Headhunters, Part 2

Stuck in traffic on the way home, I wished I had a Blackberry. I shuddered even as I made the wish, and looked around the inside of my car to make sure that it hadn't come true. I could remain blissfully unaware of e-mail, even this one. Without even knowing the offer, my brain sizzled with the prospect of escape. As I crawled along Brock Avenue, I knew that it wouldn't really be escape--I'd be trading one brig for another, still shanghaied by life.

The traffic drifted apart, breaking gradually until the flow became even once more. From the corner of my eye I saw a police car and what might once have been a sedan. I kept my eyes ahead of me, careful for the speed traps they set up at the end of the month.

Along the side of the road, the office buildings gave way to stores, which turned into apartments. These came further and further apart, until Brock joined cleanly with a wide swatch of road that took me into the hinterlands around Larch. I peeled off of the road five minutes later, into a dusting of buildings that rose up into what would soon enough be a proper commuter city.

There was plenty of space in the building's parking lot, leaving my car stopped alone on the cracking concrete. I'd gotten an unshaded space, so the car always ended up hot and the tar around it suffered the worst of the freeze-thaw cycle. The management office never had time to handle things like spot change requests, but they did have time to tag your car with annoying fliers and adhesive reminders to not park in an unauthorized spot--what else was security supposed to do out here? There was, after all, a mall near enough that the lot looked appealing to those cruising in.

Before I got to the door, I heard a long, labored "Ahem". It was like someone trying to clear drying caulking out of their throat. I turned and saw a hunched over young man smoking. He leaned against one of the pillars that held up the section of the building that shaded the nice spots in the parking lot. He didn't look like a bum--and I'd never really seen a bum out here.

"So," he said, voice a ruined mess of tar and blood, "you given any thought to the job offer yet?"

Headhunters, Part 1

I set the phone down and began my wait. The only other person left in the office worked upstairs, so she couldn't have heard my phone conversation. My personal e-mail account would be a good way to get the details of the offer. Jumping ship meant sailing in the same ocean, but it might also mean docking at better ports and getting finer hauls. Sighing at my failure to include a pirate metaphor to my florid self justifications, I returned to actual work, with my eyes always on the tab along the bottom that told me if I had new gmail.

Five-fifteen rolled around, I still had a few loose ends to tie up and no e-mail from the headhunter. I thought about when Cynthia, the upstairs coworker, got a job offer from one of the cable companies. She said she'd have passed it on to me if I had enough experience, mostly to get them off her case it sounded like.

My cellphone shrieked its awful chorus of rings, sure to attract my attention no matter how deep into work or interesting stuff I got myself. I picked it up. "Hi Margaret."

"Planning on sleeping there tonight?"

"What are you making for dinner." I scrolled through my spam folder, looking at the fifteen new, useless messages that came in since the headhunter called.

"A surprise. A very yummy surprise." The faint sound of cars passing came over the line.

"Getting ingredients for it now?" I flipped back to the actual inbox, still no message. I looked over my shoulder, but I hadn't heard Cynthia moving around upstairs for awhile. She was probably locked in place in front of her computer, handling whatever they handled up there.

"Possibly. Anyway, I'll let you get back to work so you can get home."

"I have something to talk to you about when I do, I think I'm being headhunted already." I let it out in one awful rush, straight into the speaker.

More faint sounds of cars passing came over the line. "Let's talk about it when you get home."

We went through our hang up rituals. I looked over the haul for the day: statistics on international migration, the price of pop in various countries of interest, and performance predictions for web-based multimedia conferencing services. Typical stuff for Looking Glass Research. With nothing left to do, and no owners around to keep me in the office, I turned off my machine and straightened up the office.

On my way out I flipped off a few of the lights and headed halfway up the pine stairs that had been shoved into the house after its construction to make a single office area for Looking Glass Research. When I got up high enough to hear Cynthia in her office, I cleared my throat and then yelled, "Anything I can help you with today?"

"No, thanks Max, I'll see you tomorrow."

Cleared I left, closing the security door behind me.