Chapter 2

After the meal was over, Noru arose to begin his annual ritual of boring everyone to sleep with his interminable speech. One year he talked non-stop for two full hours until somehow the electrical power to the podium microphone got cut off. My staff gave me a trophy for that secretive commando feat – I'd bribed a waiter to start throwing electrical circuit breakers until there was silence. This year, he seemed especially animated and out to set a new record for speaking the longest without actually ever saying anything of any importance.

Oh, he praised everyone's services, Gerald's and mine especially, but there was precious little substance to anything he babbled about until the one hour and twenty minute mark passed when he roused everyone from their comas by discussing the Patterson-Wilcox deal. This was the contract that Gerald had recklessly promised a full six weeks earlier than was humanly possible to deliver. Now Noru had everyone's complete and undivided attention!

It was as bad as I feared. The ball-less git didn't face down Gerald after all and the new 'improved' delivery schedule for the project was now an official go! You could hear grown men starting to cry all over the banquet hall.

When Noru stated to babble about sacrifice and showing company "fighting spirit", I decided that the moment wasn't going to get any richer or riper for the start of my petty little revenge. I signaled my waiter accomplice, who had nearly been bored nearly to sleep himself, and the VHS tape began to play on the nearby TV monitors and my banner was then unfurled for all to see behind Noru's head.

The VHS tape was an edited compilation of slave galley rowing scenes from the movies, mostly sequences from Ben Hur and Les Miserables, with lots of shots of the guy with the drums sounding off the rowing beat for the poor slaves to row to while they being whipped by overseers. These clips were looped, so there should be lots of time for me to make a little speech of my own. The banner added another entire level of poor taste to the production, and probably exhibited extremely bad judgment on my part ... but I just couldn't resist doing it. The tamer alternative probably would have involved the use of firearms.

"Arbeit macht frei" is a German phrase meaning "work brings freedom" or "work will set you free", and it has extremely unsavory social connotations. Most knowledgeable people know that these were the words written on the outside gate of either Auschwitz or Dachau, and they'd be both right. Actually, the Nazi's used this phrase as a sign at a great many of their slave labor camps. Slave labor was about the way most of the staff felt they were being treated these days, so I thought I'd make it semi-official.

Poor Noru was still semi-oblivious, and trying to talk over the rising sound of the rowing oars and slave drums. The more historically educated folks started to break out into laughter once they read the "Arbeit macht frei" banner, except for Mrs. Goldstein of accounting, but she at least had enough of a sense of humor to nod her head and smile. The rest of the captive audience got the joke fairly quickly and joined in.

Awoken from a semi-coma of his own, a reporter from the local town newspaper got a few good photographs of Noru with his right arm enthusiastically extended while still blathering on with his speech, which graced the local newspaper the next day, generating one heck of a shit-storm. The resulting published picture did strongly intimate that our CEO had indeed made a Nazi salute, and the amused witnesses were all rather willing to confirm this rather accidental misinterpretation of the facts.

I gave up the hope of Noru ever shutting up, so I pegged him with a thrown dinner roll and rose to my feet to give a vastly abbreviated farewell address while the last moments of my short slave galley footage still rolled.

"Friends, engineers, countrymen, and you folks down in manufacturing that actually work for a living – lend 'Norman' thine dinner rolls! Tis but a far far buttery thing that I do, than I have ever done before! Fellow slave galley workers unite - you have nothing left to lose but your chains!"

With that the pelting of Noru began in earnest.

Rachael stood up to restrain me, but I snarled at her to shut her filthy whore mouth and go somewhere to clean Gerald's cum stains off of the bodice of her dress.

She slapped me, so I poured a glass of red wine down the front of her silk dress. She then screamed and tried to take a wild swing at me but was a little too drunk for dancing with the height of her heels and started to fall over the moment she tried to become vertical. I caught her long enough to push her into the arms of Gerald, who had arisen to either defend Noru or his mistresses honor. He'd had a snootful to drink as well, and the pair of them flopped over a chair together which rolled onto its back, spilling the pair of them together onto the floor. Gerald's drop dead gorgeous wife, Marcy, completed the moment by pouring the remainder of a wine bottle over both the hapless pair on the floor.

Noru was now being pelted with desserts and any other leftovers from uncollected dinner plates. No amount of dry cleaning was ever going to restore that Armani suit. The poor git was utterly confused and I'm certain that he had no clue what had angered the natives and sent them off on the warpath. Noru's long suffering wife Misaki was laughing herself silly and blew me a kiss as I started to leave the Banquet.

For good measure, I let out a loud "I Quit – and I mean it this time!" before I left the room, to a standing ovation.

The "Arbeit macht frei" banner somehow appeared outside of the front door of the manufacturing plant the next morning. Security promptly took it down, but the next night the words were replaced with red paint, and painted in at least twenty places upon the outside main office building walls as well. Some other wit added "Romani ite domum" for good measure, but at least it wasn't repeated a hundred times. Noru, having no sense of humor at all, probably didn't get the joke ... but the joke had been on him all along.

The revolution had begun, but like the Russian Cruiser 'Aurora' I'd fired my last broadside and was just glad to be rid of that madhouse. The madhouse, however, wasn't quite rid of me just yet.

Paul, my Assistant Director of Engineering was offered my job first thing Monday morning, but he promptly quit also. As did a vast majority of the Engineering department. Things were even less civil over in Manufacturing. The floor supervisors held a big employee meeting on Monday afternoon at which the rank and file overwhelmingly voted their willingness to form a labor union.

Noru, horrified at the thought of organized labor coming in and taking over things, threatened the employees with a lockout on Tuesday, but less than ten minutes later he found out that nearly ninety percent of his workers had already gone on a walkout in protest. Wednesday morning the main offices were locked and the manufacturing plant was padlocked shut.

Needless to say, the employee office Holiday Party that Friday was cancelled and bonuses were most definitely not handed out.

I had a few things to do to occupy my time before catching up on some long overdue sleep and rewatching my collection of Christmas horror movies (comedies). I packed up all of Rachael's clothes and things that were at my house and set them on the porch for her to pick up. She did come and get them, and returned my own items, mostly suits (including my favorite) ... which I found were all sliced up into shreds with either a knife or sharp scissors. So much for common courtesy.

In any case, that put a final 'done and finished' to that relationship. This suited me just fine, but it still ticked me off that Gerald had been wearing a bloody Santa hat while face-fucking her! The day of the ultimate Santa Apocalypse won't come too soon to suit me!

My phone kept ringing, so I unplugged the blasted thing. There really wasn't anyone that I wanted or needed to talk to. My role as the spark plug for the revolution was over. I'd performed my role as Samuel Adams but now I was more than willing for someone else to go play George Washington and command the revolution instead of me.

It didn't work out that way. Well meaning and concerned folks kept knocking on my door too in all hours of the day or night until I decided that I wasn't going to get any peace and quiet at all until I either skipped town or hid myself off somewhere. I ought to have just driven off somewhere for awhile, but for some reason I just didn't want to leave town. I was having too much fun watching from a distance all of the madness unfold around Noru. There were talks of lawsuits and countersuits, and counter-countersuits, and it was all just much too entertaining to leave just yet.

I could sense that something bigger still was now about to happen but I didn't know quite what.

Also, I didn't quite have a new job as of yet. For several years, one of our better competitors had been head-hunting me and promising the moon if I would come join them. Now that I was very much a free agent, their mood towards the whole thing now seemed to have chilled a bit. I heard a lot of excuses about the economy, and needing special permission from their legal department, and some further approval from their board of directors, etc. Lots of excuses, and very little in the way of specific details. I wasn't going to hold my breath to wait for them to call back. I guess they now considered me to be a threat to their management.

I moved into an obscure motel on the outskirts of town for the next week or so and spent my days keeping my ears down to the railroad tracks to listen for oncoming trouble and my evenings drinking at a little hole in the wall dive that I'd taken a bit of a liking to. It was there, the Friday before Christmas that trouble found me first.

It was early that Friday evening, just after 5 p.m. when I got an early start on the evening's entertainment at Herbert's Bullpen. Herb had been a career minor league pitcher in the 1950's and had never made it past AAA Ball in eight seasons of toil, but he knew a thousand entertaining stories from those golden days of baseball. I never actually did much serious drinking there, but it was a fun place to hang out with all of the vintage baseball décor and Herb made for a pretty good host.

Tonight, he was fairly busy behind the bar so I was amusing myself watching Jeopardy on the TV behind the bar. I'm fairly well read and have a good memory for trivia, and I'd like to think that if I ever were to become a real contestant on that game show, I'd likely win a small fortune ... unless they asked obscure questions about Renaissance era Italian poets. In any case, I was doing well and winning pots of virtual money when a Santa Claus, complete with a full red suit came into Herb's and planted himself down on the barstool next to me.

I shouted "Unclean!" and made the universal ablutions to ward off evil and moved over to another barstool. The swine moved over and again sit next to me. It was moments like this that I despaired for my state, that the liberal wankers at the state capitol had not voted us victimized tax-payers the right to conceal carry firearms ... and the right to 'rehabilitate' known proven public menaces to the common welfare, like Santa's on sight.

I gave the Santa a very beady eye glare of distain, but I was in just enough of a good mood that I decided to now just pretend that I didn't see him. Oddly, this particular rosy-cheeked nuisance wasn't even drinking the usual cheap rotgut either. He asked Herb to climb up to the top leftmost shelf and bring down a certain bottle of scotch that was in the furthermost back corner and pour the three of us each a small glass. Such a bottle was indeed there, complete with decade's worth of dust. It was also the best darned tasting scotch I'd ever had in my life!

In the spirit of the season, and being on public neutral ground (and without firearms), I decided to forgive the Santa for the mortal offense of speaking to me, although it was getting harder to pointedly ignore him. Wow, that was good scotch! I even thanked him, when he offered to provide us with a refill. Poor Herb was at a complete loss – he never even had a clue that this most excellent bottle was even on the premises; he'd never seen it before!

My mood significantly improved, I didn't even mind when Santa ("Just call me Kris", he said) joined me in playing along with the remaining last part of the game show on the TV. When the program finished, a second new episode of the game show began and Kris leaned over toward me to offer a wager.

"I'll bet you the remaining contents of this most excellent bottle of very old Scotch, that this old man can beat you silly in this next bout of Jeopardy. We'll alternate questions, and the one with the most correct answers at the end wins. If you win, I'll hang up this hat and suit for good. If you lose, you can owe me a very small favor. Nothing important, serious or hurtful, but you'd be helping me, along with yourself too ... and might even enjoy it. Do we have a bet?"

Absolutely. I'm pretty good at this game, and there wasn't the slightest doubt in my mind that I could beat a drink-besotted Santa wannabe. Plus, it would keep him safely away from diddling some children or exposing himself to any old ladies for awhile. On the plus side, at least this guy had a real white beard and looked the part.

I took that bet ... and he absolutely whooped my ass. He never missed a question, not a single one! I hardly got a single answer right. It was all weird stuff like Existential Philosophers, Australian Marsupials, Oriental Porcelain and yes, of course, Renaissance era Italian Poets.

Bah! I took a long bathroom break to see if Santa would forget about me, and my 'favor', and was temporarily delighted to see that his stool was now empty. Santa had indeed departed, but not before leaving me a package on my own stool. His Santa suit. My 'favor' was to dress up in his suit and act as a substitute for him at a small party this evening for no more than two hours.

Double Bah! I was of no mind to do it ... even though Kris had provided one last drink refill for me which slightly softened my mood. Didn't this red suited demon from the lowest planes of hell know what he was asking of me? I was going to have to 'join the enemy' ... and I didn't like the thought even one little bit.

"Do it or you're barred and not welcome in my joint again!" Herb directed. "I can't stand a guy who welshes on a bet! You lost, fair and square. Be a man, suck it up and pay up. Think of the little kiddies!" I thought about remarking that the little tykes would probably just as soon rather not be fondled and diddled, but the menacing glare on Herb's face brooked no contradiction.

I finished the last of my drink and bowing to cruel and monstrous fate, I put on the costume. My shame was complete.

To my rather great surprise, the suit fit rather well and was of quite excellent quality. This wasn't one of the usual cheap felt jobs that the stores can burn later after dressing up a flea-bitten street hobo, but a nice warm lined one of soft clean velvet and what felt like real fur. I didn't even need much padding around the midsection ... I unfortunately spend most of my days sitting down. Even the fake beard was a pretty decent theatrical stock one and I had to admit that looking into the reflection of myself in the bar mirror, that I did make a rather convincing Santa Claus. I started to wonder when I get the overpowering urge to go molest some young orphans.