Where'd You Go, Bernadette(43)
To: Audrey Griffin
I have chosen to disregard the tone of your previous nasty-gram and chalk it up to the stress of your living conditions. Audrey, you have Elgie all wrong.
This morning, I got on the Connector at my usual stop and settled into a seat in the back. Elgie boarded a few stops later, looking like he hadn’t slept. He lit up when he saw me. (I think he’d forgotten I’d signed us up for the same Connector.)
Did you know he’s from a prominent family in Philadelphia? Not that he would come out and say such a thing. But as a boy, he spent all his summers in Europe. I was embarrassed to admit that I’d never left the United States.
“We’ll have to change that, won’t we?” he said.
Don’t jump to any conclusions, Audrey! He said that rhetorically. It’s not like he’s planning on taking me on a trip to Europe or anything.
He went to boarding school. (On that topic, it seems you and I were simply misinformed. People like me and you, who were born in Seattle and went to the UW, we lack the… I don’t want to use the word sophistication… but we lack the something to understand this broader worldview.)
When Elgie asked about me, I was flustered because I’ve led such a dull life. The only thing I could think of that is remotely interesting is how my father went blind when I was seven and that I had to take care of him.
“No kidding,” Elgie said. “So you communicated in sign language?”
“Only when I was feeling cruel,” I retorted. Elgie was confused. “He was blind,” I said, “not deaf.”
We both broke up laughing. Someone quipped, “What is this, the Belltown Connector?” It’s an inside joke—the Belltown Connector is notoriously raucous, much more so than the Queen Anne Connector. So it was a combination of Get-A-Room and a reference to what fun they have on the Belltown Connector. I’m not sure my explanation helps you get the humor. Maybe you had to be there.
We turned to the subject of work. Elgie was anxious about the amount of time he was taking off for Christmas.
“You keep calling it a month,” I said. “It’s twenty-seven days. Twelve of which are Christmas vacation, when Microsoft clears out anyway. Six days are weekends. You have five travel days, where you’ll be in hotels with Internet access, I checked. That leaves you out of touch for a total of nine. That’s like having a bad flu.”
“Wow,” he said. “I can actually breathe.”
“Your only mistake was telling the team you were leaving in the first place. I could have covered for you, and nobody would have known.”
“I told them before you came along,” he said.
“Then you’re forgiven.”
Most wonderful was that by the time we arrived, Elgie’s spirits were buoyed. Which made me happy, too.
*
From Ms. Goodyear, hand-delivered to the Westin
Audrey and Warren,
A disturbing allegation has been presented to me regarding Kyle. A parent came to me a month ago with an accusation that Kyle had been selling drugs to students in the hallways. I refused to believe it, for your sake as much as Kyle’s.
Yesterday, however, another parent found twenty pills in her child’s backpack. These pills have been identified as OxyContin. Under questioning, the student pointed to Kyle as the source. The student has been allowed to continue classes for the next week, with the understanding he/she will receive treatment over winter break. I need to speak to you and Warren immediately.
Kindly,
Gwen Goodyear
*
From: Audrey Griffin To: Gwen Goodyear
You’re going to have to do better than that if you wish to implicate Kyle in a Galer Street drug ring. Warren is curious about how a legal prescription for Vicodin written to me, which I asked Kyle to carry because I was on crutches due to an injury sustained on your campus—something I never considered holding Galer Street liable for, even though the statute of limitations gives me plenty of time to change my mind—has anything to do with twenty OxyContin? Was my name on those pills too?
Speaking of Warren, he’s looking into the legality of letting a student who’s a known drug abuser finish out the semester. Isn’t that a threat to the other students? I’m asking out of curiosity.
If you’re so hell-bent on placing blame, I suggest you look in the mirror.
*
From: Audrey Griffin To: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal
Excuse me for not responding sooner. But it has taken me an hour to pull my jaw off the floor. I’m spending Christmas in a hotel and you’re lauding my tormentor? Last time I checked my calendar, it was the middle of December, not April first.
*
From: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal To: Audrey Griffin
Let me clarify. Elgin Branch walking down the aisle of the Microsoft Connector is like Diana Ross walking through her adoring audience, that time we saw her in Las Vegas. People literally reach out and touch him. I’m not sure Elgie knows any of them, but he’s led so many gigantic meetings, and been on so many teams, that his face is familiar to hundreds, if not thousands, of MS employees. Last year when he won Outstanding Technical Leadership, which is awarded to the ten greatest visionaries in a company of 100,000, they hung a huge banner of his face from Building 33. He raised more money than anyone to be dunked in the dunk tank for the company-wide giving campaign. Not to mention his TEDTalk, which is number four on the list of all-time most-watched TEDTalks. No wonder he wears sound-canceling headphones. Otherwise, people would be climbing over one another to get some face time with him. Frankly, it stuns me that he takes the Connector to work at all.