Chapter Two
Almost two weeks later, Eddie called me.
It was a Wednesday. A rough Wednesday. My department was pulling together what we call “the ultimates”, which is a subjective process whereby we guesstimate how much a particular film will earn in each market it enters. The sales people from each division stop by, and we sit down to estimate their expected sales figures. The closer we come to reality, the better.
That morning, I spent a half an hour trying to explain to Fred Metz, a dimwitted VP with an MBA, why he wasn’t going to be able to earn two million dollars selling The Taking of Flight 16 to his airline clients.
“But they’re trying to get Will Smith.” Fred crossed his legs and attempted to look superior. “And it’s historical,” he added, since it was set in the sixties.
“I don’t think even Will Smith can sell a film about a plane hijacking to the airlines, even if it is historical. I mean, would you want to watch that at thirty thousand feet?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“The hijackers crash the plane at the end,” I explained. I could tell by the look on his face he hadn’t read the entire script, even though he was one of the few people on our end of the studio who regularly received scripts. I’d only read the script because my boss delegates the reading of action films to me -- while covering romantic comedies herself.
He frowned, and I could tell he was about to insist again that I didn’t understand his market, when my phone buzzed and I was called into my boss’s office. My heart moved up into my throat. It was nearly time for my yearly review, which meant the possibility of a promotion or at least a healthy raise. My financial situation was crap, and I was desperate to start pulling myself out of the hole Jeremy had made in my finances.
The accounting department was located in a nine-story building across the street from the main lot. It was a drab glass and metal building that wasn’t likely to make it onto anyone’s tour. The studio itself had changed hands, and names, so many times in the last two decades that they probably put some stationers’ entire extended family through college. Recently, we’d been purchased by a German conglomerate, which resulted in a lot of nervousness and some unpleasant Nazi jokes.
Sonja Cartier’s office was two down from mine. Between us, in a miniscule office that had once been a supply room, was Charles Odom, a thirty-something closet case who ran ten miles each morning and had a binge-purge eating disorder and a penchant for undergoing plastic surgery on his vacations. I always did my best not to peek in as I walked by. Across from my office and his were two cubicles, which housed Tiffany Edwards, a forty-five year old frazzled single mom, and Bill Wilson, who’d been at the company since the seventies and was coasting his way to retirement. Outside Sonja’s office was an open station for her assistant, an aspiring actress named Meribelle who was clearly going nowhere.
Sonja’s office was small for a corner office, but still denoted her status as Executive Vice President Finance. It was tastefully decorated in early stockbroker: mahogany desk with a brass lamp, royal blue carpeting, forest green sofa, subtle fleur-de-lis pattern on the drapes. She’d even chosen two prints depicting foxhunts, which sometimes led people to question whether she’d inherited the office and never put her own stamp on it. But that was Sonja’s pattern. Be conservative. Don’t make waves. Fit in.
When I walked in, she told me to shut the door. Pacing behind her desk, she’d taken off the jacket to her well-tailored, gray suit. I had a sinking feeling things were not about to go my way.
“I just heard,” she said, then paused dramatically, “we’re re-engineering.”
Re-engineering is a polite way of saying that the new owners would be laying off a lot of people to make the books look good. I felt my raise and promotion slip away.
“I’m going to do everything I can to protect you,” Sonja promised.
“Thank you,” I said. Of course, the fact that I needed protecting didn’t make me feel particularly safe.
“We’re going to have to give them someone, though. The rumor is they’re asking for a ten percent reduction from every department.”
“I suppose we could do without Bill,” I said, though I’d rather have gotten rid of Charles. Bill was useless, while Charles actually got in the way.
“The thing about Bill is he’s so close to retiring. If I let him go now and we go through this again in a year then I’m royally screwed.”
“You think we’ll go through this again?” I asked, a little dumbfounded.
“Absolutely,” she said. “The Germans only want us because they think the Japanese do. They’ll either sell us to the Japanese at a huge profit, or the Japanese won’t actually want us and we’ll get dumped for cheap. What about Tiffany?”
I liked Tiffany. She had a bubbly personality and a can-do attitude. It’s true she had trouble working overtime since she had two teenaged boys to keep an eye on and a penchant for over-extending herself. She was currently taking two college classes at night. But the quality of her work was better than either Charles or Bill. I said so.
“You have an issue with Charles, don’t you?” she asked.
Here I had to be careful. Sonja
