Success

Rosemary Harper, one of my research analysts, crossed her legs, distracting me momentarily from her presentation. Was it my imagination or had Rosemary been wearing even shorter skirts in the last few months since my promotion to head of the Health Statistics Branch. Maybe it was because, as Branch head, I had more occasion to have Rosemary seated across my desk from me.  

Back to the matter in hand. I was in my office in downtown Sacramento. Rosemary was giving me a progress report on her investigation into poisoning deaths, a project which Dr. Sanderson, one of our Deputy Directors, had instigated and which, as always, he thought could be completed at once. She believed she’d cleaned up the data bases she had to use and had written the computer programs needed to get deaths with the proper codes. Rosemary was an attractive young lady, also quite intelligent and capable, having graduated several years before from the University of California at Davis and besides was very ambitious. I told Rosemary to proceed with all possible speed. “You know Dr. Sanderson is always in a rush. “

Rosemary stood up. “I’m glad you finally got George Rozier a promotion,” she said. “He deserved it.”

“I thought so.” George Rozier was a man in his fifties who was my chief analyst. He was an expert in the sometimes arcane computer programs used to extract data from our aging computer tapes, but he was also grossly overweight, always looked as if he’d slept in his clothes and given to politically incorrect statements. Getting him promoted, after some 15 years, had been one of my priorities on becoming Branch head.

“Now that George’s a senior analyst,” said Rosemary, “there should be room for an associate. I plan to take the next exam. Do you know when it’ll be?”

As I’d noted, Rosemary was very ambitious. “I think it’ll be a while,” I said. “We may be facing some budget cuts, but I’ll check on it.”

“I wonder if we could have lunch,” said Rosemary. “I have a few ideas for the Branch I’d like to run past you. Any chance of doing it today?” She gave me a high-wattage smile.

I usually just had a sandwich at my desk, but it so happened today that I did have a lunch date, with a few of my fellow Branch heads.  I told Rosemary I was sorry and maybe we could do it sometime soon.

“I hope it’s sooner rather than later,” she said. “I think you’re doing a terrific job.” She gave me another high- wattage smile and left.

Well, that was interesting. Before my promotion, Rosemary had been rather distant with me. Then I realized, I was now Branch head, so she was being friendly. I looked at the pictures of my wife Ellen and my two daughters on my desk.  Lunch? Was she being more than friendly? Maybe she was even trying to set me up for a sexual harassment suit. No, that was being paranoid. Rosemary wanted to get ahead so she was just using all of her assets in being nice to her boss. .  

My phone buzzed. It was my faithful secretary Doris, telling me that I’d been summoned by His Majesty. That was Doris’s tag for our esteemed Department Director, Marcus Aurelius Gonzales. I picked up a notebook and headed out for the Director’s office up on the 12th floor. I greeted Maria, Marcus’s secretary, and told her he’d sent for me. As I’d expected, she told me he’d be with me shortly. As a mere Branch head, I’d be kept waiting 20 or 30 minutes. I looked around the office. Maria was about 30, a very attractive woman, as were all of the ladies who worked for Marcus. He liked to be surrounded by good-looking women, who were called by some Marcus’s harem. But for all that there’d never been a hint that anything else was going on.

After the standard wait, while I looked through a year-old Time magazine, I was ushered in. Marcus was behind his large, entirely clear desk. He was a neat freak and was always on me because my desk was usually a mass of computer printouts, memos and reports. “Come in, Arnold,” boomed Marcus. “Sit down. How’s my favorite statistician? How do you like being an administrator?” Marcus was about 42, a few years younger than me. He was a large man with jet-black hair, a broad nose and penetrating black eyes. At times he liked to play the simple Mexican but nothing much got past him.

“I’m getting there,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“Yes,” said Marcus. “I heard you had a little trouble at first, but you seem to have righted the ship.”

What trouble?, I thought. But before I could ask, Marcus launched into what I could do for him. He wanted some very specific health information for several Bay Area cities. This would be difficult; we obtained all of our data by county. “By those cities? That might be hard,” I told him.

“But it can be done?”

I thought. Yes, I thought we might manage it.  I’d assign the job to George Rozier  If anyone could do it, he could. Marcus gave me some more details of exactly what he was after and I scribbled in my notebook. Finally, he smiled and said, “Good. You’ll excuse me, I have a meeting in the Governor’s Office. You know how it is.”

I didn’t, but I nodded sympathetically. “Oh,” he said as he was on his way out, “we’re having a little dinner party Saturday. We’d like you and Ellen to come. Seven o’clock. Nothing fancy.” Then he was gone.

It was Thursday. Saturday was pretty short notice, Ellen was a teacher and I knew she’d planned to spend the weekend correcting papers. She wouldn’t be thrilled. But going to the Director’s dinner parties was more of an order than a request. That was what Branch heads did.

My lunch date with the other Branch heads was at the Mandarin Palace, a downtown restaurant that was the favorite watering hole for politicians, lobbyists, high-level State officials and occasionally, some lesser lights like myself.  The owner, Peter Chin, was at the door. On the rare occasions I’d eaten there, he’s always eyed me dubiously as if trying to figure out how I’d obtained entry to his place. Now he said, “Congratulations on your promotion, Arnold,” and led me to a table where my colleagues were already seated. How did Peter Chin know about my promotion? How did he know my name?  I guess it was true that Sacramento was a small town.

Don Finster, Mental Health, who’d invited me to this lunch, greeted me and said he’d buy me a drink. I declined. I knew both Joe Sanchez, Children’s Health, and Bob Baker, the Department’s Civil Rights Officer, slightly. Joe told me I was the luckiest guy in the Department. Why? Because I had Rosemary Harris under me. The other two joined in and I realized I was being ragged. The newest kid on the block. The talk naturally shifted from Rosemary to Marcus’s harem and, speaking of Marcus, we discovered we’d all been invited to Marcus’s dinner party that Saturday. We wondered if Marcus had any agenda other than feeding us. Then Joe Sanchex spotted a particularly obnoxious legislator across the room and we spent the rest of the lunch comparing our experiences with obnoxious legislators who wanted us civil servants to jump at their every command.

The first thing I did when I returned to the office, much later than usual (but then, I was the boss) was to see George Rozier and fill him in on Marcus’s latest project. “Think you can get the data by city?” I asked him.

“Don’t worry,” George assured me. “I’ll get it somehow. I’ll work late today.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“It’s no problem,” and his look said that he was ready to serve. I realized that he was grateful for the promotion I’d managed to get for him and felt a little embarrassed.

As soon as I was done with George, my secretary Doris asked if she could see me for a few minutes. Doris was a small woman of indeterminate age who’d been with the Department for years and she’d been my friend since I’d started there. She looked serious. “I thought I should tell you,” she said, “the word is getting around you’ve been accepting favors.”

I was startled. “What do you mean?”

“That trip to San Francisco last week to that insurance company.”

“It was perfectly legitimate. They have a large data base of health claims. I was meeting with their Research chief.”

“Did you let him buy you lunch?”

“Did I? Let me think. I don’t know. Maybe I did.”

“And when you turned in your expense account, did you put down the per diem for meals?”

“I guess I did. Who’s talking about all of this stuff?”

“It’s your friend Don Finster. He’s always had it in for you, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know. I thought he was my friend.”

Doris shook her head pityingly. “Oh, one more thing. You should cool it with Rosemary.”

“But nothing …”

“I know. But Don Finster would like nothing better than to nail you.”

After Doris left, I pushed a pile of memos and reports to the middle of my desk, but I didn’t do anything more.I thought of how hard I’d worked to get my promotion and of how happy I’d been when it had finally come. I was a success. Now I’d become a target and someone was trying to shoot me down. I recalled a fellow I’d known when I’d first started with the State. His name was Babcock. He was a veteran employee and he spent most of his time figuring out when he could retire.

I looked again at the picture of my wife and two daughters. My two daughters, the lights of my life, and also the banes. Pat, the older, was 20 and in her junior year at college, UC Berkeley. Cindy, the younger, was 18 and still at junior college. In the fall she’d be entering a four-year college and our expenses would shoot up dramatically.  They were really the reason why I’d wanted the promotion so badly. No, I couldn’t retire, not until both were safely through college. Then maybe I’d be emulating Babcock.

Finally, I pushed the reports and memos aside. I’d been saving the worst thing I had to do for the last. I asked Doris to send in Myrna Doyle, our statistical clerk.. Myrna had been around for ages. She wasn’t the fastest worker in the world, but in general she was reliable, slow and steady. In the last few weeks, however, some of the tables she’d done had really obvious errors. She’d also been taking an unusually high number of days off, either sick or vacation..

Now Myrna sat before me, a small, plump woman with a round worried face. “I think you know why I asked to see you,” I began.

“I know, I know,” she burst out. “My work’s been terrible. I can’t seem to get my mind on it.”

“Are you having any problems at home?”

“I am, I am. It’s my oldest, Simon. He’s the one who’s sixteen.”

I knew that Myrna was a single mother with three kids. I hadn’t realized her son was already a teenager. Her Simon story, which she got out in fits and starts, was all too familiar---hanging out with a bad  crowd, cutting classes, drugs (she suspected), on the verge of flunking out. “Please don’t fire me, Mr. Gray,” she ended. “I need this job. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m fired.”

I looked at Myrna and it struck me that she was actually afraid of me. In her mind, I was the all-powerful one who held her fate in my hands. I reassured her that her job was safe. I hadn’t intended anything as drastic of letting her go in any case; the paperwork would have been horrendous. I told her to try to concentrate on her work; we relied on her. I also said that if she needed any more time off she should discuss it with me and we’d see what we could do. “Thank you, Mr. Gray, thank you,” she said as she backed out of my office.  I could see that I’d be spending time checking statistical tables.

After this, it was time to leave. I noticed that George Rozier was still at his desk, working late as he’d promised. The bus ride home was long; Sacramento freeway traffic was getting worse each year. Last year I’d thought that if I could get that promotion, all of my problems would be over. But last year when I left the office I would forget about it. Now I couldn’t. My thoughts tumbled over one another.  :My fellow Branch head was trying to get me; my sexy young analyst was, what, being over-friendly (certainly she wasn’t trying to seduce me; was she?). My statistical clerk was afraid of me. I had a pile of work waiting for me the next morning.

When I finally arrive home, Ellen asked how my day had been, “Fine,” I said. She told me that our college daughter had called; her hard drive had crashed and she thought she’d need a new computer. Our junior college daughter wanted to go out after supper, to “study,” she said. Ellen looked tired as she dished out our meals. I decided I’d wait until later to tell her we were going to Marcus’s on Saturday.