Randall’s face was the shape and texture of a huge preformed glob of cookie dough betraying a daily increase in sag under the force of gravity. Gravity had acquired an affinity for the office. Hatchet imagined it as the bulky likeness of his boss holding his breath, pumping his swollen arms, comic steam spraying from his ears, all of it dialing up the force of sucking draining gravity in the building. Hatchet had begun wrestling this crisis, reporting every detail to him, expecting things to change. But Randall had ceased to be the fearsome alpha dog. His effectiveness had been one of the first pieces of the office reduced by the dilemma bent fabric of space-time into unrecognizable ill-connected bits of ego.
I need this paid, Randall. Done, Marcus, next week. Randall, why would the Austin crew withdraw $3000 from an account yesterday? They were shorted some security clamps for the Collins install. The ol’ boy at NorCold won’t ship unless we pay the past due. Give him what he needs. He needs a check. So give him a check. What check? He’ll take it over the phone won’t he? I’m not sure; I doubt it. Did you ask him? Am I supposed to fabricate checking info and just hand it to this guy? Marcus? Are you really gonna pull this shit on me, man? What the fuck are you talking about? … Randall, why would the Austin crew withdraw $3000 from an account yesterday? I told you, they were shorted some security clamps for the Collins install. So they took $3000 for what? to buy hookers? Marcus, you need to chill the fuck out, bro. You’re telling me to chill out, to be casual, to let this roll off my back; maybe you can but I can’t. Maybe I can? I’m the guy these people are chewing on, Randall, I’m the fucking gatekeeper. You think I don’t know that, Marcus? what do think I’m doing up here? jacking off to porn all day? am I not the one with most on the line, Marcus? the house, the kid in college, the wife and my cars and my land? Objectively, you may have the most on the line, Randall, but I’ve got everything on the line, same as you. … Get out of here and take care of NorCold. Hey, Randall, you’ve got some shit in your teeth, right there, and oh yeah, fuck you!
Soon, Randall was spending the majority of his days on the phone with two camps. Contestant number one was a fully loaded surgeon from Denver, a former customer, who had been on the lookout for a second or third pet business he could nurture into another McCastle on some McIsland in some McRocky-McMountain lake. Number two was a pair of young lawyers from Dallas who, unbeknownst to either Randall or his lawyers, had a talent for snooping out struggling firms willing to eat their own hands in order to save the remainder of their skins. Randall hired three antisocial accountants who moved into one of the vacant offices at the end of the hall to spend several weeks cooking the books to a fine golden brown. The lawyers seemed disinterested but the surgeon dropped his hat and Randall howled with glee as he clapped down the office phone, dialing Hatchet on his cell with other hand.
He’d saved them, he told Hatchet. He’d pulled this out of the fire. There are different kinds of fire, Hatchet told him. Well, all the smoking bits and pieces belong to him now. And so do we. Oh Jesus, Marcus, we just paid—I paid the damn bills; someone had to find someone to pay the damn bills, bro.
As he would any victim of excess, like any drunken college kid slammed into a tree on the side of the highway, the new owner lashed the company to the table. The surgeon’s personal assistant wrenched the restraints into place and went to suturing wounds and investigating symptoms. Randall hadn’t calculated their desire to micromanage the beast of a business. The surgeon would keep Randall on his cell phone until 5am. Marcus was told to report to Denver in daily emails and the belts and levers of the machine began to stutter and whine and come to life again.
Through the fall when all the light is afternoon light and on through the winter when the skies of the Texas plains are the dull color of bones, he regained his rhythm within the new state of things. Due to policies on what he could promise, he no longer whipped up the frenzied amount of sales he had enjoyed before the takeover but at least he could deliver what he promised. He had grasped the ropes as this doomed vessel moldered among the rocks and somehow both of them had survived. The rest of the chores, the web maintenance, the shipping and logistics, and the installation support had all been handed to a new breed of voices, robotic and unnerving voices that seemed the soul of the phone rather than some human shaped coil of flesh behind a desk in some other building on the other side of a continental mountain range half a desert away from him.
Hatchet found himself peering into chasms of time and no inventory to fill them. He exhausted all possible extra time with Olivia but by spring, as titanic storms bombed the blond and greening plains, he became a shape on the horizon as random as any tree or barn or guyed tower. He had discovered a rush in capturing on film the galactic power that resonated with every flash and every titanic roar that shattered the air. As if scooping with the palm edge of a gigantic hand, the forward sorcery of the clouds lifted sheets of loose soil into the air, tumbling them into a shadowy tube bouncing along the knife-edge of the horizon. This was thievery. He stole from them the best moments of their brief and violent lives and his plunder gave him an increasing respect and love for the natural universe.
I need this paid, Randall. Done, Marcus, next week. Randall, why would the Austin crew withdraw $3000 from an account yesterday? They were shorted some security clamps for the Collins install. The ol’ boy at NorCold won’t ship unless we pay the past due. Give him what he needs. He needs a check. So give him a check. What check? He’ll take it over the phone won’t he? I’m not sure; I doubt it. Did you ask him? Am I supposed to fabricate checking info and just hand it to this guy? Marcus? Are you really gonna pull this shit on me, man? What the fuck are you talking about? … Randall, why would the Austin crew withdraw $3000 from an account yesterday? I told you, they were shorted some security clamps for the Collins install. So they took $3000 for what? to buy hookers? Marcus, you need to chill the fuck out, bro. You’re telling me to chill out, to be casual, to let this roll off my back; maybe you can but I can’t. Maybe I can? I’m the guy these people are chewing on, Randall, I’m the fucking gatekeeper. You think I don’t know that, Marcus? what do think I’m doing up here? jacking off to porn all day? am I not the one with most on the line, Marcus? the house, the kid in college, the wife and my cars and my land? Objectively, you may have the most on the line, Randall, but I’ve got everything on the line, same as you. … Get out of here and take care of NorCold. Hey, Randall, you’ve got some shit in your teeth, right there, and oh yeah, fuck you!
Soon, Randall was spending the majority of his days on the phone with two camps. Contestant number one was a fully loaded surgeon from Denver, a former customer, who had been on the lookout for a second or third pet business he could nurture into another McCastle on some McIsland in some McRocky-McMountain lake. Number two was a pair of young lawyers from Dallas who, unbeknownst to either Randall or his lawyers, had a talent for snooping out struggling firms willing to eat their own hands in order to save the remainder of their skins. Randall hired three antisocial accountants who moved into one of the vacant offices at the end of the hall to spend several weeks cooking the books to a fine golden brown. The lawyers seemed disinterested but the surgeon dropped his hat and Randall howled with glee as he clapped down the office phone, dialing Hatchet on his cell with other hand.
He’d saved them, he told Hatchet. He’d pulled this out of the fire. There are different kinds of fire, Hatchet told him. Well, all the smoking bits and pieces belong to him now. And so do we. Oh Jesus, Marcus, we just paid—I paid the damn bills; someone had to find someone to pay the damn bills, bro.
As he would any victim of excess, like any drunken college kid slammed into a tree on the side of the highway, the new owner lashed the company to the table. The surgeon’s personal assistant wrenched the restraints into place and went to suturing wounds and investigating symptoms. Randall hadn’t calculated their desire to micromanage the beast of a business. The surgeon would keep Randall on his cell phone until 5am. Marcus was told to report to Denver in daily emails and the belts and levers of the machine began to stutter and whine and come to life again.
Through the fall when all the light is afternoon light and on through the winter when the skies of the Texas plains are the dull color of bones, he regained his rhythm within the new state of things. Due to policies on what he could promise, he no longer whipped up the frenzied amount of sales he had enjoyed before the takeover but at least he could deliver what he promised. He had grasped the ropes as this doomed vessel moldered among the rocks and somehow both of them had survived. The rest of the chores, the web maintenance, the shipping and logistics, and the installation support had all been handed to a new breed of voices, robotic and unnerving voices that seemed the soul of the phone rather than some human shaped coil of flesh behind a desk in some other building on the other side of a continental mountain range half a desert away from him.
Hatchet found himself peering into chasms of time and no inventory to fill them. He exhausted all possible extra time with Olivia but by spring, as titanic storms bombed the blond and greening plains, he became a shape on the horizon as random as any tree or barn or guyed tower. He had discovered a rush in capturing on film the galactic power that resonated with every flash and every titanic roar that shattered the air. As if scooping with the palm edge of a gigantic hand, the forward sorcery of the clouds lifted sheets of loose soil into the air, tumbling them into a shadowy tube bouncing along the knife-edge of the horizon. This was thievery. He stole from them the best moments of their brief and violent lives and his plunder gave him an increasing respect and love for the natural universe.
Edit 11.4.2018