Power Play

So why does he tell me: ‘Oh yes that’s so good’ just as he’s coming? Why?

And more than that: why does it make me feel so low?

Chapter Two

Of course I know something’s wrong the minute I look up and see Benjamin stood there, framed in the meeting-room doorway. He never, ever, on pain of death interrupts the Monday morning break-downs. Never. I suspect he’d rather die than let every grey face in here see him up so close, with his shirt perpetually untucked on one side and his expression always so naked, so naked.

But he’s here, and he’s obviously waiting for me to say something. Speak, boy, I think, like some sort of ridiculous internal sneeze. Like a reflex I don’t really want to have, but which comes anyway, unbidden.

Then I get a hold of myself, and straighten, and greet him more normally.

‘Yes?’ I ask, but it’s the strangest thing. Somehow it comes out sounding like speak, boy, anyway. And even worse, I think he might know it. The faintest flush spreads over his face after I’ve spoken, and when he finally manages to explain he’s all expansive and blunder-y about it.

‘Ms Harding,’ he says, and this time I really get a flash of something unwanted. That buzz, I think, that buzz at the start of my name, only different to the way I usually hear it. Usually I don’t know what to do with it.

But I know right now.

I tell everyone to take five, and walk briskly to the door. All of these strange and new parts of me very aware of how fumbly Benjamin suddenly appears. How like he’d seemed in my head when I hadn’t meant to think of him.

‘Uh, yeah,’ he says, the minute I’ve closed us into the narrow hallway.

I resist the urge to tell him that those words are decidedly not the ones to use. A man of his size and stature should be clear and precise; he should tell me directly what he means. He shouldn’t be like this, all awkward and half-crouching down – though I don’t know why it suddenly bothers me so.

It never bothered me before my last meeting with Mr Woods. Before that sense of strange lowness, of a sudden shift in the way things are between us.

‘Go ahead, Benjamin,’ I say, though again those aren’t the words I want to use. The real ones are in the back of my mind somewhere, being ignored until I can think about all of this more clearly.

‘I’m supposed to take you up to your office, Ms Harding,’ he says, and that’s when I know it. I’m not going to get the chance to think about this strange little buzz in the back of my mind at all.

And it’s mainly because of this sudden and creeping sense of unease.

Of course, I felt that way the moment I walked in this morning. But it’s far more obvious now, as I take in every little nervy tic of the strange man in front of me. He’s not uptight exactly – it’s not like that. He’s not wound up inside himself, unable to escape. It’s more like his insides have escaped far too much, and are currently spilling themselves all over me. The urge to brush bits of him off my vintage Yves Saint Laurent suit is strong, very strong.

‘I see,’ I say, though of course what I really want to do is ask him what all of this is about. He has a lot of papers in his hands – which had seemed perfectly right in my head. It’s just that it doesn’t seem perfectly right now. ‘Lead the way, then.’

He does. He lollops on ahead of me, every stride so immense that after a moment I actually find myself almost trotting to keep up. Of course I don’t let it show – he’s so obvious in his movements that I anticipate his head turns, and always slow to a near halt – but even so. There’s an element to it that’s mildly disconcerting. Like something about him doesn’t quite match up or work, and it’s my job to figure it out. Though I’ll be honest, I’ve no idea when the task fell to me.

‘Here we are, Ms Harding,’ he says, and I notice several things at once. I notice his voice first, despite the fact that doing so is the wrong thing to be picking up on. I shouldn’t be thinking about his odd, slightly glassy and very American sort of accent, while stood outside Mr Woods’ office.

And I definitely should have taken in the new brass plate on the door, before anything about Benjamin occurs to me.

But the truth is, I don’t. For a long moment I simply stare at him, in a much meaner way than I intend. I watch him ruffle through his papers, most of them almost sliding out of his grasp as usual. That ridiculous, All-American-Boy hair of his falling into his eyes, as he attempts to function like a normal human being.

And then finally I ask, without letting any of my deep, deep concerns about this entire situation affect me. I don’t let them show in my expression, I don’t give them time in my tone. I already know what’s happened here, but I keep it cold and below the surface.

‘Perhaps you could tell me why my name is on the door, Benjamin.’

Of course, I half-know what his reaction is going to be. And I’m proved right when his mouth kind of flops open and his big eyes get bigger. The search for some unnamed thing amidst his pointless papers gets more frantic.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Oh, I thought you knew, Ms Harding. Did no one tell you?’

I think of the people above Woods, from the board of directors. Julian Wentworth, with the little pointed beard and the fidgety hands. Derek Carruthers, who so rarely visits that I don’t even have a few bullet points to pin to him. He could have three heads and one eye for all I know.

‘No,’ I say, and this time the expression on his face is so clear I could have read it from across a room. It’s you who were supposed to tell me, I think, and then I watch with the strangest sort of detachment as he searches in vain for something amidst his papers.

‘Ohh Geez, I’ve made such a mess,’ he says, under his breath. He needn’t have bothered. I can tell he’s made a mess, with or without his help. He has mess written all over him, in bold black marker. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something.’

‘Did you forget to give me a letter, Benjamin?’ I ask, because it’s torture watching him do this. My hands itch to do God only knows what. I can feel terrible, terrible words clawing at the back of my throat – words like we’re going to have to do something about you, Benjamin. Even though I know that’s one of the first things Woods said to me.

‘I think … yeah. Maybe … just hold on, Ms Harding.’

I don’t want to hold on. I want to say it: We’re going to have to do something about you, Benjamin.

‘Oh, man. Here it is. Here,’ he says, and I have to wonder if I looked like that when I first stumbled into Mr Woods’ office. Clothes barely fitting me, words all fumbling one after the other. Scorchingly sensible of a mistake I’ve just made.

Though when he speaks again, I’m almost relieved. There’s at least one glaring difference between the way I was and the way he is – and it comes to me as he tells me he’s always getting things wrong.

He’s not ashamed like I was. He’s almost bright and boyish about it instead, the expression on his face full of a kind of hope I don’t know how to process.

‘I’m so sorry, Ms Harding,’ he says, as some of the papers spill out of his hands. And then I simply have to stand there, frozen, as he tries in vain to gather them up. Everything about him so big and clumsy and sweet somehow, in a way I know I never was. ‘But I swear, it will never happen again. I swear to God.’

What a strange creature he is – though I confess, I’m grateful to him. For a long moment I’m so transfixed by his utter awkwardness and his ever-hovering grin that I can’t focus on the true matter at hand.

Woods is gone.

And I am his replacement.

* * *

I have three contact numbers for Gregory Woods. One is for his office, which would now mean I’m ringing myself. The other is his mobile phone, which always goes directly to his curt little voicemail message: Woods. Speak. And the last is his home number, which I have never on pain of extreme torture rung.

I will never ring it, not now. He’s done this thing, and that’s all there is to it. It’s the sort of person he is; it’s the way he operates. He makes a decision as brisk as a knife coming down, and if you get one of your limbs chopped off in the process, well.

So be it.

Though I swear I don’t feel that way. I feel calm and composed, all the way through the rest of the Monday morning break-down. I am like a summer breeze as I field questions from the head of the sales division about targets Woods has decidedly not set. I’m the very soul of inner peace, when I discover the other seventeen thousand problems no one ever thought to ask a man like Woods about, because Woods always looked like someone in control.

He treated me like someone in control.

But as I learn at one-thirty-five on Monday afternoon, his legend was definitely somewhat exaggerated. In fact, by the time Benjamin asks me if I’d like my midday Scotch, I’m convinced Gregory Woods was some sort of magician.

I knew him in so many appallingly intimate ways, but I didn’t realise his level of incompetence. And judging by what Benjamin is now telling me – in all innocence – it wasn’t sober incompetence.

I think I actually say to him: ‘Are you serious?’ though I swear I don’t mean to.

It’s Woods I’m angry at, of course it is – and yet I snap at Benjamin so hard his teeth practically rattle. His mouth comes open again, though this time it at least has the wherewithal to seem voluntary. He almost catches it before it’s reached the halfway mark, but I still glimpse those odd teeth he has – so perfectly straight and white and gleaming, apart from the hint of point on the incisors. It’s not a hint really. It’s strong and obvious and like he should have a lisp, though I’m not sure how I come to that conclusion.

And I can still feel the words he wants to get out, pushing at the back of his throat.