Layla, Act 2
Layla Gordon stood on the broad gray concrete area, penned in by a set of straight lines of yellow tape, her arms folded tightly over her chest, a scowl carved as if from granite on her face. She didn’t even move her eyes as she asked, “You’ve tried calling the drivers directly?”
“We only keep the numbers on hand for the regional dispatchers,” the store manager answered. He was a pale, gangly man, often described by his subordinates as looking akin to a humanoid praying mantis coated in ashen paint. “And each and every one of them told me the same thing- there’s only one driver for each district right now, and they’re all stretched too thin. Apparently we’ve got one guy who picked up his haul in Hayford, and he’s got pallets going out as far as Cincinnatti.”
Layla shook her head in disbelief. The Gordon’s closest to her own home hadn’t been brought any new stock for four days, and about sixty percent of the store’s shelves lay barren. On the second day of no deliveries, she had been called by Garret Dean, the store’s manager, and she had come in to perform a walk-through inspection of the state of the store.
The day after that, she’d gotten a batch of emails from numerous district managers about the lateness and low numbers of restock deliveries arriving at stores in their areas. Finally, late the previous evening, she received an email from a local radio personality, wherein he extended an invitation to come on the air to talk to the public about the recent stock shortages in many of the Gordon’s Goods stores around the Empire.
Now, with her watch reading just ten minutes shy of eight o’clock in the morning, she finally spotted a long freight truck backing its way toward the loading dock in the back of the building, its caution lights and beepers blaring. At first, it had appeared that the driver had turned himself around far too early, but as she looked on, Layla realized that the extra space was required; the driver was hauling two trailers on his rig.
“I’ll be right back, I’m just going to get Harold and Sam,” said Garret, whisking away far quicker than she would have expected from a man who looked so sickly. Several minutes passed as she watched the driver back expertly into one of the three loading docks and engaged his air brakes before killing his engine. The driver approached up the access ramp, a tall and broad fellow in an all-blue jumper bearing the Gordon’s brand logo over the right chest pocket and his own name over the left. He approached Layla slowly, brows furrowed in confusion, a clipboard with several sheets attatched to it in hand.
“Um, I’m looking for Garret Dean,” the driver said. He looked just off to the side of Layla, and his curiosity broke into a sort of reserved friendliness as the store manager approached, two forklifts humming along behind and to one side of him as the employees he’d gone to fetch followed. “Sorry, ma’am, I just know Garret pretty well, been driving this route for a few years. Well, not this one exactly,” he added with a scratch of his head as he handed the clipboard to Garret, along with a pen. “Got a whole bunch of extra stores on my ticket for the next couple of days.”
“I shouldn’t expect you’d know who I am, young man,” Layla said tightly, her hands loosening from her biceps as they slid behind her back. “I’m Layla Gordon,” she said, offering him a brief nod. The immediate recognition of her name, combined with the stark and terrible fear that came rushing to the surface of his eyes, might once have given her cause to laugh or gloat; it was usually nice to drop that in on some of her people’s heads, to reveal that the boss up on high could and would occasionally swoop down to check on her own operation personally.
Now, however, she felt robbed of that tiny, if cruel, spark of satisfaction. She needed answers, and she felt certain that a driver would know more than any of the dispatchers, store managers or district managers. After all, the people who were seemingly missing among her workforce were not members of management, so why would they have spoken to anyone in charge about the cause of their sudden mass estrangement with doing their jobs?
“I’m, uh, really sorry, Miss Gordon,” the driver stammered, bringing the cap down off of his head and holding it over his heart. She’d already caught sight of his name, however, and if she hadn’t, it was on the forms that Garret was at the moment looking over. “Don’t apologize, James,” she said evenly. “Come with me over to the break room, I’d like to bend your ear for a few minutes, and perhaps let you bend mine” she said, taking him by the elbow gently and guiding the way.
**
James Holcomb had been driving freight for Gordon’s Goods for nine and a half years. This in itself somewhat surprised Layla, given that the young man didn’t look much older than twenty-five years of age, but it turned out that he was thirty-four and simply took care of himself and lived a pretty clean lifestyle. He was unmarried, had no children, and lived well within his means, foregoing much of anything in the way of leisure or niceties. He had a library card, which he used quite frequently, and a small handheld video game system, which he played whenever he hit a stop and had to wait while the store teams unloaded his haul.
Gordon’s paid him pretty well, for a long-haul driver, and the benefits were good enough that he never felt the need to leave for any other employer. He still got to come home and enjoyed enough vacation time that he never felt tempted to go elsewhere. And all of this contributed to his heightened confusion when, about three weeks earlier, some of his fellow drivers started talking about leaving the company to go drive for Ganges.
According to James, several of these other drivers had tried to lure him to join them with tales of the pay scale they were looking at, and the benefits improvement, and the kind of schedules they were looking at. Drive for four days straight, get three days off, week in and week out, and all was right as rain. Employees got free Ganges Premier accounts and access to their entire on-demand video library, and discounts on some purchases. It all sounded quite excellent, but James passed them up on the opportunity; he knew who he worked for, knew all of the store managers he dropped off to, and had worked up a splendid rapport with the people he interacted with. He wasn’t about to trade that away.
Even now, with approximately two and a half times more deliveries to make each run, he wasn’t put off; he quite enjoyed travelling the length and breadth of the Empire, seeing new towns and Territories, and thought it might be nice to get the change of scenery. While it troubled him to see so many of his comrades and peers leave Gordon’s for Ganges, he didn’t begrudge them. After all, to each his or her own, he reasoned.
“But it is starting to take a toll, ma’am,” he finally said as he wrapped up his explanation of the situation with her drivers to Layla, who sat sipping a soft drink across from him in the rear break room of the store. “I won’t be able to get back home from this run until Thursday, and then I’m going to have only the one day off before I have to come on back and take another haul. We need three or four more drivers, or we’re all going to be on the road twenty-four/seven, and nobody wants to do that. No offense,” he said sheepishly.
“None taken at all, Mr. Holcomb,” she replied gently. “I may not have ever driven a truck for a living, but I think that anybody who spends as much time and effort as you have in keeping a company like this one running smoothly and efficiently deserves their regular days off, vacations, and not to have to carry the majority of the burden. Your efforts are more appreciated than you know.”
The pair exchanged a few more pleasantries, at the end of which Layla once more thanked James for his loyalty, and informed him that she would be personally commissioning a bonus for him and the other drivers who had remained on hand. “I’ve got a little bit before these guys finish unloading, you sure you can’t talk some more,” he asked as she rose to leave.
“No, James. I have to get ready for a radio interview,” she replied before departing.
**
Layla raised an eyebrow at the young man who was positioning some kind of metallic orb, like a high-shine disco ball, on a tripod at one end of the table to her right and Don Davidson’s left. She sat across from the talk show host known in the region as ‘Diamond Don Davidson’, a veteran of radio for nearly twenty years and consummate slack-ass from the look of him. He sported a good week’s worth of stubble on his face, wore a faded and stained track suit, and had hair that looked like it hadn’t seen the attentions of a brush or shampoo for longer than was healthy, but he practically beamed at her with a stack of papers set neatly before him on the table.
“What is that thing,” she finally asked as the technician gave Davidson a thumb’s up and stepped away.
“It’s a ball-cam, we use it for the video version of the show,” said Diamond Don with a grin. “And I also use it to do the weekly ‘Diamond Shines’ videos on my website and for UsTube. It’s picking up a good head of steam, actually,” he said. Layla noticed a hint of some kind of cologne on the man, and also picked up on a voltage of energy that seemed out of sync with his outward appearance.
“This is a put-on, isn’t it,” she said, nodding her head at him. “The bad clothing, the unkempt appearance. It’s all for show, isn’t it?” Davidson snickered and nodded.
“Trust me, you should’ve seen me before the suits upstairs insisted we do a parallel video format with the broadcast,” he said, scratching his neck. “I fucking hate letting my neck get scruffy like this, it itches like a motherfucker.”
“Are you allowed to talk like that once the show goes live,” she inquired.
“No way,” he replied with a scoff. “The ICC would be breathing fire down all of our necks quicker than you could blink. I caught a fifty-thousand credit fine last year for letting ‘shit’ slip out when one of these crackerjack assistants spilled coffee down my back after he tripped on the old ball-cam cord. They’re fully chargable now, thank Christ,” he said with a shake of his head. “How long we got, Steve,” he asked the young technician.
“Three minutes, Mister Davidson.”
“Great, thanks. Now listen,” Davidson said, lowering his voice a little and leaning forward, his expression flattening slightly. “I’m going to slip you the bottom paper from this stack, and you’re going to read it to yourself, then slide it back to me. Be quick,” he said, sliding the bottom paper from his pile over to her. Layla turned it over and found a printout of an email, addressed to Davidson, and coming from a sender whose address she didn’t recognize beyond its server designation.
The e-mail message was brief and to the point, which Layla could appreciate. But its implications chilled her deeply.
From: asorenson@kchat.com
Subject: Today’s Interview (Layla Gordon)
You are not, under any circumstances, to infer or imply on air that Gordon’s current troubles have anything to do with Ganges. If possible, make sure to avoid even mentioning them on the air, or for the weekly video. This is no joke, if even a whiff of negative feedback about them comes through, you will be out on your ass in minutes flat, Don, contract or no. I’m a lot less afraid of your lawyer than their legal department.
-Sorenson
Layla turned the sheet back over and slid it once more to Davidson’s possession, and the host slid a grill metal wastebasket out from under his side of the desk, lit the sheet on fire with a gold-plated lighter, and dropped it into the basket to burn and crumble.
**
“As I’ve said, we haven’t had any troubles with our supply chains from the top end, or source of merchandise,” Layla replied, looking at Diamond Don with a false half-smile forced onto her face. “What we’re experiencing at this time is a lack of drivers, actually.”
“Does this have anything to do with the calls for an attempt at forming a labor union among the associates and drivers that we all heard and read about a few years back,” the radio host asked, leaning back in his chair and scratching his gut.
“Not that I’m aware of, though that is certainly a possibility. I haven’t had such an issue brought to my attention by any store or district managers, however, so I’m not sure how much credit I could lend such a rumor, Mister Davidson.” She took a brief sip of the water Davidson’s technician assistant had brought her, weighing her options. She only had a few minutes left in this interview, she sensed, looking at Don’s papers. He’d neatly divvied them up into three smaller stacks, and the one he’d been going through with her had only one sheet remaining, which he now flipped over and looked down at.
“We’ve got a few questions from the website her, Mrs. Gordon, inquiries that some of our listeners and watchers have submitted, and I was hoping we could go through and put a few of them to you with the last bit of our time here. Is that all right?” Layla took a deep breath, letting it out evenly.
“By all means.”
“Okay. Our first question is from Jim Q., and he writes, ‘Has Gordon’s Goods considered buying out or merging with one of the other big or mid-sized big box stores’? Well, what about that one, Mrs. Gordon? Has that approach been considered?”
“It’s certainly one of our options, yes,” Layla replied. “I recently had a sit-down with the other members of the board of directors regarding this exact question. We were looking at potentially absorbing the Kmart brand of stores, which are very popular in the easternmost Territories. Unfortunately, when we had the chance to look over their corporate holdings and debts, we found it would be detrimental to take on their holdings, since the vast majority of them are owed to creditors at a rather exhorbitant interest rate.”
“Gotcha, gotcha,” said Diamond Don with a nod. He once more looked down to his sheet, taking up a pen and moving to cross off the next inquiry. Before he could, Layla reached across the table and put her hand gently on his, meeting his sudden gaze.
“I believe you wanted to pose as many of these questions as you could, Mister Davidson,” she said evenly. “Why cross that next one off?” Davidson clenched his jaw, eyebrows furrowing as he glared at her.
“Fair enough,” he said, pulling his hand away from under hers and sitting up straighter in his seat. “This next question comes from Helen J., and she asks, ‘Do you think it’s at all possible that some of your company’s recent troubles or losses may come as a result of the success and accessibility of Ganges?’ What’re your thoughts on that, Mrs. Gordon?”
Layla was about to respond when the studio filled with its commercial break music, and the door from the studio out into the hallway pounded open, a middle-aged suit bustling in and stomping his way over to Davidson, leaning down and rasping rapidly in his ear. When the suit was finished speaking to him, he looked up sharply at Layla and barked, “You, out of here, now,” his right arm thrust toward the door through which he’d just burst.
Layla squinted at him as she rose from her seat and grabbed her purse. “May I ask who exactly is ordering me out of here so rudely,” she inquired before making any move toward the door.
“You may not. Get the fuck out,” the suit snapped back, repeating the thrust motion of his arm to point at the door. Layla nodded and headed for the door, walking between a pair of individuals dressed in white button shirts bearing patches on their arms marked ‘Security’, who followed her all the way to the front doors of the station. When she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she risked a look over her shoulder, and found them standing just inside the entrance lobby, staring out at her through the glass.
She withdrew her cell phone from her purse and, holding its screen upright and out to be seen, walked back over to within a few inches of the glass, holding it for the guards to see as she finally turned off her voice recording program.
**
Shelly kneaded her temples in small concentric circles, eyes pinched shut. “I just, I don’t understand what you think you’re going to be able to do with that,” she said, planting her hands on the kitchen island across from Layla. “You didn’t inform them that you were recording audio in the room. Is this even admissible in any kind of way?”
“I thought about that ahead of time,” Layla replied, keeping her composure. She’d thought that her own wife would, if not excited, at least be supportive of her thinking ahead when going to the radio station for her sit-down with Diamond Don Davidson. “Because we were in a broadcasting station, with equipment at the ready, and were there with the express intent of holding a dialogue, I had no need, according to Imperial law and previous statute, to disclose that I was also recording audio.” She reached out for Shelly’s hand, took it in her own, and gave it a quick squeeze. “They can’t take me to court for anything I decide to release or talk about elsewhere. They brought it on themselves.”
Shelly had listened, dumbstruck, as Layla had first played back the recording for her, followed by telling her about the e-mail printout that Davidson had shown her. Shelly returned her grip a moment, took a deep breath, and sauntered toward the fridge. “Have you thought about where you might send the recording, or who you might talk to about all of this?”
Layla shrugged, hands now on her elbows. “Honestly, I haven’t thought much about it yet,” she admitted. “I just wanted to get home and talk to you about it first, dear.” Shelly poured herself a mid-sized glass of orange juice and took it all down in one draught, seeming to hold herself as still as possible for a ten-beat before pouring herself another measure and turning to face her wife.
“Do you want my take on it?” Layla nodded. “There’s no way in hell you can take on someone as big as Ganges. They’ll destroy us with barely an effort.” Layla shook her head, beginning to pace back and forth. “I’m not trying to be a downer here, and I’m not saying it’s right, dear. I’m just pointing out the truth; if you try to take them on, you’re going to lose.”
Layla hung her head as she repeated her steps, hands planted on her hips. After a minute of silent walking back and forth, she turned and looked at her wife, jaw set firmly. “I have to do something, Shelly. We can’t just sit back and let all of our drivers leave, and if we’re going to bring on new drivers, we’re going to have to offer them more money and benefits than Ganges will offer them.”
“So do that, for now,” Shelly replied, an edge of irritation creeping into her voice. “It doesn’t have to be permanent, maybe something as simple as a sign-on bonus so that it isn’t a long drain on your company’s margins.” Though she didn’t appreciate the tone of her delivery, Layla internally conceded that her wife had a solid notion to float. After half a minute, she pointed at Shelly with a bouncing finger.
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said. “I’ll tell my people in recruiting to work something up for the job postings.” Layla started out of the kitchen to head straight for her home office, pausing a moment to look at the Ganges pod sitting on the kitchen counter as Shelly made a request of it to pump some classical music into the kitchen through the half-hidden speakers strategically placed around the room.
She narrowed her eyes at the device.
**
Robert Digby stood in her office doorway the following morning, his shoulders slumped as he knocked on the doorframe with his free hand, a lone piece of paper in his left. Layla looked up from her computer screen and nodded to him, making a hand pull gesture of her own before pointing to the door. He shut the door behind himself, hesitating before bringing the paper to her desk and taking a seat across from her, the sheet still in his hand.
“This doesn’t bode well, Bob,” she said, steepling her fingers in front of her, elbows planted firmly on her blotter.
“No, ma’am, it doesn’t,” he replied, finally relinquishing the sheet to her. Layla found herself reading through a printed out article from a business-focused website she’d never heard of, and detailed the finalization of a deal the day before in which the retail chain Kmart had sold its entire holdings and brand to Ganges.
The sum that the online retail giant had paid out for the smaller department store chain, according to the story, was only about three-quarters of what Tom Jameson had initially offered Layla and the board for Gordon’s Goods. The story went on, but Bob had only printed off the first page. As Layla handed him back the paper, she asked, “How did this article wrap, Bob?”
“Ganges is going to convert about half of the properties into Processing and Sorting Centers,” Bob Digby said, folding the paper several times before tossing it into the wire trash can on the left side of the desk. “It goes hand-in-hand with another deal they closed last week, buying out the next three fleets of rigs being produced by Peterbilt, Volvo and Unix.”
“Three fleets? How long does it take them to complete a fleet,” Layla asked, eyebrow raised.
“About six months,” Digby said with a shake of his head. “For the next year and a half, every rig produced in the Empire for commercial sale is going to be owned by Ganges.” Layla felt her chest tighten, her spine slouching slightly forward as she put more weight on her elbows on the blotter. A twinge of pain shot through her jaw as her teeth pressed powerfully against one another.
“So even if we get more drivers back onboard, we’re stuck with the trucks we have right now,” she observed. “Some of which we’ve had for close to three decades, and need to be replaced.”
“Right. And now, we can’t replace them, not without purchasing from a non-Imperial manufacturer.”
“We simply can’t afford that,” Layla snapped back. “Financially or in terms of the wait. There’s so much red tape for a transaction like that, it would end up costing us almost twice as much and taking nearly twice as long to get them available.” She opened her hands and lowered her head into them, staring down at her blotter as tears threatened at the back of her eyes. “Call the others, Mister Digby. Get them here, now.”
**
There had been a great deal of snark from beginning to end, but when the board members finally filed out of the room, leaving only Layla and Robert Digby behind, they had all been in agreement; no matter what the offer, if and when Tom Jameson approached Layla Gordon again, she would accept his terms. Digby had tried to throw himself in front of as many of the barbs of the other board members as he could, but in the long run, Layla had been forced to take a veritable verbal beatdown.
In silence they sat for almost three minutes, with the ever-loyal Digby finally rising from his seat and straightening out his Ramones tee under his plain black blazer. “Mrs. Gordon,” he began. When she brought her eyes up to meet his, she thought, He’s grown, somehow. In the last few minutes, somehow, he’s grown.
“Yes, Bob?”
“It has been an honor working with you,” he said with a nod, coming around the table and extending a firm hand to her. She took his hand, surprised by the confidence in his grasp, but taking heart from his surety.
“Likewise, Mister Digby,” she replied. She waited a full ten minutes after he disappeared from the boardroom before heading to her office and formulating an all-points e-mail, which she mass messaged to every department head. Everyone in the company was going to have a head’s up; she felt she owed them at least that much.
On the drive home, she felt her eyes drawn toward the nearby Gordon’s Goods, but reset her view on the road ahead and made her way steadily home. As she drew toward her house, she noticed a long, sleek Towne Car parked across the street. She was barely out of her own vehicle when Tom Jameson oozed out of the rear of the Towne Car, working his way across the street toward her.
She could almost hear the hiss of his serpentine tongue tasting the air as he approached. Layla knew she could just head inside and avoid this encounter altogether, but instead, she squared herself toward Ganges’ Vice President of Acquisitions, hands folded together in front of her. He stopped on the sidewalk just fronting her driveway, a black leather folder tucked under his left arm, smiling toothlessly at her, lips stretched into a curl that seemed almost to split his face.
“Mrs. Gordon,” he said by way of greeting. “May I?” He inclined his head down toward the black asphalt of her driveway.
“I’d prefer you stay off of my property, Mister Jameson. You know what the folklore says about inviting the devil into one’s home,” she said with a mirthless grin. Jameson snickered, shaking his head but pointing the folder at her in a ‘good one’ motion.
“That’s a good one, Missus Gordon, I like that. I have something here for you, though, that you should take a look at,” he said, offering Layla the folder. She came toward him just far enough to grab the folder firmly, drawing it away and opening it upon a stapled set of papers, the top of which laid out the basics of what Ganges was now offering in exchange for the purchase of Gordon’s Goods. When she was done with the first two pages, she snapped the folder shut, barely able to keep from flinging herself at Jameson and tearing at his throat or eyes.
“You have to be joking,” she rasped, waggling the folder at him.
“I assure you, we’re not,” Jameson replied. “We’ve already sent e-mails to the other members of your board to fill them in on the details, and four of them have already confirmed that they’ll accept our terms.” He pulled out his cell phone, swiping away on it, until finally he held it screen-out toward her. Layla risked one more step toward Ganges’ servant, reading the headers of several reply e-mails.
She recognized each sender as a member of the board.
“And what would they think if I played them my recording from my time at the radio station just a few days ago,” Layla asked. Jameson drew his phone back, tapped and swiped a few times once more, then held it down so that the speaker faced Layla. She heard then a playback of her own voice, speaking with Shelly in their home.
The conversation had been one they’d had almost a year earlier, back when associates at several stores were starting to discuss the possibility of forming a labor union. Layla listened, horrified, as she heard herself explain to her wife the various measures being implemented to prevent any such union from coming to fruition, including several surprise promotions, terminations, and bonuses that would be offered on the condition that all talk about forming a union be suspended.
When the recording finished several minutes later, Layla half-whispered, “How in the hell do you have that?” But she already knew, even as the question had been forming in the back of her mind- the pod sitting on her kitchen counter. There had been some kerfuffle a couple of years back when the devices were apparently said to have accidentally and inadvertently recorded audio in users’ homes and sent the files along to Ganges’ servers. The company had come out and apologized for the breach of privacy, promising to do better in the future, and issuing credits to all owners. At the time, the credit issuance was said to have cost Ganges millions of dollars.
And here’s how they make up for the loss, Layla thought. “This is illegal,” she said, jabbing a finger at Jameson, risking poking him right in the breastbone. “You try to use that, and I will bury you in a courtroom.”
“Actually, no, you won’t,” Jameson said, flashing a wider, teeth-revealing smile. “If you’d kindly pull out and look at the page tucked into the back pocket in there,” he said, pointing at the folder. Layla took a step back, huffing, and snatched out the paper from the back of the folder. She looked over it carefully, glaring at the signature at the bottom.
It was an updated user agreement for the Ganges Home Pod, electronically signed by Shelly. Covered in the agreement’s final page was an acknowledgement that the device occasionally sent snippets of audio from the area around the pod to a server base at Ganges, and that users would hold blameless the company for any and all materials recorded and transmitted in this manner.
“You can’t blame us for having what we have,” Jameson said amiably as Layla tucked the sheet back into the folder slowly, straightening herself up. “And you’re not going to get a better offer if you try holding out, Missus Gordon. What do you say?” Layla took a half-step away from him, angling her head back toward the house.
“I say, Mister Jameson, that you win,” she said plainly. She swung her head back toward him, and whatever lay within her visage or eyes caused the Ganges suit to flinch back visibly, just for a moment. “I’ll sign these and have them messengered to your nearest offices as soon as possible. Now, get the fuck out of my sight,” she snarled, standing her ground until Jameson returned to his Towne Car and was driven away down the street, around a corner and out of view.
Heading inside the house, Layla strode into the kitchen, offering no reply when Shelly greeted her. She set the folder down on the kitchen’s central island, calmly opening it and spreading out the papers, handing Shelly the Home Pod user agreement before slipping around her wife toward one of the drawers near the sink.
She drew a heavy meat tenderizer out of the drawer, then made her way over toward the coffeemaker, unplugging the Ganges Home Pod and laying it on its back side before releasing a primal scream and bringing the meat hammer down on it with a resounding explosion of plastic. Over and over she swung the hammer-like utensil down on the broken bits and pieces of the pod, until bits had been flung all the way back to the hallway behind her.
The worst of her fury spent, Layla Gordon tossed the tenderizer in the sink, sank down to her knees, and wept into her hands.