CHAPTER FOUR

Quintrell, whom I was beginning to associate with overreaction, punctuated my reading of this document many times with statements like: “Oh shit,” and “This is not good,” and even “Hell’s bells,” which was not a thing that I thought people actually said.

I’m a quick reader, and tried to use my free moments to study everyone’s reactions. Quintrell, true to his interjections, looked alarmed, as though he expected this document to challenge the ground beneath us. Gary was serene, looking like a doomsayer whose predictions had finally been vindicated. Archie was just dreamy; that’s probably bad detective work, because surely something was going on behind those brown eyes of his, but my read was mostly “dreamy.”

Vanetta, on the other hand, was doing the same exercise I was. She wasn’t just passing along this memo; she was checking for a reaction. Was this why Cynthia was fired? Probably not a question that a receptionist should ask.

“Has it really been this bad?” I asked.

Which was also probably a question that a receptionist shouldn’t ask.

“It’s not been bad here at all,” said Quintrell anxiously. “It’s been a privilege to work here. Every day is a joy.”

“It’s been hell,” said Gary.

“Who posted this?” I asked. “Do we know that it came from here?”

Vanetta looked surprised by this question, and I couldn’t tell if I had said something incredibly stupid or incredibly canny. But clearly I had hit one of the margins.

“That’s an excellent question,” mused Vanetta. “Why is it that the temp secretary is asking the most salient question here?”

“I’m in shock,” said Quintrell.

“It’s probably because she’s slept a little,” said Gary.

Vanetta ignored this crack. “We don’t know where it came from, who posted it. But I’ll tell you where my bosses at DE think it came from. They think it came from here.”

“Why do they think that?” I asked.

“It does sound like us,” said Quintrell. “Wonderful people!”

“It sounds pretty vague to me,” said Archie. “It could be lots of places. Digital Endeavors does this to everybody. That’s their modus operandi.”

“Where’d you hear that?” asked Gary.

“Lots of people,” said Archie. “Don’t you ask around?”

“When,” said Gary, “would I have had time to ask around?”

“When would any of us have had time to write a letter this cogent?” asked Archie.

“Not you,” said Vanetta. “Spouses. Significant others. Gary, you have a wife. Archie, you have, well, various situations going.”

“It’s not my wife,” said Gary. “Honey Badger don’t care. She didn’t even get angry that time Lawrence ‘accidentally’ drugged me.”

“You call your wife Honey Badger?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” said Gary a bit sheepishly. “And she calls me Cobra. It’s our thing.”

“I’m in the clear,” said Quintrell. “No love for me. Hell, at this point, if I were to take a girl to bed, I’d dump the girl and just take the bed.”

“Don’t talk about beds,” said Gary. “Just don’t. I can’t handle it.”

“It could be your mom or someone,” said Vanetta.

“You don’t have to be insulting about it,” said Quintrell. “I’ve had girlfriends. Lots of girlfriends. I just don’t have one now because I never leave this building. I mean, going outside is a key component of meeting people.”

“Not for Vanetta,” said Archie.

“Listen,” snapped Vanetta. “I don’t want to pry into your personal lives, and I’m not going to speculate about what kinds of girlfriends or boyfriends or what you’ve got going on there—”

“Girlfriends,” said the guys.

“Why would you even say boyfriends?” asked Archie.

“Solidly girlfriends,” said Gary.

“Hey, I don’t know,” said Quintrell. “Describe the bed of this hypothetical dude.”

“High-thread-count sheets and ergonomic pillows,” said Archie.

This conversation was getting off track, I thought, although it struck me that any extended conversation with these three was eventually going to turn into a conversation about sleeping. I was about to try to refocus them, but Vanetta, who must have been used to this sort of work, had already spoken up.

“I’m sorry I need to bring it up. I get that it’s intrusive. I’m just saying that DE thinks it’s us. I don’t know if they’re right; but they might be right. It could be us. Look into it, gentlemen. Ask your wives and girlfriends. Ask ex-girlfriends. Ask your family. Ask your pastor. Check with any stalkers you have. Just because you don’t think you had anything to do with this, don’t take that for granted.”

“And if we do have something to do with it?” asked Quintrell. Everyone’s eyes darted toward him angrily. “I mean, I’m just asking because as the lone singleton here, I thought I could pose the question.”

This answer did not seem to mollify Vanetta.

“Stop it immediately. Because if the brass figures it out, heads will roll. Yours, and possibly mine as well.”

I had a question, and after having fortified so many people with baked goods, I felt I had earned the goodwill to ask it.

“Even assuming that it was someone from Cahaba who posted this,” I asked, “how do you know that it’s not someone who left already? Somebody who got fired might be more motivated to whistle-blow.”

There was no reason to take the letter at face value. Just because someone said they were a spouse, it didn’t actually mean that they were. It could be a parent, roommate, brother, sister, anyone. “You’re Working My Husband to Death” sounds much more compelling than “I Feel Bad for My Roommate.”

It could also be written by the employee themselves. You write about your own conditions, and it sounds self-serving. But throw in an imaginary wife, and suddenly everyone feels sorry for you.

“You could be right,” said Vanetta. “It could have been someone already dismissed. I don’t know. Let’s hope so.”

“Or Lawrence,” I said, still thinking aloud. “It could be Lawrence.”

“Lawrence would not give a fuck,” said Vanetta quite simply. “He’s the only person around here who I can say, quite definitively, did not send this letter.”

“It would also be littered with typos,” said Gary.

“Does Lawrence even have a girlfriend?” asked Quintrell. “I don’t know anything about him.”

“Probably,” said Gary. “He probably has dozens of them.”

“Forget Lawrence, forget his girlfriends,” said Vanetta. “Focus on your own houses, and get your work done. Digital Endeavors is breathing fire on me to get this to a playable state. Fight the good fight, gentlemen.”

“Right,” said the guys, and took off.

I hadn’t been to a lot of staff meetings, as I’ve not really been employed very much, and even then, under skulduggery, but I felt it was unusual the way the meeting just sort of limply dissolved. The moment everyone walked out the door, they were all zombies with blank faces. Their energy just ran out the moment they left the room.

Welcome to corporate America, I suppose.

I followed the gang out, but my phone was ringing and so I made my way back to my desk. Receptionist, recept thyself! I lifted the phone from its cradle and said, “This is Cahaba Apps. How may I direct your call?”

Which I felt was pretty good—I had the voice down. I was channeling primo secretary—Joan Holloway / Della Street goodness. Of course, it was all an act, and a pretty badly conceived one, because no one had shown me how to use this phone system yet, and so directing their call would probably involve a lot of cursing.

“This is Ignacio Granger.”

This name, which was peculiar, sounded oddly familiar to me, but I couldn’t immediately place it.

“Hello, Ignacio Granger,” I said. “How may I help you today?”

And no sooner had I finished saying his name aloud than it hit me. I knew this guy—he was a writer for Stage Select, a gaming blog. Sort of the poor man’s Destructoid. I remembered him because he had actually written about me when I got shot by a cosplayer at a gaming convention. It was a good piece, although no primary sourcing. He hadn’t interviewed me, but just repackaged the story from the Phoenix Sun article.

“Wait,” I said. “I know you.”

“Lots of people do,” he said, unimpressed.

“What can I do for you, good sir?”

“I’m calling for a couple of different reasons.”

“And I can help you with all of them,” I said. Man, being a secretary was awesome.

“First,” said Ignacio, “what’s your name?”

Well, shit.

“I’m Cynthia Shaffer,” I said, looking at the nameplate on my desk. I didn’t want to say Dahlia Moss because this guy might—it was unlikely, I grant—just might remember me. That article he had written described me as a “geek detective” and I didn’t want to do anything to imperil my industrial spy gig. “I’m just a perfectly ordinary receptionist.”

“Well, we’ll get along splendidly, then,” said Ignacio. “I’m a perfectly ordinary journalist.”

There was something about this line that seemed smarmy and ingratiating and also a little ominous. I thought I’d take him down a notch.

“Yes,” I said. “I saw that listicle of yours where you ranked all the Sonic the Hedgehog games. Groundbreaking work.”

It was perhaps not the most receptionist-y thing I could have said. Della Street would have held her tongue. But this did not seem to bother Ignacio Granger.

“Hey, that Sonic thing got a lot of hits,” he said. “You can’t knock hits.”

“That’s what Matt Drudge tells himself every morning. Now, what do you want?”

Nope, still not being very reception-y. Then, remembering once more that my job was to be pleasant, I said:

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m double-checking the time for my tour of the place,” said Ignacio.

“Oh,” I said. I had not been here very long, but it instantly seemed to me that Cahaba Apps, with its abandonment-themed decor and sleep-deprived hysterics was not a great place to allow a journalist to wander through. Still, not my call to make. “Let me see if I can put you through to Vanetta.”

And I looked at the phone system, which while not overly complicated, was at least opaque. There was a button that someone had written “Vanetta” on, and if I pressed that I’d probably have her line. But should I press Transfer first? Or maybe Hold first and then Transfer? Or did this even matter? It struck me that I should have Charice call here so I could practice transferring her around.

“I’d love a quote from you too. You’re at the nexus op, after all,” said Ignacio, whom I suddenly suspected was trying to charm me. Why would he be trying to charm me?

“No quotes,” I said, because I might not have been a great receptionist, but I was no fool. But then, because I was a detective, I asked: “Why would you want a quote from me?”

“About the DE scandal. You’ve seen the post, right?”

“I cannot comment on that at this time,” I said. Transfer first, then Vanetta.

“Sounds like you’ve seen it,” said Ignacio. “Listen, the word on the street is that things are falling apart over there.”

“I’m transferring you now,” I said. And I did just that, or, possibly, I sent him off to oblivion. Either way, problem solved.

I didn’t have much time to wonder about Ignacio’s fate, although I couldn’t imagine it was going to go well for him, wherever he got transferred to. Given a few more moments, I might have wondered about what, exactly, he was after. Because this was Video Game Journalism, which resembles actual journalism in the way a cat resembles a zebra. He wasn’t going to do an exposé on Cahaba Apps, because people in Video Games Journalism don’t do exposés. On anything.

They do glowing reviews and listicles.

So what was that about?

This was an entirely reasonable question, but I did not have time to pursue it, because I was accosted by Lawrence Ussary, Man Who Did Not Give a Fuck. I wish I could say that I deduced his identity by some sort of impressive and astute observation, but he was wearing yet another Burberry suit and looked like some sort of runway model Burberry might use. It seemed plausible that he might have been playing football earlier, perhaps in the 1920s, perhaps for Harvard.

He was winning, I guess I’m saying.

“Cynthia, do you have my suit?”

It wasn’t clear to me if Lawrence Ussary, Man Who Did Not Give a Fuck, was joking. As in, “Ha, ha, I see that you aren’t Cynthia, but there you are sitting in front of her nameplate, and thus I will assail Humor!” Or was this “The nameplate says Cynthia so I’m going with that.” But as he did not exactly stop at my desk so much as merely slow down, I tended toward the latter.

I did not have a lot of time for extended impressions of Lawrence Ussary, but suffice to say that he looked like he had been getting plenty of sleep.

“Yes, Mr. Ussary—I took the liberty of hanging it in your office.”

“Thanks, Cynth, you’re a doll,” said Lawrence Ussary, and then he was gone.

I have not been called a doll very frequently in my life, in part because I’m really more of an Action Figure, and in part because this is not the 1940s. I felt as though I should have been properly offended, but it was such an odd exchange that I was more confused than anything.

Quintrell King showed up at my desk.

“Who was on the phone?” he asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, you transferred the line, and a moment later, Vanetta threw her phone on the floor and kicked it,” said Quintrell. “And I feel like that can’t be a good sign.”

“Lawrence Ussary called me a doll,” I said, trying to change the subject.

“He spoke to you? Wow.”

“And he called me Cynthia,” I said.

“He usually calls me Jason,” said Quintrell.

“What does he do around here?” I asked.

“I wonder that myself. I know he put up most of the money that got this place started. He and Vanetta went to college together. She was the brains, he was the money.”

“So Vanetta programs?”

“She programs, yeah,” said Quintrell, “but honestly, she’s not that great. Don’t tell her I said that. Mostly she designs. The Rails series were all her ideas. She’s really good at game theory. If you ever catch her with any sleep ask her about her dinner with David Sirlin—the game designer. She’ll get really excited, but also weirdly furious. It’s very exciting to watch.”

“And what do you do?” I asked.

“Gary and I mostly program,” he said. “Although these days that means trying to repair the damage that’s been done.”

“And Archie does art?”

“And music, and some promotional bits, but right now mostly music.”

“And that’s the staff?” I asked.

“That’s the local people,” said Quintrell. “There used to be more of us. And, of course, there are people who work for DE out of other offices. They gave us an organizational flowchart when DE bought us, and it’s honestly the most complicated thing I have ever seen in my life. And I can do the New York Times crossword puzzle on Fridays.”

From Quintrell’s bragging intonation, I suspected this meant something—do the puzzles get harder as the week goes along?—but I did not get to follow up on the point because Vanetta slammed open the door to her office and yelled, “Cynthia, my phone isn’t working!”

“That’s because she kicked it,” whispered Quintrell.

I wasn’t sure how to respond. My natural answer would be to say “Don’t kick phones,” but what did I know? Maybe there was a malignant spirit on the other end of the line, like in a horror movie, and Vanetta Jones had dispelled the evil and saved us all. It was at least hypothetically possible.

But even in the universe where Vanetta was the vanquisher of phone-based evil, it wasn’t like I was going to go in there and somehow reassemble her phone. There were other people for that.

I settled on: “Would you like for me to make a call for someone to come out and service it?”

Which felt like it was pitched nicely down the middle.

Vanetta did not respond, however, because Lawrence Ussary walked by and said: “Cynthia. Jason.” And walked into Vanetta’s office and closed the door.

There was a silence, in which Quintrell once again looked nervous and impressed. A lot of things seemed to provoke this reaction in him.

“I know you probably aren’t aware of this,” said Quintrell. “But Lawrence going in there is weird. It’s like the south pole and the north pole just going off together.”

“They’re both cold,” I said.

“Yes, but together they will destroy the earth,” said Quintrell.

“He called you Jason again,” I observed.

“Yeah,” said Quintrell. “I really hate that he does that. Jason used to work here.”

“Do you look like him?”

“He was three hundred and fifty pounds, so I hope not,” said Quintrell. “No offense, Jason.”

“Gotcha.”

“Also, Jason was white. Still is, I’d assume.”

“I guess Lawrence isn’t really a details guy.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Quintrell.