Little chef

Manguy stood at his filing cabinet, idling sorting through the papers in the drawer.  It was organised along GTD (Getting Things Done) principles, with a folder for each day of the month and then a folder for each month of the year.  It was complicated a little by the need to have folders in there for each of the Jewish and Muslim months as well, plus the fact that at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations they used a standardised 37-day month for a lot of internal billing and business practises.  Then there were a couple of additional folders of his own addition that marked deadlines for tax forms (in eighteen jurisdictions) and proposal tenders, plus a tracking folder for the CEO, Jeremy Diseased-Rat.  It was, in fact, a rather full filing cabinet drawer, and the data it contained was very important, so long as you knew how it all inter-related.

His fingers found a sheet of dove-grey paper that was otherwise unmarked and he paused.  This was the colour he reserved for Margoyle, one of his colleagues who was showing promise and signs of thinking about promotion.  The page here was to remind him that his last tactic, of suborning her assistant and making it seem like Jeronica’s doing, had gone oddly wrong.  Her assistant, Corisette, was dead due to a freak asphyxiation event in the stairwell that had lead directly to him (and about twenty-five people at his level) installing a fire-escape rope-ladder in his office for exiting the building via the window, but Jeronica didn’t seem to be suffering unduly from Margoyle’s rage.

Actually, Jeronica was an interesting puzzle in her own right at the moment.  A few more flicks and his fingers found a sheet of canary-yellow paper, one corner dog-eared and a loose staple in the diagonally opposite corner.  She was achieving far too much in internal meetings at the moment and he couldn’t figure out why.  Certain meetings where he was sure she would be stalled or blocked by equally-ambitious people were going smoothly instead of erupting into arguments and dividing along faction lines, and she was gradually drawing attention from the level above.  Soon enough she’d even attract Jeremy Diseased-Rat’s attention, and Manguy definitely wasn’t ready for that kind of competition.  He placed the sheet on his desk; he would need to sit down and do some planning to deal with this.

More flicking through the papers in the cabinet and he pulled out the only sheet of paper that was due tomorrow.  There was a drawing of a chef’s toque on it, and he sighed.  He closed the filing cabinet, closed the blinds on his office window that had a view of the corridor outside, and sat down in the leather swivel chair to think about this meeting.  A… let’s call her a lady, he thought, though that may be generous.  A lady, connected in not insignificant ways to the National American Society of Hipsters, was concerned that her children were insufficiently ambitious and may fail to obtain jobs that would allow them to lead the kind of lives she felt were appropriate for them.  She had four children, and Manguy had already managed to see to it that the girl who wanted to be a school-teacher had changed her mind and become a banking executive for an organisation that leased school-supplies to the third world using a scheme that applied punitive damages to anyone trying to leave it or think for themselves.  That had been almost simple: it was just a case of finding the right boyfriend for her and then having her attacked a small herd of five-year olds that had been eating sweets all morning.  The pay-off for him was the National American Society of Hipsters listening more attentively to his recommendations, and nominating the right presidential candidate.  The polls were looking promisingly like he’d win the next election too.  This time though, the issue was the son who wanted to be a chef.

Manguy wasn’t sure what was wrong with being a chef.  Occasionally, when his dealer failed to come through with the good stuff and he had to sleep unaided, he’d wake up from dreams of working in a kitchen and turning out plates of beautiful food that made beautiful women weep and powerful men offer him jobs on private yachts.  He would lie there in the morning light, remembering the scent of lobster bisque, or tasting the memory of a single perfect madeleine, and for a moment he would know what happiness was supposed to feel like.  Then he’d get up, pay the hooker to leave, and return to being Manguy, the go-to guy at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations and heir-apparent to Jeremy Diseased-Rat.

Well, now there was a point.  The woman wanted appropriate life-styles for her children, so perhaps the job wasn’t such an issue.  What she needed was a celebrity-chef for a son, someone with a television show, a chain of high-profile, high-turnover restaurants, a reputation for swearing like a hooker… no, wait that wasn’t the phrase, was it?  Swearing like a sailor, on shore-leave.  That was it.  Someone  who made powerful women fall in love with them and rich men offer them jobs on private yachts….

He made a couple of notes on the page, and jotted down a phone-number of the publicist to call to get this young man’s career started, and only had to brush a single tear away from his eyes.

A little light marketing after brunch

The offices of Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations were housed in a modernist steel-and-glass construction that stood on the site of a four-hundred year old house.  They'd had to obtain special permission to demolish the house, and had ended up paying to have it vandalised first when English Heritage had looked ready to step in.  Their CEO had been quoted in the papers about the event.
"Well blast it all, we wouldn't have had any of these problems if this had been America!" he'd said to the reporter.
"Ah yes," said the reporter.  "They don't have any buildings 400 years old in America though."
"Exactly!  There's a culture that knows how to renew things regularly!"
Those particular interviews were carefully kept absent from the book of cuttings and other publicity that the firm had managed to obtain.
The building towered over the surrounding houses and small shops.  The row it was on had originally been factory houses built early in the Industrial revolution and subdivided ever since, until modern day residents boasted about their cupboard-sized kitchens and bathrooms not actually big enough to fit a bath in, even stood up on end.  Minguy, looking out of a tinted glass window that occupied the entire wall, liked to stare down at the rooves below and fantasize about pushing his office safe out of the window to see if it would crash all the way through the ground.  He thought it might.
"Minguy!"  He turned lightly on the balls of his feet and saw that Jeronica was stood just outside his office clutching a vase of pussy-willow stems.  He smiled, the exact smile that he practised every evening in front of the mirror for fifteen minutes until it felt like it was part of him, and beckoned her on in.  She wobbled a little as she walked over, and he realised that she was now eight inches taller than him.
"New heels," she said as she got close enough for him to be able to hear her without her having to shout.  "A little gift from Leshoutier for getting their adverts shown in Dubai.  There's something waiting for you in reception too."
Minguy smiled a little wider, feeling the corners of his mouth tear slightly.  He dipped his hand into the pocket on his waistcoat for some vaseline to rub on them.  "They make you tall," he said, tilting his head back slightly so he could make eye-contact with her.  "Intimidatingly so."
"Yes," she said, tossing her hair back over her head.  Immediately two heavily-styled locks fell back to obscure her vision and give the impression of a scared young girl peering out at him.  He thought it was creepy, but expensively so.  "Yes, and not all of our doorways are tall enough."
"You won't be wearing them around the office much then?"
"What?"  Jeronica looked at him as though he'd suggested she wear viscose.  "I've spoken to Jack, he's going to get another three inches clearance for the doors.  I've also given Ozwald a call and told him to design me something that won't look like ankle support but actually is, and I've called Scholl and told them I'm going to need a whole lot better toe care and aggressive foot therapy."
Minguy nodded, this was pretty much what he expected from Jeronica.
"Anyway," she said, "Leshoutier has sent you something too, and reception swear that there's no airholes in the box this time, and it's not been barking, or trying to move by itself, so there's probably no hurry on this one.  And when you have a minute, the National American Society of Hipsters are looking to hire us."
"What do NASH want?"  Minguy let genuine interest creep into his voice.  NASH had only managed to organise properly in recent months, mostly as a response to what they saw as a direct attack on their core beliefs and everyone else saw as justified mockery.  Much to his (and his research assistant's) surprise they'd attracted substantial funding and membership.  It seemed like there'd been little pockets of hipsters scattered around everywhere just waiting for the chance to find like minds and start doing things together.  Their Facebook page had been an absolute success, with all the hipsters firmly disliking it instantly and then rushing to change their opinion once it was so uncool that liking it was the only cool thing to do.  While the group oscillated wildly out of control and newspapers made sardonic comments on irony the members had somehow managed to come together, form a coalition and a society, and now had a grand building somewhere in Manhattan where they looked down condescendingly on the rest of America.
"The Presidency," said Jeronica.  "They've figured out that the primaries are just ways for special interest groups to get the right candidates in front of the electorate and that the final election is about as fair as coal.  Rumour has it they have a hipster on the Supreme Court already, so they can take the Presidency so long as they get a candidate up there."
"Which one?"
"Well, there's the problem," said Jeronica, but Minguy interrupted her.
"No, I meant which Supreme Court Judge?  The little one?"
"Eff knows," said Jeronica breezily.  "It doesn't matter at the moment, the problem we're going to have is that they want a President only a hipster would vote for.  Someone who's not cool and no-one else would vote for."
"Ha!" said Minguy.  "That figures.  But then how could such a person get elected?"
"That's another problem they want us to solve."
"Hmm.  What do you think?"
"I think it's a challenge," said Jeronica, carefully.  "And having the group that picked the American President a happy client is certainly something to consider.  I think we need to think long and hard before we say either yes or no to this.  And finding a suitable candidate is a significant problem."
"Maybe not," said Minguy.  "Don't we still know that woman who sells suicide-ducks?"
"Marlene?  Straps mines to the underside of ducks and sets them loose in kiddie-parks?"
"Yes, she's the one.  She's American, isn't she?  And not in jail?"
"Yet."
"Well then, I think we have options!  Let's go market, Jeronica dear."