He had the urge to clear the floor, to pass through the glass and steel, and float out over the street to the amazement of the people below. They would gawk and wonder, trembling hands over open mouths, at the figure hovering free like a god returned to pass judgement.
Pass judgement. Everyone assumes he’s heartless enough to just draw a line across a spreadsheet and declare, “Everyone below this line will get a call from HR.” He shook his head. There had to be a better way.
“I hate it when you stare out the window like that.”
He turned. Barbara regarded him from the leather arm chair in front of his desk, one shapely leg crossed over the other at the knee under a pencil skirt as blue as the midday sky. A slender finger rested against her smooth cheek, the carmine nail matched her lips.
“I always feel like you’re ready to jump,” she said.
He turned back to the window and stared down at the toy cars in the street and the tiny people clogging the sidewalk. He had been among them once in the stinking subways, but he was far above them now.
“Maybe I need to jump,” he said.
“Killing yourself won’t stop what’s coming. You have shareholders to think about.”
The shareholders. Those dragons will have their gold, heaped pile upon pile.
“Who thinks about the people we shepherd toward the door?” he asked.
Barbara shrugged. “Once they’re out the door, they’re not our problem. You’d rather bring down fifty thousand just to save those ten?”
“Ten thousand people, Barb,” he said. "That’s the village where I grew up. I’d be putting an entire village out of work.”
Barbara said nothing. He returned to his desk.
“Damn you. Start the conference call.”
~~~~~~~
© Kevin M. Coleman, 2023
Photo Credit to Marc Olivier Jodoin