Divine Misfortune

The boss seized Phil’s sweaty hand and squeezed.

“Can I interest you in a cup of coffee? Great stuff here. Imported. I think it might even be from a country we have a trade embargo with, but I don’t ask. Plausible deniability.”

Phil drank coffee only in the morning, and that he liked strong and black. Anything else didn’t interest him. But Rosenquist was already pouring the cup from an hourglass-shaped carafe. He handed it to Phil, who held the mug in both hands, unsure of what to do with it.

“Smell that,” said Van. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

Phil went through the act of inhaling the aroma. He found it unpleasant, but he kept that to himself.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you up here.”

“Yes, sir… Van.”

Rosenquist poured a cup of his own, sniffed it, then set it down on his desk. “The truth of the matter is that you’re doing a hell of a job for us down there, Phil.” He slapped Phil’s shoulder. “Just one hell of a job.”

Phil braced himself for the next part. The”… but we’re making layoffs” part or the”… but corporate restructuring renders you redundant” part.

“We could use a man like you on the seventh floor.”

“Me?” Phil tried not to sound too surprised.

“Yes, you. We have a new position opening soon. Executive vice president in charge of complicated government paperwork. Not the final job title, but that’s the gist of it. And you’ve made the short list of candidates.”

“Me?” This time he utterly failed to hide his disbelief.

Rosenquist chuckled. “It’s not guaranteed at this stage, you understand. We’re feeling out some others. But I don’t think there’s any harm in telling you that you’re the front-ru

“But why me?”

“Why not you? Can I be honest? Sure I can. You look like the kind of man who appreciates honesty. Am I right?”

Phil nodded. As if he could answer no to the question.

“If you get this position, it really won’t be much different than what you’re doing now. But our lawyers tell us that we need someone in a more official position. Legal reasons. Don’t ask me to explain it. So we sent down a memo asking for each department to send us possible candidates based on paperwork error ratios.”

“They keep track of how many mistakes we make?”

“Oh, it’s all monitored somewhere. The list was sent up to us, and it was quite a long list. We trimmed it to the top ten candidates via a selection of PER reports and seniority indexing. It was still a fairly long list. Then a computer error ate most of the data and only four were left. So it looks as if you had a stroke of luck there.”

Phil smiled. Lucky had come through again.

“It’s not glamorous. You’ll move out of your cubicle, but your office won’t be much better. You’ll be an executive in pay only. Can you accept that?”

“Same job,” paraphrased Phil, “more money.”

“A lot more money,” added Rosenquist.

“I can live with that.”

The intercom buzzed. The boss had a short exchange with his secretary. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me a moment, Phil. Have to put out some fires. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

Phil put his coffee down and walked to the window. The equally tall building across the way obscured the view, but if he stood close enough to the glass, he could almost see the street below.

Movement on the outside caught his attention. A red pigeon with black dots perched on the ledge. The bird stared back with its bright blue eyes and pecked the window twice. Hard enough to leave a long crack in the glass. He was worried it might break through and dive-bomb his eye. Instead, it flew away.

He backed away but kept watching for it to return. It didn’t, and after a minute, he was comfortable enough to take his eyes off the glass. Though he kept it in his peripheral vision.

He reached for a mug, but since his attention was split, he ended up knocking it off the desk. He scrambled to pick it up, but the coffee had all spilled out on the carpet. He found some paper towels in the wet bar and tried dabbing up the spill with only mild success.

“Son of a…”

There wasn’t enough in the carafe to refill the mug all the way. Phil took the half-filled beverage. That way, his boss still had a full cup and Phil would have less to drink. He congratulated himself on his cleverness when Rosenquist returned.

“Van, I’m sorry, but I spilled some coffee on-”

“Don’t worry about that. Housekeeping will take care of it.” Rosenquist slapped Phil between the shoulder blades hard enough to put a permanent bend in his spine. “You’re an executive now.”

“I have the job?”

“Practically.” He picked up his mug and waited for Phil to do the same. He obliged, and they tapped them together.

Rosenquist took a hearty gulp of his beverage while Phil took a sip. It wasn’t very good, but right now, it tasted like nectar from Olympus.

“Now it’ll take a few days to get everything in order,” explained Rosenquist. “All the normal bureaucratic hoop-jumping. But I am confident in saying, unofficially, welcome to the seventh floor.”

“Thank you, Van.”

The boss seized Phil in another painful handshake. He caught Phil glancing over his shoulder at the window.

“Something wrong?” asked Rosenquist.

“No,” said Phil. “Everything’s great.”

“Good to hear it.” He glanced down at his cup. “Hey, didn’t I give you the red mug?”

“I don’t know, Van. Did you?”

Rosenquist’s smile fell. “Did you switch mugs?”

“I might have. I wasn’t really paying attention when I refilled-”

Rosenquist poured his coffee on the floor and peered into the cup.

“Something wrong, Van?”

The boss threw his mug aside. Beads of sweat poured down Rosenquist’s face. He released Phil and grabbed his chest.

“Van, just stay calm. I’ll get a doctor.”

Rosenquist lurched forward. Phil moved to catch the toppling executive. Rosenquist was heavier than Phil expected and they ended up on the floor together, the boss on top. Phil had trouble breathing, and it wasn’t just the weight bearing down on him. The pair of hands wrapped around his throat had something to do with it, too. Phil gasped for a few strangled gulps of air as he stared into Rosenquist’s bloodshot, twitching eyes.

Rosenquist’s body went stiff as he sucked in one last strained breath. He collapsed. Phil rolled Rosenquist to one side and caught his breath. Rosenquist wasn’t breathing, and his face was frozen into a ghastly rictus. Phil had never seen a rictus before, but he was pretty sure this qualified.

The next few minutes were a blur. He remembered alerting the secretary, who called the paramedics. They arrived quickly, but by then it was obviously too late. Phil sat in a chair in the lobby, trying to figure out what had happened.

A heart attack at that particular moment in time seemed unfortunate. A lousy bit of luck. He wondered, several times, if this would hurt his chance for promotion. Then he felt guilty that he was thinking like that while a man had just died.

He kept wondering. Was it luck?

Or was it Lucky?

Phil left work early so he could beat Teri home. He found Lucky sitting on the sofa, watching television. It seemed as if that was all Lucky did with his free time. Phil had come to realize that gods, for all their awesome power, were deprived of the one thing that made life worth living.

A time limit.

Silently, Phil turned off the TV and sat across from Lucky.

“I was watching that,” said Lucky.

Phil took a moment to compose his thoughts. He didn’t have long before Teri walked through that door.

“My boss died today.”

“Sorry to hear that, buddy.”

Phil held up his hand, and a surprised expression crossed Lucky’s face.

“Did you kill him?”

Lucky sat up. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not judging,” said Phil. “I just need to know. Did you kill him?”