Warm basso rumbles. It was her baby and it hurt her that such a deep demonic sound could come from such a little girl’s tummy. Her daughter bravely held her pinky as the two stood in line outside the Lenox Avenue Soup Kitchen. They silently stared forward, waiting their turn.

There wasn’t anything to do but not to make eye contact with anyone else. Such was the dark energy in the air of that cold October night. Everyone looked out-of-sorts as they stood bundled up against the wind fighting the harsh realities of Mother Nature. Everyone battled a new feeling of being disheveled and lost, everyone except maybe the homeless guy people called “The Troll”. He always looked disheveled and lost.

He stood waiting well up ahead of them in line and muttered to himself in his usual nonsensical tones. Nobody would know or care but he hadn’t suffered in the financial devastation that rocked the world. He talked to himself when the Dow was at 13,000 six months ago and he talked to himself today with the stock index at 7351.

She thought for an instant that he must be happy as he carried on several conversations simultaneously with fits of laughter then rage. She didn’t know but she was wrong. But then again he wasn’t sad either. He was nothing.

She looked down again at her taciturn daughter who stood beside her much more solidly than she felt. She looked down and felt like she had failed her. The child stared across the street entranced by the graceful, almost joyful, glide of a ragged newspaper as it danced and rolled in eddies then dove broadly swooping down the street towards them. Like her guardian angel, she thought.

This guardian angel was her new one. It was a bit more Disney, infinitely more imaginary but no more invisible than the one it recently replaced. It was no more magical or more powerful than the abstraction of a conglomerate to a child; a concept that had become all too confusing for the mother as well though once upon a time it had been all so clear.

The invisible force gave that life to the fragile newsprint turned it into an ephemeral wonderment for anyone with an eye for beauty to discover. Both mother and child watched it find a new jet stream which blew it on a hot current of air that sucked it spinning like a boomerang against cold brick buildings then sent it tumbling into the busy street.

A speeding tire threatened to flatten it like a pancake but only steamrolled the bottom corner into the asphalt. A police mug-shot tore in half on the paper, decapitating the head, but the rest of the page, with the headline story intact, flew away, graceful, beautiful, and free.

Free for mere microseconds until another car careening in the opposite way created its own invisible force which whipped and ravaged the paper brutally. The dance now turned harsh, the dancer now beaten.

But, the dancer would not be bested. It rode up a quick updraft then flattened on the windshield striking back at yet another abusive vehicle, creating its own kind of symbolic victory. The newspaper personified and romanticized by a child, the headline story, even the decapitated mug shot, none of it, none of it was seen or mattered to the driver who strained to avert calamity. But, blinded to the road he veered slightly too far leftward and crashed head-on with another speeding auto.

As airbags shot out of dashboards and steam shot out of radiators and oil shot out of engines and drivers shot out of cars the paper shot across the street and gently came to a rest on a child’s penny loafers.

“Look mommy our company!” she said as she pointed to the paper.

It was indeed. It was even more.

The headline made her mother cringe: “SecureCo Bought out by Chinese Conglomerate”.

It was her old guardian angel.

“Not anymore,” said the mother who took the filthy paper, which should have been left on the street and not in her daughter’s perfect hand. Her stomach turned as she set it back adrift on another chilly gust and cursed it as ugly memories flooded into her mind.

She never worked for “SecureCo” and so it never really was her company in that sense. But it was in every other. And, though at the time she didn’t see, she now realized she had been a child just as naïve as her young one. For at the time she too shared her daughter’s guardian angel. And, as long as she did things right by doing them “The SecureCo Way”, she thought she always would.

It wasn’t by an unusually precocious nature that her daughter spotted the SecureCo moniker as it blew by. For the last few years, for the majority of the little girl’s life, in fact, the two would watch CNN together over dinner and take relish in disasters like tornados and earthquakes. Only because they had SecureCo.

And, calamites didn’t have to be natural. They could be man-made as well. There were times like the night the mother got the phone call. After hanging up, she tiptoed blissfully into her daughter’s room and sat down beside her child who knelt with eyes closed and head down and hands together that rested on her sweet pink themed bed.

The little girl stopped mid-prayer to look up at her mommy who said there was indeed much to be grateful for. She told her daughter the facts of life and how important it was to be a responsible woman. She told her how much she wanted to have her when she was born and how she and her daddy, who though no longer lived with them, had planned and planned for her conception and birth. She also told her that because they had purchased SecureCo’s “Fail Safe Prescription Plan” (SCoFSPP) mommy wouldn’t be stuck with the usual menstrual cramps, moodiness, and vaginal dryness commonly associated with generics. They could once again be an AstraZenica “Yasmin” family!

Birth control would once again be a blessing and thanks to SecureCo’s fully committed “war on generics” they could find something to be truly grateful for. As she finished her prayers the child solemnly looked up and chanted a very special hymn to the night’s savior. It was a blessing most of the world knew. The melody was from a very popular jingle and the words were from award winning ad copy:

“Thank SecureCo.”

When the price of oil went through the roof hitting $150 a barrel she hugged her daughter and kissed her forehead to wipe away her frown. Then she bravely swiped a credit card and started pumping gas: “Don’t worry baby, we have the “SecureCo Gas Always Flows Freely Plan” (SCoGAFFP). We can afford drive up north to visit grandma on The Fourth.”

“Thank SecureCo.”

When, up north and under the burst of cherry bombs, grandma discreetly whispered into the mommy’s ear that she had been diagnosed with Stage IIIa breast cancer – which wasn’t covered by her insurance – so had been referred to Mt. Sister Mary’s – who not only was one of the ten worst hospitals in the nation but the to add insult to injury put her on a 90 day waiting list – which really was way too long to linger with such an aggressive cancer – so this then might be the last time she and her baby saw her grandmother alive – before she died a horrible excruciatingly painful death.

After the old woman said her peace and hopelessly turned to the Independence Day night sky the mother looked at her daughter through the corner of her eye. She may have watched the fireworks but she heard every word: “that’s right dear, Thank SecureCo and their ‘Joy and Freedom to the Covered World Plan’”, (SCoJFCWP) which covered ‘friends, lovers, and others’.

“God Bless America” sang the little girl along with the spectators as blooms of red, white and blue exploded overhead. Then a tear rolled down her cheek as she quietly looked out across the deep Milky Way and solemnly thanked her angel’s benediction “God Bless SecureCo.”

Inflation went through the roof: “Thank SecureCo.”

Stock market plunged: “SecureCo’s keeping us secure.”

Then, on an unusually chilly day in mid-September, the two found out that mommy was laid off from a CNN news brief as they ate dinner. The company’s website didn’t verify the story but then again didn’t exactly offer them hope; it was down. Then when the email came late into the night that she was put on ‘immediate unpaid leave of absence’ she crept into her daughter’s bedroom and kissed her daughter’s forehead as she peacefully slept in her sweet pink bed: “Remember, we’re in their world”.

“Thank SecureCo” the little girl mouthed in deep slumber.

At the time they didn’t know but the slogan she parroted to her daughter had just been pulled along with all of the SecureCo spots. Fact was, SecureCo was no more.

*  *  *

In her cage, Manny, the hamster, watched TV and munched away.

The television blasting how the Chinese conglomerate that now owned SecureCo had terminated every employee and cancelled every SecureCo plan, paid up or not, may have upset Stewart. He probably then would have gone on to curse himself for ever keeping up the tiny glimmer of hope that Joan, the HR lady, whatever-her-last-name-was, would call him back. Then, it was likely he would have gone on to mope about that whole situation and his whole situation for the rest of the evening until Janie finally got home.

Or he may have gone on to fill Manny’s food dish and then seen the newspaper story lining the bottom of her cage which ran almost as an aide to the daily economic woes that dominated the media. He would have probably gotten there too late to see the small roughly drawn police sketch before it bore disfiguring hamster scratches. But, he just might have made it in time to witness the ominous prophetic caption of the subject who would one day very soon twist into his life like strands of DNA. That was if he had gotten there early enough. The hamster was quickly turning that bit of inscribed cellulose into a poor-man’s TV dinner.

But, none of it happened to him that evening.

What happened was he snoozed away in a deep peaceful slumber. His snores sent deep basso reverberations though her cage which Manny tried to escape by burying herself deep under mounds of wood shavings after she finished decimating the word: “Killer”.

*  *  *

The rag which now picked up God forsaken, probably disease laden, round splotches from spending way too much face time with the street blew up the sidewalk, slapped onto the back of her leg and gave her a terrible start.

After she realized it wasn’t going to kill her, she turned to reluctantly touch the filthy paper with a gingerly placed thumb and pointer of her tan Versace glove only because she couldn’t kick the rotten thing off. Damned Chanel boots. She was instantly embarrassed to be wearing them to the food line even if none of these ogres would know how terribly expensive they were.

Of course they were terribly scuffed as well, though that didn’t cross her mind.

She snapped her pant leg down to cover them after she snatched off the offending newspaper and then sharply snapped her Burberry overcoat closed. At least none of the heathens could tell it was Burberry. It wasn’t her style to wear anything with labels all over it. That wasn’t her.

Before she gave the paper back to the jet stream she glanced at the ripped police composite but vanity quickly drew her to the headline photo above it. The shot not only had the power to lure but it sent her back to the very moment and she glowed in small satisfaction at seeing the bewildered expression on the distinguished looking man’s face. For, she was the one who caused it. She was there.

“Welcome to SecureCo, indeed”, she said wryly as if she had said it a thousand times. Which, in fact, she had, though never with that tone. She was Joan Shields, former SecureCo senior director of human resources and at one time very close to the upper brass.

Director was fine, but it wasn’t senior VP and where her sights were firmly set. Coincidentally, she made the decision the very morning she took her usual brisk walk across the expansive SecureCo campus to transfer yet another new staffer, a Stewart Kitchen, to his orientation, that this one would be her last.

Coincidentally, it would be the last one for SecureCo as well.

Yes, this was indeed very much her company. And, it didn’t matter that Mr. Price still didn’t know her by name. That would come she thought as she shook Kitchen’s hand and led him in, noting that his temporary badge was set a bit too askew for her personal tastes.

She shook Kitchen from her mind. What an inglorious final recruit. The photo took her back to a time before that orientation, back to a time when things were still good in her world. Back to the night Mr. Price threw an impromptu company party in honor of a janitor. Naturally, the press was invited.

“Why don’t we invite all the Krapper keepers while we’re at it?” Joan muttered under her breath.

“Albert’s team does far more than toilets”, Wilson Price started his speech as cameras flashed away pictures of the two.

Joan spent most of her time at the part jealously skulking around after that night. Dumbfounded, she watched Mr. Price walk around buddy-buddy with the token Filipino janitor who he introduced to everyone like the guy was his best friend in the world. So what if he had been with the company for thirty two years. So what?

She burned inside each time Mr. Price toasted Albert What’s-His-Name? She also burned that she couldn’t remember. Joan always prided herself on her thorough knowledge of personnel personal stats. It was just one of the reasons she believed they owed her VP. It was what set her apart from the pack.

Not just her, but everyone was drawn to Price. When he spoke his charisma lit up the room: “As there are beginnings”, Price bravely started, “it’s a fact of life that there are always an ending”. “And, hard as it is to imagine, when that day comes and SecureCo closes her doors for the very last time, it’ll just be me and Albert Balenzuela to lock them, mail out the generous severance packages, and turn in the key.”

“Damn it! That was it! Balenzuela!” She chided to herself as self doubt started creeping in. But she wouldn’t let it get far. Balenzuela had been with the company far longer than she had. She never hired him. She never reviewed his CV or checked references or even spoke with a previous supervisor. He probably wasn’t in her hard files and he certainly wasn’t in any of her spreadsheets. She was worthy. She was entitled.

And, deep down, she knew she was being plain silly. Of course Mr. Price wasn’t being literal, she laughed to herself, feeling better and better about the Balenzuela incident. SecureCo had tens of thousands of employees and owned most of their own property, worldwide. If the unthinkable were to happen massive computers would digitally sign and mail out the generous severance packages just as they always did the biweekly paychecks. That was the SOP.

She calmed irrational anger by repeating ‘he’s just being witty’ then an enlightening ephemeral flash helped her understand the true wisdom of the man. And she smiled. “To you, Mr. Price”, she said as she made an apologetic, unreciprocated toast to him across the ballroom. “To you.”

Of course there would be no final rent check to pay. No final key to turn in. Still, despite her new mantras about how crazy she was being and how Mr. Price was a genius who was naturally charismatic and just doing his job by entertaining the press, it simply got her goat that he could make that kind of plan with an ancient B7 pay-level employee with bad teeth. And not her.

And, what in heaven’s sake could he have in common with the head janitor anyway? It was she and Price who shared some common ancestries. Like schools. Well not the exact same but at least they were both Ivy Leaguers, even if she had graduated quite a few years earlier.

She would just march right over.

After a slight detour.

She got a refreshed view from the circular bar under the grand chandelier where she watched Mr. Price toss back with the toilet washer and planned the perfect time to swoop in. She spied on the two who refracted wildly through goblets filled with red wine before a waiter pulled away her tray, and in the process failed to offer her one. It was really something of a boys club with Mr. Price, the janitor and now the waiter who made her feel naked after yanking alcohol crutch.

She took out frustrations by munching on deviled egg hors d’ouvres while desperately trying to look casual. Had the janitor worked at Pampron Inc. like her? She thought not. But she and Mr. Price had that in common as well. It was indeed one of the reasons she had sought out that company. Because, then, at that time, a very upwardly-mobile Mr. Wilson M. Price happened to be their senior VP.

And, though, and much to her dismay in over twelve years that they both worked at SecureCo there was never happenstance for them even to have made even a bit of small talk, she was in fact interviewed and hired by Price at Pampron.

She wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone in the world, but it was the one time she had ever conversed with the man. Okay, if she was being honest you couldn’t call it a conversation, per se, and not really a talk, or chat or even a casual tête-à-tête.

It was a question. Only one question.

That was never answered.

She remembered the imposing dark office with the oversized leather chairs and her knees that shook as she folded them to try to steady her nerves and then the micro tear in her nylons that she saw too late and secretly cursed and covered with her hands as he asked: “So why don’t you want to work at Pampron?”

“Why don’t I want to work here?” she thought to herself as he took a long distance phone call. What kind of question is that? Is this a trick question? There’s no reason I don’t want to work here. You’ve made this place into one of the greats out of nothing in no time. What kind of question is-?

“Take your time” he said to her after he returned from a bathroom break then excused himself for an impromptu meeting with the CEO right after his assistant brought in some papers for him to sign.

All alone and for what felt like an eternity, she sat there thinking and uncomfortably twisting in her oversize leather chair.

It was her one and only interview at Pampron. When she slunk out of the industrial complex late that day she felt nauseated and fought off dry heaves on the bumpy ride all the way home. For over a week and a half later the whole affair wore heavy on her heart and convinced her that she was a complete loser, doomed to mediocrity for all time. But, the most painful, most mortifying moment was when Mr. Price’s leggy secretary glided into the office late that afternoon to flip off his lights and asked: “you’re still here?”

It played over and over in her head on a continual loop. It convinced her she was eternally worthless. But, all that changed mere seconds later when she got an unexpected FedEx delivery. As she ran to the couch to tear open the box, her contemplation of living the life of a menial laborer would end forever. In her hands was a thick offer letter from Pampron!

Even though Pampron, the brain child of Mr. Price, was a small company of about one hundred, especially small compared to the goliath SecureCo, Joan would never talk to him again. And, it wasn’t that Price kept himself cloistered from the others, far to the contrary. It was just that one month after she was hired, he quit.

She would blabber on with the two other HR girls on their lunch hour over fish tacos that she was stumped and completely unable to answer Mr. Price’s solitary interview question for an entire month. Then on the day she heard he quit the answer finally came to her!

She tingled inside at work that day and wrestled with the answer that was fighting to come forth. Her anticipation bubbled over as she imagined the moment and wrote and rewrote her words. She couldn’t take it anymore as she fought off final swells of enthusiasm as she reverently walked down the quiet hallway and into his dark leather office.

But, he was already gone.

Though he would never hear it, her answer was: “why don’t you?”

She kicked herself under the bar and then cursed the heel which dug into her nylons creating a big chasm which shot up her calf. How could she have been such a blabbermouth? Still the girls seemed to get a kick out of it which made her feel special. What made her feel even more special at Pampron was that when she asked around it turned out that no one was interviewed in that unconventional way. And, no one was hired after only meeting with one person, and only asked one question, which was not even answered.

The phrase stuck with her when came on board at SecureCo as HR associate to such an extent that the first question would ask an interviewee was: “So, why don’t you want to work here?”

And, as she rose through the HR ranks, she trained her team to make that their first question as well. She told them it was to throw a perspective employee off a bit to see how they would recover. Initially to her it was really just a sort of causal affair, even a sort of opening line joke.

But over time it became an all-encompassing question. For her, the answerer to that one question could determine the fate of an entire interview. In fact it did. On the day she became the full fledged director of Human Resources and was put in charge of the entire hiring process at SecureCo she made one executive decision:

The one question interview.

Bottom line: she felt there were too many rote answers to too many rote questions. One Question Theory was to put an end to all that.

In company wide seminars and teleconferences to her HR teams around the world she instructed that it was simply all they’d ever need to know. The two page pamphlet she handed out in the early days grew to her now famous 509 page SecureCo Press HR handbook entitled “One Question Theory” which became a management graduate textbook in many universities around the world.

Joan was specific when she instructed her teams to ask the prescribed question and then just back off. They were to sit completely still for the rest of the forty minute interview and take copious notes. She rationalized you could tell a lot from how someone reacted to stillness.

She boasted of the elegance of her question which her subordinates were to stick to word for word without fail. And, though she told no one, it was her homage to the brilliance of Mr. Price, even if she had no qualms about taking full credit for his idea.

Her process made interviews exceptionally grueling at SecureCo. An interviewee was assigned four interviews in the morning with separate members of the HR department, an hour lunch, and then four interviews with the candidate’s potential teem later in the afternoon. Some interviewers broke ranks, especially those not in HR, but it was also common for an interviewee to face the question eight times in one day followed by the prescribed forty minutes of silence.

Some SecureCo staffers liked the one question theory only because they could deviate from Joan’s intention and got some free time to zone out and surf the net, as the person across from them squirmed uncomfortably. Of course this could have been a serious problem for infractors as HR expected reams and reams of copious “reactions and responses” to be forwarded back to them. However, that repercussion was easily averted. It wasn’t long before interviewers fed up with the whole process started copying/pasting “reactions and responses” from previous sessions.

Joan had no idea but very early in her one-interview period frustrated employees put up a renegade page on the SecureCo website which contained generic “reactions and responses”. They could be reused again and again by simple copy and paste.

None of Joan’s subordinates ever noticed the sloppy cut/paste jobs which made most of the copious reports sound the same because very early on they learned to only pretend to read them. After they were “read” they were printed out, embossed and collated in three ring binders to be stored along with other personnel folders in fireproof cabinets. The intention was to keep them forever to defend the company in case of any type of litigation.

There were many detractors though they were mostly silent and vocal ones were ultimately squelched by the SecureCo high powered litigation team. They rationalized that if an employee or former employee ever went mad and hypothetically say shot up a small village with high powered weapons, blood thirsty litigators couldn’t come back years later to make the claim that working for SecureCo made them unstable and potentially crazy; “Therefore”, a shark would go on to argue, “SecureCo is fully liable for compensatory and punitive damages!”

“No!” SecureCo litigators would assert while slowly poring over copious “reactions and responses” in the well preserved one-question interview binder to safely conclude: “he was crazy when he started working here.”

By the time she interviewed Stewart Kitchen some years later everyone, but everyone knew what was going to be the opening and only question. By then it was SOP at the conglomerate worldwide. Stewart was one of the last to know. He found it in several blogs and forums while doing his tie and a last minute Google the brisk morning before he went in. There was even a “One-Question Theory for Dummies” at Amazon which he kicked himself for not buying weeks before. He’d have to. The book was on perpetual backorder.

That was it! The flash rocked her into the present. Surely he knew the question was homage to him. Surely he must know. Surely he knew it was their own private history.

She slunk right over, a bit too tipsy now on cosmos and pinots to notice the run which shot up the back of her leg and under her skirt.

“Why don’t you wanna work here?” she blabbered with sloppy lips too red and wet with wine.

Mr. Price may have stared back dumbly but she stood there horrified. On the final syllable of the final word she blabbered, a solitary sesame seed fully coated in egg yolk fired out of her mouth. Everyone in the circle around them saw the renegade seed take flight. All around synchronized heads softly panned to follow its path. Then eyes stopped where it landed: squarely on the senior executive CEO nose.

Joan was mortified seeing Mr. Price with egg on his face. This was an important man after all. But, besides that she was jolted by something that shocked her to the core. Maybe she’d been wearing egg on hers? Maybe he’d been angry at her all these years for kidnapping and glomming his genius One-Word Theory!

“Gertrude!” he bumbled with his arm attached to his fat friend as if he were on intravenous drip. “Do you know Albert?”

Head janitor Albert motioned to his boss with a wiping gesture to no avail.

“Why no I don’t” she managed to get out. But she was again hit in the gut with the realization that after all these years Mr. Price didn’t know her name. She put her hand on the grand piano for needed balance. Her nails dug into the wood and her right foot held her left in place preventing it from running away.

“Oh sure. Albert’s been with the company forty years. Forty, right?”

“Thirty two.”

She had to do something. Of course he knew her name. He got the first sound right even though the name he called her didn’t begin with a ‘J’. And, his lips were sloppy wet too; he was acceptably intoxicated. She couldn’t let her ego get the best of her. She had to do something. At least he wasn’t mad about her ripping him off.

“Well, there you go. Thirty two. You’re making me look bad, Al”, Price joked. The joke went over well and the execs who had now gathered around the three erupted in a fit of laughter. That wasn’t new to Price. All his jokes went over well, funny or not. And most were not.

She had come this far. Maybe if she just reached out she could flick – no better still, she could just lean in a little and try to blow the highlighter yellow yolk off his nose.

“You know”, he slurred as he continued, booming for what would feel like the whole world to hear. “You know, Geri here has always had a thing for me.”

Silence.

“It’s true”, Price continued but it didn’t matter if it was or not. The CEO needed continuous IV drip of positive feedback and the silence wasn’t cutting it so he continued. “It’s true, this girl Jane’s always loved me for years.”

Joan was seconds from fainting as the janitor turned to Price to try another rescue: “We all love you, sir.”

“Not like Joanie” said Price as he turned to grab another drink from a passing waiter then put his arm around her.

Joan’s face flushed with heat bright red. He did know her name! She felt as high as she did the day she got the offer letter from Pampron; the event she credited with igniting the skyrocket of her wildly successful career.

She looked up at the tall, lanky Mr. Price gratefully. What a leader. What a man.

“Lady… Wanna smoke? Lady, smoke?”

“What!” she answered, ripped from her daydream by the stubby fat slug who was trying to make time with her.

He offered her the lit cigarette from his mouth.

Smoke billowed across her face as she rejected the salivated nib with a wave of her glove then thrusted her hips frontward, extending the courtesy of the food line which slightly inched. “Heathen”, she expelled in a cloud of frosty breath.

The smoke burned in her nose as she faded back to the only day she wasn’t looking up to see Mr. Price. To the day she looked down and find him cowering under his bed. That sad image of him once again sparked a well buried maternal instinct in her, damn it.

And, the guy with the smokes was once again pawing her coat, damn him! This guy couldn’t take a hint. I feel that. “I feel that!” she yelled as she turned to face the sad man. But it was just a child who jumped out of her skin and her mother.

“Sorry, we were just trying to make a little headway. My baby hasn’t eaten all day. I’m-”

But, Joan didn’t care. She was hungry too. Her body could make it to the food and it didn’t hurt if her mind wasn’t there while it happened. She knew she had to do something about her future as her thoughts faded off into the past.

The smoke, still heavy in her nostrils, brought her back to the day SecureCo went under and to a very expensive overturned Maybach which billowed smoke that reeked of burning plastic. As she tossed off her white Chanel heels and sprinted to the car she couldn’t help feeling miffed that a million dollar vehicle could actually be made of plastic.

All around her there were massive protests on the campus. Employees were outraged that yet another CEO – this time it was their own Wilson Price – could so tinker with the company stock as to cause them to wholly lose their 401k and retirement plans. Truth be told there were probably a million reasons not to want to work for SecureCo, though nobody in Joan’s tenure ever stated one, as repeatedly admonished by “One-Question Theory for Dummies”. Truth be told, pretty much everyone who ever worked there did so that they could comfortably retire.

Joan knew that was true even if she wasn’t one of them. She liked working at SecureCo. So, though she too lost a quite a large portion of her 401k, as well, it didn’t sting quite as bad. At least she had her job.

Earlier that month Price used the skill that made him so upwardly mobile. He created hype. Through various untraceable channels he created several fallacious in house campaigns promoting SecureCo stock, “SAFE”.

That was also about the time the CEO started budding up with low level, especially non-English speaking, employees, like janitors. When Albert Balzenuela went back to his crew after the lavish 32 year anniversary party thrown for him his men couldn’t understand why their jefe would be so graciously courted by Price, who had never partied or even talked with them before and certainly never shared stock market tips.

After work, over beers by the trash bins they turned into makeshift barbeques to cook burgers, they rationalized in broken English that perhaps the stock advice was Price’s way of asking for forgiveness for putting them through the one-question interview.

Other migrant types to who Price whispered ‘buy SAFE’ as they stood side by side at adjacent urinals initially didn’t know what to think after the CEO zipped up and left without another word. Could this be some sort of early retirement compensation? Was it like a get out of jail card free, for having to work in the spider web? Most everyone told fellow workers their insider information. Most everyone believed the tip to be true.

Everyone told by Price, in one way or another, were low level employees like the janitors or drivers or security. Price did this for tons of reasons. First, he felt that he could easily defend a SEC investigation if the deposed could barely speak English and were functionally illiterate. The secondary reason was that he didn’t want potential business associates to get stung in his charade and not want to work with him again in the future.

They did, though. Execs all the way up the corporate ladder got wind of the rumor and bought like mad. Most of them weren’t happy working at SecureCo either and wanted to get a piece of the early retirement pie as well.

When reporters started asking questions after leaks started springing out of the company’s borders as employees told friend and family to buy SAFE, Price’s only statement to the press was that there were going to be some big things happening for SecureCo.

Everyone but everyone everywhere thought that big meant good. Not bad. The public at large bought SAFE like there was no tomorrow. Many even borrowed money to buy.

Joan did too. She just wanted to kick herself. This time she followed the impulse. It didn’t matter the shoes were already tarnished and the Gucci pants were already moth-eaten. She feared there were things that Price never told her, things he did that she didn’t even know of. Things that hadn’t even come out yet that would steam her up in some future freezing food line.

On the day, with heels in hand, she sprinted towards his legendary Maybach no one had any idea there were two. Joan watched the second identical one wing by as she strained to remain erect and cope with the angry mob who heaved her from the overturned super-car. Her arms and legs flailed trying to protect the man inside they were trying to get at. Thank heavens she was wearing new panties.

Thank heavens Mr. Price was able to slip away.

Price’s second million dollar Maybach had met a similarly ugly fate as well. As Joan drove around near the rear gate of the glorious Price Manor there she saw it smashed into the rear of his wine cellar. The door was left open. The engine was smoking. And there was a hole in the brick building.

A hole just big enough for an upwardly mobile HR director to slip through. She resolved right then and there that the time for her to become his right hand man, ahem… woman was finally at hand.

As she thought back over all her mistakes and especially how she worshiped that man and most especially for actually going through the hole into cellar and up the lavish stairs guided by a faint whimpering which sounded like a poor helpless baby bird that had fallen from its nest, she again wanted to just kick herself, but didn’t. Her poor calves had just taken too much abuse.

She found him under his bed in a fetal position incoherently crying.

“Mr. Price?” she asked as delicately as she could. She didn’t want to step on any toes but there was no need for worry. His wife and daughters had been gone for weeks on a ski adventure through the French Alps, the maid informed her in broken English. None of the house staff wanted to get close to the master bedroom but they showed her the way.

“I can’t believe it’s over! I can’t believe it’s over! What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”

“How much trouble could you be in, Wilson?” she cooed to her baby birdie, brazenly using his first name, and holding his head which he finally bravely stuck out only after much reassurance from her. “You’re Mr. Wilson M. Price.”

“The third”, he said weakly between tears.

“Yes, the third”, she said as she stroked his soft thinning hair. His deep-set blue eyes looking into hers. His sweet head resting on her lap-

Wait a minute. She was brimming. Stop it! Stop it!

“Do you mean it? Will it be okay?”

“Of course we will. We can get through anything, together,” she assured trying to maintain her generic plastic smile. It was hard, so hard, because right under the mask bubbled a violent volcano which threatened at any second and at every second to instantly melt her facade. It challenged every fiber to the depths of her core to keep up the well worn mask from igniting and going up in flames. She wanted to jump out of her skin! She wanted to frolic through a meadow! She felt like they were in the midst of consummating a sacred union, so happy that these words were finally coming out of their mouths so perfectly.

She could just kick herself.

“I’m so glad you so love me” he continued through tears as he blew his nose on her new silk shirt collar.

At the time she didn’t mind. She figured it was really his shirt, anyway. After all she purchased it with money from his company. After all he was the genius that made Pampron and then SecureCo such successful giants.

This time she did kick herself. She kicked herself for being so naïve and she must have been loud because a grubby man with a strong presence about him came to stop her.

“Patience, child. All things will come. In all good time.”

Child. If there was one thing she was not, that was it. In fact, aside from the sweeping change in interviewing practice, most of the time she felt more of a schoolmarm than anything else as she walked the halls at SecureCo keeping employees in line. She knew they called her that along with a host of other names, most much worse, behind her back. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t control what they said and in fact didn’t care. She made the resolve early on to return that kind of attitude with a plastic smile. There was no other choice. It was just the professional thing to do.

She never had children of her own, not that she could, anymore. It was too late for that. And it wasn’t because she was infertile but rather she never had them because that was also the right thing to do. Long ago she made SecureCo her mate, or lover she thought in times of heightened sexual arousal, and the employees her children. Some good, many naughty.

“Who the hell are you?” she ripped back at him.

“I am Father Bob, child.”

“Well, fuck you Father Bob”. She couldn’t believe that spilled out but was glad as hell it did. “Fuck you!”

“Hey! Whaddya’ mean there’s no more food?!” someone ahead of her in line screamed. She couldn’t believe she had to put up with this. Maybe she could just sell some of her old designer clothing on Ebay.

All around her people were pissed. Up ahead she saw the flash of that SecureCo name again as Father Bob picked up that page and rolled it into a torch to light bon fires in trash cans as he ran down the street away from her.

Further back in line the Troll walked by the mother and her daughter and took a bite out of a cheeseburger. “You fed the Troll?” someone yelled. The homeless man dropped the half eaten burger into the gutter and walked away speaking in many voices to himself.

People threw up their hands as the doors to the food shelter up ahead slammed closed. People started to walk away when someone stopped them all.

It was Father Bob.

Joan looked up. To her, though somehow he looked different. Somehow his voice was different.

The mother looked up. It was the creep again. She didn’t know his name.

“This system’s broke” he said. “And we’re gonna fix it.”

“I certainly am”, said Joan as she walked away, determined never again to be the facilitator of another megalomaniac’s grand designs.

“First! We need food!!!” he boomed and the crowd roared after him in cheers.

Maybe he isn’t such a creep the mother thought as she and her little daughter gathered around to join the mob as he rose on a soapbox to address his crowd.