11: Decisions
I was lounging in my underwear in Gail's hotel room in the Millennium Biltmore, actually not far from Gail's new office building... we had ended up here after "christening" her new office... twice (but that conference table wasn't nearly as sturdy as it looked)... then cleaning ourselves up just enough to avoid getting arrested on the street, and rushing over to finish the night, and each other, off. In the morning, Gail had told me to stay here and wait for her call, then went off to meet Cooley again.
As a good 250 cable TV, numerous pay-per-view and porn channels presented themselves to me, I gave them no mind at all. My whole world, at that moment, was Gail, and the truth about her and Pete. It made me fully realize how much they had been torturing themselves over the past few years, not just the months I'd been here... just thinking about it hurt me deeply.
Occasionally, my thoughts and feelings for them were interrupted by the reality of my own situation. I had been spending a lot of time trying to recover my lost life in Baltimore... and increasingly found myself asking "Why?" Not just because it was Baltimore, mind you... because there hadn't been anything special in my life back there. Certainly nothing even remotely like... Gail. Was there any good reasons for me to go back, even if I could? As the days went by, those reasons numbered fewer and fewer, and now, I could scarcely think of a single one.
Well, maybe just one:
Unfinished business.
I was also reflecting on the strangeness of finding the answer to my two biggest questions in life, on the same day. If you told me that would happen a week ago, I would’ve assumed that the space-time continuum would collapse an instant afterward. Yet, here it was. And now that I knew the answers, I had to figure out what I was gonna do with them.
It was about 2pm when my cellphone rang. I had put in a new ringtone that morning, a series of ten notes from the opening bars of an old R&B song. I'd be willing to bet that most people wouldn't have been able to identify the song:
Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel. (Go ahead... say "Awww.") "Hey, babe."
"We're downstairs at La Bistecca," Gail said.
"Come meet us here."
I dressed and came down to the hotel lobby. La Bistecca was one of two restaurants in the huge lobby space of the hotel, and at that time of day, it was easy to find Gail and Cooley at a table nestled against the far wall. I walked over casually, trying to present as upstanding a citizen as I could in such an ornate and expensive place. I smiled sheepishly at Cooley, and nodded at Gail. "Good afternoon."
"Please, join us," Gail said, and I took the chair opposite Cooley. I glanced his way, and was glad to see no sign of rancor on his face after my little con-job performance yesterday. In the meantime, Gail went on to say, "We have something to announce."
I turned to her, momentarily unsure whether her "we" meant her and me, or her and Cooley. "Yes?" I said finally.
"Mel has accepted a position with our firm's new L.A. offices," Gail smiled.
"Oh! Well," I said, extending my hand across the table to Cooley, "congratulations, Mr. Cooley. I'm sure you'll be very happy here."
"I'm sure I will be," Cooley said, shaking my hand. "Gail can be very persuasive. I'm looking forward to it."
A waited showed up, and I ordered a drink to go with both of theirs. Once the waiter had moved away, Gail said, "Actually, there's something else we want to discuss with you." I looked at her expectantly. "Mel and I have talked about
your situation. I explained everything to him."
I turned to Cooley, who nodded. "Mister Schitzeiss... Mike... you got a raw deal at the hands of my employers... my
former employers," he added, pausing to smile at Gail. He turned back to me. "If I can, I'd like to help... along the lines you mentioned in my hotel."
My eyes popped. "Seriously?"
"Yes," Cooley said. "After Gail and I talked, I realized you might be right... simply waiting things out on the left coast might not be enough to prevent me from being implicated by any future use of Merc... especially after I deliver my resignation. You said that you'd like to do something that will not only make them pay, but clear your name and mine. If you can do that... I'm in." He extended his hand across the table again. I took it gladly, and we shook across the table. We both glanced at Gail, who reached out and put her hand on top of ours.
When we pulled our hands back, I said, "Now, that's something to consider: When you give your notice, B&M will immediately be concerned that your knowledge of Merc might compromise them. That might make them plan to act sooner than later... and since we didn't know when they were going to act anyway, we might be able to take advantage of forcing their hand."
"That's true," Cooley admitted.
"Well, if that's so, we're going to have to put a plan together that can react fast enough, and stop them. It'll be tricky... and I can't guarantee I can pull it off, at least, not until I know more about Merc." I arched an eyebrow at Cooley. "Are you up for a challenge?"
"A challenge to get at my old bosses, before they screw me? Let me see..." Cooley said, lifting his eyes to the ceiling in mock-consideration, and prompting smiles from me and Gail. Then he dropped his eyes and said, "
Hell, yes!"
At that moment, the waiter arrived with my drink, which I promptly lifted in the air. "In that case: I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship..."
Stay tuned for the inevitable (and hopefully mutually satisfying) conclusion of Denial of Service!
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