Anatomy of Evil (6 page)

Carol looked at her surroundings, hugged herself and started to cry. Sam put an arm around her.

“We're going to be okay,” said Gary. “We're safe.”

After the drinks arrived, he told them about his conversation with Jamarqui. He shared the warning that they not discuss the experience of the red storm.

“The last time we ignored his warning, look what happened. I don't want a repeat. Let's take an oath here, now, the four of us, that we just bury this experience, evil spirits, whatever the hell it was…” He looked into their faces. “That means we never mention it to anyone, not on the island, not to our spouses. Starting today, consider me superstitious, consider me scared…”

He grew silent. Then Sam spoke up to the group. “I'm going to pray for us,” he said. “I recommend all of you do the same.”

Chapter Ten

On the ride back to the island's small airport, the seven Chicagoans sat on the wood benches in the back of the pickup truck, a study in contrasts. Kelly, Emma and Jake engaged in lively chatter, reflecting on highlights of the past week and the consistently flawless weather. Rodney, Gary, Sam and Carol sat in silence, faces stoic, emotions cold.

Emma attempted to engage with her husband, offering him lotion, commenting on the unusual orange tan spread across his arms and face. He shook her off.

“You coming down with something?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“It's probably the ice cubes from our drinks,” said Jake. “I bet that's what got me sick. It's not like they are going to use bottled water for ice cubes.”

“My stomach's fine,” said Gary in a firm tone that cut off any further discussion about his condition.

Arriving at the airport, the passengers began climbing out of the pickup truck. An airport worker loaded their luggage on carts.

Emma waited in the truck for several minutes before crying out, “Gary, you know I can't do this by myself.”

Wordlessly, Gary returned to the pickup truck and thrust his hand at her. She clasped it, leaned on him and delicately descended the stepstool, her face tight with pain.

Once her feet reached the ground, Gary abruptly let go. She nearly lost her balance. He turned and headed to the main building.

The driver stood by his vehicle, smiling and wishing the travelers a safe ride home. Sam stopped and stared at the man. An awkward moment passed before Sam wordlessly continued on his way.

Seeing this, Kelly approached the driver and thanked him, semi-apologizing for the chilly behavior of some of the others. “It's been a great trip. We're just very tired.” She gave the driver a ten dollar tip.

As Carol and Jake reached the entrance to the airport building, a thin, dark-skinned island man and his young son greeted them. The man carried a large piece of cardboard populated with a variety of dusty, out-of-fashion sunglasses. “One dollar,” he said. “Sunglasses, one dollar.”

“One dollar,” echoed the small boy, smiling, eyes bright, face weathered beyond his young years.

Carol looked at them both and responded, immediate and firm.

“No.”

Jake turned to look at his wife, surprised. Without slowing her stride, she entered the building.

Inside Cassidy International Airport, the small staff immediately stepped forward to assist the travelers. As the group prepared to go through paperwork and passports, the sunglasses salesman and his son entered the building and continued soliciting potential customers.

“Get away from us,” Gary told them in a harsh tone. “Those sunglasses were probably stolen from tourists on the beach.”

“Gary!” said Emma in a disapproving tone.

A large islander wearing a blue security shirt stepped forward and waved for the old man and his son to leave. “Go! Go! Get out!”

The old man responded with a rapid fire of words in the local language. The security man shouted back at him, also in Gilbertese.

An argument broke out and the security guard quickly lost his patience. He grabbed the cardboard out of the old man's hands and tossed it away, sending sunglasses scattering across the floor. The elderly man's shouts grew louder and the boy joined in, high-pitched and panicked.

The confrontation quickly escalated with the security man pushing the old man and his son out of the building. The old man attempted to resist, arms stretched out, slapping at the security man, demanding to return inside for the sunglasses.

Through the open doorway, several of the travelers witnessed the security man strike the old man, knocking him down. The old man's son burst into tears and cried out, “Papa!”

“Oh my God,” said Kelly, heading toward the door. “Rodney—you have to do something.”

Rodney grabbed her arm.

“No,” he said. “Stay out of it.”

She whirled to look into his eyes. “What?”

“I mean it,” said Rodney.

Gary called out to the group. “C'mon, let's not miss our flight.”

They boarded the small plane for Honolulu.

Nestling into their seats, many of the passengers shut their eyes for sleep, drowsy from the early hour.

Carol pulled out her cell phone and called up her email.

Jake, sitting next to her, gave her a gentle nudge. “Honey, let it rest until we get back. Don't start now, save it for home.”

She began working the keyboard frantically.

“Your boss will understand,” said Jake, leaning toward his wife. “What could be so important that…”

Then he glimpsed her screen.

Carol was deleting all of her emails, one by one.

“Honey…” said Jake, shocked. “I don't think you want to do that.”

She continued the systematic deletion of every email.

Jake watched as she deleted, unread, a message from one of their sons.

“Hey!” he said, and he reached over for the phone. “What are you, delirious?”

She gave him a sharp elbow jab and he retreated.

“Jesus,” he said.

In the row behind them, Sam made his first sound in more than an hour. He started laughing.

At Honolulu International Airport, during the wait for their connecting flight to Chicago, the group found a sit-down restaurant at the food court and filled a table to order lunch.

“As much as I like fish, I am looking forward to a good old-fashioned American hamburger,” said Jake.

Gary began snapping his fingers for a waitress.

“Gary, that's rude,” said Emma, annoyed. “What's gotten into you?”

“I'm hungry and I want one of these bimbos to take our order.”

His words were loud enough to reach one of the young waitresses, a pretty Hawaiian woman with long, sleek dark hair. She advanced to the table with a look of trepidation. She forced a smile. “Are you ready to order?”

“Honey,” said Gary, “what I want is not on the menu.”

Jake shut his eyes and shook his head in disbelief.

“Let me apologize for my husband,” said Emma. “Too much time in the sun, I think it baked his brain.”

“No problem,” said the waitress, with a small, nervous laugh.

Gary straightened up in his chair. His eyes locked on another waitress at a nearby table, taller with a shapely figure. “Can we switch? I kind of like that one.”

Kelly turned to Emma. “Do we need to kick him under the table?”

“You're being an asshole,” Emma told Gary. “It's not funny.”

Then Sam began laughing.

After ordering, Gary watched as the taller waitress walked the aisle near them. He picked up a fork and gave it a casual toss to the floor in front of her.

“Oops,” he said.

She stopped and bent down to pick it up.

Gary's eyes lingered on her rear end as she doubled over, making his intentions obvious to everyone at the table.

Emma stared at him, aghast.

“I'll get you a new one,” the waitress told Gary, naïve to what had just happened.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he replied.

“How long before we eat?” mumbled Carol. “I'm starving.”

Rodney reached into his pocket. He brought out a selection of candy and offered it to her. Carol chose a Snickers bar.

“Where did you get that?” asked Kelly.

Rodney gestured across the food court to a newsstand.

“When did you buy candy?” she said, surprised.

“I didn't,” replied Rodney, tearing open a bag of M&Ms.

She looked him over. “Wait. What?”

He looked at her, shrugged and smiled.

“Oh, you just took it?” Kelly half-smiled, as if entering a joke.

Rodney did not smile back. “I'm a police officer. I serve society. Society owes me a few things in return.”

She turned serious. “But you can't just—”

Rodney ignored her. He turned his attention across the table. “Sam, care for some Raisinets?”

“Yes, please.” Sam took a small bag, tore it open and spilled them across his placemat. He began eating them one by one.

After lunch, the group headed for the terminal and boarded the flight to Chicago to continue the long trip home, fatigued and brewing with growing tensions.

As the plane took off, Jake began to mutter about the loss of his camera.

“We had so many great pictures,” he said to Carol. “I don't see how you could've just let it fall overboard on that fishing trip. Didn't you have it looped around your neck? I always had it around my neck, or at least around my wrist. That was a high-end camera, we had pictures going back months. I don't think I downloaded the ones from Michael's track meet or Todd's prom pictures. We probably lost a hundred, a hundred twenty-five pictures. It's not just about the camera, it's the memories. I had all those fun photos from the luau…”

Carol turned to him and spoke in a booming voice loud enough to fill the aircraft. “WOULD YOU JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THE CAMERA?”

After an extended, awkward hush, a single sound broke the silence.

Sam was laughing.

At the end of a very long day, the seven travelers stood disheveled and tired along the rim of a crowded baggage carousel at O'Hare International Airport. Piece by piece, they identified their luggage and lifted the belongings up and across the maze of obstacles to safely bring them to their side.

After Rodney and Kelly had retrieved their suitcases, Rodney remained standing very still, staring hypnotically at the revolving stream of baggage.

“What are you looking at?” asked Kelly. “Let's go.”

Rodney's eyes followed a specific item that moved in a wide arc, passing throngs of travelers, unclaimed.

“I bet I could just take it,” he said.

“Take what?”

“Those golf clubs. That's the fifth time they've gone around. Whoever they belong to…they're not here. I could go over, take them, and we could be out of here in minutes.”

“Okay…” she said, looking at him strangely. “But why?”

“Because they're nice clubs,” said Rodney. “Because I could.”

Suddenly a woman nearby let out a shriek, followed by an angry shout. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

On the other side of the baggage carousel, an attractive middle-aged woman in a blue business suit and black stockings faced Gary, staring him down. Emma came hurrying over, limping and dragging a heavy suitcase.

“I did not,” said Gary clearly.

“You did too,” said the woman. “You grabbed my ass. You keep your hands to yourself or I'm calling security.”

“Gary!” said Emma, reaching him, dumbstruck. “What are you doing? Why did you walk away? What the hell is going on?”

“Nothing,” said Gary. “Just some crazy bitch making up shit.”

The business woman opened her mouth, shocked, and simply let out a disgusted gasp. She stormed off, dragging her suitcase, wheels squeaking loudly across the floor.

Elsewhere in the crowded baggage claim area, Sam walked purposefully through the crowd, cutting a deliberate path to a destination, eyes steady and focused forward.

He walked up to a gray-haired clergyman, dressed in black shirt and pants with a white collar. The priest was engaged in a deep conversation with two young people. Sam interrupted him, standing inches away, staring directly into his face. He uttered a firm declaration.

“There is no God.”

Part Three

The Bleeding

Chapter Eleven

“Good morning, sunshine.”

Carol's eyes opened, thin slits overpowered by the light. Jake stood over her at the side of the bed. She stared at him, stretching under the sheets.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded and slowly sat up, rubbing her face.

“It's going to take a few days to get used to the time change,” he said. He kissed her on the cheek and left the room.

She rejoined him in the kitchen, where the boys were digging into heaping bowls of cereal.

“I decided to make us omelets,” said Jake, standing over the stove.

“Thanks,” mumbled Carol.

“I think what we needed was a good night's sleep in our own bed,” said Jake, pouring eggs into a skillet. “It'll be good getting back into our routine.” He chuckled. “You were pretty cranky yesterday.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

Michael, one of the teenage boys, chortled. “No way. I've never seen Mom cranky.”

“She swore,” said Jake.

“Dad, you lie,” said Michael's younger brother, Todd.

The boys finished their cereal, placed the bowls in the sink and headed upstairs in loud, thudding footsteps to prepare for school.

Carol remained quiet.

Jake walked over and spoke in a low voice, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tease you. It was just a different side of you. But I understand. I'm guessing… You're having your period, right?”

An hour and a half later, Carol sat in her car in the parking lot of InvestOne. She had been listening to her Empowerment for Good motivational CD during the commute, but as she approached the office building, the disc started to skip. Now it was stuck in a mad shuffle, a sound collage of syllables producing gibberish.

The noise transfixed her, a steady rhythm of “crshm…crshm…crshm…”

Then she heard: “Crush them… Crush them… Crush them… Crush them.”

Carol left her car. She advanced inside the building, receiving a cheery greeting from Syd, the guard at the front lobby.

“Welcome back, Ms. Henning,” he said.

She stared at him for a moment, swimming for a response until the old, familiar automatic pilot kicked in.

“Thank you. How are the Cubs doing?”

Syd chuckled. “Not so good. But it's early in the season. Plenty of time to get it together and make a run for first place. It's a weak division this year.”

She stepped into an open elevator, where she exchanged pleasantries with coworkers. As the elevator climbed, she experienced a brief bout of dizziness with small sparks appearing before her eyes. She shook them away.

On the fourth floor, she stopped by her boss's office on her way to her cubicle.

“Good morning, Diane,” said Carol, pushing up her energy levels. “I'm back. It was a wonderful trip.”

Diane looked up from her desk, eyes filled with a familiar look of panic, fingers tense like claws.

“Great. Love to hear all about it. Later. Now. Listen. I need your help with something right away. I'm totally swamped. We have a job candidate coming in. She might already be here. I'm supposed to interview her but I just don't have the time. I need you to cover for me.”

“You want me to interview her?” said Carol. “I just got in. I—”

Diane held out a piece of paper. “Take this. It's her resume. She's great, she's perfect. This is just a formality for HR. She's as good as hired.”

Carol took the resume. “For what?”

“Analyst. Entry level. Replacing Chris. God, I need my morning tea.”

“Do you want me to fill out the candidate assessment booklet?”

“No!” said Diane loudly, then quickly softening her tone. “I mean, obviously I value your opinion but it's not necessary. The decision has already been made. I just need a warm body in there with her. Make her feel welcome. I'm working with HR on the offer. You better hurry up, it's in Conference Room D. She might already be there. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'd love to hear about your vacation, maybe over lunch one day.”

Carol took the resume. She hurried to her desk to drop off her laptop and remove her jacket.

She stared at the resume for a moment. In the margins, Diane had scribbled: “starting salary 78,500.”

The number struck Carol like a punch to the stomach. It was well above her own salary. There was nothing in the candidate's resume that surpassed Carol's own skills and background. In fact, this was a student fresh out of college with basic internships serving as professional experience. Carol was entering her sixth year for her employer.

Carol let out a small sigh.

“Hi Carol, how was Mexico?” a male coworker called out, passing by without stopping.

“I wasn't in Mexico,” she replied, barely audible.

Carol began the walk to Conference Room D, gripping the resume. She felt a pounding in her chest. The walls began to curve and distort. Then the corridor lengthened, flinging her destination farther into the distance.

She stopped, shut her eyes and felt a tight shudder restrict her breathing. She fought to relax. After a moment, she opened her eyes and her surroundings returned to a normal perspective.

“Hi, I'm Amy Sibley!”

The chirpy, fresh-faced brunette hopped out of her chair as soon as Carol entered the conference room. She offered an energetic handshake. “You must be Diane?”

“No, I'm sorry,” said Carol softly. “Diane got pulled away. I'm Carol.”

“Well, then, great to meet you, Carol,” exclaimed Amy with a big, confident smile.

Carol sat down at the table and Amy sat across from her. She wore a cheerful peach-colored business suit, so new that Carol expected to see the Nordstrom tags hanging off it.

Carol looked down at her resume. “So…it says here you're fresh out of business school, Indiana University.”

“That's right, go Hoosiers!” she said with a happy punch of enthusiasm.

“Well, tell me about yourself,” said Carol. She wished she had a formal set of questions to guide the conversation.

However, Amy clearly didn't need them. She launched into a crisp, well-rehearsed monologue. “I'm looking at a career in investment banking. It's my passion. I have excellent analytical and quantitative skills. I love to tell the story behind the numbers. I've been following InvestOne and all of your successes and I really believe I can be an asset to the firm.”

“At InvestOne, we put people first,” said Carol, recalling language from a recent employee engagement campaign. “We're not a factory producing widgets. What we sell is the talent of our people, so we strive to be the very best. InvestOne is one big extended family helping each other to succeed so we can all rise together.”

“I'm excited to hear more about the job,” said Amy. “It sounds perfect.”

“InvestOne is united behind a single mission,” recited Carol. “Client solutions. For your role, that means deep research and analysis with an excellent attention to detail. You'll help build financial models that analyze the impact of different capital structures, potential M&A deals, market activity, credit and risk analysis. Your assessments will help guide the investment decisions of major institutions and billions of dollars…”

The dizzy sparks returned, dancing in front of Carol like fireflies. She continued to speak the company line without effort, unspooling a stream of words already programmed into her head.

Carol rattled off a half-dozen responsibilities of an investment analyst at InvestOne, rolling through a well-known bullet list and concluding her speech with one additional requisite:

“Also, most importantly, you will need to eat shit.”

Silence.

Amy's little mouth popped open. Several seconds later, words fell out. “I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly…”

“You will need to eat shit,” Carol repeated with perfect annunciation.

“I… What?” Clearly Amy had not rehearsed a response for this moment.

“I said you will eat shit,” said Carol. “Every day you will eat shit with a great big smile on your face like it's the tastiest delight you've ever rolled across your tongue and swallowed into your gullet.”

“I'm sorry, I don't…”

“It's big business, Amy. This isn't your fun little sorority house pajama party anymore. This is bending over and taking one for the team until you rupture and begin internal bleeding.”

“I still don't…”

“Happy to elaborate,” said Carol, slamming her hand on the table. “In your job here as an investment analyst you will have no interaction with clients, no ownership of your work, no big trips or fancy events. Just a desk and a computer and if you're lucky, a few spare hours a week for a social life because every other minute will be spent at the service of redundant layers of management scrabbling for relevance. You will do the working, they will take the credit and you will thank them for it. You will laugh loud at their jokes, applaud their half-assed ideas and feed their fragile egos on a daily basis like you would feed a pet dog.”

Carol leaned across the table, staring at Amy's face. Amy's eager smile was disintegrating.

“You will submerse yourself in arbitrary busywork that serves no function other than preserving the jobs of others,” said Carol. “You will waste countless hours trying to untangle the demands of a leadership team that lacks any integration, coordination or clarity. There will be so many chefs in the kitchen that what you produce will be inedible and vomited back on your shoes. You will have no control. You will be a puppet pulled apart by a dozen squabbling puppeteers. Forget everything you learned in school. You are not paid for your brain. You are paid to indulge stupidity. You are paid to say yes to bad ideas. You are paid to make other people feel good about themselves. You are paid to follow orders without deviation or original thought. Everybody here is pushing a personal agenda based on fear or greed or both. You will know your place and like it.”

Amy's smile had entirely evaporated.

“What's wrong?” said Carol. “Don't lose that smile. When you enter these walls, no matter how else you may feel, you smile. If someone says something wrong and idiotic, you smile. When others talk over you at meetings to render you inconsequential, you smile. If someone robs you of your weekend and personal plans with insane demands, you smile. When you get reamed in a room full of people to make someone else look big, you smile. You smile until your face hurts and your head wants to explode. Smile and the company will smile back, but don't trust anyone because they are all out to get you. Your colleagues will be passive aggressive, looking to undermine you at every turn. Your managers will grab credit for your success and push down the blame for their mistakes. The executives are out of touch and clueless and their ignorance is lethal. They are gullible to the devious, suckers for glib self-promoters, unable to sort fact from fiction and unwilling to take the time to
listen
. That's because they are too absorbed in their own fat heads, convinced every random brain fart is a nugget of gold. If something works, they will break it. They are determined to throw a monkey wrench into a well-oiled machine because at least it shows they are making a contribution. They do not want to be inconvenienced by high standards. They want one thing: obedient servants. You will spend your life here with one goal: to become the person that other people want you to be. Your tombstone will read:
I did what they told me
. You will begin dying the day you start your job here. Your first week will feel like a month. Everything will be big and new and scary, moving in slow motion, consuming your senses. Then the newness wears off, like fresh fruit turned rotten. You will settle into a routine that blurs the days together into an endless smear. You will go cold and then you will go numb. You will live on a treadmill of tedium. The years will shoot by like days. You will sacrifice everything for this job. Your health, your family, your sanity. You will breathe your pain like oxygen. Not even sleep is safe. This place will invade your dreams. You will compulsively check your emails and phone messages every ten minutes. You'll find something new to stir you up every time. This company will keep you on a very short leash. The demands will crush you. The pressure will squeeze you. The rewards will be modest, just enough to keep you coming back for more, a gold-covered lock on a rusty cage. You will get old here, you will get fat and tired and joyless, performing your duties for your corporate master until one day you completely lose your identity, your individuality, your hopes and dreams. You will become nothing more than a piece of office furniture, a benign object that serves a function but will be replaced when it breaks and
you will break
, you will crumble, you will want to rip out your hair and gouge out your eyes and pound on your lifeless heart and beg for a second chance to live because you will have thrown it all down a sewer hole of rats and rabies and excrement. You will regret this day until your last dying breath, the day you entered the belly of the beast and
lost your soul
.”

Amy fled the room, crying.

Carol returned to her cubicle. On the way, she passed Diane's office. Diane looked up from her papers and asked, “How did it go? I hope you didn't make her do all the talking.”

“It was fine,” said Carol in a flat tone. “It was good. Everything's good. Happy Monday!”

Diane nodded and returned her attention to her spreadsheets. “Yes. Happy Monday,” she muttered.

Carol returned to her desk. She sat down and opened a file drawer. She dug around for a moment until she found what she was looking for: the InvestOne organizational chart.

She slapped it on her desktop and took out a red pen.

She mapped out her game plan.

She circled the row of vice presidents and senior directors. She wrote next to them:
increase exposure to leadership
. In smaller handwriting underneath, she created a list: