Below Deck - Love Under Lockdown

I wasn’t surprised at the rebellion. I hadn’t even touched my sandwich back at Ariba and wasn’t about to go back for it. Carrie was able to wound me more with a look than she ever could with a knife.

My heart went to her as completely as possible. Not that I dared to say anything. She was still my employee and there were certain appearances to keep. The company was still growing and there were potential clients who might not look kindly on an intra-office dalliance, especially between a boss and assistant. The power dynamics were just drought with trouble. Not that I was really thinking about that.

As far as I was concerned, we were just two people who happened to work in the same building. It wasn’t like I was going to fire her for not being with me. What was more, I was almost certain, at least as certain as it was possible to be, that she knew that. Of all the words used to describe my management style, ‘petty’ was not among them. Neither was ‘exploitative.’

The most common descriptor that I was aware of came down basically to ‘tough but fair.’ I could be demanding and expected the best out of my employees and all of us, I hoped, were working toward the same goal of growing MP Solutions into one of the top insurance companies in the country. I was never vindictive or mean and did my best to recognize and reward good work. But what I felt for Carrie fell well outside of even that.

Slice in hand, I hopped back in my car and with Offspring’s “Nitro” blasting on the sound-system, I drove like a more cautious Batman. I Avoided the main roads as much as possible, nearly ending up on the Brooklyn bridge at one point but getting stuck in a lunch hour traffic jam was the last thing I needed.

The Atrium, despite the name, was built in the 19th century. It was an imitation of the Crystal Palace in London. Reaching to the sky like a crystal obelisk, it was difficult to miss and visible from several blocks away. New York City blocks were, like most things in the city, both bigger and smaller than everything else in the country.

The building designs were not the only element bearing the mark of colonial parentage in America’s grand city. The influences went right down to the design of the city. Much like London, New York was comprised of smaller parts stitched together into an official whole. Official because a good deal of localization was still holding strong. The ‘sides’ of Manhattan function much the same way as the districts of London. Never mind the other boroughs, particularly the older ones like Brooklyn and Staten Island.

They may have the same mayor but might as well be separate cities unto themselves. The expansionist spirit was still alive and well in the New World.

Signing in at the security desk, it was onward and upward on the state-of-the-art silent elevators. They were a later addition to the original design. Much of the original material was still intact. Not all the walls were glass, which would have certainly been interesting but a bit too risky even back when it first went up.

The crystalline appearance from the outside was achieved by what amounted to wall-sized windows instead in place of the more traditional exterior walls. The interior of the glorious structure was mostly white marble. It was only one floor, so the stairs were more than usable. But I had heard so much about the elevators that I just had to give them a try, like a kid seeing an amusement park ride for the first time.

The numbering system was something quite interesting. For starters, the designers of the atrium had been traditionalists, using Roman numerals as opposed to the traditional Arabic numeral system. That made things really fun once you got up past fifty, which happened with surprising speed.

“Max, in here, buddy,” Mitch said, popping his head out into the hallway as I breezed right past the door.

The meeting room was small but still big enough for our purposes. I really wanted to let our work speak for itself. We had gone through enough to get it. Mitch was more the sales guy anyway. Not in a sleazy or oily way. He could always just find the very best way of presenting. He was the ultimate optimist, really.

His mostly positive attribute could get a bit creepy once you’ve seen it literally applied to a plane crash. Mitch went into full spin-control when a nascent airline we were covering started having trouble with mechanical air. They tended to drop before really lifting off too high so one really got hurt, but still, it looked pretty bad. In swooped Captain Charm and fixed everything right up.