Marburg International

I first went to work at the offices of Marburg International when I was fresh out of college. Ready for the world of business, the cut and thrust of commerce, the 9-5 that would make a man out of me in this manly world.

It was in a small office on the third floor, accounting and stock control, that I began the slow and steady task of learning my trade. I knew no-one in this modern city and was able to complete my studies without distraction.

Wendy came to work in the typing pool about three months after I had begun at Marburg. Her russet-tinted high-curls another bright point in my routine. The boys around the floor had her pinned from the moment she set foot in that place but I was young and foolish and work seemed the thing for me. I merely said hello and went about my routine.

I guess she would have been working there six weeks or so, which makes her new and me old, when we had our first real contact. I needed some new reports on some stock out in Ohio and the ‘phone system had jammed. I entered the type-pool and asked if one of the girls could keep on trying for me as I had to be in a meeting all day with Stryker, the Head of Logistics. Wendy turned her lamps on me and said she would gladly do it and “do it till it were done.” I smiled at her friendliness and her turn of phrase. It occurred to me right then that I hadn’t had a night out with a woman since college and that I was getting along so well at Marburg that I might allow myself to start thinking these thoughts we men have so easily.

For some reason the meeting seemed to go on so interminably that my mind began to drift. Ordinarily I would have been thrilled to be involved at so high a level meeting with our International Stock Planning committee so early-on in my training but I guess I was worried that something could muck-up with that Ohio business and so when Wendy knocked on my office door at five past five to give me the answer I’d been hoping for I was so glad that I told her how glad I was and asked her if she wouldn’t like to try a spot of dinner with me right then and there.

Of course, she says yes – and why not, I’m a future star of the company. I took her to a little place I’d seen on my first day in town, right around the corner. Smart but not flash. She has rissoles I have the sirloin and we talk. Turns out she was better educated, better travelled hell, just damn better! than the other broads in the typing swamp. She was just there for a few months, earning money to pay for her dying mother’s medical care. When her old dear passed, she said quite frankly, she was off to paint in Italy or climb the peaks of Scotland or somesuch romantic nonsense. Well, it didn’t sound like nonsense coming from her sweet lips. It sounded like a trip to the park or something. Me, I’d never thought about going as far as Denver. This girl was different. This girl was something.

I offered to walk her back to hers but she said her mother wouldn’t like it so I hailed her a cab. I walked home on a cloud and a smile and slept like a dog in Winter.

What happened next I don’t know but it was only seconds after it did happen that I was on the floor of the van and the van was pulling away from the kerbside with a pair of cops sitting on me like a tree-trunk.

Alright boss, the detective growled from across the desk at me, we want your story and we don’t want it to be no story, if you catch my drift? He stank, I stank, we all stank together. I asked for a coffee and a cigarette and when I got them I began.

The chaps were decent to me. They didn’t tell me nothing but I was free to go to work on condition I didn’t say nothing, not that I knew anything nor pip.

I was somewhat of a disgrace to myself at the office that morning. Joe Caulfield , the guy who gets the grit, was at me in seconds: So, Mikey, I hear there’s a new team in the Derby. I said I really wasn’t sure what the rumor was but I’d just had some bad news and work was piling-up and all. Joe had seen this coming, someone always sees something, and he offered to grab me some coffee if I gave him a bite. I needed coffee, in all my days I’ve never inhaled so many coffees and cigarettes as I did in those short hours.

Caulfield left my door disappointed though. I could only tell him so much after all, police orders. The world noticed my uncharacteristic lateness as much as it did my smell and Wendy’s absence. Rain thudded on the bolted windows as charts and spreadsheets danced before my eyes.

Down in the basement, where the bosses parked their perks, a furnace roared into life, heating the air to pump around the building. I reflected that I’d never seen a furnace bigger than the domestic ones back in my hometown before. I imagined the firebox consuming its meal like an ape in the horror flicks devouring the human sacrifice the natives leave on their bamboo altar.

I shivered, a great wrack of motion from my toes to my shoulder-blades. I took another gulp of Joe Caulfield’s coffee. I combed through my hair with my fingers. I stretched my back. I breathed in and out, sighed to myself, counted slowly from ten and then got back to work. I knew, someday, I’d have to see Italy for myself.