Dakota Blues

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Chapter One

K
aren’s fingers hovered over the keyboard while she tried to remember the killer argument she’d been about to make, but the idea had faded. Not for the first time that day, she wished the hall outside her door hadn’t become the official gathering place for coworkers in search of gossip and idle chit chat.

It wasn’t like her to lose focus so easily. Karen couldn’t afford to slow down, not now when time seemed to have accelerated, racing up behind her so fast she could feel its hot breath. No, at her age, and in this economy, a person had to run hard and keep running. She returned to the keyboard.

A rap on the doorjamb interrupted her again. “You busy?”

Karen turned to face the young man slouched in her doorway. Thank God he’d finally ditched the eyebrow ring but his slacks were still too baggy. “Hey, Ben. Sit.”

Ben slumped into a chair in front of Karen’s sprawling desk, his eyes bloodshot. It wasn’t due to partying. The kid practically slept in his office. “Wes told me to fire Ashley.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.” He rubbed his face.

“Unbelievable, even for him.” Karen began scribbling notes on a pad. Sometimes she hated human resources. Like most people, she chose the career thinking she could help others. Instead, every day seemed to bring new confrontations. “He knows her husband is sick, right?”

Ben nodded. “He said we can’t let that dictate business priorities. Quote unquote. I don’t know what to do.”

“Give me a minute. Let me think.” Karen turned to the window where, ten stories below, Newport Harbor bustled with all manner of maritime traffic. Fishing boats, their outriggers bent like spider legs, chugged past the breakwater out to sea. Just past the mouth of the channel, long-nosed speedboats flew across the waves, and a biplane slowly towed a banner. Something about beer.

She spun back around. “Is Wes in?”

“You think you can change his mind?”

“I can try.” Karen slipped into her suit jacket. She marched down Mahogany Row and stopped in Wes’s doorway. “Do you have a minute?”

Wes looked up, his eyes narrowing. “One.”

“There’s a problem.” Karen stood in front of his desk. “Ashley’s husband has pancreatic cancer.”

“Irrelevant. You know that.”

“I know that, and I’m still asking you not to fire her.”

He pushed a tablet across the desk at her. “So give me a name.”

“What?”

“Somebody else I can fire instead.” He sat back in his chair and chewed on a pen.

Karen hoped it bled into his mouth, but she forced her face into a semblance of thoughtful concentration. “I’ll need a few minutes to think.”

He tossed the pen on his desk. “I was just playing with you. She’s already gone. I saw her outside and gave her the good news.” Wes put his feet up. “So, when do you start your vacation?”

Karen folded her arms across her chest. “It’s a funeral, Wes.”

“Oh yeah? Who died?”

“My mother.” Her voice cracked.

“Sorry.”

Karen didn’t answer.

“And how long are you going to be gone?”

“I’ll be back in a couple of days.” She turned to go.

“Hey.”

Karen stopped. “Yes?”

“Keep your phone on.”

At the other end of the Row, Karen pushed open a door to an office in which the air carried a hint of mothballs and the heavy perfume favored by older women when their noses stopped working. Behind the desk, Peggy frowned at the spreadsheet on her computer screen. “I’m busy.”

“Who isn’t?”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Peggy’s grey suit hung on bony shoulders, and her hair was thinning in back from stress.

“Too bad.”

“All right, fine, but first, help me with this. The damn thing’s frozen.”

Karen crossed to the old woman’s desk. “Ashley and her husband need a continuance on their insurance.”

“What are we up to now? Twenty, thirty families?”

“Hide it in the account Wes uses for boat repairs. He’ll never know.”

Peggy turned to Karen with a heavy sigh. “Somebody will. Then we’ll get fired.”

“We should be so lucky.”

“Aren’t you brave? Talk to me again when you’re out of a job. Now, what does it mean when the little arrow goes like that?”

“First tell me we can cover Ashley.”

Peggy looked up at the ceiling, calculating in her head. Dark red lipstick crept into the deep wrinkles around her mouth. “Six months, like the others. Now will you help me?”

Karen bent over Peggy’s shoulder, checked out the screen, and pressed a key. Immediately the document unlocked.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Peggy stabbed at a couple of keys. “Used to be we had people to do this. Now I have to do everything myself.”

“Why don’t you ask IT?”

“Screw them. They act like I’m retarded. I swear to Christ, next time I get a shot at early retirement, I’m taking it,” Peggy said. “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“How’re you doing, kid?”

For one minute, Karen stopped running. She leaned into Peggy for a hug.

“We all have to go through it, sweetie.” Peggy broke the clinch. “I don’t mean to sound like our asshole boss, but don’t stay away too long. Don’t give them an excuse.”

“I won’t.”

That night, Karen drove through the entrance of her gated community, exhausted. As the gate arm came down behind her, her shoulders relaxed. She turned into the driveway of the darkened house, parked in the four-car garage, and picked her way through piles of outgoing furniture and clothing. In the kitchen, she switched on a light, revealing a great-room combo that sprawled the length of the house. She never used it. Steve was the one who needed six thousand square feet of split-level, with four baths and five bedrooms and a pool and hot tub. He had lusted for a domestic showplace and paid cash for the house after one particularly good year.

Karen kicked off her heels and considered a Scotch, but it was almost midnight and she had a flight to catch in a few hours. Instead she navigated through the dark living room out to the patio where the land rolled away in a sprinkling of lights and ended at the Pacific Ocean. The view would be hers for…what? Another six months before Steve would want his return on investment? The coastal damp smelled of salt and settled on her bare arms, chilling her. She would have to think about moving, but not tonight.

She thought about Wes, and shivered. Leaving work for a couple days was a risk, but skipping the funeral would be asking too much, even of her. Even for Wes. Her work was done to the extent possible, and Stacey, her assistant, knew how to reach her. Everything was in place.

She stared off into the black distance. All future crises would have to wait until tomorrow afternoon, when she returned to her hometown on the Northern Plains.

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Chapter Two

T
he thirty-seater bucked and lurched toward Teddy Roosevelt Regional, but Karen continued to study her computer screen, assessing the plusses and minuses of Wes’ latest cost-cutting scheme. Only once did she pause, grasping the laptop to keep it from sailing to the floor, but she never stopped, even when the attendant warned the passengers to return to their seats and buckle up. Like most CEOs, Wes had been using the Great Recession as his excuse to slash staff to the bone, thereby showing positive growth on the company’s balance sheets. Anybody who managed to creep up the salary ladder was fair game. Age was a target, too. The older employees were tossed onto ice floes and shoved off into the dark waters of the frigid economy.