15 Civic Square
Live:Fiction #1
Dave Cornford
Copyright 2012 Dave Cornford
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into any retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked statues and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorised, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.
15 Civic Square
Contents
1. Introduction
2. A Day at the Top
3. The Tipping Competition
4. The Project
Free Book Offer & Acknowledgements
About the Author
Introduction
Live-Fiction is a stream of short stories and novellas (published as ebooks) that are inspired by current events. The stories are witty and thought provoking, and aim to be contemporary but not disposable. They are an easily digestible size – up to about 10-12 thousand words – so able to be read on a mobile device but also long enough to enable character and plot development with substance. There are now more than ten titles in the series, several collections and free audio on the live-fiction podcast. Check them out at www.live-fiction.com
15 Civic Square uses the setting of the fictitious National Civic Bank to delve into the challenges and complexity of modern life at a time when "money" is constantly in the news. "A Day at the Top" traces the inner thoughts and turmoil of the CEO, while "The Tipping Competition" follows two close friends and co-workers through the chaos of a corporate restructure. Finally, "The Project" is the story of a customer who just can't take it any more.
These three stories were first published in "Cracks in the Ceiling", and now form Book 1 of this new series.
A Day at the Top
How could I be so bloody stupid?
If I had a dollar for every time I'd asked myself that question in the last six months, I wouldn't be in so much trouble. The fact that I mostly ask it in the middle of the night is not helping.
The hardest thing is that I can't tell anyone. If it got out, I'd be a laughing stock. Imagine it – CEO of a bank loses $4m on the market, by gearing up and buying in before the crash. By buying in at the top of the market. By buying in at the worst possible time.
No one knows how much money I've lost, and I won't be going back to that fool advisor who agreed that I should jump into the market when I did. In any case, he only knows half the story – I put in twice as much as he recommended, and borrowed even more. I don't think 2007 will go down as my best year. I've heard none of his clients can contact him anyway, and if I start causing trouble, someone will work out I might have followed his advice. The media are always looking for a fresh angle, so they'd run my personal demise hard.
I haven't even told Janine. There she is, lying beside me. Asleep. Unaware. When she asked me if we'd lost any money, I said we had, but not too much. I said that everyone had lost some, and that these things happen. So she shrugged it off. We haven't lost the house, I haven't lost my job, we can still spend. Only one lot of school fees to pay now, which is a relief.
People might scoff at the idea of scrimping on a seven figure salary, but I'm subtly winding back on things like cars, so the savings can go into paying off debt without any visible effect on the family. I barely have any friends to notice that the new BMW is a cruddy two litre diesel model. We've sacked all the staff in the car park and outsourced, so no one there will notice. The old guys used to love knowing what was in the garage under the building. I can always claim pious environmentalism if pressed.
The money I inherited from Dad is all gone, the legacy of his 40 years of hard work washed up in a margin loan in about 40 days. Janine never really knew how much there was, so I can soften that blow with a little creativity. Getting all the mail about the deal sent to the office marked STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL was a master stroke as it turned out. At least it wasn't Dad losing it on my advice, I couldn't have coped with that.
One thing is certain, I won't be retiring to a few cushy board positions in a couple of years. I've already put it around that I can't imagine retiring, that I love being in the driver's seat, and that I want to keep working at CEO level indefinitely. No one has faced me up and called me a liar yet. When you've got money, position and power you can spin things your way easily – the pollies have a tough job getting away with things compared to us.
I wonder if they can sleep.
The nights just seem to go on forever. I've started walking around the house, looking at every detail, to while away the time. The money we spent on it was worth it. It's well built, with no creaking boards to betray night wanderers. It's a powerful house, full of strong statements, hard edges, bold understatement. The lights go on and off, and it's always the right temperature.
If only I could get the damn music system to work. A few thousand staff fear me, but I can't get a few thousand songs to play out in the alfresco without looking like a chump. At least I haven't suffered the humiliation of Jason being able to solve it – I'm happy to let him keep the PCs running so they can all get their homework and research done, but this is supposed to be my toy. My expensive, useless toy.
The view of the harbour is so abundant that it can be rationed, with dramatic windows framing particular vistas, or so the architect said. There's one particular chair I end up sitting in a lot. Waiting for an errant teenager to come home, reading emails from posers and sycophants on my blackberry, but always looking out at the harbour, at a view that changes by the minute all day and all night.
For months I've been sitting here half naked watching the dawn creep across the harbour. Almost every day a different building is the first one to catch the light as a sign post to the end of my vigil. That's the signal for coffee, and I've perfected getting the machine to make the brutal black liquid I need.
From here I can see the city slowly awaken, and somehow I have to match its inscrutable march towards daily function. Caffeine infused, the routine must commence.
One of the more thoughtful staff in the company once said to me that the CEO's shower is a dangerous place for a company. The comment brought shocked stares around the room, because the dullards thought he was making an inappropriate and innuendo-laden gag or accusation. But his meaning was simple – the shower is a thoughtful, isolated, energising place, and ideas pop into your head there more than almost anywhere else. You head into the office, tell someone your good idea, with the implied mandate to “make it so”, and it's off and running. Someone will cook up a business case to make it look viable, money is found, off we go.
When you're CEO, no one ever says “Our research doesn't say customers will buy that –can we hold off until we've tested it?”, or “That's not in line with our IT architecture blueprint – can we have some time to see if it has legs?” I'd love to promote the next person who says something like that to me, but I suspect no one who's close enough to me would be game to say it.
My shower isn't a dangerous place at the moment. I'm lucky to stay awake through it, let alone have the spark of some dramatic innovation.
I used to love the routine of donning my uniform of office. A quick scan of the appointments for the day to see what's required – power dressing to impress and demoralise, or a little casual to highlight that,
when it comes down to it, I can. I also love being deliberately contrary in what I wear, so no one can pick my mood or intentions when I arrive in the office.
Now I can barely focus on the blackberry, standing in the middle of the walk-in wardrobe that's bigger than the living room in our first house. The tiredness is exposing my failing 40-something eyes. Can't go wrong with grey suit and a power tie, I guess.
I've never been one to stress out about work at home, to let the pressure valve be the family. It's clear from the press that the company is doing OK in the crisis, so I've no excuse for being precious at home. I have been used to the freedom of eating breakfast alone, but lately it seems Kirsty is always there. I get the impression she's got me under surveillance. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her watching me on the sly, in my reflection in the high gloss cupboards or bench-tops. I might be wrong, but I think she is the only one who's picked that there's something wrong – never heard of daughter's intuition, but that may be it. She's seen something in me that no one else has seen. Either that, or I'm imagining it.
I get out of the house unscathed in any case. I try not to think about the car as I drive, it's too depressing, but lately my mind has been drifting constantly toward thinking of Dad. He worked so hard for all those years teaching, saving, living the life of an everyday hero. The number of kids who love science and went on to do something wonderful, many earning much more than him, would be beyond counting.
When Mum died he hardly missed a beat, with no help from me. He ended up staying at work much longer than he'd planned. Didn't renovate their house, didn't go on all those trips they had planned. He only got to enjoy a few months of his retirement when he went suddenly with an aneurysm. When I got into the finances, I couldn't believe how much he'd salted away, how much their house was worth when I sold it at the height of the market. And now, it's all gone.
It's just as well the drive to work isn't that long, or I'd get too far into replaying this sorry tale. Who knows how the boss-watchers would interpret me being moist eyed when I arrived at the office.
The car seems to drive itself past the huge brass plate on the front of the building, "15 Civic Square", and down into the bowels of the building. When the company started out, the address of the single office meant something. Now, National Civic Bank has squashed the whole of the quaint old Civic Square under its concrete monolyth.
I'm glad the workplace is so competitive and brutal now. When I started out, the senior guys in an organisation like this really were a team. The company and the market changed slowly, so real friendships formed, and those guys really seemed to look after each other. Now, it's less friendly, less permanent, and much less effective, but certainly easier to hide in.
The people who work for me now behave like dogs. Temporary alliances form, then someone gets undermined when the wind changes direction. It's like a cheap game of Survivor, except the winners and losers are the poor bastards who end up losing their jobs when some major project gets white-anted from above. What amazes me is that they're so stupid that they think I can't see it all happening. I sometimes think my job is just herding a bunch of lobotomised vipers. The idea that the Board would give my job to any of them is laughable, the fact that they themselves think otherwise, tragic.
I often wonder how much money they all lost in the crash. I wonder if the staff are running a book on that. I wonder what my odds are.
The diary will be a slave driver again today if I stick to it. The meetings are packed in half-hour after half-hour all morning. Better to be busy than stewing.
Meeting number three and I've been listening to this fool go on for fifteen minutes now, and I'd rather have my brain sucked out through a straw. I've read this power-point pack before. The general gist is that he's such a useless leader of his team, he wants to send them into six months of restructuring, during which nothing worthwhile will get done and we'll get “organisational alignment to strategy” just after the strategy becomes obsolete. And he'll have another excuse for not delivering. I feel like telling him to bash a few heads together and just get on with it. If I have to pay any more clever people to take redundancy after one of these shams, I'll piss on this fool.
I'll agree to his proposal and send him on his way –but I've made my decision –he won't see out the year here.
* * *
I don't lose it often, but I have found a place to hide when it all gets too much. None of us has an office any more, so I can't earnestly shut the door for a while and dramatically tell my Executive Assistant to “Hold all calls.” It's a little room on a floor full of meeting rooms, that for some reason can't be booked by anyone for a meeting, and nobody seems to know it exists. I can stride into it purposefully, so in the unlikely event that anyone sees me they think I'm off to an urgent and confidential meeting.
The door shuts with a thud, and the little lock on the door feels like it could hold back an invading army by its very existence. Just after the markets collapsed, I purchased a whole charity pack of chocolates that someone had left in the kitchen on our floor – everyone thought it was very magnanimous of me, but they didn't know it was for my secret stash. The little secret cupboard in my little secret room opens to reveal a dwindling stock of the sugar hit I need.
It's a sad picture –successful CEO, hiding from the world in a cupboard eating cheap chocolate. I can self-justify and say it's eccentric, but it really is just plain sad. And increasingly frequent.
Today is a two-chocolate crisis. A journo has approached the Chairman wanting to do a profile on the company, and how it's survived the Global Financial Crisis. The Chairman helpfully suggested a more personal angle, such as an in-depth profile of the CEO who had successfully steered the company through the crisis. Thanks. I've bluffed my way through plenty of these things before, but this journo won't take the “team effort” line I'll try to spin. I'm used to dodging around areas I don't want them to talk about, but I'm worried I'll either let the cat out of the bag about the company, or about me, trying to be clever about the other one. I feel a trip to visit the Asian operation coming up, maybe with some fact-finding in the region? That should put them off for a while.
Three o'clock. A two hour Steering Committee meeting on some project that is over-budget and not delivering. I'll look stern and let them dance to my stony silence today, which will make sure the meeting finishes on time so I can get back to my desk and do something useful. More useful. Less useless.
The days are starting to close in now as autumn progresses, and the brief joy of getting out of the office in daylight is long gone. The rain has crept in while I was reading, and from my desk I can see the city lights sparkling through the damp. This will look great from home.
This is the time when it pays to look really busy, because the moths come out – people who stay late, and get attracted to the light at my desk, hoping for privileged access to the oracle that they can't get without 2 weeks notice to book a meeting through my EA. I know how these things go. “Can I catch you for five minutes?” turns into an hour or so, depending on how thick the layers of half-truths and deception are, how long it takes me to see through what's going on. I used to enjoy it as a weird kind of bloodsport, and if I was really feeling vicious I'd end with “Revise that paper as we've discussed, and I'll look at it in the morning.” He he, no sleep for them tonight. I can't be bothered now, so word is out not to venture around here after six.
The rain makes a fresh whirring sound as the tyres flick it up under the car, and the rhythm of the wipers is hypnotic. Am I better off for the fact that I didn't have to go through the tedium of actually turning them on? I can rest easy knowing that when the car pulls into the garage at home, I won't have to turn them off either.
The house is full of the smell of something delicious. They're still at the table as I sidle into the kitchen, and Kirsty jumps up to serve mine out. It's such a great place to eat, with subdued lighting and a huge window facing the harbour. The food is fantastic, but then I know that the
beef did not come from the supermarket. Must stop trying to calculate the cost of the ingredients and the wine, it won't make that much difference to the budget.
We talk about school, uni and work, and I'm so glad that these kids are doing fine without any meaningful input from me. We seem to have set them up okay –Janine and I exchange proud parent looks a couple of times as the stories of the week unfold. I've always tried to encourage them to follow their passion rather than chase money, but in the end they're both heading towards solid, well-paid professions. This is a relief as they certainly won't be getting those apartments I was going to give them when they turned twenty-five. Both sold.
There's a new patisserie in the village shops, and I'm pretty sure the wafting beauty that has just emerged from the oven came from there. Add the handmade ice cream, and that dessert looks like fifty bucks worth.
We spend the rest of the evening orbiting around the earnest designer kitchen, coming and going with assignments, phone calls, television, washing up and cups of tea and hot chocolate. All the while the city lights twinkle through the rain, a backdrop to the ideal family in the ideal house enjoying their ideal life.
Another day undiscovered. Another day when the truth that the company is doing OK has triumphed over the truth that I have taken my family to the brink and trashed the legacy my father drove himself into an early grave to leave for me.
Just another day at the top.
The Tipping Competition
“When?”
“I'd say next Tuesday. They tend not to do it on a Monday, and they never do it on Friday – too many suicides over the weekend.” Steve had let the volume of their conversation creep up above a discrete whisper.
“Shhh. That's only when they tell people they've lost their jobs, not when they announce the restructure is coming.”
“OK, then, Jimbo, lay your bet.”
“And anyway, who'd top themselves if they got sacked from this place?” James thought for a few moments. He actually agreed with Steve's logic, but couldn't tip the same date. May as well go out on a limb. “Tomorrow. Friday the sixth.”