Al Houston was missing his right hand, but things weren’t so bad. Gary Heady, the Boss, Mr. CEO Man, didn’t need the inconvenience of a lawsuit, even with all his assurances. After Al lost his hand in a workplace accident, he gained a position on the executive floor and exponentially deeper pockets.
Jasmine, an executive who technically outranked Al but was really Heady’s assistant, started the board meeting by taking attendance. Heady looked over her shoulder while she tapped at her tablet.
“Al’s here,” Heady said.
“What?”
“Add Al Houston to the list. He’s in attendance.”
Jasmine looked down the long gray table. Gray clouds blocked some light in the window behind her, but they were on a high enough floor that Al could see some blue. The real lighting came from the area with the cubicles, though, through the glass wall closer to Al. “Of course,” Jasmine said.
“Did he not mention it to you?” Gary asked, chuckling. He pointed his nose at Al, but he was talking to — and laughing at — Jasmine.
“Don’t talk to him that often.”
Bad sense of humor, that one, Al thought. But she’s pretty. She also somehow convinced Heady to drag her all the way up here, so who cares? Assistant to the human genie!
Al made himself laugh. The board stared. They stared at the end of his right arm too, and Al sank into his chair. Don’t look at me, he thought. Creeps! Voyeurs!
“Just… didn’t tell her… happy to be here…”
Heady cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. What’s this union business Jasmine tells me about?”
“I sent in-” Jasmine started.
“No business,” Clifford interrupted. The dog. The heel-licking, coffee-fetching, hair-shedding, sweaty, big, red dog. And wasn’t he the joy of his perfect nuclear family? At least, that was according to Jasmine. What did Al know? “It’s taken care of,” Clifford added.
Clifford! Al thought, grinning. Dog! I’m learning!
“Good, good,” Heady said. He paused, and looked over at Charley What’s-His-Face, who sighed.
“There is some less fortunate news,” Charley said. He was interrupted by a knock at the big glass door. Two meatsacks in suits came in, each with cup carriers. They passed them around to the real people, plus Al, and Jasmine thanked them.
Jasmine! Of course it was Jasmine, and not Heady. These were her creatures, not his. Al thought of Russian nesting dolls, and that ugly coffee bean farmer in the center.
But why look at them? Jasmine was prettier. She scrunched her eyes at Al, who redirected his attention to Charley.
“A collapse in one of the diamond mines,” Charley continued.
Heady was a puppy, now. He even set down his coffee. He had already finished, but that was besides the point. Al found himself sure that Heady was appalled by the disaster, and would do everything in his power to prevent anything similar in the future. “How… how many casualties?” Heady asked.
Charley smirked, then collected himself. Al dug his nails into his last palm. “Nine,” Charley said.
“God,” Heady breathed. He imitated taking a slow sip from his empty cup. Al reached out his right arm to do the same, then remembered his minor physical inconvenience. He remembered a time when he had thought his wife would need to provide for him, and had contemplated taking his life. Then Heady had come along, and thanked him for the sacrifices he had made for the company. Now, the bandage at the end of his limb was gone, he was on top of the world, and he could drink his coffee with his left hand just fine.
Justice, Al thought.
“Horrible, horrible,” Heady muttered. “And… well, I’m sure the safety precautions we demanded were being followed to the letter?”
Again, Charley smirked. He took a sip of coffee to hide it, but Al noticed. Al was a hawk, and he saw perfectly that Charley was a no-good, rotten, malicious villain. Charley coughed. “That’s hot,” he said.
Burn all the way down, Al thought. Burn all the way down to hell.
Clifford gave Charley a look, and finally, finally, Charley answered the question. “Erm, not to my understanding, no. I believe the miners were not given the helmets and the rope we distributed, which were reportedly sold by the managers. Not to mention on the week of the incident the miners told the local administration that the area was unsafe and needed to be attacked more slowly, and in response, they starved them for a few days and broke off some of their fingers.”
Heady moaned. Why he didn’t smite Charley and the mine’s local administration with lightning from heaven, Al couldn’t fathom. “So they think that just because they're halfway across the world they can get away with murder! With killing the poor and vulnerable, just for a bigger cut! Can’t tell the difference between red and green! Well, they’ll learn! I want them brought right here, so we can chat!”
“And what’s more,” Charley added, “and not that this matters, but this was the opportunity of the year for some journalist out in Africa reporting on human trafficking. Can you imagine, human trafficking leading her to our mine?”
“No!” Heady said.
But you can, Al thought. You had a hand in it — Charley. I’m sure of it.
The worst part was that Charley was staring. Charley was staring at Al’s missing hand. Al looked at Charley’s eyes, which flicked up and away.
Die, Al thought.
“Well,” Jasmine said, “We can send someone to bring the local admin here, and while they’re there they can find the reporter. Not to tell them not to get the word out, of course, just to clarify some things. Our involvement and lack thereof.”
Al rolled his eyes. Smartest person in the room award, he thought.
“Good,” Heady said. He was composed, but Al knew he was distraught. “What else?”
They talked about taxes and how to not pay them.
“Let’s put the extra sum in Place A,” Clifford suggested. “It’s so efficient, they couldn’t tax us fast enough.”
“No,” Charley argued. “I think Place B is much more elusive.”
Jasmine added her two cents. “It has to be Place C. It has the most liquidity, and it looks charitable from the outside. It’s all-round most prudent.”
All the while they drank their coffee. It was like a contest. Heady had finished so soon, so now they all had to finish as quickly as possible. Whoever let their coffee get lukewarm was a rotten egg.
Al couldn’t keep up. He wasn’t yet used to drinking with his left hand.
Jasmine won the big stupid word competition, and Heady agreed to put the money in Place C.
Al scoffed quietly.
Now there was the question of “Human Resources”. It turned out, Charley was the Head of the HR department. Al wasn’t surprised. Charley was good at managing people, wasn’t he? There was no one better than Charley at managing kids into shipping containers and trunks of cars, and managing them into diamond mines, and managing them into coffee bean plants.
“It’s good — I think,” Charley said. “Our blogging crew made some… err… judgmental errors.” Again, he smirked. He dumped the last of his coffee, which wasn’t really anything, into his mouth to hide it, but he couldn’t fool Al. God, if Al still had a good right hand he would’ve shown Charley how they did things on the east side. Of course, Al himself had moved west years prior.
Charley set down his empty cup. “They put up a post that could be interpreted as a dig against us — against you — and, well, what does a blogging team even do in this decade?”
“They’re gone?” Heady asked.
“They’re gone.”
“So you didn’t run it by me?”
Charley’s hand walked to the back of his neck. Clifford cleared his throat.
“I’m joking!” Heady laughed.
Everyone else laughed, too, and Al loudest. The good mood gave his heart permission to steal another glance at Jasmine, who returned the stare.
“Good, no, that’s good,” Heady said.
Al and Jasmine broke their gaze. Al returned his to Heady and Jasmine returned hers to Charley.
Al wasn’t looking at Charley, but he could feel the pressure of Charley’s eyes on his right arm. The cones in Charley’s retinas were sharp, prickly, impactful things.
“Though, for how long have you been waiting to let them go?” Jasmine asked.
“I suppose a while.”
“Since we’ve had cell phones, right?”
“You think I’ve been wasting time.”
Jasmine shrugged.
Charley scoffed. “Heady, please tell Jasmine that you can’t just fire people. There has to be both a reason and a pretext.”
Heady waved his hand. “I understand. Jasmine doesn’t need to.”
Jasmine crushed her empty cup.
Al wasn’t sure how to feel. He was rooting for Heady and against Charley, but they both beat Jasmine. What did he think about Jasmine?
He couldn’t remember.
But what did he need her for, anyway? He tried to drink some more coffee — with his ghost right hand. His stump knocked the cup over, and an ant’s fortune in brown liquid spilled on the table.
Heady snapped, and conjured the coffee-bringers from earlier. They came in, towels already in hand, and cleaned the mess. It happened so fast, it was like magic. Then they were gone.
“Thanks,” Al said to Heady.
“You’re welcome.” He paused to think. “Well, I think that’s about it. Except — and I apologize for not having done this sooner — we have a new member of the board.” He raised his hand, palm up like the Messiah. “Al Houston.”
Jasmine, for whatever reason, was staring at the ground, jaw clenched. Clifford and Charley looked from her to Al and clapped one or two times. “Welcome,” one of them mumbled. It was probably Clifford.
“Meeting adjourned,” said Heady.
The four of them left, while Heady stayed in the room and made a phone call. Charley walked away fastest.
Good, Al thought.
“Al,” Jasmine said, but again she was interrupted by Clifford. Clifford stood between them, grabbed Al’s hand, and shook it for longer than was polite. This took a moment, since Clifford offered his right hand first.
“Al, I just gotta ask. You know, I really don’t wanna be rude but…”
“How did I lose my hand?”
“Yeah. Well, kinda, but I wanted to clarify first. Heady wouldn’t tell me the details, of course, and so neither would Jasmine, and Charley — he’s Head of HR —”
“Right.”
“—Right, well all he would tell me is, ‘workplace accident’ this, ‘highly confidential’ that. Then, I heard you had an office job. That’s not true, is it?”
“It is.”
“You lost your hand in an office?”
“I sure did.”
“Doing what? Copying and pasting it onto a Google Doc?”
If Charley had said that, Al would have socked him. Instead, he laughed. Jasmine was still glowering, which made him laugh harder.
“No, Clifford. You know those big paper cutters? They look kinda like a guillotine?”
Clifford chuckled. “Yeah.”
“I tried to cut too many sheets at once, and put my hand in to stop them from wedging the blade open.”
“No way!” Clifford laughed.
“Way!”
“I mean… those are not sharp!”
“Well, this one was!”
“Maybe!”
“No, I mean… I remember! It definitely was!”
“But, I mean, still!”
Only then, they stopped laughing.
“Hey, Al, let me get you a coffee sometime.”
“Sounds great.”
Clifford walked off, too, and Jasmine confronted Al. “Al, I really didn’t appreciate you staring at me like that.”
Al smiled with his top teeth. “Jasmine, do you know what it’s like to lose a hand? To lose the most valuable part of your body and not only be unable to properly work, but be gawked at and ridiculed for the rest of your life because of one mistake? You have no idea what it’s like to have everyone you meet think they can stare at you like you’re behind bars in a zoo. You have no idea what it’s like to have everyone you walk past on the street feel entitled to their one and a half seconds of entertainment, so God help me if I don’t get to look at my wife every once in a while.”
Jasmine Houston tried to raise her eyes to his by standing on her toes, which meant she stood normally in her high heels. She covers her ring with her off hand. “Sixteen years, and you haven’t grown at all.”
“Hey, Jasmine,” a voice called from behind Al. Charley. “We gettin’ coffee? I don't know about you, but one cup definitely wasn’t enough for me.”
“I’d be delighted,” Jasmine called.
Al turned to face him. “What are you doing? I thought you left.”
The man actually looked confused. He was setting papers on a desk. “Taking Jasmine for coffee?”
“Jasmine? Jasmine Houston? My wife, Jasmine?”
He laughed. “No! God, no. I mean, yes, but it’s not like that.”
“What’s it like, then?”
“Al, no. We do it all the time.”
“You take my wife on dates all the time?”
“No, I mean it’s the office culture. We—” he moved his hand in a big circle “—do it all the time. It’s not romantic.”
“So it’s purely sexual?”
He laughed, again. Al was going to murder him. “Al, I like you. I wouldn’t do that. It isn’t romantic or sexual or anything like that. Okay?”
Jasmine stepped between them. “Okay,” she said.
For the first time, Al noticed the other office workers outside Heady’s office. The cubicles, and the people leaning out from them to watch the new executive get pushed around by Charley. “Okay,” Al said.
They left, and Al, unsure of where else to go, turned to face Heady through the glass pane that separated the meeting room from the cubicles. He couldn’t hear very well through it, and Heady was still on the phone besides.
Heady smiled and waved, but did not invite Al in. He had a conversation to finish.
At least the people who aren’t Charley aren’t like Charley, Al thought, smiling and waving back.
“Yes…” Heady was saying. “The union… some losses, but we’ll manage… local administration… that’s great, we never knew them anyway… the reporter… a non-issue?... You’re sure?... Okay. Thank you.”