Duplicity A New Beginning

“Look, there’s Chopper 9,” Laura said, pointing into clouds behind Bank of America Stadium, as the latest news helicopter emerged from the hazy morning horizon and banked into an arc over the scene below on Stonewall. That made three news and two police helicopters circling the jet-black smoke billowing from the street below, and Steven, Nick, Lori and I all crowded in front of the tiny window in my office to get a better look.

We looked more like second-graders with our faces plastered to a classroom window than futures analysts at a Fortune 500 company. But as much as we craned our necks, and fogged up the glass, the action remained conveniently hidden behind the new Duke Energy Building. Even from 38 floors up, all we could see were speeding toy police cars and little plastic fire trucks racing behind a gleaming, perfect shield of steel and glass. The thick column of smoke continued to rise from behind the building and drift into the sky over the stadium.

“Man, I really hope no one got hurt down there,” Steven said from behind his wire-rimmed glasses, nervously biting his lip. Steven was a nice guy, and an eternal optimist. He wore bad ties and a constant expression of sympathy and understanding. He was chubby, instantly likable, and had the kind of optimism that could be contagious – like when Dr. Phil gets involved with some seriously dysfunctional family and you think for a second that everything just might work out. A year ago, when six people in our team were cut in one day, he tried to reassure everyone carrying a brown box to their car that it would all be OK. As if his optimism alone would be enough to help them make their $4,500/month mortgage payments.
It wasn’t going to be OK this time, though. At least not for someone down on Stonewall Street where all the smoke was coming from. To me, the five circling helicopters and almost a dozen emergency response vehicles were proof of that.

Nick turned toward Steven with an incredulous smirk. “Dude, Steve, are you serious?! Someone down there is burnt toast, man. Fried. Well done.

“One less car on the road for the commute home, right Gus?” Nick smiled toward me, hoping for a laugh.

I shrugged. Steven looked over at me and pushed up his glasses.

Nick was one of those guys who only needed five minutes to rub you the wrong way, and he had been transferred all over the country because he was so good at pissing off the wrong people. He’d come to Charlotte this spring from somewhere in Ohio. Cincinnati or Dayton, maybe.  He was a math genius, though, and as long as he could help banks lose less money, he’d have a job somewhere. Nick could have been Eminem’s twin brother, and he was known around the office as Slim Shady. He hated rap music, and he hated his nickname even more. Karma can be a bitch, I guess.

I saw he had the new ID badge that the company had just switched to. Damn if he really didn’t look just like Eminem, too. Just like him.
I glanced down at my own badge, and a faded, young Gus Kaminski smiled up at me.

Nick was also that guy who didn’t get the memo that you stop wearing Old Spice after high school, and my office smelled like cheap aftershave.

“Guys, I need to get going on a couple of things this morning,” I explained. “I hate to stop the show, but I have a really big fire to put out, and a meeting with Brent at 10, and I’d like my office back now, please.”

I wasn’t trying to make a joke, and only realized what I’d said when all three of them turned away from the glass and stared at me. Slim Shady smiled and laughed one of his Ohio dickhead laughs.

“Nice, Gus.”

I had moved into my very first window office just eight months earlier, and Nick had taken my old cubicle between Lori and Steven. The window office wasn’t really much of a step up. The space was comically cramped and just big enough for a desk and filing cabinet. It had less actual space than my old cube, but it did have a view of the street and apparently enough room for four people to squeeze shoulder to shoulder in front of the single window.

The water stain in one of the ceiling tiles and my bonsai tree silently looked on with us as the churning smoke began to subside. Glare from the mid-morning sun now reflected brilliantly off of the Duke Energy building and lighted up my tiny office like a movie set. This was my favorite part of the day actually – the 38 minutes every morning when sunlight overpowered the white glow of fluorescents.

“Wait Gus, hang on a sec,” Lori breathed, stepping up on her tiptoes, eyes again glued to the street below. She instantly became the tallest member of the group, and I could see Nick fighting hard to keep his eyes pointed downward.

“There’s a tow truck.”

Lori was the prettiest girl in our department. Excluding admin, she was really the only girl in our department. Gifted with legs like a Russian ballerina, and a unique ability to find discrepancies in reams of mind-numbing statistical data, she had the guarded persona that attractive women embrace when working surrounded by guys. Chestnut hair cut to a razor’s edge scraped her collar when she glided through the office, and annoyed brown eyes discouraged the bravest of suitors. Nick openly proclaimed he had “hit the jackpot” when he was placed next to Lori, and waited until precisely 10:15 a.m. on his first day to begin hitting on her.  She ignored Nick’s weekly invitations to “grab a roll down at Enso” with such zest that even Steve finally suggested that he give up and “find someone who’s more receptive, because you’re a good guy, and the right woman for you is out there somewhere.”

The smoke had stopped completely, and the tow truck carefully backed up out of sight, leaving only yellow shadows from its siren to maintain the suspense in my tiny office. The air conditioning kicked on again, displacing a few tufts of Lori’s brown bangs and sending a fresh blast of Old Spice around the room.

I glanced around the city and noticed that the event down on Stonewall Street wasn’t our spectacle alone. Thousands of onlookers in a colossal theater of office towers stared down at the scene silently with us. Faces, hands, coffee mugs, suits and ties of all shapes and colors peered down solemnly on a brilliantly sunny August morning. Some of them could probably actually see what was going on.

“Can Stella can see it from her office?” Nick asked, gesturing across the street toward Two Wachovia. It wasn’t a secret that my fiancée worked in that building, but I had never had a conversation directly with Nick about it. Even after five years, I still couldn’t get used to office gossip. It annoyed me that he knew, but I had bigger problems to deal with, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter in 30 minutes anyway.

Lori and Steven’s eyes darted to each other’s and back to the street.

“Stella can’t see it either,” I said flatly.  “The Duke building is in her way, too.”

“Hey guys, did I miss the show?”