Part 12: Off-the-record[Needs editing] "I wanted to talk to you about this morning's meeting..." She said hoping that the bridge she'd burnt that morning was still salvageable.
"I see..." He appeared skeptical, as though he was still deliberating if it was of any worth to spend time with her at all. But she instantly felt a visible relief when he added, "Do you want to grab a seat someplace or do you think we could keep walking to office?" after a beat.
"We can walk...it won't take long" She nodded and turned around to join him.
His stride was long and steady and she felt hurried to keep up. Even before she could open her mouth to touch on the subject of that morning's meeting, they were at the crosswalk again. Besides, she couldn't bring herself to speak to him when he didn't take his eyes off his cell as they ambled towards the other side of the street and it frustrated her furthermore that she didn't have his full attention.
"So, you wanted to talk about this morning..." He said when they were nearly done crossing the road.
"Err...Yes" She spoke as she sped alongside, "This morning...In the meeting...I didn't mean to..."
Oh! Dear. Surely, the good lord had picked the wrong moment to vaporize her vocabulary.
It tensed her immensely when he stopped mid-way on the side walk and partly turned in profile to face her, "Can I be frank with you?" He asked, "If there is something that's bothering you, you should just come out with it..."
"Sorry..." She prompted unsure, "I don't get you" she said when his statement made her re-consider what she'd originally wanted to tell him. He couldn't really think that she had a problem with him. Or could he?
"Ok...let me make you a deal" He sounded decisive. So firm that she didn't think she could walk out of whatever it is that he would be proposing, "Anything you tell me in the next five minutes goes off the record. No offense taken..."
Her head titled to one side, "You would do that?" As naive as she sounded, she was just as surprised at the sudden incentive he was offering and that amused and intrigued her at once.
"You mean take offense?" He asked, folding his arms one over the other.
"No..." She shook her head vigorously. "Give me a free reign on all that I get to tell you?"
His brow went up and he held a smile that was deceiving at best, as if he was privy to some inside joke that she knew nothing about. "You could say that...", he said, as he began walking towards their office again.
She took a deep breath and felt forced to catch up with his pace once more. They were at the lobby now and she was panting audibly, unable to form a cohesive statement in her head. When he pressed for the elevator button and in the time they waited for it to arrive at the ground floor, she caught the break to begin addressing him again.
"I don't think I was wrong about correcting you at the meeting" Her eyes flew up to his and she couldn't grasp how he perceived what she'd just said.
"I mean it wasn't feedback on your work or presentation to be discussed in private" She added quickly to justify her part, "I was only concerned that we might work out the entire next quarter's forecast based on the wrong numbers. I'm new here and trust me, I have been rote memorizing many decks and there is every chance that I might have got my numbers mixed up with something else. But I'm pretty sure that the last quarter's numbers that you quoted were slightly off from the original forecast. So, I believe apologies are not in order..."
"And..." She drawled feeling a startling impatience to add another piece that she hadn't thought through at all, "May be for once people can believe that others could be right too, you know..."
There, she'd said it and now there was only the consequence to face. It was time he knew that his god persona was a little too healthy for both him and the people on his team. That others deserved the same trust as the measure he commanded. And, hell no! she wasn't even talking about herself here, when in the short span of four days she'd met a few others who had all the potential that he came equipped with and still had somehow managed to let him overshadow them. He practically owed his success to the aggressiveness others lacked. To their shortcomings.
"Were you?" He asked her, still without giving away any of his thoughts.
His question weakened her initial resolve that she'd been right in her place to offer the correct numbers. Even as she gazed into his eyes, she found herself asking, "I don't know...Was I?"
"Honestly, it doesn't matter..." He shook his head as he spoke and he walked off to the corner to flick the empty coffee cup into the trash can, "I was explaining how to adjust the initial quarterly forecast numbers after the actuals for the previous quarter comes in. Think of it like an equation that tells you how X and Y are related and it makes no difference if X is 56 or 65. I was only giving a walk through on how to come up with Y, when X changes"
Seriously? Was the man ever going to behave as a mere mortal? And that annoyed her to no end when she'd made a fool of herself in front of so many people while thinking that she'd been right all along.
"Oh..." Was all she could manage in response and her eyes lowered with an unspeakable embarrassment, she thought, she was never going to recover from. Well, she at least now had firsthand knowledge of why everyone hated and revered him in equal measure.
The elevator announced its arrival with a chime and they waited for everyone to get off before they could make their way inside. The brief reprieve from not having to look at him and instead being greeted - in a rare occasion - by a friendly herd of people heading out for the day humbled her and she made her decision to acknowledge that she'd not understood everything he'd detailed in that meeting.
"Would you judge me if I tell you that that part of the meeting completely went over my head?"
She moved aside to make way for the rushing people and stood next to him. When she realized that he was still distracted from the throngs of people around him, she muttered, "No wonder they all looked at me like I was going to be an ex-intern soon, joining those long list of people who had worked with you and left only after being a month on the job"
She winced and closed her eyes the same instant she caught onto what she'd just said. "I'm talking too much, right?" She asked, unable to reign in every word that was coming to her mind, as if she'd lost an important brain to mouth filter ever since that big realization a few seconds ago.
"Should I take it that you interpret I had some part to play in having them fired?"
He didn't wait for her answer and walked into the elevator once it was free of people while she stayed put at the elevator lobby, "Does that mean you didn't get them fired?"
Her eyes widened from both alarm and anticipation, when at the same time she cursed herself mentally for having gotten it all wrong about him. May be he wasn't as soulless as she'd read him to be.
It felt like her feet wouldn't move without having his response, nevertheless it wasn't the case with him. He pressed the button for his floor and she noticed a smirk rise at the corner of his lips.
"Oh! I absolutely had everything to do with having them fired..." He said, right when the doors began to slide close.
Shit! There was one and only one thing she prayed for then. That the barring of her soul she'd done all that while remained off-the-records for the entire time she had a chance of staying with the company. That is if she was still staying with the company. So much, for believing that he wasn't the tyrant everyone thought he was.
Edited by 6th.Element - 12 years ago
Anupamaa
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