Elizabeth sat at her desk, typ­ing a report on the mar­ket­ing strate­gies in New England, when a head popped up over the cubi­cal wall to stare at her. The head belonged to a red-head named Pauline. She was young and bright, but was also the office gossip.

“Hey, guess what.” Pauline’s brown eyes were mag­ni­fied behind thick glasses.

Elizabeth looked up from her work, her fin­gers not stop­ping on the keys. She looked at the younger woman expec­tantly. When she didn’t con­tinue, she prompted, “Yes?”

“I heard that Mr. Warner is leav­ing to work across town.”

Absently she replied, “Good for him, it’s about time.” She looked back at her screen, and fin­ished the last of her typ­ing. She saved her doc­u­ment before send­ing it to print.

“You know what that means?” Pauline asked excitedly.

Elizabeth had rarely seen more than her head, but could pic­ture the heav­ier set woman bounc­ing in her excite­ment, on the desk she had to be kneel­ing on, like an ener­getic child who had been given too much sugar. The printer fin­ished her last page and she care­fully pulled the pages from the tray.

Seeing that she wasn’t going to get any fur­ther response, Pauline con­tin­ued, “It means that there’s going to be an open­ing in management.”

“They’ll pull one of the men from down­stairs, like always. Don’t get your hopes up, Pauline.”

“Me?” She looked shocked, not gen­uinely so, but she was a good actress as well as a gos­sip, espe­cially when it came to office drama. “I was talk­ing about you silly.”

Elizabeth laughed. “There hasn’t been a female man­ager in over ten years.”

“Exactly. I hear that the peo­ple down in PR have been putting pres­sure on Mr. Lindbergh, and peo­ple say that he’s finally going to cave.”

“We’ll see about that Pauline. I really doubt it.”

Pauline’s head dis­ap­peared with­out com­ment just as foot­steps were heard com­ing from the end of the thin hall­way between the cubi­cles. Elizabeth looked over when she heard the foot­steps stop beside her. An older man, a lit­tle heavy set and bald­ing, named David stood with his hands in his pock­ets. He sneered at her and looked bored. “Mr. Warner wants to see you,” he said before leaving.

Pauline poked her head over just long enough to say, “I told you so.”

Standing, Elizabeth frowned. She walked out of her cubi­cal and down the thin hall­way, straight­en­ing her pantsuit as she went. Her heels made soft clink­ing noises on the floor. She reached the oaken office door and knocked.

“Come in.”

She opened the door and stepped inside, clos­ing it with a soft clunk behind her. The win­dow was open to give a slight breeze, and she smelled the rain in the air. Breathing deeply she relaxed. “You wanted to see me sir?”

“Yes.” Mr. Warner spun around in his high backed chair, hold­ing a manila folder. He opened it on his desk and scanned the top sheet of paper. “You’re a very accom­plished young woman.” He looked up at her then, and noticed that she was still stand­ing in front of the door. He motioned to one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Please, have a seat.”

Elizabeth sat down, remem­ber­ing all of the man­ners and eti­quette that her mother had taught her while she was young. She crossed her ankles and tucked her feet to the side of her chair. Mr. Warner returned to scan­ning the file. She sat very straight and clasped her hands in her lap. Elizabeth took another deep breath, sud­denly feel­ing like she had been sent to the principal’s office. “May I ask what I’ve been called in for, sir?”

He looked up at her, and ran his hand under his glasses. “I’m sorry. It’s been a busy week.” He was in his late 50s, and had grey patches at his tem­ples, with scat­tered grey strands through­out his oth­er­wise black hair. He wore a black silk suit, and a black tie that was prob­a­bly worth more than she made in a week. On the coat rack behind the door hung a bowler hat and a cane, which was for show and not for any sort of phys­i­cal weak­ness. He smiled at her before sit­ting straighter. “I recently accepted a posi­tion across town,” he began. He looked at her for a moment before con­tin­u­ing, “I’m sure the rumor mill has been busy lately.”

Thinking of Pauline’s head above her cubi­cal wall, she smiled. “I’d heard men­tion of it.”

He nod­ded. “My leav­ing has pre­sented an inter­est­ing prob­lem, which Mr. Lindbergh has asked me to per­son­ally solve.”

Elizabeth nodded.

“There are three equally qual­i­fied can­di­dates.” He held up the file. “And you are one of them.”

While she wasn’t alto­gether shocked, she smiled grace­fully, want­ing to see what he would say. “May I ask who the other two are?”

“David Walker and Pauline Dubois.”

She nod­ded again. The three of them were often assigned to work on projects together, though they hardly left their own cubi­cals to do it. It was eas­ier to deal with peo­ple you didn’t exactly get along with when they were only words on a com­puter screen. She liked Pauline, but she was a lit­tle bub­bly some­times, and David was never pleasant.

“Pauline could poten­tially become a secu­rity risk if we allow her near the per­son­nel files.” Mr. Warner chuck­led. Pauline was a very lik­able per­son, but she was well known for not being able to keep secrets.

Elizabeth started to laugh, pic­tur­ing Pauline’s excite­ment as she read over all of the tid­bits of infor­ma­tion that every­one had hid­den in their files. She quickly stopped her laugh­ter over the men­tal image and cov­ered her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, smil­ing. “David is,” he paused delib­er­at­ing, “he’s a bit of a,” he paused again, search­ing for the right word, “lia­bil­ity.” David was known for his hot tem­per. She could under­stand why a mild-mannered per­son such as Mr. Warner would hes­i­tate putting him in a posi­tion of author­ity. “So while there are three wor­thy can­di­dates, I believe that you are the only one qual­i­fied for the position.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

He pulled another file from inside his desk. “I’d like you to take this home and read it over.” He passed it to her. “It’s your con­tract, should you accept the offer.”

She reached for­ward to take the file and then stood up, sens­ing the meet­ing was over. “Thank you for the oppor­tu­nity, sir.”

He stood with her and walked her to the door. “Don’t thank me yet, I’ve been doing this job for 20 years.” He laughed, “Wait until you fig­ure out what you’re in for.” He opened the door for her and bowed slightly as she walked out, call­ing out to her, “But you’ll do well, I’m sure of it.”

She heard the door close behind her and looked down at the file in her hand. It was only a few sheets thick, and held together with a paper clip. Shrugging, she walked back to her cubi­cal to fin­ish up the day’s work.

&

That night Elizabeth sat on the couch in her apart­ment, with the file open on her lap. Sipping from a mug of hot choco­late, she re-read the con­tract for the third time. She didn’t see any loop­holes, but there was some­thing both­er­ing her with the ease of the pro­mo­tion. She’d only been with the com­pany for four years, work­ing at a middle-level posi­tion. She han­dled five adver­tis­ing accounts per­son­ally but didn’t over­see any­one else’s account, and as Mr. Warner had said, she was among two oth­ers equally qual­i­fied for the same job.

Something wasn’t let­ting her believe that it was sim­ply because Pauline was a gos­sip and David was mean. There were plenty of bosses that were unpleas­ant, and the com­pany had actu­ally favored them over the more con­ser­v­a­tive and friendly of the prospects. Mr. Warner was an excep­tion. He was extremely gifted with words and had the type of per­son­al­ity that was both head­strong and per­son­able at the same time. Elizabeth hadn’t met any­one who didn’t imme­di­ately take a lik­ing to Mr. Warner.

The world of adver­tis­ing was com­pet­i­tive, and upper man­age­ment had its col­lec­tive eye on the dol­lars of busi­ness at all times. Thinking of it that way, she fig­ured her pro­mo­tion had more to do with what they weren’t going to be pay­ing Mr. Warner, ver­sus what they could get away with pay­ing her. The expen­sive clothes he wore, the expen­sive cars he drove, he had to be mak­ing good money. The amount they offered her was a con­sid­er­able step up from her cur­rent pay, but was no where near enough for her to move into a man­sion and buy thou­sand dol­lar shoes.

Satisfied that she had fig­ured out the hid­den rea­sons behind her sud­den pro­mo­tion, she closed the file and tossed it onto the side table, on top of her phone. Leaning back into her soft couch, she sipped her hot choco­late and kicked off her heels in one fluid motion. She had barely got­ten com­fort­able when the phone rang.

Sitting up, she pushed the file onto the floor in front of the couch and picked up the receiver, “Hello?”

“Elizabeth.”

Frowning, she leaned for­ward and set her mug on the cof­fee table. “Who is this?”

“It’s David.”

“David? How did you get my num­ber?” She looked around her liv­ing room, fear­ing she had been trans­ported to a hor­ror movie and he was wait­ing behind her shoul­der. Seeing noth­ing out of place, she shook her head, scold­ing her­self for an over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion. She had always loved read­ing hor­ror nov­els, and her favorite author was a mas­ter at turn­ing every­day sit­u­a­tions into a night­mare. He played with fears very well, and ever since she had started read­ing his nov­els, she had been overly cau­tious about things that most peo­ple took for granted. She checked the back seat of her car when­ever she got in. She threaded her keys between her fin­gers when she walked to her car alone at night. She even checked that noth­ing had been dis­turbed when­ever she came home.

“That’s not impor­tant.” He paused. He’d never been one for many words, but he seemed to be delib­er­ately vague.

It was a bit unnerv­ing that he had got­ten her home num­ber with­out her hav­ing given it to him. She fig­ured that all he had to do was tell the recep­tion­ist that he needed to call her about a project they were work­ing on though. “Ok then, why did you call?”

“I saw that you had a meet­ing today with Mr. Warner.”

“Yes, you were the one that told me to go.” She sat up straighter, her brows fur­rowed in confusion.

“I’m guess­ing he offered you the posi­tion he will be vacating.”

“I don’t see how that’s any of yo-,” she started.

He inter­rupted her, “Don’t take it.”

“What?”

“Don’t take the posi­tion,” he spoke slowly, like he was speak­ing to a child.

“Why not?”

“You won’t like the consequences.”

“What con­se­quences?” She stood up from the couch and bent down to pick up the fallen contract.

“You won’t like them.”

“You said that.” She set the file on the cof­fee table beside her mug.

“Don’t take it,” he threat­ened before he hung up.

She pulled the receiver from her ear, and stared at it in con­fu­sion. What was he talk­ing about?

&

The next morn­ing, Elizabeth checked her hair in the mir­ror, push­ing the brown curls back from her dark eyes and smooth­ing her hand over the back into some sem­blance of order. Sighing she tugged the hem of her black suit jacket down to smooth it out, and turned to leave the ladies room. She wore a pale pink blouse under her suit with a thin sil­ver neck­lace around her neck.

Elizabeth chose the more for­mal black pantsuit that morn­ing as the most pro­fes­sional look­ing. She had called early to sched­ule an appoint­ment to meet with Mr. Warner about her deci­sion, and only had ten min­utes before their meeting.

He was stand­ing out­side his office door, hold­ing a cup of cof­fee when she arrived. She peeked inside to see two men wear­ing the grey jan­i­to­r­ial uni­forms pack­ing the pic­tures and books that lined his walls into boxes. “Good morn­ing Elizabeth, I’m glad that I heard from you so soon.” He smiled at her, then took a sip of his coffee.

“Well it was a very tempt­ing offer.”

He nod­ded. “I thought you’d like it, and I’m glad that you accepted. Do you under­stand what it is that you’ll be doing?”

“I believe so, I have five accounts of my own that I han­dle, I assume that I’ll be given a few more, and also I’ll be find­ing new accounts and del­e­gat­ing those.”

He nod­ded. “I did more than hand out assign­ments though.” He looked into his office and gri­maced as one of the jan­i­tors tossed an arm­load of his books into a box hap­haz­ardly. “Follow me.” He took a few steps down the hall­way, away from the cubi­cles and entered a door she’d never noticed before. They entered into another hall­way that was lined with doors. Each door had a name let­tered in gold below a sil­ver plate with a title on it.

Mr. Warner walked quickly, his long legs tak­ing steps that she had to nearly jog to keep up with. Standing next to him, she’d never real­ized he was so tall, eas­ily over six feet to her five and a half. He reached the end of the hall­way and entered a plain door. “This is exec­u­tive con­fer­ence room three.” He walked in and held the door open for her.

She walked in to see three men seated at one side of a round table. Each of them had a small packet of paper in front of them. She rec­og­nized the one in the cen­ter as Mr. Lindbergh. He was nearly 80 years old, and was essen­tially just a fig­ure­head, but his opin­ion still held sway with major deci­sions. He wore a grey suit with a black tie. He sat with his back straight and his hands folded on the table in front of him, on top of the closed folder. His eyes were alert, but his face had no trace of emo­tion or expres­sion. The two younger men seated next to him she was intro­duced to as his son and grand­son. Both men looked strik­ingly alike, and in her ner­vous­ness she smiled and shook their hands weakly. The mid­dle aged Lindbergh wore a blue suit with a match­ing tie. He was bla­tantly star­ing at her, but he seemed curi­ous more than any­thing else that she would have expected. Mr. Warner helped her into her chair and took a seat across from her.

The youngest Lindbergh wore a pair of khaki dress pants and a black sweater. He wore wire rimmed glasses and his pale hair was parted in the cen­ter and combed behind his ears. He spoke almost imme­di­ately, and handed her a manila folder. “I trust you’ve read this through already.”

She opened the folder to see that it was her con­tract. “Yes, sir.” She looked over at him, and for the first time noticed his young age. He couldn’t be older than 23, a few years younger than her­self, but he was an impor­tant per­son with the com­pany and she didn’t want to offend his young ego. Elizabeth decided to keep refer­ring to him as, sir.

His uncle leaned for­ward to peer at her closely, before sit­ting back in his chair and fold­ing his hands over his belly. He didn’t say any­thing, just kept watch­ing her curiously.

The youngest Lindbergh con­tin­ued. “You have suc­cess­fully man­aged five accounts for the last four years.” He looked at her for confirmation.

She nod­ded, not bring­ing it to his atten­tion that she’d only had five accounts for two years, and the first two years she’d only man­aged three of her own. At the same time she had been work­ing with David on two of his account that she had then taken over, because the clients liked her bet­ter. He had never for­given her for that.

“Charles has brought you to our atten­tion,” he motioned to Mr. Warner, “As his per­sonal choice for his successor.”

The way he said suc­ces­sor made her think that she was being asked to be the heir to a royal throne. She looked over at Mr. Warner and saw him nod. Looking back at the younger man beside her, she caught his scowl, before he cov­ered it with a fake smile.

“While we don’t usu­ally pro­mote some­one with this lit­tle amount of expe­ri­ence, Mr. Warner has assured us that you are the best,” he sneered over the word “woman” before look­ing her in the eyes “for the job.”

Not lik­ing the hos­til­ity in his voice, she looked over at Mr. Warner for sup­port. He was star­ing at the young Lindbergh. Seeing that he wasn’t going to be any help, she looked back at the man next to her, notic­ing for the first time how pale his hair was that it made him look like he was going grey. She smiled slightly, and then quickly stopped, not want­ing him to know she had almost laughed at him. Most young men had frag­ile egos, and she didn’t want to offend him.

He handed her a pen. “I’m sure that we can count on you to con­tinue Mr. Warner’s success.”

She took the pen and signed her name on the line where the red post-it arrow was point­ing. She shook her head slightly won­der­ing if they did that for all of their prospec­tive man­agers or if they thought that because she was a woman she wouldn’t be able to read the bold let­ters marked out say­ing where to put her name.

As soon as she fin­ished, the youngest Lindbergh passed the file to his grand­fa­ther who signed it with great flour­ish­ing let­ters that took up most of the bot­tom of the paper. The mid­dle Lindbergh took the folder and closed it before stand­ing. He shook her hand and nod­ded to her before walk­ing around the table and out of the room. She stared after him as the oth­ers followed.

As she and Mr. Warner made their way back to his office he kept check­ing his watch. “Do you have an impor­tant meet­ing this after­noon?” she asked.

“What? No.” He laughed, look­ing at his watch again. “I’m just count­ing down the min­utes.” He reached his now empty office and con­sulted his watch again before motion­ing for her to step inside. He closed the door behind him and frowned when he saw that his hat and cane were just lying on the floor in the mid­dle of the empty room.

“Minutes to what?”

He reached down and picked up his things, putting his hat on and tuck­ing his cane under his arm. He looked at his watch. “This is no longer my office.” He smiled, and then shook her hand. “The guys will be bring­ing in your things shortly, I sug­gest from expe­ri­ence, that you pack any­thing break­able yourself.”

She laughed. “Thanks, for everything.”

He shook his head. “Don’t thank me yet. Wait until you get to know Mr. Personality.”

“Which one?”

“Exactly.” He walked to the door and opened it, laugh­ing. Just as he was about to leave, he stopped and turned to look back at her. “Elizabeth,” he looked at her seri­ously, “It’s going to be tough, espe­cially at first. Don’t let it stress you too much.”

She nod­ded, “I’ll try.”

“Watch out for David. He’ll be resent­ful, and he’s a manip­u­la­tive guy, don’t let him get to you.”

She gri­maced. “David and I haven’t always got­ten along. I’m not sure he’ll take too well to my being in charge of him.”

“I agree, but you have to remem­ber that you are in charge. No mat­ter what David says, he’s a cow­ard at heart, and if you take author­ity with him, he’ll have no choice but to obey.” He scratched his chin. “Young Toby can be a bit over­bear­ing at times, but he’s harm­less really. His uncle is the strong silent type.”

“I noticed that.” She folded her arms and looked past his shoul­der to see David stand up in his cubicle.

“Mr. Lindbergh senior is only around for big meet­ings and things like that, so you shouldn’t have to worry about him at all.”

“Thanks for the advice.” She smiled at him.

He returned her smile. “Don’t men­tion it.” He took a pen out from the inside of his jacket, and wrote on the back of a busi­ness card from inside his wal­let. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

“Thanks, again.”

“If you need any­thing, just give me a call.” He handed the busi­ness card to her, before he walked out the door and down the thin hall­way. He passed David on his way. The two didn’t exchange words, but traded frowns.

David walked down the hall­way faster and she saw Pauline’s head pop up over the edge of the cubi­cles. Standing alone in the door­way of her first office, Elizabeth found that she wanted to bar the door against David. She held back, fear­ing that it would only make things worse. “I saw you go back there,” he said by way of greeting.

“Good morn­ing.” She folded her arms and leaned back against the doorframe.

“I told you not to take it.”

She nod­ded. “I’m sorry, but I was under the impres­sion that I was capa­ble of mak­ing my own decisions.”

He scowled. “I have three years senior­ity over you.”

She nod­ded. “I know, but I wasn’t the one mak­ing the decision.”

He looked around the office, and then leaned in close. “So who did you have to sleep with to get it?”

“What!” she gasped stand­ing up straight in shock, “The nerve.”

He laughed. “You’re a beau­ti­ful young woman, and I saw young Tobias Lindbergh leav­ing through that door just before you.” He motioned to the side door lead­ing to the con­fer­ence rooms. He con­tin­ued smil­ing. “What would hap­pen if a cer­tain some­body found out?” He looked back at Pauline.

She laughed. “That not true and no one would believe it. Especially not Pauline, she’s my friend and when she hears of it, she’s going to come to me to ask about it. She will believe me over you any day. Once she knows that it’s not true, then every­one will know it’s not true.”

He shrugged. “It’s Pauline. She’ll believe any­thing as long as its juicy enough.” He laughed again then leaned in close. “Or you could say you had a change of heart and step down.”

“No. That’s blackmail.”

He nod­ded. “So it is.” He turned around to walk down the hall­way again.

Exasperated, Elizabeth walked into her empty office and slammed the door closed behind her. “What a rat.” She muttered.

&

The next morn­ing Elizabeth walked into her office to find a sto­ry­board sit­ting propped up against her desk. It was a com­mer­cial for a car com­pany. Setting down her things, she walked over to pick it up. It was hand drawn and she rec­og­nized David’s style. She had to admit that he was tal­ented, and if it weren’t for his atti­tude he would have got­ten the job over her. She frowned when she real­ized that the last square had fallen off the board. She couldn’t set up an appoint­ment for a client with a miss­ing frame. Sighing, she tucked the board under her arm and walked down the hall­way to David’s cubi­cal. She knocked lightly against the entrance frame and he looked up from lean­ing over his desk. He frowned when he saw her. “What?”

She took out the sto­ry­board. “Do you have the last square? It seems to be missing?”

He nar­rowed his eyes, look­ing her over from head to toe. “Did you rip it off?”

Shocked, “No, of course not.” Seeing his dis­be­liev­ing frown she was tempted to roll her eyes, but kept her face neu­tral. “It just wasn’t on there this morn­ing when I came into my office.”

He con­tin­ued to stare at her, and it was unnerv­ing. “Just leave it there, I’ll redraw it later.”

Frustrated, she set the poster on his desk. “When you find it, just bring it back and I’ll call to make the appointment.”

“Why don’t I just go ahead and make it? It’s my client.”

“And it’s part of my job; you never had a prob­lem with Mr. Warner sched­ul­ing the appointments.”

“You’re not him.”

“I know that, I’m not try­ing to be. But I did take over for him, so you’ll just have to get over it.” She turned and walked straight to her office, not look­ing back. When she got there she sank down into her chair and turned on her computer.

While wait­ing for it to boot up, there was a hes­i­tant knock on the door. “Word around the water cooler says you’re dat­ing Lindbergh’s grandson.”

Elizabeth looked up in shock at Pauline’s voice to see the short round woman stand­ing in the door­way. “Don’t believe every­thing you hear around the water cooler.”

Pauline’s face fell. “You mean that it’s not true?”

“No, it’s not.” Elizabeth opened up the plan­ner pro­gram on her com­puter and clicked on the cal­en­dar option.

“Well.” Pauline stood up straighter. “Doesn’t that just.” She paused let­ting out a frus­trated growl.

Elizabeth watched her with inter­est. Pauline was typ­i­cally a very good natured woman. She couldn’t remem­ber a time when she saw her upset. She was about to make a remark about gos­sip, but Pauline con­tin­ued on her rant.

“You never can trust peo­ple these days. There was a time when rumors were just truths that peo­ple didn’t want to get out.” She turned around then quickly turned back. “Are you sure,” she asked hopefully.

Elizabeth nod­ded. “Positive.”

“I can’t believe he lied like that.” She left with a huff.

Elizabeth shook her head. “David was true to his word I see.” She turned back to her com­puter and began look­ing for an empty block to sched­ule an appoint­ment in.

&

Three days later, David walked into the client con­fer­ence room with a sat­is­fied smirk. He was on the ground floor of the build­ing, wait­ing for his meet­ing to get started. In truth he was half an hour early, but he wanted to make a good impres­sion. He flipped through the sketches in his folder that he was going to be pre­sent­ing to his client. The man that he was meet­ing with was the head of a toy com­pany. It was a small com­pany, but the fam­ily had money. It was also a French fam­ily and there were a lot of fam­ily mem­bers with many chil­dren. If the com­pany never sold a toy to any­one out­side the fam­ily, then they would still make a profit each year just from Christmas.

He shook his head and began to set things up. He reached down to the chair he was sit­ting in and quickly loos­ened the bolt on the base that attached to the seat. Smirking he stood before the chair became unsta­ble from his weight. He set the fold­ers con­tain­ing copies of his adver­tise­ments and a write up of his plans at each of the three seats that would be occupied.

He sneered as he placed Elizabeth’s folder in the supervisor’s spot. It was only her sec­ond day and he already saw red when­ever she walked by with a sat­is­fied smile. It had taken a lot of per­sonal restraint on his part not to trip her as she got off the ele­va­tor that morn­ing. He had con­grat­u­lated him­self when he’d reached his cubi­cal, but then he got to think­ing. Why should he have stopped him­self? She had taken the posi­tion that he deserved. Did he not deserve some sort of sat­is­fac­tion in return? Was he not jus­ti­fied by doing his best to make her see that he was the best man for the job? He smiled at his rea­son­ing and unscrewed the end of the pen he was plac­ing at her seat and snapped the cap back on.

He looked up at the clock to see that there were ten min­utes before the meet­ing was sched­uled to start and he knew that Elizabeth would be run­ning late. He smiled as he remem­bered plac­ing the heavy pot­ted plant in front of her door. It was only enough to block the door from open­ing from the inside, and not enough for any­one walk­ing by to notice that any­thing was out of place with­out look­ing closely.

Extremely sat­is­fied, he sat back in his own chair, next to the easel which held the enlarged ver­sions of his ads, and folded his hands over his round belly.

“I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Raleigh.”

He heard Elizabeth’s soft voice and sat up with a start. He looked at the closed door and won­dered how she had got­ten out so quickly. He had enough time to casu­ally rearrange him­self so that noth­ing was sus­pected before the door was opened.

She walked in first as the door was held for her. She laughed, and nod­ded to the man behind the door. “You are such a gen­tle­men. Thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do for such a pretty lady.”

It took a lot of self con­trol to not let his shock show, but some­how David man­aged it. He stared at the young man who walked into the con­fer­ence room. He was tall, skinny but well built, with dark hair and dark eyes. He wore his hair long and tied back in a tail at the base of his neck. Instead of the stan­dard suit and tie he wore a pair of khakis and a tan cable knit sweater, sim­i­lar to what Tobias Lindbergh was fond of wear­ing. The white dress shirt he wore was unbut­toned at the neck and at the wrists, to show under the sweater and fold out­ward. He car­ried a leather brief­case and looked com­pletely at ease when he walked in the room. He helped Elizabeth into her chair as any gen­tle­men would before even acknowl­edg­ing David’s own pres­ence in the room

The young man smiled at him, flash­ing per­fect white teeth. “Hello, my name is Julian Raleigh.” He extended his hand. “You must be David Walker.”

David hefted him­self from his chair to shake the younger man’s hand. “Yes, I am. It’s a plea­sure to make your acquain­tance. I hope that you are as pleased with my pro­pos­als as I am.”

Mr. Raleigh nod­ded before walk­ing around to the other side of the table and tak­ing his place. “I believe I will be, if what my father said was true about your work.”

David stood up straight under the praise and smiled. “If I might ask, where is your father?” This young man was not what he had expected. The man who had always run the toy store was in his mid 50s, and was more the type David could relate too. The younger gen­er­a­tion was get­ting more and more artsy, and while he was an artist him­self, he didn’t go over­board in the way of dress­ing like he was about ready to jump up on a stage and read poetry.

Mr. Raleigh looked at him curi­ously before reply­ing. “He retired over the sum­mer, and I took over run­ning the company.”

David fought the frown that wanted to sur­face. The young man sit­ting before him couldn’t be more than 25 years old. His doubted Mr. Raleigh’s abil­ity to run a com­pany and felt some­how cheated for hav­ing to present his ideas to some­one half his age. He looked over at Elizabeth who was sit­ting in her chair twirling the pen he had rigged in her fin­gers absently. She was also young, prob­a­bly not much older than Mr. Raleigh sit­ting across from her. He won­dered why she hadn’t fallen out of her chair and tried harder not to frown at her. He noticed that other than the pen she was twirling, she sat absolutely still. He willed her to shift her weight or some­thing so that she would fall, but no mat­ter how much he stared at her and wished, noth­ing happened.

Mr. Raleigh stared at David expec­tantly. When no one started talk­ing, he cleared his throat, “Should we maybe get this started? Or are we wait­ing for some­one else.”

“No, we’re all here.” Elizabeth smiled then looked over at David with the same expec­tant expres­sion. “David?”

David broke from his thoughts and walked over to stand next to the easel with his pro­posed ads on it. “You see what I have here is,” he began.

Elizabeth watched him with detached worry. He had been openly star­ing at her, his expres­sion unread­able, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know what he was think­ing. She leaned back in her chair and felt her bal­ance shift unex­pect­edly. Before she could do any­thing to stop it, the chair tilted back­wards and dropped to the floor, with her in it. She landed with a thud and a sur­prised shriek.

Mr. Raleigh rushed over to help her to her feet. “Are you ok?” he asked.

She accepted his hand, then straight­ened out her pantsuit. It felt like her face was on fire from blush­ing. She chuck­led ner­vously before look­ing at the young man beside her. “I’m fine. The chair must be bro­ken.” She flipped her long curls behind her shoul­der and looked over to see David try­ing to con­tain his laugh­ter. She frowned at him before tak­ing a deep breath and will­ing the flus­tered feel­ing to go away. She picked up the detached seat from the floor and set it against the wall while Mr. Raleigh went back around to his chair. She sat in the empty chair beside her orig­i­nal one, and folded her hands.

David calmed him­self and resumed his pre­sen­ta­tion, but she noticed how his eyes kept stray­ing to the pen she was hold­ing. Deciding that being para­noid would be a good thing for once, she set the pen down and didn’t touch it for the rest of the meeting.

David was in a sour mood after his pre­sen­ta­tion. He shook Mr. Raleigh’s hand like it was a snake that was about to bite him, and left in a hurry. Elizabeth tried her best to apol­o­gize to the young man, but saw that he had been offended by David’s sud­den change in mood and any­thing she said wasn’t help­ing. She promised him to see what she could do about switch­ing the account, and Mr. Raleigh seemed pleased with that. She thought of the new young girl that she had just hired that morn­ing, and thought she would be per­fect for the account. He had kissed the back of her hand and promised to call her at the end of the week to find out how things went.

Elizabeth walked over to the ele­va­tor and shook her head, think­ing of David’s behav­ior. She was thor­oughly embar­rassed and ashamed of him. He was pout­ing like a child, and the only rea­son she could come up with was that of her pro­mo­tion. The ele­va­tor stopped at her floor and she walked off and con­tin­ued down the thin hall­way to her office. She closed the door behind her, and set her brief­case on her desk. “Well, that was eventful.”

Elizabeth looked at the pen that she held in her hand and frowned in con­cen­tra­tion. She twisted the cap off care­fully and noticed how it gave ever so slightly. She looked up and grabbed a tis­sue to place on her desk top. She fin­ished unscrew­ing the cap and sep­a­rated it, hold­ing the two ends with the thumb and fore­fin­ger on each hand. She let go and smiled when a small amount of ink leaked out from the inside foun­tain cham­ber. Satisfied, she was about to scoop the whole mess into the trash when an idea popped into her head. She screwed the two pieces back together and cleaned off the out­side before set­ting the pen at the edge of her desk. She smirked before turn­ing around toward her computer.

Elizabeth was work­ing for half an hour before her mind strayed back to the inci­dent in the meet­ing that morn­ing. She leaned her elbow on the edge of her desk and stared absently at the doc­u­ment opened on the com­puter screen before her. She rested her chin on her hand. “If he’s so upset at being passed over for a pro­mo­tion, why is he act­ing like a child?”

“I think that’s a good question.”

Elizabeth looked up at the unfa­mil­iar voice with a start. “Mr. Lindbergh, what brings you here?” she stood, as the younger man walked into her office.

“Call me, Toby. Mr. Lindbergh makes me sound old.”

Confused she wel­comed him to a chair. “Is there any­thing I can do for you?”

He set­tled his weight and leaned back casu­ally, his eyes smiled and he looked com­pletely at ease. He was noth­ing like he had been when she met him at the meet­ing. It was almost like he was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent man. “I just came to see how you were started out, you’ve been a bit of an exper­i­ment, and my uncle was curious.”

She didn’t know if she liked being an exper­i­ment or his smug smile when he said it, but she care­fully kept her face neu­tral when she replied. “Well, so far I don’t fore­see any problems.”

“Good, good,” he smiled at her, and she felt strangely unnerved. “Any problems?”

“I feel like a babysit­ter some­times,” she mut­tered. She heard his intake of breath and saw him sit up straighter before she real­ized that she had said that out loud. Her eyes widened and she cov­ered her mouth with her hand. “I mean, um.”

He stood up, cut­ting off her weak expla­na­tion. “Things get­ting tough already?”

She shook her head, know­ing her posi­tion as a man­ager was pre­car­i­ous. “No, sir. I, um, just.” She took a deep breath then met his stern gaze head on. “It’s noth­ing I can’t handle.”

“Good.” He folded his arms over his chest and looked her over with a frown. “Anything else?”

“No. No, every­thing is under con­trol,” She wasn’t sure what made her so ner­vous, but speak­ing badly about her employ­ees was prob­a­bly not the best impres­sion to be making.

“I’ll see you around then.” He nod­ded to her then left through the open office door just as quickly as he had entered.

She let out a breath that she didn’t know she had been hold­ing, and sank slowly into her chair. “That can’t be good.”

&

A week passed and Elizabeth fell into a rou­tine. The new accounts she was given were Mr. Warner’s babies. Before leav­ing he had evi­dently explained to all of them that he would be leav­ing and that he was choos­ing a com­pe­tent young woman to take over. The tran­si­tion had gone smoothly, most of his accounts he had already dis­trib­uted among the rest of the agency. Her first new account was a lit­tle known cos­met­ics line that she had passed on to a young intern named Jessica.

When David found out that she had switched the Raleigh account from him to Pauline, he had stormed into her office. He had yelled at her, say­ing she had no right, but shut up imme­di­ately when she had said that it had been Mr. Raleigh’s spe­cific request to be trans­ferred. He’d walked out of her office in a huff and had ignored her and any­one around him for the rest of the day. The few peo­ple who attempted to talk to him, and there were a few around the office who actu­ally tried, were treated like they were invisible.

On her way to grab a cup of cof­fee from the lunch room she spot­ted David. He smiled evilly at her and she almost was tempted to turn around to leave. He stood from his seat at a small round table and walked over to her pur­pose­fully. “We have a meet­ing in 20 min­utes,” he said.

Elizabeth watched him wearily. “Yes, I know.”

“This is a big client, worth a lot of money to this company.”

“I real­ize that,” she said try­ing to push past him.

He slid his bulk into her path. “We need to make the best impression.”

Before she could respond he stepped closer to her quickly, and out of reflex she jumped back from him. In doing so, she knocked the cup of cof­fee from his hand to spill all down the front of her blouse. She looked up at him in shock to see that he was try­ing not to laugh, and had a sink­ing sus­pi­cion that he had planned just that reac­tion. She took a deep breath and glared at him. “If you’ll excuse me, it seems that I have to go get cleaned up.” She turned around and walked quickly away.

&

The shirt couldn’t be saved and so she was forced to but­ton up her tai­lored jacket all the way. The client hadn’t remarked on it, and she had breathed a sigh of relief when the elderly gen­tle­man had left the build­ing. The thin silk was still moist against her skin when she made her way to her office after the meet­ing. She almost groaned when she saw the pale hair of Tobias Lindbergh sit­ting in her chair. Taking a deep breath she walked in. “May I help you with something.”

He spun around in her chair and frowned at her. “I heard that you were late for this morn­ings meet­ing with Mr. Johnson.”

“The meet­ing started 15 min­utes ear­lier than I had sched­uled it for.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “You’re lucky that David was there early to pre­vent any dis­as­ters from hap­pen­ing. Mr. Johnson is a big money client, and he was a big one for Mr. Warner. I was a lit­tle wor­ried when he had assigned the account to David instead of his suc­ces­sor, but I see now that he made the right choice.” He leaned for­ward to stare at her. “I’m watch­ing you. This posi­tion of yours is a trial run. See to it that you’re not late for any more meet­ings.” He stood and walked around her desk to stand in front of her. He stared down his nose at her. “Try to get to sleep ear­lier at night, so that you don’t walk around here smelling like cof­fee.” He sneered at her, “Good day Elizabeth,” and walked down the side hall­way toward the exec­u­tive con­fer­ence rooms and offices.

Elizabeth let out a growl of frus­tra­tion then she spun around just in time to see David smirk­ing at her before walk­ing into his cubi­cal. She slammed her office door closed and leaned her head against it. Closing her eyes she growled again before slam­ming both fists against the door. The force of the impact rat­tled the wall she was against and a framed black and white pho­to­graph of a rose fell to the floor with a crash.

&

Tobias walked down the hall­way to his Uncle’s office and entered with­out knock­ing. He found his uncle sit­ting at the huge oak desk. He hung up the phone as soon as he saw his nephew enter. “What do you need?” he said by way of greeting.

Tobias almost fal­tered in his con­fi­dent steps at the unfriendly tone. “I can’t come for a visit out of the good­ness of my heart?”

His uncle laughed. “You do a lot of things for a lot of rea­sons, but out of the good­ness of your heart doesn’t even make the list.”

Tobias smirked. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that new man­ager we made last week.”

“Ah, yes.” The mid­dle aged man leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “How is our lit­tle project com­ing along?”

Tobias grabbed a put­ter from the rack next to the door and walked over to the green car­pet set up in the cor­ner of the room. He took care­ful aim at the hole at the other end of the car­pet and hit the golf ball that was already set up. Only once his ball made it up the small ramp and into the cup did he answer. “It’s only been a week.”

“You’re avoid­ing my ques­tion, young man.”

He leaned over to pick up his golf ball, then replaced it and lined up another shot. “She doesn’t like David, but every­one likes her.”

“Well, nobody likes David,” his uncle laughed. “Keep a close eye on her; I don’t want her to think that she’s in any sort of posi­tion of authority.”

Tobias stopped what he was doing with a frown. He looked over at his uncle. “She is.”

“She’s just a woman. She only got the job because of PR.”

Tobias shook his head, but didn’t com­ment. He sank another putt then looked over at his uncle. “So when do I get a big­ger office?”

His uncle laughed then stood up. “When you grow up kid.” He walked around his desk and across the room to open his door. He motioned for Tobias to leave. “Keep an eye on her.”

Frowning, Tobias left the put­ter against the wall and left. “Don’t worry. I’ve got my eyes open.”

“I wouldn’t depend on David for any­thing. People don’t like him, and he doesn’t like peo­ple. He’s use­less for get­ting information.”

Tobias nod­ded from the other side of the door, “I know what I’m doing.” His uncle closed the office door and he turned to walk down the hallway

&

By the end of the week, Elizabeth was about ready to throw some­thing at the next per­son who walked into her office when her desk phone rang. She looked down the hall­way and saw David stand­ing up in his cubi­cal talk­ing on the phone. She snatched the phone from the receiver and growled into it, “What?”

“Rough week Elizabeth?” Mr. Warner chuck­led on the other end of the line.

Relaxing Elizabeth rested her elbows on her desk and placed her head in her free hand. “You could say that, I’m sorry.”

He chuck­led again. “Don’t worry about it. I actu­ally have just heard from Toby over there and he didn’t sound too pleased. He also didn’t sound like he was talk­ing about the same Elizabeth that I knew, so I fig­ured I’d give you a call to see what’s up.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He prob­a­bly was.”

“What’s up?”

She debated telling him, but looked up to see David put down the phone in time for the Lindbergh in ques­tion to walk over for a chat. She closed her eyes. “David is doing every­thing in his power to make me look incom­pe­tent. I asked for him to be trans­ferred, but no luck.”

Mr. Warner sighed, “I was afraid of that.”

“I was hop­ing he would be mature about the sit­u­a­tion, guess I was wrong.”

“Elizabeth, you have to under­stand that he’s a very ambi­tions man, and he’s been passed over more than once for promotions.”

“But you held this posi­tion for longer than he’s been work­ing here.”

“He was sup­posed to go straight to the top, and I don’t know if I should be telling you this, but he’s a Lindbergh too.”

“I don’t under­stand, isn’t his last name Walker?”

“It is, but Alicia Lindbergh is David’s mother, Old Man Lindbergh’s daughter.”

“Oh.” She was begin­ning to see things a lit­tle clearer.

“David’s the black sheep of the fam­ily, and only has the job he does now because of the con­nec­tions he’s related to. He’s tal­ented, but he has no peo­ple skills.”

“I noticed.”

“Be care­ful Elizabeth. David is a lit­tle unsta­ble when it comes to get­ting his way and black sheep or not, the Lindbergh’s will look after one of their own before they look out for any­one else. No mat­ter how wrong what he’s doing is, or how inno­cent you are.”

“Thanks for the warn­ing.” She turned in her chair to look at her com­puter screen. “It’s been great hear­ing from you Mr. Warner, but I have a meet­ing to get to in half an hour and I don’t want to be late again.”

“I under­stand, and keep in touch.”

“I will.” They said their good­byes and she hung up. She grabbed her port­fo­lio with all her doc­u­ments, and straight­ened out her grey and pink pin­striped busi­ness suit on her way out her door.

&

Elizabeth sat at her desk, read­ing the lat­est novel by her favorite author. Her eyes remained glued to the page as she slowly ate the apple that was her lunch. When she fin­ished, she tossed the core into the waste­bas­ket beside her. She was so engrossed in the words on the page, that she didn’t hear the soft knock on the door. She picked up the knock and leaned back in the chair, obliv­i­ous to every­thing around her.

She jumped at the sound of impa­tient knock­ing; three quick, loud raps on the door frame, and looked up to see Tobias Lindbergh stand­ing with his arms crossed. “Am I inter­rupt­ing?” he asked.

She closed her book and set it beside her. “I was just fin­ish­ing up my lunch break.”

He walked in and took a seat at the chair in front of her desk. “I came to see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing fine. I’ve had to move a few accounts around, but noth­ing has come up that I can’t handle.”

He remem­bered what his uncle had said about her get­ting com­fort­able in a posi­tion of author­ity and frowned. “Sounds like you’ve got things under control.”

“Yes, I do.” She took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes before she could change her mind. “Unless you can trans­fer David for me.”

He looked at her in shock. No one had ever told him they had a prob­lem before. Aside from David, but he was dif­fer­ent. Most of his employ­ees were too afraid of being fired to admit they couldn’t do some­thing. “Why would I do some­thing like that?”

“I’ve had to give two of his account to other peo­ple so far, and I don’t believe that’s going to be the last two.”

“And why is that?”

“The com­pa­nies that he has right now are being run by elderly men. They like him, but they won’t be around for­ever. The two that he lost have recently changed hands, and while they like his work, they don’t like his atti­tude. He’s giv­ing us a bad name.”

Tobias nod­ded. “He does have a way with peo­ple.” Thinking of his uncle, he shook his head, “But you’re in no posi­tion right now to be mak­ing demands, or changes.”

“I was just putting the sug­ges­tion out there.”

He stood up and looked down at her. “Keep the clients happy, and if he looses another account I’ll see what I can do.”

&

David sat at his desk, work­ing on an ad for a new fla­vor of tooth­paste; he smiled as his pen­cil scratched across the paper sketch­ing out a young woman’s face. The ad was going to be run in a children’s mag­a­zine, so he had opted for a more car­toon like draw­ing. The young woman was in her early teens, she had pig tails, and was wear­ing jeans, a t-shirt and a cape, while rid­ing on a broom­stick. He hadn’t thought of a slo­gan yet, but wanted it to be some­thing along the lines of magic. “Kids these days love magic,” he mut­tered to himself.

Running his hand through his thin­ning hair, David leaned back in his chair. He loved draw­ing, it always relaxed him in a way he couldn’t explain. Whenever he was inter­rupted, he became irri­ta­ble. He was always draw­ing, and any time he wasn’t draw­ing, he took as an inter­rup­tion. Therefore he was always in a bad tem­per. He liked being in a bad tem­per, for the most part. It kept the has­sle of inter­act­ing with peo­ple who would crit­i­cize his draw­ing to a min­i­mum. He liked the power of being able to mas­ter and con­trol what­ever he decided to put down on paper.

The phone rang beside him, and he glared at it. He snatched it from its holder on the sec­ond shrill ring, and growled into it, “What?”

A soft woman’s voice met his ears that he didn’t imme­di­ately place. Whoever she was, she didn’t sound like she was in the best of moods either. “David, how far along are you on that tooth­paste ad?”

He looked at the paper in front of him and frowned; he had sketched the out­line and was work­ing on the shad­ing. “I’ll be done in a cou­ple of hours.”

Good. When you are let me know because Mr. L’Orange just called ask­ing about it. If it’s done today than I can call him back before I leave tonight and he’ll be happy.”

He rec­og­nized the voice as Elizabeth’s and frowned, “It’ll be done.”

“Good.” She hung up on him.

&

David fin­ished his project by 3 pm. He slipped the sheet of paper into a pro­tec­tive sleeve and walked up the thin hall­way to Elizabeth’s office. He walked in the par­tially open door with­out knock­ing and sat down in the chair that was in front of her desk. She was on the phone. “Yes, I under­stand.” She twirled the cord around her fin­ger and lis­tened intently. “No, that’s not nec­es­sary, I can” she took a breath to con­tinue speak­ing, but stopped abruptly and took the phone from her ear to stare at it before sigh­ing, and hang­ing it up. “Did you fin­ish, David?” she turned in her chair to look at him.

He held up his work as an answer then tossed it to land on her desk.

“How does 9 am tomor­row sound?” she asked.

“Fine. I’ll be there.” He pushed his bulk from the chair and turned to walk back to his cubical.

Elizabeth stud­ied the fine lines and deep col­ors of the ad; David was one of the few left in the busi­ness who still drew his own ads. Everyone else sent their ideas down to the cre­ative depart­ment to have them drawn up. She admired his skill, but he lacked the peo­ple skills to ever fur­ther him­self in the depart­ment. Thinking of the cre­ative depart­ment, she remem­bered hear­ing from Pauline that one of the work­ers was about to take mater­nity leave. Latching onto the hope that the thought brought, she stood from her chair and walked out of her office and down the thin hall­way. She met David’s sneer with one of her own as she passed his cubi­cal. Questioning her deci­sion momen­tar­ily, she walked to the end of the hall­way and turned left head­ing for the elevators.

&

Three days later Elizabeth looked up to see David stand­ing in front of her desk with a smirk on his face. He stood with his arms crossed. “Guess who was promoted.”

She widened her eyes and looked up at him inno­cently. “Who?” she asked, not want­ing him to know that she had a hand in his pro­mo­tion. She had no idea what had prompted the change in heart of Tobias Lindbergh about trans­fer­ring David, but was glad for it.

“Me.” He smiled tri­umphantly. “Now you’ll be com­ing to me for help when­ever you need some­thing done.” He twirled his pen­cil in his fingers.

She nod­ded. “I heard.” She motioned to Pauline’s head, which was peek­ing over the top of her cubical.

He turned to look at Pauline, then back at Elizabeth. “At least I got the pro­mo­tion on my own.” he sneered then turned to leave.

“David,” she called out.

He stopped, but didn’t turn to face her. “What?”

“Congratulations.”

He smiled. “Thanks,” then left.

Elizabeth took a deep breath and sighed. She knew he would be hap­pier in the cre­ative depart­ment. He would have his own office, and he could lock his door against any human con­tact if he wished to. She was also glad that she would no longer depend on him for any­thing, and he wouldn’t be in a posi­tion to mess with her job at all. She smiled and sat back, turn­ing in her chair to look out the win­dow at the falling rain. She breathed deeply and smiled; now her job could begin.