The Misfortunes of Others

Look on the bright side. You can always come back and burn the place down, Pierre thought, slowly removing his framed degree from the wall.

He didn’t really mean it. Whenever things went wrong, Pierre sought comfort in dark humour, and his inner monologue gradually took on a sarcastic and melancholic tone. Then, the depression would come. Since the kids moved out of the house, that meant watching Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns in the basement while trying to eat his feelings. He could feel it coming over him now and couldn’t wait to get home.

The board meeting had been well-attended and had dragged on and on as everyone wanted to be heard. It was late evening, and the sun had set, leaving the corner office in darkness save for the glow of traffic coming through the windows from the Queensway. Pierre held the frame up to the insufficient light from the small desk lamp, examining the university seal and looping script that declared his academic achievements.

What a waste, he thought and shoved it down into the brown cardboard box on the desk.

He winced from sudden and unexpected pain as a silver letter opener, shaped like a miniature claymore, jabbed into his skin. In his rush to fill the box, he’d carelessly left the blade’s tip facing up, propped between two thick books. He raised his hand to his face just in time to see tiny beads of liquid forming on the second knuckle of his left ring finger. Pierre watched as they swelled and merged, forming a larger drop of blood that dipped toward his palm, leaving behind a thin burgundy trail that looked almost black in the low light. He reached across his abundant midsection and, groaning with the effort, dove his right hand into his left pocket, retrieving the clean white handkerchief he habitually kept there. He wrapped the handkerchief around his palm, carefully threading the loose ends through his fingers to keep them in place while he finished packing.

It was a testament to how historically terrible today had been that stabbing himself in the hand and watching it bleed had been an unexpected diversion from the even less pleasant task of filling boxes with the random trophies of a once-promising, but ultimately disappointing career in advertising. A silver Cross fountain pen given to him by his wife on their twenty-fifth anniversary. An engraved paperweight made of natural pale-green jade, gifted to him one Christmas by the agency’s founder. A framed picture of Pierre and his wife standing under the Eiffel Tower on their honeymoon, looking young, happy, and a bit drunk. One by one, each artifact of a happy moment in his life was shoved into a box that, just last week, had been used to deliver letter-size printer paper to their agency.

A trill signifying an incoming message from Trent interrupted Pierre’s brooding. He opened the chat window on his computer and read the message.

Trent: Mr. Hayes is here to see you. Shall I send him in?

Pierre placed the cursor in the text box and stabbed at the keys with his index fingers, using the “hunt and peck” method.

Pierre: Hello Trent,

Yes, you may as well.

Sincerely,

Pierre Guindon

Pierre had never grasped that in this messaging app, as in most others, his name and avatar always appeared next to what he wrote, making salutations or sign-offs redundant. If he’d been more self-aware, he’d have seen long ago that within this peccadillo lurked a far more dangerous flaw, one that had inevitably cost him his job. Pierre had fallen behind the times, which, in advertising, is an unpardonable sin.

Instead, oblivious, Pierre had kept two-finger typing his instant messages with all the formality of letters sent by mail. The short, informal, and frequently misspelled replies from coworkers seemed to him to lack professional etiquette and made him bemoan the slow erosion of properly written English. He felt the same way about French, his mother tongue, which now seemed so filled with Anglicisms that it bore no resemblance whatsoever to the beautiful and precise language the priests had taught him in school.

He adjusted his glasses and leaned forward, watching the eye symbol jump into place next to his message. He knew that meant Trent had read it, followed by the three jumping ellipses a moment later that indicated Trent was typing.

Another trill sounded as Trent’s response was delivered.

Trent: Yes, sir. Shall I bring coffee?

Pierre: Hi Trent,

There is no need to bother. But thank you.

Sincerely,

Pierre Guindon

Trent would soon be reassigned if he hadn’t been already, so there was no need to send him on a final coffee errand.

Besides, Hayes is an overpaid man-child, Pierre thought. Obviously, he is only coming to gloat, so why should I offer coffee?

He’d seen it before. When someone was sacked, there was never a shortage of rubberneckers wanting to come and enjoy the spectacle of professional disaster from a safe distance. All under the guise of collegial commiseration, of course.

Pierre had even done it himself, especially in his early days with the agency. For the ambitious young man he’d been, with his tailored suits and newly minted business degree, fired employees were a train wreck you just couldn’t look away from. A source of schadenfreude whose career failure made your own star seem to burn brighter.

The door opened, and Hayes surged into the room, bringing a subtle wave of Bleu de Chanel behind him. His hair was perfectly coiffed, his beard neatly trimmed, and he wore an expensive pale blue seersucker suit with a pink shirt open at the collar. Despite his antipathy for the man, Pierre had always admired Hayes’ style, the seemingly effortless way he combined different colours, fabrics, and patterns in ways that were both on trend and appropriate for the situation. In contrast, Pierre still clung to outdated styles that showed his advancing age as much as the grey hair streaking his temples, opting for baggier fitting suits with wide lapels made of outdated fabrics like rayon and corduroy.

“Guindon, how are you? Packing already?” Hayes said.

Hayes crossed the room in three long strides, hands outstretched as if he intended to pull Pierre into a bear hug. Pierre instinctively stepped to the side, placing the desk between himself and any unwelcome physical contact. He peered into the open top drawer of his desk, rummaging through the papers and feigning concentration. Hayes, seeming not to notice, unbuttoned his jacket and dropped into one of the two leather chairs that faced the desk.

“Hello, Hayes. Yes, I thought I had better get to it. No sense waiting.”

“Well, it’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it? You’ll be missed, Guindon.”

Hayes always mispronounced his name as “gwin-din” even though he’d heard their boss, who was from Montréal, correctly pronounce it as “gain-don” in countless staff meetings. For all his style, Hayes was socially tone deaf. He was the type of person who, hearing heavily accented English, presumed a lesser intellect and became patronizing.

“So, what will you do with yourself now?” Hayes asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Take it as it comes. I’ve always wanted more time for gardening, so I’ll start there, I guess.”

“Gardening!” Hayes scoffed. “I never understood the appeal. Life’s too short to play in the dirt like a kid. What do you grow anyway?”

Not waiting for an answer, Hayes sat forward and gazed around the rest of the room.

“Say, how big is that wall?”

“No idea. Maybe twelve feet? Why?”

“Oh, no matter. Just trying to figure out if I’ll need to order a different sofa.”

Hayes started as if coming out of a daydream. He pushed himself out of the chair and stood, smiling broadly and buttoning up his suit jacket.

“Anyway, I’ve got to go, old man. Some of us still work for a living, you know?” Hayes said with a wink and a laugh.

Coming around the desk, he took Pierre by the hand, pumped it energetically, and slapped him on the shoulder.

“Goodbye Guindon,” Hayes said.

Without warning, Pierre pulled the bigger man in close and wrapped him in a bear hug.

“Goodbye Hayes,” Pierre said, slapping him warmly on the back with one hand and roughly massaging his shoulder blades with the other. He could feel Hayes tense up and pull away. Confused by the unexpected show of affection from the older man and suddenly quite uncomfortable, Hayes backed toward the door.

“Yes, well, goodbye, Guindon.”

“Goodbye.”

Pierre watched as Hayes turned and crossed the room toward the door, the back of his blue seersucker jacket covered in dark burgundy streaks and blotches. He looked down at his hand and smiled. He wrapped it again in the stained handkerchief, carefully threaded the ends through his fingers again, and reached for another box.

*****

Daniel Crépault is a criminologist, addiction treatment provider, and emerging short fiction writer. He lives in Ottawa, Canada with his wife and two beautiful children.