Page 15 of The Boardroom: Jonathan
“You got it boss,” Sabryna said, shaking her head at me with a look of somewhat amused concern.
“I’m definitely gonna need it once Samantha gets here,” I joked.
Sabryna broke out into a guilty smile. “Uh, Johnathan…”
I looked at her questioningly. “What?”
“You know Samantha Doyle has been in the conference room working on that report since six o’clock this morning, right?”
I stared at Sabryna blankly. “Shit…” I said. “Shit.”
I abandoned the chamomile tea Sabryna had started steeping to a cold and undeserved demise as I rushed into the conference room.
“Hi!” I said awkwardly as I pushed open the conference room door to find Samantha typing notes peacefully into her laptop with a cup of coffee balanced between her fingertips.
“Good morning Johnathan,” she said, taking a delicate sip of her coffee and keeping eyes locked on me. She bowed her head a bit as she put the cup down, as if acknowledging an opponent. “I thought you would get here earlier, considering the deadline is tomorrow, and of course, the weather reports.”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. That was irresponsible of me.”
Samantha stared back at her laptop, unsure of how to respond to my sudden acquiescence. “Look Johnathan, about the other day…I’m sorry.” She squirmed a bit in her seat as I gazed up at her. “Implying that you were being more generous with these negotiations than you were intending was…not professional. At all.”
I shrugged, unsure of how to respond as well. “Thanks,” I said. “But what’s done is done.” I pulled my laptop and some files out of my briefcase and sighed. “Now we just have to focus on getting this report done before the storm hits.”
Samantha smiled over her coffee. “It’s not too bad. Most of it is writing the data analysis sheets up and making our circumstances look as pretty as possible. If we budget our time correctly, we can probably finish this by the late afternoon and get home safely.” Samantha shuffled the batch of papers in front of her to even them out. “Now can you hand me the graphs and pie charts and stuff? You printed them out, right?”
I froze in my seat. “Um.”
“It’s okay, just email them to the printer and—”
“I didn’t…” I bit my cheek as Samantha stared at me with terror in her eyes. “…I didn’t actually get around to making the graphs yet.”
I watched as Samantha’s eye’s widened. “Youwhat?”
I got the same feeling I used to get when I would neglect my science homework as a kid to go and play baseball with my friends, day after day, until my grades plummeted. She was giving me that same disappointed and annoyed look that the teachers would give me as they cycled around my desk to see that once again, I could not produce a worksheet from my backpack.
Samantha shook her head and looked down. “You know, it amazes me sometimes that I’m the one who went bankrupt and not you.” She laughed incredulously. “I mean, do you get away with this stuff all the time? Because I certainly don’t. What, do you just charm your way out of these things?”
I stayed silent.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Samantha said as I fumbled with my pen. There was no way to fight back on this one. She was clearly right and I was wrong. Her accusation was not too far from the truth, either.
“Well don’t just sit there,” Samantha said. “We’ve got five days’ worth of work to do in one. Get started on the charts!”
I smiled at her in defeat. “Yes, boss.” She rolled her eyes and continued working.
The tension in the room was palpable as I compiled the data from the Torver Group and Wordsworth in a series of graphs, a series of neat pie charts and tables that showed the details of our earnings for the year. I could feel it when Samantha looked over at me, and every time I glanced up towards her I felt like she would feel it and accuse me of something. The air in the room was thicker than usual. It was full of unspoken arguments and the leftover bitterness of the shouted ones, of the spoils and wounds of our wars and all the greed and pain that lingered with them.
We had worked out a system where I would compile our data into graphs and email them to Samantha, and she would write the accompanying report, being the better writer out of the two of us. It wasn’t the hardest work, but there was a hell of a lot of it, and by the time lunch break came around, the monotony of the work combined with the unflinching tension in the atmosphere made me feel as exhausted as I usually did at five o’clock.
“…It’s noon,” I said, nervously looking up towards Samantha, who had the posture of a duchess and the focus of a general as she typed away.
“Mmhm.”
“It’s noon, Samantha. We should eat.”
“There’s no time to get anything,” she said. “We’ll deal.”
I rolled my eyes at her stubbornness. “Nonsense. I’ll have Sabryna call in a pizza. No time wasted, okay?”
