“A security guy?” said Joe. “How come?”
“Because we just can’t take any chances,” she replied.
Genevieve thought she dusted the way she did everything else, with great gusto and command. It was the first time she had ever been intimidated by someone else’s dusting. She sat quietly.
“But Lynn,” he said, “there are only one or two people who genuinely believe he poses a threat. Most of it is just idle chatter.”
“It’s not just me, Joe. It’s the other partners,” she said.
She moved from the armchair over to the leather sofa behind them and began to wipe that down as well. Joe twisted in the chair to keep her in his sights and talked to her over the backrest. Genevieve chose to keep staring straight ahead.
“These recent e-mails to Benny and Jim,” Lynn was saying, “the way he left this place, his behavior toward his wife — the man destroyed all his belongings with a baseball bat. Now, I’m not saying I definitely think he’s on his way back here,” she said, looking at Joe during a brief interlude in her dusting, “but when he’s swept up in something, he doesn’t act right, not like a normal person, and I don’t think we can take the chance.”
She returned her attention to the sofa. “But how is one guy from security going to stop him if he does come back?” asked Joe. Genevieve was surprised by his contrariness, and had new insight into the openness of dialogue that passed between them when the rest of the team was out of the room.
But that wasn’t the real news. The real news was that Lynn Mason now entertained the notion of Tom Mota planning a return. That point of view had had only one serious spokesperson until then — Amber Ludwig, who worried about everything. Security had posted his picture at the lobby desk, but they were screwball comedies down there. Lynn Mason’s concern legitimized the idea. That was a new and uncomfortable development.
“We’re working on getting an order keeping him from the premises,” she said, “but in the meantime, Mike’s giving us a guy, and we’re putting him outside your office.”
“Why my office?” Joe asked.
“Because your office looks directly onto the elevators, and if he comes back here, this is the floor I think he’d visit first, and to be honest with you, Joe, I think the biggest grudge he has might be against you. With maybe me being the exception.”
“I disagree,” said Joe. “It’s true he didn’t care for me in the beginning, but by the time he left, for whatever reason, I think I’d earned his respect. And to be honest with you, Lynn, I think we’re blowing this whole thing way out of proportion.”
“Well,” she said, with her back to him. “There’s still going to be a man outside your office.”
Through with her cleaning at last, she opened the door to the grandfather clock. When Joe informed her of the time, she set the hands accordingly and wound the clock with a key. She set the brass pendulum in motion and then shut the door and watched it swing. In the intervening silence Genevieve glanced back to see what she was doing, found her standing before the clock, and once again realized how small she was in real life. Joe could probably lift her off the ground. He was no muscleman but he was no slouch, either, and he could probably take her by her two arms and lift her, maybe all the way until his own arms were extended, and at the very thought of Joe holding Lynn Mason up in the air like that, like a child, and with a little extra effort, even spinning her around, Genevieve had to choke back the laughter rising in her throat, because Lynn was just then coming around to her desk and pulling her chair out to have a seat. All at once she loomed larger and more intimidating than ever before.
“Now,” she said, “what did you want to talk about?”
“NOW I REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS!” cried Marcia.
It had finally come to her. She had heard Benny was selling the totem pole and she wanted to stop him. “Who told you I was doing that?” he asked. It was making the rounds — the rise in rental rates and his reluctance to pay the difference. “But who ever said I was selling it?” he asked. “Don’t do it,” Marcia pleaded. “Please, Benny. Do you want to see them win?” “Who’s ‘they’?” he asked cautiously. “Every single one of those motherfuckers,” she replied. She had momentarily forgotten her vow never to be mean again. “If you sell it, Benny, you will be handing a victory to every ignorant motherfucker on the payroll. You don’t want to do that, Benny, you don’t. And I don’t want to see it happen.” “What I want to do,” he said with sincerity, “is I want to stop giving three hundred bucks a month that I don’t have to that storage place — that’s what I really want.” “I’ll pay the difference,” she said. “You’ll do what?” “The difference between what you’re paying right now and the rise in rates,” she said. “What is it? I’ll pay it. I’ll write you a check every month.” “Why would you do that?” he asked.
Part of it, she explained, was to help rectify every despicable, hateful thing she had done since that happy day she had been hired. It was an effort to restore the balance, to reclaim her right to raise her head and stand up proudly. Benny did not need reminding that Marcia was a dabbler in Asian religions. In fact he had been reading up on them. He had been studying the Four Sights, the Eightfold Path, and the Ten Perfections in the hope that one of them might come up in conversation. He was slipping allusions to the Bo tree into many of the stories he told. Marcia hadn’t responded to any of them as he had hoped she would, either because she wasn’t paying attention, or because the allusions meant nothing to her. We said nothing because Benny was Jewish, and we assumed he, as a Jew, knew more about religion than the rest of us. But in fact he had mistakenly been studying Buddhism, while Marcia considered herself more of a student of the Hindu religion. The only thing he got right was a copy of the Bhagavad Gita sitting on his desk, on top of some papers, with the spine facing conspicuously in her direction.
“So let me see if I get it,” he said. “You want to help your karma.”
“Yes,” she said.
“From good must come good,” he said, “and from evil, evil. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes!” she cried. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. How’d you even know that?”
“I’ve been reading about it lately,” he said.
But it was not as simple as cutting him a check, she explained to the novice. Karma did not take if an offer was made only in the anticipation of a return. A genuine and pure impulse had to precede the selfless act. “So what’s your impulse?” he asked. “Not to see those bastards win,” she replied simply. Benny said he was just hazarding a guess here, but that didn’t sound very pure to him. Marcia reminded him of the Yopanwoo Indians. The Yopanwoo Indians had made a mockery of every real Native American tribe ever to suffer an injustice. The practical joking had turned a tragedy into a farce. She promised Benny it was as pure as they came. “I’m from Bridgeport, I never met an Indian in my life,” she said. “But I was still offended. And I thought what you were doing with it — with Brizz’s totem pole, I mean. To be honest, I didn’t know what you were doing with it, but I thought whatever it was was. . was —” “Weird?” he said. “No,” she said, shaking her head and its all-too-lovely new contoured hair. “No, not weird. Noble.” “Noble?” he said. “You thought it was noble?” He wondered briefly where she had been with this talk of nobility when they were hooting at him from the hallway and bloodying that skinned toupee on his desk — though he said nothing about that and took the compliment with pleasure. Her good opinion was well worth three-nineteen a month — though that wasn’t why he had done it. “So to stick up for the Indians,” she said, “and to see that those bastards don’t win, and to help you do whatever it is you think you need to do with Old Brizz’s totem pole, you tell me the difference and I’ll write you a check.” There was a fourth reason, too, of course, which was that it might help Marcia improve her karma, but she left that off the litany.