A Winter Dream

Chapter


Fourteen


Nothing is so predictable as the dominance of the unpredictable.

Joseph Jacobson’s Diary





The next Monday morning I had been at my desk for less than an hour when Timothy buzzed my cubicle.

“Come see me,” he said.

I walked to the office. He was packing the contents of his desk into a box.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Did you get the memo?”

“What memo?”

“Leonard’s gone.”

“That was fast.” I leaned against the back wall of his office. “Potts said he was going to fire him. I didn’t know if he was serious.”

“Potts is always serious,” he said.

“Leonard told me he fires people a lot.”

“Actually, he’s never fired anyone,” Timothy said.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s too much red tape in firing people. So he demotes them, then transfers them to some remote hellhole, hoping they’ll quit.”

“Does it work?”

“Usually.”

“Is that what he’s doing to Leonard?”

“Yes. He’ll send him to some satellite office to languish in obscurity. Writers’ purgatory.”

“How is Leonard taking this?”

“Not well. He’s blaming you.”

“Why would he blame me?”

“Because Potts told him that you’re now in charge of the creative team. So, presumably, it’s your decision.”

I sat down in one of the chairs. “He said he was going to put me in charge. I have no idea what that means.”

“It means you’re my boss,” Timothy said. “Welcome to your new office.”

I looked at him with surprise. “You’re kidding me.”

“I wish I were.”

“I don’t want your office,” I said. “I thought Potts just wanted me to oversee the Bank On It campaign. I wasn’t trying to take your job.”

“I know. It’s Potts’s way of doing business, divide and conquer.”

“This doesn’t have to divide us, does it?”

“No. It’s not like I got a pay cut.”

He lifted a large box off of the desk. “There you go. It’s all yours.”

“Wait,” I said. “I’ll just tell Potts I don’t need an office.”

“That’s not a good idea,” he said. “Potts is a control freak. If you don’t take the office, he’ll leave it empty before he’d give it back to me. And he’ll be angry at you for defying him.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It does to Potts. To him, life is about gaining power and the burden of protecting it.”

“That’s just stupid.”

“Maybe, but that’s how the world turns,” he said. He walked to the door carrying a box. “You should know that. That’s why you’re in Chicago.”



That afternoon Potts called me into his office.

“I’ve scheduled a meeting with the BankOne marketing team for Thursday afternoon. They’d like to brainstorm some direct promotion ideas for increasing clientele.”

“What do I need to prepare?”

“Nothing. They just want to talk things out. So how’s your new office?”

I resisted saying anything about Timothy. “It has a great view.”

A peculiar smile crossed his face. “Speaking of great views, what did you think of Brandi?”

“Brandi?”

“My fiancée. You met her your first day.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know her name. She’s beautiful.”

“She’s a model. I met her on a photo shoot for Victoria’s Secret.”

“Burnett has the Victoria’s Secret account?”

“Had,” he said. “We lost.” He looked me over. “What about you? Anyone special?”

“Had,” I said. “I also lost the account.”

“What did you do to lose it?”

“I came here.”

“I had a wife like that. She didn’t want to leave Pocatello, Idaho.”

I was as surprised to hear that he’d been married as that he was from Pocatello. “You’re from Pocatello, Idaho?”

“Someone’s gotta be,” he said. “The thing is, some people dream in black and white. And some people, like us, dream in Technicolor. You can’t change them. All you can do is change the channel.”

“I wish it were that easy,” I said.

“It is,” he said. “The trick is to never fall in love.”