In the grand scheme of things, Tessa Wright considered
herself a relatively uncrazy person. She was Prozac- and
Xanax-free and required only the occasional tune-up from
her therapist. Yet she sensed vultures circling outside
her office door. She said as much to her friend and fellow
banker, Kate.
"That's paranoia talking," replied Kate, no mincer of
words. Tessa supposed her unrest might be chemically
induced, rising with the glue fumes from her new
carpeting. More likely, though, it was a spot-on
assessment of her prospects for continued employment.
"Be logical," Kate said as she lounged in the one guest
chair that fit in Tessa's small space. "We're both members
of the streamlining team. They wouldn't have asked us to
join the group if they plan to terminate us. This place
has always been about teamwork, and no one's done it
better than us."
True, to a point. They had met at Midwest National Bank as
fledgling credit analysts seventeen years earlier. To
Tessa, that first heart-pounding, new-suit, hopes-
abounding day seemed in some ways recent and in others
ancient history. She and Kate had been anomalies, staying
on instead of job-hopping in Detroit's volatile financial
services industry. In those years together, they had
formed an alliance. Kate was the balls-out tough member of
the team, and Tessa was the charm and diplomacy department.
Ultimately they'd been rewarded, too — though Kate more
so. She was a first vice president in charge of the asset-
based lending group, and since that promotion, also
Tessa's boss. For friendship's sake, Tessa had managed to
swallow her jealousy with only the occasional hiccup.
"Teamwork? Absolutely," she said. "Teamwork's key, right
up until the moment you're summoned upstairs and
terminated. We all die alone."
"Relax, Tessa. Morbid doesn't suit you," Kate replied.
Tessa knew it didn't, but the events of the past several
weeks — the former coworkers departing with their boxes of
personal effects, the falsely jocular farewell parties
where too much was drunk and too much said — had taken
their toll. She'd developed a taste for gallows humor and
an alarming fondness for the acid bitterness that had
begun to leach into her heart.
"I think I'm wearing morbid rather well."
Kate's smile was tinged with the sense of impending doom
they all carried these days. "You're wearing it as well as
any of us are wearing our armor."
Which wasn't saying much. Kate was edgier than usual, and
Tessa nearly out of ways to smooth the turbulent
atmosphere. Still, they would survive. She and Kate had
weathered changes in management, changes in economy,
fashion crises, men crises and some all-around botching-up
of their lives. And as essentially different as they were,
they'd stuck it out together.
Kate stood. "I need a cigarette and you need to clear out
of here for a few minutes. Come on, let's go walk the
fitness trail."
The heavily treed path winding through the headquarters'
suburban campus was most often used by smokers seeking
sanctuary from smoke-free laws. Kate, a chain-smoker, was
now incredibly and ironically fit. Tessa, who had never
smoked, could hardly keep up. In this instance, she
preferred to blame her penchant for high heels rather than
her avoidance of exercise in any form. Still, it was a
balmy — by Michigan standards — seventy-degree, mid-
October day. She would walk and pretend to enjoy it.
They were nearly to the elevators when Kate's secretary
stopped them. "Kate, Simon Pearson wants to see you in his
office."
Pearson, the corporate angel of death. Since the firings
had begun, silence and averted gazes had become his
harbingers in the hallways. A mention of his name killed
conversation. To be summoned meant career annihilation.
Tessa's reaction to Kate's summons wasn't her finest
moment. She briefly closed her eyes and tried to quell her
mental celebration, but it was a losing battle. She sent
one selfish and heartfelt thought out into the universe:
Thank God the vultures weren't mine.
When she again focused on Kate, her friend had lost much
of the color beneath her fading tan. Tessa was sure that
even gutsy Kate sometimes bolted awake at four in the
morning, cold with panic because her job could be going
away. In Tessa's experience, exhaustion and the human
mind's resilience were generally enough to lull one past
those moments — but when faced with the reality...?
"Shit," Kate said.
Kate's secretary had already moved two steps back, as
though retreating from the creeping grasp of
failure. "I'll, uh, just..."
"Go on," Kate told her, calmer now. "You might as well
start finding me a couple of boxes for my things."
Tessa scrambled for poise, folding her hands together. She
was startled to find them shaking, but shouldn't have
been, considering the metallic taste of fear heavy in her
mouth.
"Do you want me to come up there and wait for you?" The
offer had been impetuous and, she suddenly realized,
impolitic.
Kate shook her head and punched the elevator's up
button. "No. As you said, we all die alone."
After Kate had stepped into the elevator, Tessa considered
making a weak joke about Kate's trip to a better place,
but found she didn't have the stomach for it. Gallows
humor was losing its gloss.
She returned to her mini-office, pausing briefly outside
her door to look at the charcoal-colored placard with her
name imprinted in neat white letters. As her circumstances
had changed, she had slid that particular bit of plastic —
and before, one like it bearing her maiden name — in and
out of any number of holders. She thought of Kate, soon to
tuck her nameplate into a box and depart, and knew yet
another unbecoming moment of relief. This was the first
time she would willingly cede the role of trailblazer to
Kate Murkowski.
Tessa sat, elbows braced on her desk, head bowed with
thumbs pressed to her cheekbones and fingers following the
arch of her widow's peak — her customary pose for
corporate meditation. She had customers to call and,
thanks to a dearth of credit analysts to handle grunt
work, financial reporting to input into the bank's
tracking system. Both could wait. So many tasks had fallen
onto the wait list since she'd become aware that the bank
wasn't staying its course.
Dinner with one of her husband Jack's customers? Not in
the past eight months. She couldn't, and she'd be poor
company, anyway.
Sneak away midafternoon for some rare "together time"?
Impossible. She needed to be seen at her desk, just for
appearances, if not to actually function.
For months now, she'd been awaiting her fate. In some
small way Kate had been the lucky one today. Not that
Tessa planned to share the sentiment with her.
Eyes closed, Tessa listened to the ebb and flow of
conversation as people passed by her door to linger in
front of Kate's. She didn't bother straining for the
words, for most would be spoken with insincerity. Seeing
the mighty tumble had a way of bringing quiet glee. As she
well knew.
The unsentimental truth was that someone would have to
replace Kate, though not at Kate's salary level, which
Tessa knew was loftier than her own. It wasn't as though
the bank could extract itself from the business of asset-
based lending. Around industrial Detroit, machinery and
equipment were the coin of the realm. They were a gritty
form of collateral, and worth a fraction of their original
purchase price when liquidated, but unavoidable.
It was wrong, almost like corpse-robbing, but already
Tessa considered the comforts of Kate's full-size office.
One with a window, two guest chairs and space for files.
As the bank had begun to pare down, it had packed more
employees into the headquarters building. In this process
Tessa's office — and a number of others — had been
subdivided. Kate had said not to take it personally; the
facilities department had told her that it had been a
matter of Tessa's location. And at least she had new
carpet.
The quietly selfish voice that Tessa seldom let slip out
had whispered that Kate was just next door. Why had she
been immune? Now regret nipped at Tessa for both her prior
and present selfishness.
"Napping again?"
Tessa looked up to see Kate in the doorway. She'd regained
a measure of her color, though the set of her jaw remained
tense.
"The deed's done," she said.
"And how was it?" Tessa asked, uncertain of what else one
said to the newly terminated. Unlike some in the building,
she'd shied away from the firing postmortems.
Kate shrugged. "Clinical. I have two days to wrap up
matters and give final reports to Hank," she said,
referring to her direct superior. "Really, it was
painless."
Kate had never lied well, always giving herself away with
a subtle roll of the shoulders, as though the fit of her
clothing had grown too tight. This time was no different.
"I'm sorry," Tessa said. Those, at least, were the
appropriate words.
"I'll be okay. It's no big deal."
Tessa noted the shifting of shoulders that marked yet
another lie. She wanted to be able to fix this for Kate,
to give some assurance that everything would indeed be
okay, but that particular well had run dry.
Kate glanced over her shoulder at the small group
clustered on the outer boundary of the cubicle maze behind
her. "I really need that cigarette now. In fact, I need
the hell out of here." She paused and shook her head,
perhaps recalling that her wish had just been permanently
granted.
"Why don't you head over to Dante's?" Tessa suggested.
"I'll meet you when I'm done here."
Dante's was a bistro not far from both Kate's and Tessa's
homes. Over the years, it had become their official Friday
evening cocktail/appetizer/gripe session location.
Kate nodded and was gone. Tessa rose and closed her office
door. Better to be trapped in an airless closet, adrift on
the buzz of glue fumes, than to witness the whispers, e-
mails and gossip now rippling out from the epicenter of
the latest firing.
After a few minutes, Kate's side of a phone conversation
came through the wall to Tessa. She couldn't pick up the
particulars, but the hostile tone was obvious, as was the
hard ricochet of the receiver being slammed into its base.
Following that was the louder slam of Kate's door. And
thus a new era began.