Sweat

Amy Grant, black spiked hair to go with her pierced eyebrow, took several minutes cutting, pasting, taping, and copying. She had been working on the company emergency all weekend with her boss, trying to find the right people to talk to. When they found the first note, everyone assumed it was a hoax. When the number of notes passed two dozen, Republic Outfitter’s quality control group checked the contact person for the contract on the emergency order of shorts. Surprisingly, they found the same name in the contract as in the notes. Peter Winthrop.

Amy finished honing her kindergarten cut-and-paste skills and looked at her handiwork. She placed the stack of paper face down, and fat fingered the final number on the fax machine before hitting send.

Marilyn impatiently waited by her personal all-in-one fax, copier, and scanner. Peter was due to call any minute, and she would feel better knowing what the emergency from Maine was all about.

Jake walked in the office, gave Marilyn a wave and a “good morning,” and continued on to his office, briefcase bulging with files and newspapers. Twenty minutes later, Marilyn contacted Amy Grant at Republic Outfitters to tell her she was still waiting. The spike-haired employee insisted she had sent the fax, and checked the confirmation ticket that the fax machine generated automatically. She confirmed the number with Marilyn, who reconfirmed that the sender had sent the fax to the wrong number. The first page of the fax came in, inching its way from the slit in the top of the machine. The page was a photocopy of smaller pieces of paper, pushed together in an odd collage—a Picasso masterpiece made from scraps of paper, a plain sheet of office paper serving as the canvas.

Marilyn looked at the first page and then the next. She glanced at the machine and its small display window. There were five pages in total, but she didn’t wait to see them all before picking up the phone. Her demeanor was noticeably more serious.

“Where did this come from?” Marilyn asked.

“That’s just it. They came in the order of shorts we just received. We do a cursory examination on a sample number of shorts as they come in and the inspector found the first note. Then he found another.”

“How many did you find all together? I see the fax is five pages long.”

“Oh that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of notes so far, and still more keep coming. I don’t have a clue what the total number is, but it looks like it is in the thousands.”

“Isn’t that wonderful,” Marilyn muttered.

“What would you like us to do?”

“Check all the shorts and any other merchandise you get from Chang Industries. Keep all the notes. Mr. Winthrop will see to it that you are compensated for the extra work.”

“But what about the notes?”

“I will handle it and get back to you.”

Marilyn hung up the phone, looked around helplessly, and began to cry.

When Peter called, Marilyn grabbed her keys, unlocked her boss’s door and went into the privacy of his office. She came out a full hour later, eyes watering, sniffling like a kid with allergies in the middle of spring. It was only nine o’clock in the morning, and already it looked like the beginning of the second worst day of her life. ***

Jake fetched a cup of coffee from the main lounge on the far side of the floor and returned to his office to check his email. There was plenty to do at Winthrop Enterprises, if Jake felt like working. As the president’s son, no one was busting his balls. He did have daily meetings with the international trade team, a group of ten serious professionals who kept track of the movement of goods across the globe. They were masters of importing, exporting, and international trade law. They knew custom officials by name in fifty countries and had bought, sold, imported, and exported just about every item known to man. The group of international trade specialists at Winthrop Enterprises was like the prison inmate who could get anything for anyone, for a fee. They danced the edge of legality, toes just inside the line, but willing to cross it if the money was right.

Jake liked the international group. They opened his eyes to a whole new world. He had done a short, two-day rotation in accounting and finance, but found the people even more boring than their stereotypes. Even the marketing group, which as far as Jake could tell didn’t actually do any marketing, was surprisingly quiet. But international trade was interesting, and the group humored him and his questions. Sure Jake knew he was the president’s son and the employees were probably following orders—showing Jake the ropes, entertaining him.

But Jake wasn’t loafing on the job either. He was working hard to learn something so different from English Literature that at times the trade group members seemed like they were speaking a foreign language. The international trade team may have had to accept him with open arms, but if Jake had any say in the matter, they were going to absolutely love him before long. Diligence served with a smile.

A megaphone blared outside the window and Jake stood from the piles of paper at his desk and checked on the action in Franklin Park across the street. It was early, before the heat really set in, and there was already a loose-knit group forming in the one-square block park.

He was learning to love his office and his front row seat to the live entertainment played out across the street. The organizers of today’s gathering either had no agenda or weren’t well prepared. There was no indication that the religious freaks or abortion nuts were going to spend the day praying for the sinners’ souls. The group didn’t look like the normal vets either, who formed regularly to bitch about poor treatment, a complaint that was probably true. They sure as hell weren’t tree-huggers from the West Coast converging on the city. The most organized faction in the park was still the homeless camped out in their normal spots on the park bench, behind the hedges, and on the heating grates fed by the subway system below—prime real-estate in the winter that the homeless marked with their belongings year-round.

Jake looked away from the window and his eyes fell on the tray of his fax machine. Another random junk fax. Someone had his number. He took one step on the plush beige carpet, reached down, and picked up the piece of paper that would forever change his life. Pandora’s Box on an eight-by-eleven inch sheet of paper. ***

Marilyn sat at her desk, shoulders slumped, eyes puffy, a small trashcan full of tissues next to her chair. The morning went down the crapper with the phone call from Republic Outfitters, and Marilyn now looked ten years older than she had when she got off the subway. The wrinkles were showing, the small veins pronounced, the first layer of make-up wiped away one tissue and tear at a time.

Jake approached Marilyn’s desk like a defensive lineman on the blind side of a quarterback.

“I need to speak with my father,” Jake said with bite.

“I just spoke with him. He’s on the road and can’t be reached until tomorrow.”

“Then you and I need to talk.”

“Can it wait, Jake? It has been a rough morning.”

“No, Marilyn. It can’t wait.” Jake held up the fax. Marilyn looked at the unmistakable piece of paper she had neglected to look for in the midst of her morning emotional breakdown. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes.

“Grab your bag and let’s go,” Jake said.

“Where are we going?”

“Out of the office.”

Marilyn snagged her purse from the back of her chair and snatched her cell phone off the desk. She ripped a handful of Kleenex from the box in rapid succession and shoved them in the pocket of her white cotton blazer. The receptionist and several Winthrop Enterprise regulars gave Jake and Marilyn suspicious looks as they waited silently for the elevator. The whispers grew as soon as the elevator doors shut.

A block from Winthrop Enterprises, Good Morning Sunshine served breakfast, usually coffee and toast, to a paper-reading clientele in suits. Marilyn and Jake were the only couple in the joint—all the other patrons were enjoying their morning dates with The Washington Post. A few Wall Street Journals were on the counter, read and folded.

Jake ignored the “wait to be seated” peg-lettered sign standing near the door and led Marilyn to a table near the window.

“Two coffees and one order of waffles,” Jake said to the lone forty-something waiter who took the order with a nod. The twenty-seat wannabe diner was library quiet.

“What the hell is this?” Jake asked, whispering forcefully, placing the fax on the table.

“How did you get this?”

“It was on my fax machine.”

“Oh, dear God,” Marilyn said. “Of all the fax machines in the company.”

“Who is Wei Ling?”

“She’s a girl your father knows.”