crude and offensive to her. (She thinks they are praying about us.) Even their holidays fall on different days. (They are a perverse and stiff-necked people. She does not want our daughter to marry one, although she'd prefer that to a Puerto Rican or Negro.) Kagle won't improve. He still goes to church with his family when he's home on a Sunday and to places like Toledo on business for a week and to low-class whores in the late afternoon. He is still a bigot and won't hire a Jew or fuck a Black girl, unless he's away at some business meeting on an island in the Caribbean. Then he likes them young; he's had them fifteen and would take them thirteen and eleven, I think, but would feel abnormal. I have to fire him; I've been to whores with him and can't forgive him or forget. He'll hover. He'll bump shoulders with me, snigger indecorously. 'Aw, come on, Bob. Cut it out. I know you. Remember when.»
'It never happened. And if it did, I don't remember and you have to pay.'
I will shift his hard-drinking cronies in out-of-town offices around to new positions in different cities and hope they quit. Arthur Baron and I do not talk much about matters like this when we meet by chance in corridors, but there is a diplomatic understanding now, I feel, in the small talk he makes.
'How are you, Bob?' he'll always stop me now to say.
'Fine, Art. You?'
'That's good. Horace White tells me he gets a big kick out of you.'
'I like Horace White a lot, Art. He's a fine man.'
(My facts are wrong but my answer is right.)
Horace White approves. Does Lester Black? Johnny Brown will go growling to him in dissension when he learns I'm his boss. Black probably won't care. It's out of his area, and Black is ready to retire anyway and spends much time out of the office sailing.
I did my best to dissuade Kagle from going to Toledo (and knew, of course, I would fail. My conscience is almost clear.
'Stay in town, Andy. You know Arthur Baron wants you here.'
'I'll tie it in with a supermarket promotion,' he responds with one of his conspiratorial winks. 'Heh-heh. You'll see.').
'Kagle in Chicago, Bob?'
'Toledo.'
'There? He told Laura Chicago. What's there?'
'He might come back with a supermarket promotion.'
'He shouldn't be the one to do that.'
'He phones in every day. I know where I can reach him. He asked me to cover the office.'
'Good, Bob. We'll have to start making our preparations for the convention. I'd like it to go very smoothly this year.'
'I think it will, Art.'
'So do I. Horace White gets back to town next week and he and I'll start setting up our meetings upstairs. Are you ready to make some enemies?'
'If I have to.'
'You'll have some friends.'
I'll have some speeches, too. I'll need Kagle for the convention. He'll do that well, claiming credit for having engineered the changes himself and professing gladness at having shed administrative responsibilities he did not want and being free at last to do the type of work he really enjoys. No one will believe him. But that won't matter. After that, I won't want him around.
'What will you want to do about Andy Kagle?' Arthur Baron will ask.
'I think I'd want him to open the convention.'
'I think that's good.'
'I think he'll do that well. He'll smile enough without being told.'
'And afterward?'
'I don't want him around.'
'Would you want to keep him on as a consultant or use him on special projects?'
'No, Art.'
'He could be useful.'
'But not here. I think it might be a bad idea to have him around.'
'I think you're right, Bob.'
'Thanks, Art.'
Of course, I can't fire Kagle. (If I could fire people, I would fire Green, and I would fire the typist Martha, who is still going crazy slowly but not fast enough to suit me.) I can merely indicate that I don't want him around and the company will move him somewhere else. I wish somebody else would fire her before I have to make Green do it.
'Art,' I might say. 'Have you got a minute?'
'How are you, Bob?'
'Fine, Art. You?'
'That's good, Bob.'
'There's a girl in Green's department with a serious mental problem. She's going crazy. I think she talks to herself in imaginary conversations. She laughs to herself. It doesn't really help the appearance of the department to have her there.'
'Is she happy?' he might ask.
'Only when she laughs,' I answer. 'But she stops typing then and her productivity suffers.'
'Tell Green to get rid of her.'
If he says that, it will signify he wants me to start issuing instructions to Green and take dominion over his department. If he says:
'I'll talk to Green.'
That means he wishes us to maintain our departments separately (and I will not be downcast, for there's an advantage in having Green's department to shift blame to).
If, with an expression of sobriety, he asks:
'What would you do?'
'She probably has a fair amount of sick leave coming to her,' I'll answer. 'And after that her major medical hospitalization insurance can take over, if she wants to use it. People who go on voluntary sick leave for mental disorders almost never try to come back.'
'That's good, Bob. It sounds like the kindest way for her.'
'The jobs aren't held open. We can tell her that, if she reapplies. One of the nurses can tell her she needs a rest.'
'But I'm happy here. I smile and laugh all day.'
'It's just for a little while, dear. We — they — have to cut down.'
(Sick leave is what I am holding in reserve for Red Parker.)
(He'll think I'm slipping him a favor.)
(Wait till he tries to come back.)
(I'm so smart I ought to be President.)
I might even start using Red Parker's apartment again when he's no longer with the company. It will not dawn on him for a while that he's not with the company but outside it, and there will be major medical benefits for me in his major medical insurance policy. His job will be filled. (He will be filed.) The opening he left will be closed if he tries to come back. (He probably won't. He'll get used to doing nothing and jumping about aimlessly on reckless vacations.)
People who go on voluntary extended sick leave for anything but surgery or serious accidents almost never try to come back. They don't feel up to it. (Even people who've been out awhile with hepatitis or mononucleosis have a hard time making their way back. They lack pep.) (Long after they've left, somebody who enjoys keeping track of people (in the army, it was our public relations officer) drops by to tell us they're dead (or suffered a 'cerebral vascular accident,' and then we know they really are gone for good. Or bad, ha, ha).
'Did you hear about Red Parker? Or Andy Kagle? Or Jack Green?' someone like Ed Phelps will stop by to say,
