. “And sure, it was true, there were people who didn’t like Jews. But Dad…Dad saw it in everything, everywhere…”
Bob Eisner’s obsession worsened with the passage of time. He evolved into a rabid supporter of Israel, a Zionist of Zionists. “You couldn’t so much as suggest that the Palestinians might have some legitimate grievances without provoking an explosion of righteous anger,” David sighed. “Our family was solidly Democratic, of course, but not Dad. Once he decided that the party was insufficiently devoted to the cause of the Jewish state, that was it for the Democrats.” David allowed himself a bitter chuckle. “His political conversion pretty much ruined family Thanksgivings for all time…”
At home, at work, among his ever-shrinking circle of friends, Bob Eisner’s obsession wrecked his life. “When a heart attack took him twelve years ago I think that my poor mother was relieved, much as she loved him. At the time he was pursuing a vendetta against their next-door neighbor, some Irish contractor. Dad claimed that the guy had called him a kike or something. I don’t know. But the guy and his wife came to the funeral home. ‘Sorry for your trouble,’ he said, shaking my hand. And afterwards they were good neighbors to my mother…”
“So that’s it?” I said when he was finished. “That’s the thing with Harry?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” David shrugged. “What you told me, it reminded me of Dad, that’s all.”
We were silent for a moment. Then I stood, David following suit.
“Well, then.” I said, offering my hand. “Thanks, David. I appreciate your candor, and I apologize for putting you on the spot like that.”
“That’s all right,” he said. We shook hands and David Eisner took his leave.
What I’d heard from him regarding Brain Mason was more or less the story related by the other people I cautiously questioned over the next few days. Mason was a perfectionist. He was demanding. He could be tactless. But as far as I could discover—and I believed that if there had been any truth to Harry’s charge it would have come to light—the man was no bigot. Which left me baffled. What the hell was going on with Harry…?
"Morning, gentlemen,” the security guard said as the revolving door disgorged Harry and me into the lobby.
“Morning,” I responded with a friendly nod. Harry just grunted. He seemed particularly morose this Monday morning, shambling with hunched shoulders toward the elevator.
“So how was your weekend?” I asked.
“Fucking Prussian,” Harry muttered. “Probably making two bucks over minimum wage to man the front desk and he acts like he’s better than us.”
“Take a break on the guy, Harry.” I laughed though I wasn’t particularly amused. “He’s just doing his job.”
In fact by this time I knew a fair bit about the guard. Wondering if Harry’s dislike of the man bore any relation to the matter of Brian Mason I’d had a word with the security day shift supervisor, Clarice Barron. “George? He’s retired Army,” she told me. “Sergeant major, thirty years. Worked for eight years as an armed guard for an armored car company before he signed on with us.”
“Good guy?” I asked.
“Sure.” Clarice shuffled the papers on her desk. “Shows up on time. Reliable. Polite. Looks professional. That’s why I put him on the desk in Main Reception.”
“He’s an Army vet,” I said to Harry as we stepped into the elevator. “A thirty-year man.”
“Yeah? Big wow.”
That was the overture to a day that was destined to live long in the corporate memory of Harrington & Associates Advertising.
It began quietly enough. In the morning I occupied myself with busywork while pondering what I might say to Barbara when we met over lunch again to discuss Harry’s issue with Brain Mason. Of course your word is good, I’d told him. But now I didn’t think so; to me it seemed that Harry was imagining things. How, though, was a lapsed Episcopalian supposed to tell a Jew that he didn’t know jack when it came to a case of anti-Semitism?
For the first time in a long while—probably since college—I thought about the history that lay behind Harry’s charge: the war and the Germans and the Jews. Like so many men of his generation my father was a World War II veteran and I remembered that a friend of his, a guy he worked with named Patterson, had seen one of those camps, right at the end when Nazi Germany was falling apart. His platoon leader’s tank had smashed down the camp’s main gate, liberating the place. Drinking beer one afternoon in our back yard—Dad had put on a clam boil—Ace Patterson talked about that day: I never had much use for Jews—but Jesus H. Christ, what I saw. You wouldn’t believe it…
But wasn’t it ridiculous to pile that enormous burden of history onto a workplace dispute…?
It was just before noon by the digital clock on my desk when a tumult of raised voices in the hall sent me to my feet and through the door of my office.
“—don’t tell me!” someone yelled and after a moment I realized it was Harry. “I’m telling you, all right? What, my word’s no fucking good around here anymore?!”
As I stepped into the hall, the door to Harry’s office banged open and Barbara backed out. Her face in profile was drawn and pale; the thought flashed through my mind that now she looked her age.
“If you can’t discuss this rationally—” she began.
“Rationally!” Harry all but screamed. “You want rationally after coming into my fucking office and calling me a liar, straight to my face?!”
“Barbara,” I called.
She turned to me with an expression of dismay. I strode to her side and placed myself between her and Harry, who was standing just inside his office. The man’s face was red and curiously swollen. Incredibly, there were tears standing in his eyes.
“Harry,” I said in a low, deliberately level voice. “You need to calm down.”
His fists clenched and just for a moment I thought that he was going to take a swing at me. But then he took a step back and shook his head.
“Well, look who’s here,” he said with something of his accustomed acerbity. “Okay, sure, I’m calm.”
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded.
“Ask your girlfriend,” he sneered.
“What?”
“Don’t give me that,” he said. “I know about the two of you. Hell, everybody knows.”
This, I supposed, was true. Few secxrets kept for long in the hothouse office environment. But giving voice to them, that was another matter…
“Harry,” I said. It cost me something to keep my voice level and my tone neutral. Barbara still stood behind me and it seemed to me that I could feel, as a vibration through the air, her anger and distress. “Harry. Why don’t you go back into your office?”
He glared at me but complied, closing the door with a small slam.
“What happened?” I asked, turning to Barbara.
“Harry called and asked me to step over to his office. When I got here he confronted me with a demand—a demand that Brian Mason be terminated.” She shook her head. “Terminated immediately. Naturally I told him that I wouldn’t do that.”
And that, she said, was when Harry lost his temper. “He simply would not listen to reason, Stephen. When I tried to leave he actually pursued me through the door, ranting…”
“Christ.” I shook my head. “That tears it.”
“I’m afraid it does,” Barbara said.
“All right. But let me talk to him.”
After a moment she nodded her agreement. I knocked on Harry’s door and entered.
“What?” he snapped from behind his desk. “You’ve got some lecture for me, Steve? Some sermon?”
“You’re done,” I replied, opting for quick, radical surgery. “Harry, you’re finished here. You have to know that.”
“But I’m a partner,” he ground out. Yet his voice lacked conviction. Harry knew well enough that what I’d said was true. He could fight it. He could make it uncomfortable for all concerned. But one way or another Harry Kaufman was finished at Harrington & Associates Advertising.
But he was a partner, and so the thing was handled diplomatically; the forms were preserved. At a hastily summoned meeting of the partners it was agreed that Harry would take early retirement, relinquishing his partnership in consideration of a generous buyout. His health insurance and various minor perks would be continued for five years. All this would be embodied in a severance agreement to be signed by Harry and me in my capacity as managing partner. His retirement would take effect immediately. A memo to that effect would be prepared and circulated to the staff via email after Harry’s departure.
“I think it would be best to finalize matters today,” Barbara said. I noted that she had recovered her customary poise. But her face was still very pale.
“Suppose Harry refuses to go along?” someone asked.
“Then we’ll do it the hard way.” She looked around the conference table. “That’s what lawyers are for.”
There were nods but no one said anything more.
I conveyed all this to Harry, who’d remained in his office throughout the day, speaking to no one. I was braced for another angry explosion, but he made no objection to the departure scenario that the partners had arranged for him.
As we signed the severance agreement he cleared his throat and said, “Look Steve, what I said—”
“Skip it,” I cut him off. “It’s over and done with, Harry.”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you call your wife? Have her meet you or…”
“We’re separated,” he snapped, which was the first I’d heard of it.
After that there seemed nothing more to say. Harry’s personal effects would be gathered up by the office manager and sent along by courier, so when the time came to leave Harry had only to put on his coat and grab his briefcase. When I told him I’d walk him out he gave me a bitter look but again made no objection.
Feeling like a bit of a shit, I’d phoned for a security guard to help me escort Harry off the premises and he was waiting outside the office. It was the former soldier, standing with his feet apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He acknowledged us with an impersonal nod and stepped to the side. Harry and I preceded him to the elevator. I stabbed the down arrow with my thumb, anxious to get it over with, to hustle Harry out of all our lives.
The elevator doors swished open and there stood Brian Mason. “Gentlemen,” he muttered, looking at us curiously.
“You…” Harry hissed. His face darkened and he took a step forward, swinging his briefcase as if he meant to clock Mason with it.
I was about to say something—I don’t know what—when the security guard stepped forward and put a hand on Harry’s sleeve.
“Mr. Kaufman.” He spoke in a level voice. “Be a gentleman. Please.”
Harry turned to stare at the security guard and for one horrible moment I was convinced that he was about to go off on the man. But then his expression cleared and his shoulders sagged.
“You know,” said Harry to the security guard. “I was in the service too. The Navy. It was a long time ago, though.”
“No kidding?” the guard replied. “Well, thanks for your service.” He held out his hand and Harry took it. They shook, Harry saying “Thanks for yours.” Then he squared his shoulders, grunted, and gestured toward the elevator, which Brian Mason was still holding open.
“Okay, I’m out of here,” said Harry. “Come on, Steve.” He was silent on the way down. In the lobby the guard resumed his station at Reception, where Clarice Barron had been substituting for him. Harry and I passed through the glass doors of the main entrance. Outside, we shook hands. “Good luck, Harry,” I said, forcing sincerity and concern into my voice. “It’s too bad about all this.”
“Ah, what the hell,” said Harry Kaufman. He gave me his familiar snide smile. “At least it’s not my problem anymore. Have fun dealing with those fucking vendors, Steve. And remember what I said. Don’t trust the bastards an inch.”
With that he released my hand, turned, and walked off along the sidewalk. I watched him for a moment, then crossed the street to the bar and grill favored by the staff of Harrington & Associates for their after-work bull sessions. It was still early and there were few customers. I took a seat at the far end of the bar. “Vodka on the rocks,” I told the bartender. “Make it a double.” And for the remainder of the afternoon I sat there quietly, nursing the vodka and musing that no matter how long I lived, I’d never really understand people.
Tom this is a good story. I read it late last night even though I wasn’t planning to. I needed to sleep, but I read this all the way through. It’s beautiful and very enjoyable. Half way through, I got that feeling you get when you’re in the middle of reading something good. You have talent. I can say that as another writer. Keep posting your stories. I want to read them all.