The Other Ones by Dave Housley

Author:Dave Housley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Santa Fe Writer's Project
Published: 2022-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

Russell is on the “executive Core Team.” From what he can tell, that means he goes to meetings once a week and watches the consultant with the hair dye justify the surely ridiculous amount they are paying him. Russell has heard that they are on a monthly retainer. He has heard the contract is a sixteen-month contract. He remembers because the length seemed so strange. Who signs a sixteen-month contract for anything?

One perk of being on the Executive Core Team is donuts and good coffee. Russell had forgotten about this meeting and brought his own breakfast, his own coffee, but he will be damned if he is going to leave any opportunities on the table, and he forces another bite of donut into his mouth, stirs his Dunkin coffee and watches the creamer swirl while the consultant writes on the whiteboard. Russell wonders idly what he is writing and then puts it out of his mind. The man draws a circle and then another one inside, another inside that. He goes on and on. At first, people look at one another, then they titter. The consultant keeps on going. Russell understands that is the point of whatever this is—they are to suspect, then to laugh, then their interest will be drawn further into whatever this is, only to be released eventually with the revealed understanding that they are all on the same page, that there was some grand plan in the consultant seeming to make an idiot out of himself.

He has three donuts in front of him and he goes up to the table and retrieves three more. He adds a chocolate cruller. He wonders if the crullers are more expensive than the donuts, why whoever buys the donuts would have even thought to add four crullers in on top of a dozen donuts. Does the consultant himself buy the donuts? Or maybe the wife? Do they have an unseen assistant?

He takes all the crullers, piles them on top of one another, and returns to his space at the end of the table. The consultant is still drawing on the board. Everybody is looking at their phones or laptops. He wonders when it became officially okay, not only tolerated but encouraged, for everybody to be looking at their devices in every meeting. He takes a bite of the cruller. He will go on a diet soon but right now the important thing is maximizing this dumb Executive Core Team opportunity and that means crullers. It means the good Dunkin coffee, real sugar and cream. He takes a bite of cruller, adds a bite of donut.

“And that…” the consultant says, “is basically the Universe.” He pauses. People actually sit up in their chairs. Russell forces another bite of donut into his mouth. If this meeting goes long enough, maybe they will order lunch. The consultant gestures to a tiny spot in the center of his drawing. “And that is us,” he says. There are wows and huhs and knowing chortles. It is exactly how it was planned.

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