Holy Water Read Free Page B

Relief to Laxatives. Two years ago he was fast-tracked to Silicon-based Sprays and Coatings and was making quite a name for himself, but when lawsuits not of his making led to the rightsizing of the division (because discontinuing it would send the wrong signal to class-action lawyers), they transferred him to Armpits.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    He has a nine-thirty focus group, which leaves just enough time to drop off his briefcase and check his messages. Outside his office sits Meredith, his administrative assistant. “ Morning, Meredith. ”
     
    “ You are a sought-after man. ” Meredith is reading the National Review. On her desk, already devoured, are the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Daily Racing Form. Meredith ’ s auburn hair is pulled back, as it is every day, in a bun. A 1950s librarian ’ s bun. Her loose-fitting skirt suit makes her look short and, if not exactly fat, then chunky. But Henry knows better.
     
    “ Who ’ s doing the sought- aftering ? ”
     
    “ The emperor of eccrine glands. ”
     
    “ The armpit czar. ”
     
    “ Aka Doctor Sweat. ”
     
    “ Aka Giffler. ” He loves this machine-gun give-and-take. He loves the way it makes him feel as if they really know each other, as if he ’ s one of the regular guys, nice to coworkers above and below, even though Meredith, a five-year employee of the firm, looks up to no man.
     
    Meredith thinks the give-and-take is banal. “ You got it. Giffler . ”
     
    “ His mood? ”
     
    “ Bloodcurdlingly chipper. He said he ’ ll stop in on your nine-thirty. ”
     
    Henry rolls his eyes. Poor me. Poor us. Meredith looks away, turns the page. The ironic rolling of eyes, the office politics of Henry Tuhoe and Giffler and the rest of them: beneath her.
     
    His office has a decent view of Park Avenue facing east, but he doesn ’ t bother to look anymore, unless there ’ s a demonstration in the street or an aerial view of a tragedy. Like the runaway cab that killed three on the sidewalk last month. They gathered in his office, Giffler , Meredith, the rest of Armpits, not because Henry is the one they all run to for calm and assurance in a crisis, but because his office has the best view. That ’ s the type of thing that seems to bond them now. Fatalities on the street below. Rumored and unexpected layoffs. So-and-so ’ s cancer scare. The collapse of a market, an industry, a way of life.
     
    On those occasions they ’ ll gather and talk. They ’ ll inquire about non-underarm-related, occasionally personal topics. They ’ ll linger and joke, briefly revealing intimate aspects of their lives while chalk lines are drawn on the sidewalk below, gurneys loaded and lifted.
     
    By contrast, the supposedly happy occasions—the baby showers in the seventh-floor conference room, the champagne toast for a job well done, and the soon-to-be-extinct ritual of after-work drinks—have the opposite effect on their relationships, their morale. Those rituals bore them, crystallize their sources of anger, and are breeding grounds for future resentment. She ’ s making how much? They had sex where? The nerve, taking the corporate jet with more cuts to come. It ’ s gotten to the point where even the people being honored can ’ t finish their Carvel cake and warm Korbel and get out of there fast enough. Or maybe this is just how Henry has begun to see it.
     
    He closes the door, hangs up his jacket, and turns on his laptop. Standing, he bends over the keyboard. He has twenty-nine e-mails, but he ’ s not interested in them. E-mail now has all the urgency of snail mail, yet nothing, not Facebook or Tumblr or Twitter, has risen to replace it. He opens his Web browser and peeks up to look through the frosted glass of his interior windows. Meredith is standing, talking to someone. Through the lens of frosted glass she ’ s relegated to a vaguely defined shadow, but on his desktop screen Meredith is about to become something altogether