Flash! Fiction by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

53

The Meeting

It took place every Wednesday afternoon at three-thirty in the 12th floor boardroom. Everyone had meetings, but this one was different. It had been going on for four years.

Sitting in the middle at the long table, her back to the window, was the former director of human resources, a bookish face framed by too-red hair, retired after 35 years and now a consultant, who never understood why no one showed up for her retirement party.

On her left was the very large and athletic interim project director who had been recruited for his precisely-articulated and intricately-ordered plans, but who routinely failed to secure budget commit-ments and never managed to build his team beyond one.

Opposite was the former interim project director, now senior advisor emeritus, a short but distinguished raconteur and pitchman with a familiar and sometimes risqué repertoire, whose self-promotion and calculated liaisons had always ensured his place at the table.

To his left was the self-described American dissident who had evaded an earlier Asian war but whose alleged anti-establishment views were embarrassingly incongruous with his corporate outlook as financial comptroller.

Next to the consultant, at the far end of the table, was the balding but still young and very ambitious senior VP for sales and market-ing whose only fault seems to have been an attentiveness that vacillated between the cloying and the random.

At the other end of the table was the chief of technology, the legacy of an ancient merger, whose occasional outbursts, always irrele-54

vant and mostly unintelligible, were tolerated, but just barely, by his brother-in-law, the chairman.

Opposite him at the head of the table sat the chairman, a tall im-peccably-dressed man of middle age, who had directed the last 199

meetings. His secretary was absent, so there were no refresh-ments, and there was no one to take the minutes, not that anyone ever did. Following protocol, the chairman greeted each member, proceeding by rank, and then he stood up, excused himself, and walked to the door.

When the he opened the door, a security detail of 12 poured into the room and escorted the other six out to the elevator lobby. In the lobby, the chairman, without a word or gesture, handed each an envelope.

After the elevator had taken the last group down, the chairman walked back into the meeting room, sat down, and looked straight ahead. Then came the three knocks on the door.

First published on the Short Humour Site, 2011.