Chapter 5: Chapter 1 Part 5: Getting Fired - Ambulance Chasers
"Keppler!"
Every eye in the office turned to the red-faced, furious Mr. Valdez.
"If you think I'm going to be fucking scapegoat for you and your goddamn lackeys, you better think - you're fucking wrong!"
"Oh no," Daryl whispered to the next cubicle. "He's lost it. He's gone all incoherent again."
"Shh. I want to hear this."
"Mr. Valdez. Please lower your voice. If you have anything further to say-" Allistair began.
"You're goddamn right I do! I built this company! Right from the ground up! When it was just a couple of shitty graphic designers who couldn't find their own ass with their hands, I got you accounts! When you were farting around with your fancy degrees, I was bringing in money! You think you can blame all your fuck-ups on me?"
"Oh, please!" Marty scoffed.
"-don't engage him," Allistair said, but to no avail.
Marty sneered. "You got us carpet warehouses owned by dumbasses who had tigers for pets and were eventually mauled by them. You haven't made a single legit client! You're all trashy pawn shops and gold scammers, not Coca-Cola!"
Valdez turned purple. "I fucking made you!" He screamed. Then passed out. His body fell forward with a thud like a felled tree.
"Oh my God! I think Mr. Valdez is having a heart attack!" His secretary cried. Everybody began to babble. "Someone call 911!"
"Does anybody here know CPR?" The sales floor went silent at Allistair's question. He looked at Marty, who backed away, with his hands up. "Did NOBODY do the mandatory training?" The rest of the office workers looked at their feet, shuffling.
"I know one person who did," Keppler said, and gave Allistair a side-eye. Allistair glared at him, then pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Is there a CPR kit anywhere nearby?"
"There's one downstairs," Ms. French said. "I'll go get it."
Allistair sighed and loosened his Armani tie. "Forget it. It'll be too late." Rolling Mr. Valdez over onto his back, Allistair tilted his chin up and pinched his nose. "Keppler, do chest compressions. Hand over hand, like so, straight down vertically two inches." With a slightly disgusted look on his face, Allistair leaned forward and began to give Mr. Valdez mouth to mouth resuscitation while the entire office looked on in horrified fascination.
* * *
Cassie was waiting for the bus across the street from the office when the fire truck pulled up, then the ambulance, and finally, the police cars. She watched in mild fascination as the EMTs - dressed as Keystone cops - hustled up the three flights of stairs visible through the floor to ceiling windows. The flash finally faded from the roaring twenties back to the modern hustle and bustle.
The future came to pass, righting the world. Or at least, that's how her Grandmother explained it. The presentiment of danger or fortune to herself or people around her, shown in a visual form. Cassie thought of it as the ancient, more useful form of mental illness. She liked to imagine all of those priestesses of Delphi getting high off of volcano fumes and babbling fortunes had done some kind of genetic damage to their offspring, maybe. Or maybe it was the final evolution of what crazy was supposed to be.
She was too boring to be insane. Everybody said so.
This flash of the future had revolved around her ex-boss. Who wouldn't listen to her on a normal day, much less when she's trying to warn him about the coppers raiding the speak-easy and his pocket-watch in his breast pocket dying.
"Maybe I should have said a bit more to him about taking care of his health," she mused. She watched as, a couple minutes later, they maneuvered the stretcher carrying Mr. Valdez down those same flights and out to the ambulance. The lawyer followed, speaking to the police officers, wiping his mouth with a paper towel, then rinsing with a bottle of water and spitting. Cassie met his eyes across the way. "Oh," she thought, "so that's what happened."
Then the bus came, and Cassie had no choice but to leave the flashing red and blue drama behind. Gingerly, she lowered herself onto the bus seat.
"I suppose it's better than an affair," she said, "but how boring."
"What was that?" The woman in the aisle seat across the way gave her a wary look.
"Nothing," Cassie said. She turned to look out the window. The bus went over a pothole. She winced.
Her phone rang in her purse. The ominous tones of "Night on Bald Mountain" rang out. Her mother. She closed her eyes with a rare, pained expression on her face. Of course her mother called. Even if her mother didn't have the "visions" (as her family called it) and resented Cassie for having what she never could - somehow she always knew when her daughter was fired, or dumped, or had some other life crisis.
If she answered the phone, she'd have the same conversation with her mother she always had. "Your grandmother wants you to join the family business and get married. I want you to come back home, where you can be controlled."
Cassie couldn't imagine anything she wanted to do less.
Maybe the city works was hiring sewer workers. She'd check when she got back to her apartment. Because even that would be better than the alternative of marriage and entering the family business. Although it could be said that marriage and breeding was the family business, in some respects.
Her grandmother definitely saw her as a success of the program, her mother saw her as a rival for power, and she saw herself as some wonky mutation.
The family wanted to put her to use.
But all Cassie really wanted to do was cope with the hand she'd been dealt, not become some tool to be worn down until it broke.
When she was five, her aunt Sessily could no longer tell reality from vision and ended up killing herself. A tragedy, in any other family. Cassie remembered, even though she'd been very young, the day of her aunt's funeral. Her father stood in the parlor, speaking to her aunt's husband, calling her suicide a "waste," and her mother derided her sister for not taking full advantage of her opportunities. Her mother's gaze had met hers for a brief moment, and that's when Cassie knew why her mother didn't love her.
Her eyelids slowly closed as dappled light dancing on her face through the bus window. She could feel the rhythm of the stops and starts lulling her to sleep.
Then over the intercom, a stewardess said, "Everyone, please fasten your seat belts and place your trays in the upright position. We'll be at your destination in the next twenty minutes, and as always, thank you for flying Airbus International."
Cassie's eyes flew open.
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