CHAPTER TEN
I saw it happen from the corner of my eye, as I was setting up an appointment for a client half an hour before closing time. A hand came around the corner of the building by the glass front door and tossed a bulging paper lunch bag onto the sidewalk there. It landed with a squishy thump. The top of the sack had been on fire moments before, but the flames immediately went out. I heard someone curse, then the hand reappeared with a cigarette lighter, straining to reach the blackened top of the sack without revealing who the hand was attached to.
By this time I had put the client’s call on hold and picked up the shovel on the carpet under my desk. When I reached the front door I rapped on the glass with the shovel to warn off the would-be saboteur, who dropped the cigarette lighter and ran away in panic. He had been wearing a crisp white long-sleeved shirt with a coffee stain on the cuff. Once I was sure he was gone, I pushed open the front door, careful not to bump the sack roughly, then used the shovel to deposit both sack and cigarette lighter in a nearby trashcan. The sack smelled as bad as I feared it would. It was time to ask for another pay raise.
I put away the shovel and washed my hands in the restroom once I went back inside the office. When I came out, my boss had opened the door to the conference room and was giving me one of those raised-eyebrow looks. He had probably heard me bang on the door with the shovel.
“Mr. Morgendorffer paid us another visit,” I told him. “I took care of it, no problem.”
Mr. Khan closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. His lips moved as he silently counted to ten before saying, “Thank you.” He then turned back the conference room with a broad smile. “It was nothing, nothing,” he said, and closed the door to continue the meeting with Le Grand Hotel’s representatives.
I took the phone off hold, finished making the appointment, then speed-dialed a number. This foolishness had to end, and I was going to end it now before it got worse.
“VitaleDavisHorowitzRiordanSchrecterSchrecterandSchrecter,” gasped a breathless woman when the phone picked up. “HelenMorgendorffersofficethisisMariannehowmayIhelpyou?”
“This is Jennifer Johnson, calling from Buzzdome Business Solutions,” I said. “Is Mrs. Morgendorffer available?”
“Oh no, not again!”
“I'm sorry, but yes, again.”
“Oh, jeez! Um, uh, jeez, listen, Mrs. Morgendorffer is in a videoconference right now, and I was told not to interrupt it even if there was an earthquake during a nuclear attack when the building was on fire. Um, can this wait until maybe—”
“No.”
“Rats! Uh, wait, um, okay, uh—oh! Wait a minute! I know! Daria? Daria, come here for a second! Daria's the Morgendorffers' oldest girl. She's working here as a temp for the summer and might be able to help with the situation. Hold on!”
All this time I had been yelling “Wait! No! Don’t!” but Marianne wasn’t listening. She covered the phone mouthpiece and carried on a whispered conversation with someone else, then the phone changed hands and I heard a familiar deadpan voice.
“Daria Morgendorffer.”
Suddenly I wasn’t so gung-ho to talk about the incident involving her father. I was just embarrassed. Daria had been a classmate of mine at Lawndale High before we both graduated in May. I remember she sat to my left several rows over in Mr. O’Neill’s English and literature classes. Smart girl, not very talkative unless she was pissed off, not very nice if you got on her ugly side. Damn smart, though. “Hey, Daria,” I said softly. “This is Jennifer Johnson. Remember me?”
There was the briefest pause. “The tallest of the Three Jennifers? Big ponytail?”
She could have asked if I was the only African-American Jennifer, which I was, but the ponytail was a dead giveaway, too. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“I remember. I’m doing okay, I guess. At least I don’t have to go through high school ever again. On the other hand, I’m stuck being an office peon for my mom until I get my butt out of town next month.”
It was Daria, all right. I decided to take the long way around and break the news gently. “Where are you going to college?”
“Raft, in Boston. You?”
“I’m taking evening classes at Lawndale State. I have to take care of my dad and little sister when mom’s working third shift.”
“I didn’t know your dad was sick.”
“He retired from accounting after his stroke in January. He’s okay, just needs some help around.”
Another brief pause. “You’re calling about my dad, aren’t you?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m really sorry about this. We’re having a little problem with him. It’s kind of hard to talk about.”
“What did he do this time?”
So, she’d heard. I took a deep breath. “He left a paper bag full of dog poop in front of the office door.”
“What?”
“This was the third time this week. At least the bag wasn’t on fire after he threw it.”
Daria exhaled as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered, but she sounded as if she did very much believe it.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, I’m the one that’s really sorry. Was there any damage? As anyone hurt?”
“No, everything was taken care of. It’s fine. Listen, I getting worried that something bad might happen and someone will get hurt by accident. This has been going on since May, and—”
“May? I thought . . . uh, what else did he do?”
Ouch. I thought her mother had filled her in on the whole story, but apparently not. “Well . . . he usually yells things when he drives by at lunchtime or when he’s going home in the evening. In early May he wrote something on the windows with a bar of soap, then he called the phone company and tried to have our service cancelled, then—”
“Okay, okay, stop. God. Did anyone see him do this?”
“Unfortunately, for him I mean, there were witnesses when he wrote on our windows. The police were notified and he was warned. The phone company has a recording of his voice while he was talking to the service representative in June—”
“God damn it!” she suddenly snapped.
I stopped. I couldn’t tell if she was angry with me, her father, herself, all of the above, or what.
“I’m very sorry,” she said at last. “It’s not you. I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know all that.” Another pause. “Please don’t tell me what he wrote on your windows.”
“All right.” It had been puzzling more than offensive: HOW MUCH MORE, MAD DOG? HOW MUCH MORE?
She sighed, then asked, “Did you see my dad actually do it? The bag thing today, I mean.”
I thought carefully about my answer. “See if he has a light brown stain on his left shirt sleeve, near the wrist. He was wearing a white shirt.”
A few moments of silence, except for her low breathing and something she whispered that sounded like: That was from breakfast.
“Okay, I’d better go talk to Mom and take care of this,” she said at last in a strained tone. “We’ll do our best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Then I’m going to throw myself under a train. A very long train.”
I felt rotten. “Take care of yourself,” I said, knowing we were done.
“Thanks, you too,” she said in a weary voice—then added, after the briefest pause, “My best to your family.”
“Thank you.” I was on the verge of apologizing again when she hung up. I did as well. Thank God the worst thing my father did after the stroke was to shout at the TV set, even when it was turned off. He thought for a while someone named J. Edgar Hoover was living in it.
The conference ended a few minutes later. After Mr. Khan shook hands with everyone and saw them out the door, he ran a hand through his thick black hair and walked back to my desk. He still had his nametag on: Hello! My Name Is SAMIR. “What happened with Jake?” he asked flatly.
Mr. Khan is a funny kind of guy. He’s smart in the way Daria is smart, knows a lot about everything, a major-league trivia buff, but he’s also friendly, outgoing, tells jokes, and is just a nice person all around. I don’t ever remember seeing him get really mad, but I had the feeling he was pretty close to it now.
“He left us a sack full of dog poop,” I told him. “At least I hope it was dog poop and not, you know—”
“His poop, yeah.” Mr. Khan put his fists on his hips, frowned, and looked out the front windows of our office. He says his family originally moved from Pakistan to Canada, then into the U.S. He’s on the short side but wiry, kind of dark-skinned, wears bright-colored clothes and has this pencil-thin mustache he plays with when he’s trying to think of something creative. He wasn’t playing with his mustache now. A phrase popped into my head from an old Star Trek movie: The Wrath of Khan.
“I called Mrs. Morgendorffer’s office and talked with his daughter Daria,” I added. “She said she would talk with her mom about it. She was really upset.”
“On one hand,” said Mr. Khan, “I can hardly blame him. We’re putting him out of business. Probably a third of our consulting clients used to be his, but they couldn’t stand him. Everyone says he’s weird, neurotic—what was that one guy called him, um, unplugged, he acts like he’s unplugged. Crazy.”
“Was he like this when you knew him at Buzzdome?”
“A little. He didn’t fit in, really an oddball guy. He wasn’t bad or nutty, just . . . didn’t fit in. Got laid off after only one day.” He sighed. “I’m going to call the police.”
“Okay,” I said. He was right, it was for the best. Mr. Morgendorffer was starting to scare me, and I don’t scare easily. “Um, you know, I didn’t actually see it was him doing it. Just his arm. He had a stain on his shirt sleeve, like from a coffee spill.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m still going to call the police so it can be checked out. He’s a nut. I can understand him being upset that his consulting firm is going under, but this is too much. Who’s this Mad Dog he rants about, who he seems to think lives here? Me? You? What will he try to do to us tomorrow? Crazy.” He shook his head, still looking out the window, then walked back to his private office, the one with the inflatable palm tree, and softly closed the door.
Instead of letting myself mope, I tidied my desk and made a few notes about tomorrow’s work. I had only a little filing left to do before I could quit for the weekend. I remember it was twilight outside. The streets were full of cars, their lights on. I heard the low thumping of a helicopter going over, probably a TV trafficopter. It sounded as if it were very low. I remembered I had to pick up milk on the way home tonight, plus some extra paper for my little sister’s elementary-school class work.
The office door behind me opened. Mr. Khan had taken off his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and exchanged his dress Oxfords for casual sneakers. As usual, he wasn't taking any work home.
“Got a hot date tonight?” I asked with an innocent look.
“Ah, no, not tonight,” he said with regret. “I'm supposed to meet some friends for dinner at Governor’s Park, down the street. They're people I used to work with at the old Buzzdome office, part of my work node. We hang out once in a while, the few of us left around here, checking to see what's up.”
“What was that like, working there? I was always curious about that place. It looked so cool, and I thought—” I stopped. I had been about to say, I thought everything was going so well.
“It was fun.” Mr. Khan got a faraway look in his dark eyes. “It was a lot of fun. I was the company's idea man, the 'brain trust,' which meant I got paid tons of money to sit around and shoot the bull, make up stuff we could be doing as a business. It's hard to believe even now.” He shook his head. “Then the bubble popped and it all went away in March, just like—” He snapped his fingers.
“You got back on your feet pretty fast.”
“Yeah, well, I was one of the lucky ones who wasn't in debt up to my neck when it was over. There weren't many. I think Noah, the former CEO, is doing data entry now. Used to have a mansion, now he rents a one-bedroom apartment. It didn't hurt that I also saw the bust coming back in January, so I got my lifeboat built a little early, instead of waiting until the ship went down like almost everyone else.”
“Did you take over the company when it went under? I was curious because this company has almost the same name as your old workplace.”
“Oh, no, but I did buy out the intellectual rights and properties, the copyrighted computer software and trademarks and stuff. I didn’t want the building and equipment and all that. Cost me about twenty grand, even though the properties were worth millions just a few weeks earlier. I felt like a vulture. I still don't know if it was worth it. It was kind of a gamble that didn't quite pay off, at least not yet. I broke even in the end after selling off my holdings to cover my debts. The stock was worthless, of course. I thought maybe there was something the company had in its files that I could do something with, but I haven't found it yet.”
He shrugged and waved to me as he started off. “I'm outta here. You can lock up. Thanks for all your great work. You’re the best office manager there is.”
“Hey, thank you! Have a great weekend!”
“You do the same.”
He stopped at the glass door on his way out. “Oh,” he said, turning back with a grin, “if you ever find yourself without a job and no marketable skills except shooting the bull, become a business consultant. It worked for me.”
I laughed. He looked around, didn't see anyone there, then took off. I watched him cross the street through stopped traffic and set off toward downtown on a course that would take him past Lawndale Memorial Gardens two blocks away. It was a warm, cloudless night, perfect for a long walk.
He was such a sweet funny guy, Mr. Khan was. I remembered after he was gone that I was going to ask for a raise. I decided to ask him for it on Monday.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. He disappeared, and I never saw Mr. Khan again.
