The Golden Parachute
“Nooooooooooo!” Howard screamed. The wind flickered through his suit as the air stung his eyes. He was falling deep and fast through the blue or what would look blue from below! It was a feeling that he had met before with exhilaration, but this time it was terror!
“Open the back up! He heard a voice scream out from somewhere. Howard suddenly remembered his backup plan and reached up to his neck finding what felt like a rip cord and jerked hard! Howard snapped out of his fall with his eyes pulling into focus on the desk in front of him and the paintings on the wall of his office. They were paintings that gathered on either side of large wooden heavy doors, ones his wife had chosen when he took the position of CEO only a year ago. A company that had been family owned and operated until then. Sweat beaded across his forehead as he drank in the surroundings with an insatiable thirst. He pulled a silk monogrammed handkerchief from his custom tailored suit and wiped his forehead. It was a feeling of relief stirred in with satisfaction that moment, before throwing it into the brass can next to his cherry desk.
“It’s just a dream,” Howard told himself. “I must have blacked out a moment.”
Howard may have been an older man, but he was no fudey-dudey by any means, he would often say when people asked him about his off time or how the diabetes affected him.
“I didn’t get to this age by going without a backup plan,” he thought. His grey eyes crossed his desk stopping at a stack of legal documents. Being a pilot and skydiver, he knows how important it is to have that plan checked and double checked before jumping out of any plane, burning or not.
Next to those legal documents was another stack of papers, legal documents of a different kind. They were the forms that had to be filled out prior to his favorite thrill, skydiving. He reached out and grabbed the stack with the picture of a man free falling in the corner. The start of his permanent vacation, the thought followed.
He walked over to the far wall pressing his well manicured finger into the center of a small button surrounded by a gold ring. Two sections of the wall pulled away from each other to reveal two shelves of liquor and crystal tumblers inlaid. He poured a glass of clear alcohol into a tumbler and reached in to the left, taking a carton of orange juice. Howard always kept plenty of orange juice on hand for those times when his sugar was low. But, he rarely added anything to his juice, unless it was a special occasion or one of his late nights at the office.
“I’ll miss those late nights with Miss Hanover,” he thought looking down into the swirling orange and clear mix.
Howard sat down in his chair, leaning back as he rested a finger on a glass touch screen that was inlayed at the left corner of his desk.
“Miss Hanover can I see you a moment please.” He spoke in the tone of a man half his age suddenly.
“Yes, Mr. Jennings.”
A tall blonde poured into the room through the large doors standing in a business suit that seemed tight enough to choke a teenage girl.
“Close the doors please, and have a seat,” he said watching her move. She sat down with a notebook and a gold pen in hand.
“I just wanted to thank you for all your support over the past few months…”
She blushed a moment and looked down at her skirt that barely covered the seat beneath her.
“Oh, thank you Mr. Jennings.”
He reached down under his desk pulling open a shallow drawer that was always filled with something for her. Something that his other secretary picked up, of course, to her knowledge, they were purchased for his wife. It was a large flat velvet covered box, the last thing Mrs. Powell put on the company expense account for him.
He stood up from his desk and walked around before sitting down on the corner. He opened that same box that her eyes followed as he walked.
“Oh, Mr Jennings,” she gasped with one hand covering her large full chest, acting surprised. She peered at the string of gold that held a neat little clear stone on a pendant. He suddenly snapped it shut and her lips pulled to a close as she looked up at him longingly. For what she longed for, neither of them ever really ever knew.
“Please enjoy this…discreetly, as always.” He spoke with a smile before he leaned back and touched the small screen. The next sound that came from the room was the lock on the office doors.
----
“Mr. Jennings, your wife is on line one,” His secretary’s voice rang through the speaker in his desk.
He tightened his tie up to his collar as he reached across the desk.
“Thank you, Mrs. Powell,” he spoke before turning back to the young woman in front of him now pushing her skirt back into place down below her thighs.
“That will be all, Miss Hanover.”
She turned and walked out with her notebook and little blue Tiffany box as he settled back into his desk chair. A custom that she had grown used to when called into his office.
“”Hello dear, to what can I place the pleasure of hearing your voice today?”
“I just thought I would see if you were available for lunch today, on the green for a celebratory toast to your last day with the company,” she replied clearly with a flat tone.
“I would be delighted Dear, but I have quite a few small details to care for before leaving the office today.”
“You won’t be skipping another meal today, will you? I worry about you.”
“No, I will have Mrs. Powell bring me something before I let her go today.”
“I feel so awful about her having been laid off,” she replied. “Maybe you should let her go early, considering everything.”
“Yes, I may do that, but first I have to speak with the board and welcome the new CEO.” He looked across his desk with a growing smile again seeing the fresh ink on the documents.
“Okay, Howard, but don’t be too late today. You have a big day tomorrow, our pilot called the house today to confirm takeoff time with you tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Dear, I will see you at four, as usual.” He tapped the screen again and leaned back in his chair with ease.
As he left the office, he saw Miss Hanover to his right looking at the Blackberry that he assigned her while she pecked away with one finger to her Facebook page. On his second step from the door Mrs. Powell was standing and walking around her desk to hand him the day’s edition of the New York Times.
“The Dow is down 653 points with our stock down 38 points as of a few minutes ago Mr. Jennings,” she said calmly with a smile. She wore a smile of old time pride. It was a smile that covered the years of meeting two different members of the family that built the company every morning and now Mr. Jennings. It had been thirty two years with the there since she began.
Howard took the paper from her hand with a slight nod and paused as he read the headline. “CEO’s of large companies bailing out like skydivers.” The lower line read, “But at least they have a parachute as the ground closes on the stockholders and employees of their same company.”
He tossed it back down on her desk as his lips pulled tight into a grin. He looked back at Mrs. Powell who watched the paper hit her desk like a lead weight thrown around her neck in the treacherous waters of an impending recession, and her own retirement full of the same companies stock.
“I’ll be back to the office immediately after the board meeting. Bring me something back on your lunch…put it on the executive tab.”
“Yes, Mr. Jennings.” She calmly removed herself back to her desk as he walked toward the glass elevator doors at the end of the hall.
Howard took his seat at the head of the boardroom table as usual and as prescribed upon entering. He passed a few members who all seemed sharply upset by the morning’s headlines no doubt, next to the price of the company stock.
An older gentlemen spoke up to his right as Howard poured a glass of water.
“Howard, I know this is your last day and we will try not to burden you too greatly with the facts of which I am sure you are aware, but we have closed down another fifty locations. We are also going to have to lay off another five hundred employees, mostly in the south-east, to make up our lost profits from the second quarter. This should help us alleviate some of the pressure and bring up our net across the board, hopefully improving the value of our common stock and earnings per share. And none of us would like to go another quarter without a bonus again,” he added looking around the table at the others.
Howard reached out across the table at nothing as he had hundreds of times before in these meetings, his Bolivia watch freed from the cuff of his dress shirt showing him the time.
“Yes, we wouldn’t want you to have to miss a tee time at St. Andrews or another perfectly good plane to jump out of Howard.” A chum to his right spoke up with a snicker.
Howard joined eyes with him that seemed to smile under his straight veneer, knowing the impending day they had planned together to celebrate his leaving. They both enjoyed playing the humor of irony.
“Miriam you can show Leonard in now please,” Howard spoke after placing his finger on a touchpad that set at angle in the table much like his own desk.
Howard stood as a young, polished looking man stepped into the room. He wore a suit similar to the others as if they had belonged to a club of sorts.
“Esteemed members of the board and colleagues, I am pleased to introduce Leonard Hausen, whom most of you have already met, of course. My successor.”
Leonard walked around the table, shaking hands confidently with each of the members before walking around to Howard. They caught eyes, eyes that seemed to shine with the same underlying corporate ethics…or lack of.
“I am pleased to have been able to make it today as you know I am very busy with preparations on this impending partnership of our companies. I like to call this a partnership in place of merger due to the fact that this is a huge opportunity for all of us to increase the value of our new combined stock and cut some of the fat. This will lead us into years of prosperity.”
A speech no doubt that was carefully calculated and cut specifically for the audience…one that will obviously differ from the corporate announcements sent out to the families of workers that pillar the company, and the ones that are deemed as insufficient for the demanding economy, the field that they play.
Howard stepped aside with ease as the new CEO took his position with authority. In a seat that once held him up above the rest. Held him above everything.
----
It was a short walk from the glass capsule that carried him from the top floor, past the lobby desk and out to the bustling street where his car sat powerfully behind a man waiting with keys in hand. A car that carried few numbers across the digital speedometer, part of his retirement settlement. His new Mercedes SLR sports car.
“I’m on my way Ruth,” Howard spoke as he drove his car through the traffic of another day. More little family cars and old beat up trucks did nothing but throw dirt onto his paint, he thought.
He cut off a small Honda Accord with a car seat in the back and a dent in the fender that looked as though it were about ten years old, he had guessed. They should fix that dent. Take more pride in yourself, he thought as he passed the young woman driving it, wearing a uniform that he recognized from a local grocery chain.
“I will have Marie prepare the meal as usual then,” his wife replied.
Howard came home as he had every day of the last year he had spent in his position there with the company. He kissed his wife on the cheek and removed his coat, handing it to his butler before washing up for his evening meal. Yes, Howard finished his day like any other. With a feeling of pride in every smooth, yet sharp business move he had ever made, with the security of knowing that he walked away from his last position as CEO with enough millions to make certain that his lifestyle would continue until his end. Howard retired that evening as he always had, on Egyptian cotton sheets that kept him cool before leaning over to kiss his wife on the left cheek. Under one of the many roofs that kept him safe from the outside world’s filth and lower classes. Howard retired satisfied with the exception of the thrill he awaited the next day on the start of his two-week vacation. The only thrill he had left now that he conquered another business deal.
----
Howard came out of the blackness of what must have been sleep to the view of the earth closing fast.
It’s just a dream! He told himself. It’s just a dream! The ground closed faster and faster as he kept screaming to himself, it’s just a dream! He heard the voice again, but this time he could place the man who was screaming, “Pull the backup Howa---,” but suddenly the voice seemed as if it were jerked short.
He rolled onto his back with the air cutting all around him, he saw a man dangling from a chute of gold which seemed ironic suddenly.
He screamed again, “It’s just a dream!”
He rolled again seeing the earth closing on him as he found the same cord as before, pulling it sharply with a jerk! But this time he didn’t wake up and his chute didn't open either as the reality of life closed in hard and fast! Everything began to become suddenly real as they came closer and closer without any break in the alacrity of his falling!
“I must have blacked out again,” he thought. Then he remembered rushing out the door without eating that morning, he remembered the idea they had to skydive with golden parachutes that were specially ordered from one of his own company’s factories in Asia...gold parachutes, his friend’s smiling eyes came to him in the board room again knowing of this day. Then it hit...hard and as unforgiving as the blackness of his own heart mixed with his own end.
The End
© 2009 Adam C. Powers
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