He found the tea-room, and made himself several cups of tea. Then he carried them back to Fat Charlie’s desk, and arranged them around it in an artistic fashion. He started to play with the computer network. It asked him for a password. “I’m Fat Charlie Nancy,” he told the computer, but there were still places it didn’t want him to go, so he said, “I’m Grahame Coats,” and it opened to him like a flower.
He looked at things on the computer until he got bored.
He dealt with the contents of Fat Charlie’s in basket. He dealt with Fat Charlie’s pending basket.
It occurred to him that Fat Charlie would be waking up around now, so he called him at home, in order to reassure him; he just felt that he was making a little headway when Grahame Coats put his head around the door, ran his fingers across his stoatlike lips, and beckoned.
“Gotta go,” Spider said to his brother. “The big boss needs to talk to me.” He put down the phone.
“Making private phone calls on company time, Nancy,” stated Grahame Coats.
“Abso-friggin’-lutely,” agreed Spider.
“And was that myself you were referring to as ‘the big boss’?” asked Grahame Coats. They walked to the end of the hallway and into his office.
“You’re the biggest,” said Spider. “And the bossest.”
Grahame Coats looked puzzled; he suspected he was being made fun of, but he was not certain, and this disturbed him.
“Well, sit ye down, sit ye down,” he said.
Spider sat him down.
It was Grahame Coats’s custom to keep the turnover of staff at the Grahame Coats Agency fairly constant. Some people came and went. Others came and remained until just before their jobs would begin to carry some kind of employment protection. Fat Charlie had been there longer than anyone: one year and eleven months. One month to go before redundancy payments or industrial tribunals could become a part of his life.
There was a speech that Grahame Coats gave, before he fired someone. He was very proud of his speech.
“Into each life,” he began, “a little rain must fall. There’s no cloud without a silver lining.”
“It’s an ill wind,” offered Spider, “that blows no one good.”
“Ah. Yes. Yes indeed. Well. As we pass through this vale of tears, we must pause to reflect that—”
“The first cut,” said Spider, “is the deepest.”
“What? Oh.” Grahame Coats scrabbled to remember what came next. “Happiness,” he pronounced, “is like a butterfly.”
“Or a bluebird,” agreed Spider.
“Quite. If I may finish?”
“Of course. Be my guest,” said Spider, cheerfully.
“And the happiness of every soul at the Grahame Coats Agency is as important to me as my own.”
“I cannot tell you,” said Spider, “how happy that makes me.”
“Yes,” said Grahame Coats.
“Well, I better get back to work,” said Spider. “It’s been a blast, though. Next time you want to share some more, just call me. You know where I am.”
“Happiness,” said Grahame Coats. His voice was taking on a faintly strangulated quality. “And what I wonder, Nancy, Charles, is this—are you happy here? And do you not agree that you might be rather happier elsewhere?”
“That’s not what I wonder,” said Spider. “You want to know what I wonder?”
Grahame Coats said nothing. It had never gone like this before. Normally, at this point, their faces fell, and they went into shock. Sometimes they cried. Grahame Coats had never minded when they cried.
“What I wonder,” said Spider, “is what the accounts in the Cayman Islands are for. You know, because it almost sort of looks like money that should go to our client accounts sometimes just goes into the Cayman Island accounts instead. And it seems a funny sort of way to organize the finances, for the money coming in to rest in those accounts. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was hoping you could explain it to me.”
Grahame Coats had gone off-white—one of those colors that turn up in paint catalogs with names like “parchment” or “magnolia.” He said, “How did you get access to those accounts?”
“Computers,” said Spider. “Do they drive you as nuts as they drive me? What can you do?”
Grahame Coats thought for several long moments. He had always liked to imagine that his financial affairs were so deeply tangled that, even if the Fraud Squad were ever able to conclude that financial crimes had been committed, they would find it extremely difficult to explain to a jury exactly what kind of crimes they were.
“There’s nothing illegal about having offshore accounts,” he said, as carelessly as possible.
“Illegal?” said Spider. “I should hope not. I mean, if I saw anything illegal, I should have to report it to the appropriate authorities.”
Grahame Coats picked up a pen from his desk, then he put it down again. “Ah,” he said. “Well, delightful though it is to chat, converse, spend time, and otherwise hobnob with you, Charles, I suspect that both of us have work we should be getting on with. Time and tide, after all, wait for no man. Procrastination is the thief of time.”
“Life is a rock,” suggested Spider, “but the radio rolled me.”
“Whatever.”
Sunbird
2005
THEY WERE A rich and a rowdy bunch at the Epicurean Club in those days. They certainly knew how to party. There were five of them:
There was Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy, big enough for three men, who ate enough for four men and who drank enough for five. His great-grandfather had founded the Epicurean Club with the proceeds of a tontine, which he had taken great pains, in the traditional manner, to ensure that he had collected in full.
There was Professor Mandalay, small and twitchy and gray as a ghost (and perhaps he was a ghost; stranger things have happened), who drank nothing but water, and who ate doll-portions from plates the size of saucers. Still, you do not need the gusto for the gastronomy, and Mandalay always got to the heart of
