Matthew has a meeting with the big man.
He woke in the electric city dark never quite black enough for sleep. Jolted into feeling, a hand flung out on memory of muscle before an onrush of self as Matthew Indirt killed the alarm, blinking the weight from his eyes. In the blank quiet air everything pieces itself together, forming into him.
He would hear her stir softly beside him, then he would rise with the same countlessly sung morning sigh and search blindly for the clothes she would have folded for him atop the dresser.
Steam from the coffee wafted his face, warmth through porcelain deepening the cold in his bones. Silence on the back deck. The shapes of trees and stale gray condos rising in the distance, silhouetted by the city’s sickly glow. Cars whispered down distant streets, headlights passing across the back fence. He watched the dark sky pale and what few stars perceived through concrete smog fade with the first morning song of waking birds.
It was the silence away from his own thoughts which Matthew craved. The quiet hours of morning where the mind still plays with the veil of sleep, not yet making an enemy of him. A state of calm, all paranoia closed from the world before it would thrust itself through and punish him for the mere act of seeking a moments breath.
She was waiting for him in a blue robe.
“Did I wake you?”
“I wanted to see you before you left.”
“You should be resting. Going straight from a night to morning shift is going to put a number on you.”
She shrugged, the usual response in an acceptance of the sad state of things. “Are you going to do it today?”
“I am.”
“You can’t let him string you around this time.”
“I won’t.”
“We both need this raise.”
He nodded, looking only at her, ignoring the growing stack of papers piled up on the table in front of her that yet always seemed to remain in sight like a rotten star glittering on the other side of a shore.
“I’m going to do it.” He bent to kiss her on the head and stepped into the kitchen to make his lunch.
The sun was scorching, rising a hateful red over the lip of the horizon. One by one they shambled quietly into the workshop, some not yet wearing their frail masks of the day – stooped and bleary, wasted flesh and sorrow eyed, collecting paperwork and loading company vehicles. Each sharing more of the same bleak silence until the first words of good morning come from their mouths and from it the forever repeated script – talk of the game, of gambling, trouble with the wives spoken near to a tune of contempt.
“Hey, Matthew,” Darren flicked away the last of his morning smoke and pitched it into the open mouth of a phallic ashtray by the back steps. “How’s the hammer hanging?”
“Three inches and pointing up,” he looked over the parking lot. “Think Buddy’s going to be in today?”
“Doubt it. Rough game last night. He’s not going to be awake for a long while.”
“He doesn’t even like golf.”
“Does he need an excuse to drink himself blind?”
He ignored the others talking about the bets they placed, won or lost. Never going higher than a hundred dollars save Richie’s winnings of two stacks of which he could do nothing with for, as he said happily, he was still in the red. “But I know I’ll get there, luck’s a-turning.”
Leaving the shop with the day’s workload, breaking into sweat the moment they step from their vehicles – wiping brows with rags, chugging water that only prolonged their misery, diving into the daily repetitions of which some felt had been their curse for twenty years. The beginning hours, shadows long across concrete slabs, ghosts wandering through shells of newly developed blocks repugnant with cigarettes where they hung from dry and chapped lips beneath unkept beards, faces marred with crow’s feet craving the next drink. With the sun came music, the clangor and thrum of machinery, the smell of fent from the portable toilets never cleaned and sweating perspiration. Dust from the pulverized ground rose and swirled with the heavy wind like laughing djinns obscuring their view of the city and the highway, the endless rows of cars all going nowhere.
“I bet you the meeting is about the pizza party,” Chris Downer said over a smoke break.
“Seems like a waste of time,” said Matthew.
“I’m hoping he’ll talk to us about raises,” Jeremy Bud growled. “At least a bonus for all of us. I’m really needing one of those.”
“You’d expect it since he’s been bragging about all the money he spent in Colombia,” added Chris. “Company has to be doing good with all that bragging.”
“He bragged to you about it?” Matthew asked.
“Thirty stacks,” said Jeremy. “All on his nice little trip. Must be nice. I haven’t been further than three hours from home in five years.”
“Thirty grand on one trip?”
Jeremy laughing, “They won’t sleep with him for free, Matty.”
“It can’t be just about the pizza party,” said Matthew. “It’d be a waste of time.”
“I’ve been here twenty years to your two, Matty,” said Chris. “You’re in for a rude awakening on this one, pal.”
“I’m hoping I can negotiate for a raise,” Matthew said when they returned to the house they were working in. “I figured a year without asking for anything could get me something.”
“You’ll have to bend over nice and sharp and look him in the eyes before you do,” Chris laughed.
“Not sure about that, his type are homeless Colombian girls.”
“It’s not about types, Matty,” said Jeremy. “It’s about the power. Man gets off on it. Last year during my meeting with them, the big man’s niece told me they can’t give me a raise because of all the uncertainty going on around the world and that I need to understand because they’re poor too. After the meeting the big man came up to me and you know what he said?”
“What’s that?”
“He said not to listen to her. Said he’s doing perfectly fine and then walked away.”
“Jesus.”
“You have to stop saying that, Matty,” from Chris. “He’s got nothing to do with the hell we’re in.”
Later, Jeremy added: “You hear Davy lost his house?”
“What happened?”
“Couldn’t afford it anymore. Had to sell it for cheap and move into a one-bedroom apartment.” He shook his head. “He’s been here longer than any of us and this happens to him. So much for company loyalty.”
Back at the shop early for the meeting. Matthew makes his way through the damp air thick enough to choke on until he reached the blessedly cool front office and delivers the paperwork to his supervisor. He barely looks at Matthew, hunched crookedly over a keyboard, eyes hidden beneath his hat, the beard around his lips taking on the shape and color of a golden-brown hamster – from the monitor a series of news reports spewing fecal narrative, poor pixeled computer games free of cost, documentaries for house mom smut lovers of the serial killer kind. Matthew took tomorrows paperwork and left without a word.
He hardly glances into the other offices, hears voices on the phone, feels eyes watch him pass. He makes it to Trudy’s office and taps his knuckles on the open door.
“Hey there,” Trudy beamed, swinging her eyes to the computer monitor. “And how’s your day going?”
“Glad to be out of this heat.”
“I don’t blame you. Went outside earlier and it’s the first time I went back in without a smoke. Don’t know how you boys do it.”
“Love of the job?”
“Good one.”
“What’s going on around the office?” Matthew asked. “Everyone’s all quiet.”
Her eyes darted across the glass that make up the front wall of her office and she motions him inside. In a low voice she says: “There’s talk around the office of layoffs coming.”
“No.”
“Lots of layoffs.”
“I thought we were past the after-Christmas scare.”
“I’ve been hearing the big man wants to sell the building for something smaller. Can’t have a big workforce with half the building, right?”
“We’re running out of work, then?” He didn’t have to ask it. Matthew and everyone else back in the shop could feel the days growing longer and the work shorter. But never were their fears eased by the very office they worked for. Always they would say they have plenty of work coming. Two years here and even he could see through the lies for the first waves of layoffs of which he survived had come a week after the big man’s assurance to them that they were doing just fine. He could only go to Trudy for any semblance of clarity.
“Business is drying up and money slipping away,” glancing out the window again. “The big man bought some condos down in Brazil a month back. He’s going to rent them out.” She shook her head.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“He’s told half the office about it. They never even ask, he just goes up to them and says it. He splurges on every cent he sucks out of this place and brags about it. Meanwhile, all we’re getting are pennies while we lose our homes.”
“Yeah. That’s reassuring.”
“I’m sorry to bring you the bad news,” said Trudy. “Hey, maybe the downgrading is just a rumor. Maybe all the renovations are just that. Keep looking up.”
Next days work prepped, they waited by the back table, knowing he would come – voices surrounding Matthew all rambling the same verse of speech as earlier. The game. The bets. Talk of dinner and weekend plans going no further than watching the very game they spoke of and stacking empty can after empty can.
Then, spotting his shadow on the wall, a quick sound of alarm from the maintenance boy to his arrival before the doors opened as if by the shrouded hands of servants that bowed to his presence. All talk ceased.
He came with a sauntered gait wide footed in reactionary avoidance of inflamed thrush, the shuffling boots over smooth concrete robbed of all gray long ago like a frail drum or flugelhorn forewarning calamitous doom in the breaking of the seals, containing in his eyes the charts and graphs accumulating the subtotal of every pilfered coin for profit, staring over the gaunt and dead eyed faces with his own visage of plump, pale blue flesh, unshaven, unclean, matted and gleaming grease against a perfect angle of light, walking with an air of yeastlike fumes, wet stained undergarments in a buildup of smegma nestled snug within tight jeans – the shape of two squirrels fighting between his legs, a hanging barrel, bits wet with lactation, stooped over by weight of melted muscle fallen from sharp boned shoulders to droop and pool around the hips. Dwarfish, hobbling, dragging behind him the long corpse of a ramshackle shadow by smooth plated hands that have never known hardship of labor.
“Hey everyone,” he said to them. “Hope you’re drinking plenty of water. Remember, we have a vending machine of fresh cool water or sodas if you need it for three dollars a bottle.” In his arm he carried a clipboard which he set on the table to look over, the gnomish eyes sliding from one end to the other. “Okay, team, lets get this done quickly so we can get out of this heat. I’ve got you here today to talk about the coming pizza party! It’s been a few weeks since it was announced and now that we’re here, I just wanted to push you guys a little more so we can reach that quota.” He lifted the clipboard. “As stated before, we have three options of pizza. Uncle Tim’s. Dripping Goo. Crispy Crust. So, after a bit of time to decide, I’m going to cross one from the list.”
He bent over the clipboard. “Drumroll everyone. What’s it going to be?” He slides his pen across the paper, looks up, smiles and crosses his thin arms. “Crispy Crust it is. Yes, yes, I know, could have been a good option, but you have to understand I don’t much like crispy crust, nor how firm the cheese can be, yes. Now, you may notice we never spoke about a date for the pizza party. Well, that’s because it will be up to you when that happens. It’s all about output in this business, guys. Output brings success and success brings you pizza. Now, here’s a little encouragement. If you guys are able to push past your quotas, there’s a chance, mind you, only a chance, as this will depend on how quickly you want this party, that you could be rewarded with four slices of pizza or a two-liter bottle of whatever choice of pop. Not both, of course. Some of you here I’ve known a long time, some only a few years and a few of you even less than that. But you’re all part of this company for a reason, and that’s because I know you all have it in you to reach your quota. Better yet,” he forms a fist and begins fisting the air. “I know you can thrust past those quotas like they’re nothing. I have a good eye for it, guys, trust me. That will be all. Drink plenty of water.”
“All he does is talk and talk and you just get so numb you forget everything else,” said Jeremy later, wiping the sweat from his beaded brow. “Man, I’m getting into one today. Might not be in tomorrow.”
“I’m supposed to have a meeting with him,” said Matthew. “Any minute now.”
“Good luck,” said Jeremy. We listened to the others from their corners of the shop bickering about the pizza, the heat, the rationing of their wages getting tighter and tighter. And in their eyes Matthew could see a growing hunger bending itself near to madness with the waiting, the silence, the creeping desperation.
“I’ll need it,” Matthew making his way to the office, passing by a wall of tools where a few others were gathered. “You guys see the big man?”
“Yeah,” from Josh Bumbuster. “Bathroom. First stall. Wants you to meet him there.”
“Get bent.”
Shadows in the office. Coming closer, he saw Juice Tits Crugis of HR sitting across from the big man’s desk in a comfortably plush chair with his feet out, laughing and nodding while the big man spoke.
“I wouldn’t want anything younger than that,” he said, faint with distance but with little effort trying to be quiet. “But, man, you’ve never had anything like it, the way that snatch grips you like a fist. Down there, they don’t care how young they are. Hell, they don’t even want money. Sometimes all they want is some food and they’ll do anything to get it. You’d think they went to school to learn what I saw them do.”
He knocked on the door and two heads swing his way.
“Yes, Matthew?” cheerily asked the big man.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Matthew. “We have a meeting for about now. We arranged it over email.”
“Let me see here.” He looked over his monitor. Crugis lounged back, seeming content not to move. “Ah, yes, seems we do. I’ll have to ask you to step out for now, Crugis.”
Crugis rose and left without once glancing Matthew’s way.
“Have a seat.”
Matthew lowered into another chair and set his hands on his lap. “Thank you.”
“So,” said the big man. “What can I do for you, Matthew?”
“I want to negotiate for a raise,” said Matthew. “We haven’t had another meeting since last year. Last time you mentioned to me that I could come back six months later if I felt it necessary after I’ve developed some more skills and learned a thing or two. Well, I figured if I gave it a year, my chances of bringing more to the table were higher and since the year was slow, I figured there wasn’t much for me to learn in six months compared to twelve.”
“I remember. I wish you had come within six months, but I understand your reasoning. Go on.”
“Well, I can work the tools better. I know my way around the shop and the machines. I’m not an expert, but I am improving. I got a certificate on my own time and can use a lift now. My most serious argument is my reliability. We’ve spoken about it before, with my attendance being a lot better than others here. This whole year I’ve been partnered with people who don’t bother showing up some days and I would be left with the most amount of work even when I had no idea what I was doing in the beginning. Well, I can work by myself now. I can handle most things that don’t require more than one person and even then, when someone doesn’t show, I still finish more than needed by myself. I’m not asking for much. I know why I can’t get so much so soon, but I have to ask, with things being so tight for all of us these days. I also have some other ideas in mind for certificates and experience I’d like to go over. To at least show I’ve been making the effort.”
The big man was nodding, rocking in his chair and periodically looking over at his computer monitor. Pictures of sunny beaches, yachts, golf courses splaying the wall behind him, thin glass reflecting stock graphs, numbers in a dozen digits across the monitor – one picture of the man himself standing before the window of this very office, looking out over the street, almost in silhouette, taking on the pose of a comic book villain more than anything else. “Before we go on,” he said, “I want to applaud all the work you’ve been doing here. Summer or winter, I see you push yourself everyday, never slacking or losing focus. That’s what this is all about, right? Focus, ambition, the recipes for success. And I should also remind you that we love having you here. Even on the hardest days, I know you have a great attitude.” He leans forward – sharp elbows on the desk, hands folded before him. “But here’s the thing, I see more in you, Matthew, much more. You have goals, but I’ll tell you, all it takes to achieve those goals is a little more push. You see, I was in the same place as you – working the floor, lugging frames and wood and a hundred pounds of material up and down a dozen steps to get where I am now…”
He had heard this speech before, the blind comparisons out of some sort of understanding between him and the people who worked for him. They had spoken over coffee little more than a year ago on a cool spring morning. Just clocked in, waiting for the others to arrive. Matthew couldn’t remember what set the big man off, only that one second, they were talking about the game and the next he was forced to listen to the big man comparing himself to everyone in the shop, only better, more ambitious.
He remembered Jeremy’s words after, telling him everything the big man had said.
“You just got bamboozled by the dick-slider himself! That’s his best trick. He’s all talk, Matty. He doesn’t know a thing of what it’s like to work like we do, man. He’s worked in that office from day one since he was a kid and everything he has, this place, all this money, our own asses, is because he sucked up enough to be put into the will. He does it to make you trust him. The worst part is once you know the truth you’re more miserable for it because you’re in his shadow. Imagine a fish stuck in a pond draining in the sun. If a man pours water into the pond so he lives a little longer, the fish is still not safe. It will always rely on more water given by the man. It can do nothing to displease or convince the man to walk away or it will die. And all the while, the man will call himself a hero, yet mere feet from that pond lies the ocean which he will not throw the fish into or else he loses a toy.”
“I mean, think about it,” the big man continued. “These golf tournaments I’m going to are not for nothing. Some of them charge three grand per game. Another I go to charges twenty grand a year membership. But through that, you meet other people like myself, people who really worked for it. They’re all there the same reason I am, because they have drive, ambition, spunk. Power to massage the interns’ shoulders and not get blowback, you know what I’m saying? There are people in this world, Matthew, who cannot live like everyone else, for to do so would make them sick, even kill them. Everyone has a choice in life, would you rather eat filet mignon, or boiled hotdogs? Well, I won’t lie, I don’t want to eat boiled hotdogs, and that’s why I’m here. But I have confidence in you, Matthew. I know you will see the way. Let’s give it six months to learn a few more crucial skills and then we can talk about that raise. What skills would that be? Well, uh, yes, that’s actually up to you. I’m just so busy, you know. Sound good?”
He let the no slip from his lips without even realizing it. Whispered, ignorant to the fact that he had even said it until it hung heavy in the office. In that very second, Matthew saw something in the big man’s eyes change. Dark, inscrutable, maleficence malformed from seething hatred lying beneath the day’s mask, brimming in the mire of darkness until one little misdeed deemed unsavory to one’s personal guard is made – all of it a split second before the smile, staring out the window with his beard bunched up from the scrunching of his jaw.
“I forgot to say, I remember you and the guys were talking about wanting a wireless chop saw to make working in the condos easier.”
“Yeah,” quietly. “It would help. I figured having one of those on hand could get the jobs finished faster, give us time to do even more.”
“While I would like to consider them in the future, at the moment, I believe its best for all of us to get back in touch with our working roots, the way we’ve lived long before now. Machines, you know, shouldn’t be allowed to do everything for us at our beck and call. We need to be able to work for ourselves. I also believe this is a good way to think outside the box when you run into a problem of, say, the condos having no power or generators for you to use when working on site. So, when you run into that wall, instead of giving up because of modern ills.” He holds his hand up in a fist as if he is holding something. “Hacksaw. Look, you’re young, you don’t know what it was like in my day, working with my boots on the ground, gathering around the buddies with some coffee and a few knee-slappers, most of us didn’t have chops. So, hacksaw it was, no matter how thick the metal or how long it takes. These are the skills I expect from you, Matthew. I have hope for you.”
“Thanks,” said Matthew, wanting nothing more than to leave this office and go home lest he fall into another speech – not even daring to ask how hacksaws would increase their quotas. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
A smile. “I think this was a good talk. You can go.”
It was another two weeks before he heard anything else from the office. Two weeks promising her that he would try again, negotiate from a different angle. Two weeks of disappointing her and having to see it in her eyes. In those anxious thoughts of night before blessed sleep would come, he would count the days left to him before a better option was considered – opportunities, places, another lover and his mind betraying him in its viciousness that these were her thoughts and there was no stopping them.
It was Crugis that broke the news to him, waiting for him at the shop as Matthew returned from a long day under the worst heat of summer, spending seven hours lugging equipment and materials up several flights of stairs, baking in the sun-soaked concrete blocks.
“Sorry, kid,” said Crugis. “Here to let you know you’re getting laid off for a while. Big man would have wanted to do it personally, but he’s golfing somewhere and he figured it was best to do it now. Said you could look at it as a sort of vacation from the heat.”
“How long until I’m back?” Matthew asked, dripping with sweat more out of his racing heart than the heat of the shop.
“Oh, I never know that,” laughed Crugis, dripping with his own flow beneath every fold of flesh from pits to tits. “Could be a week, could be a month.” He turned to go.
“Crugis,” said Matthew. “There’s been some rumors that he’s selling the building for something smaller… that there’s a few that are going to get laid off permanently to make up for it. Will I be coming back?”
He could make out no expression or passion behind those flat, dark eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Matthew. We’ve got plenty of work coming in. Endless contracts to keep us going for years. Well, see you later. Good luck.”
He didn’t go home at once. When he left the shop, he pulled into a parking lot to think, to breath, to steady the screams of his thoughts, his ever-beating heart he scrambled to hold while his mind unraveled into terror, pouring over the next move.
He had nothing decided by the time he made it home, pulling into the driveway but never going inside, knowing she was there and unable to face her. Both hands on the wheel, he felt a statue stuck in place yet falling all the same. For a long time, he remained that way, unmoving as the days shadows crawled along colorless concrete and fell over his face.
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