“Oh, here we are,” Kate said. “The best part of all.” I followed her into the baby carriage department, where she immediately glommed on to a big, scary, black carriage with big wheels, antique-looking and forbidding. It seemed like something out of Rosemary’s Baby.
“God, Jason, will you look at this Silver Cross Balmoral pram?” she said. “It’s so unbelievably elegant, isn’t it?”
“What’s that movie where the baby buggy rolls down all those steps?”
“Potemkin,” she said with an annoyed headshake.
I took a look at the price tag. “Does that say twenty-eight hundred, or do I need reading glasses already?”
“Is that how much it is?”
“Maybe it’s in Italian lire.”
“They don’t use lire anymore. It’s euros now.”
“Two thousand eight hundred dollars?”
“Forget it,” Kate said. “That’s crazy. Sorry.”
“Whatever you want, Kate.”
“For way less money, there’s the Stokke Xplory,” she said. “The baby rides higher off the ground. It encourages parent-child bonding. Not much storage space underneath, though. But it’s pretty macho-looking, don’t you think? That telescoping handle?” I saw her cast a longing glance at the Silver Cross Balmoral pram when she thought I wasn’t looking.
“It’s macho, all right,” I said. I sneaked a glance at my BlackBerry and saw an e-mail from Gordy. Its subject line was URGENT!
“Of course, there’s always the Bugaboo Frog.”
I clicked onto the message and read, “I tried to call your cell but no answer. Call me IMMEDIATELY.”
“Doesn’t it remind you of a mountain bike?” Kate was saying.
“What? A mountain bike?”
“I’ve been hearing a lot about the Bebe Confort Lite Chassis,” Kate said. “It’s a little more than the Bugaboo, but still a fraction of the price of the Silver Cross.”
“I’ve got to make a call,” I said.
“Can’t it wait?”
“It’s important.”
“This is important too.”
“Gordy’s been trying to reach me, and he says it’s urgent. I’m sorry. This shouldn’t take more than a minute.”
I turned and hurried through the aisles to the parking lot, where I picked up a cell phone signal. I punched out Gordy’s cell number, got a number wrong, and tried again.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gordy barked when he picked up.
“Shopping for baby stuff.”
“This goddamned T &E memo of yours. What the hell’s that all about?”
“Gordy, you approved it before I sent it out.”
He hesitated only for a second. “I didn’t get into the weeds. I left that to you.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Is there a problem? Trevor just came into my office and told me how the entire sales force is on the verge of revolt.”
“Trevor?” I said. Goddamned Trevor was going to Gordy behind my back now, was that it? “Trevor doesn’t speak for the ‘entire sales force,’” I said.
“Well, I got news for you. We just lost Forsythe over this.”
“What do you mean, we ‘lost’ Forsythe?”
“It was the last straw for the guy. Apparently he had a standing offer from our old friend Crawford at Sony, and guess what? Late this afternoon he called and accepted their offer. Why? Because of your damned crackdown. You have the guys eating in Denny’s and staying at fleabag motels, and now we just lost our star performer.”
My crackdown?
“Now who’s next? Gleason? Allard? All because of what the guys are calling the Queeg Memo.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’ve taken care of it,” Gordy said. “I just sent out an e-mail revoking your new policy. Told them there was a miscommunication.”
I gritted my teeth. God damn him. “So what about Forsythe?” I said. “Is he still leaving?”
But Gordy had hung up.
I walked across BabyWorld, the goddamned xylophone and the kids’ voices grating on me like fingernails on a blackboard. Kate was staring at me as I approached.
“Everything okay?” she said. “You look like you just got kicked in the stomach.”
“The balls, more like it. Kate, there’s all kinds of shit going down at work.”
“Well, I’m ready to check out anyway. But you shouldn’t have come tonight. You should have stayed at work.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re totally distracted with your job. You’re not required to go shopping with me, Jase.”
“I wanted to do this,” I said.
“You make it sound like an assignment.”
“That’s not fair. We’re buying baby stuff. I think it’s important for us to do it together.”
“Yeah, but you’re not exactly here, are you? Your head is back at the office.”
“And I always thought you loved me for my body.”
“Jason.”
She pushed the cart toward the checkout line, and I followed her. Both of us were silent, stewing in our own juices. We stood there in line. Finally, I said, “Why don’t you go get the tag for the Rosemary’s Baby carriage.”
“The Silver Cross Balmoral pram?” Kate said. “But that’s crazy expensive.”
“It’s the one you want. It’s the one we’ll get.”
“Jason, we don’t need to spend that kind of money on a baby carriage.”
“Come on, Kate. It would be downright irresponsible to put our baby in a carriage that doesn’t have shock absorbers and side-impact bars.” I broke off. “Look, I want to do this right. Baby Steadman’s going to travel in style. It does come with power steering, right?”
When the cashier rang everything up, I stared at the bill for a few seconds in disbelief. If my father had seen how much we were spending on baby stuff, he’d have had a heart attack in his Barcalounger right in front of the TV set.
I whipped out my gold MasterCard bravely. “I am oppressed by the debt of the capitalist society,” I said.
24
As soon as Doug Forsythe got in the next morning, I strolled by his cubicle and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Got a minute?” I said.
He looked up at me and said, “Sure thing, boss.” He knew what this was about and didn’t bother to hide it.
He followed me to my office.
“Doug, let me ask you something. Did you just accept an offer from Sony?”
He paused, but only for a second. “Verbally, yeah,” he said. “I won’t lie to you. Crawford made me a killer offer.”
Verbally, he was carefully to say. Meaning maybe there was some wiggle room.
“You’ve been here eight years. Are you unhappy?”
“Unhappy? No, not at all. God, no.”
“Then why’ve you been talking to Crawford?”
He shrugged and opened his palms. “He made an offer.”
“He wouldn’t make an offer unless he knew you were considering a move.”
Forsythe paused again. “Look, Jason, I don’t even know if I’m going to be here a year from now.”
“You’re crazy, Doug. You’re bulletproof. With numbers like yours, you don’t have a worry in the world.”
“I’m not talking about me personally. I mean all of us.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well, that expenses memo-that really put the fear of God into a lot of us guys. Like, Entronics must really be in rough shape.”
“We’re not in rough shape,” I said. “We just need to be more competitive. Cut costs. A lot of our travel expenses are frankly out of line. Anyway, Gordy overruled me on that.” I was tempted to tell the truth-that Gordy had made me his flak-catcher, told me to do it, then backed down when the shit hit the fan-but I decided to just suck it up.
“I know,” Forsythe said. “But I get a feeling that’s just the tip of the old iceberg.”
“How so?”
He lowered his voice. “I’ve heard talk, is all.”