Willie Costello sat in his office, the cigar sticking out of his mouth. He was envisioning a dragon, and trying to make his smoke clothe the roof. Staring up at the various fungi on the ceiling, he completely missed his secretary, Kristy Bain, enter the room.
“We’ve got a situation, Mr. Costello.” She said, putting her clipboard on the office couch.
Willie Costello sighed, his eyes squinting a little, drawing back on the cigar’s stub. Some ash falls back down the side of it, into his mouth, causing him to hack and cough.
“Mr. Costello, there’s a spider in the water cooler.”
He composed himself, spreading his hands on the paper-laiden desk. “What...” There’s another, close-lipped, sigh. “What are you saying?”
“It’s dead. I think it’s dead but I can’t be sure.”
There’s a look of panic that Willie Costello notices now. He raised an eyebrow and the cigar flopped out, rolling off his bottom lip and hitting the table with a drooly splat. “Spider?” It was a Friday. He’d organised a stripper party at around six o’clock with prospective stockholders. There was a girl coming he fancied and he needed to restock his personal bar. No time for these sorts of dalliances in troubleshooting water coolers.
“He’s big, sir, real big. He’s lying on the surface, spread, dead I think. I can’t drink from the water cooler.”
“Do I need to do something?” Willie Costello asked, hoping Kristy would interpret it as a rhetorical, lazy question.
She didn’t.
“You have to take the spider out, sir. Nobody else in the office will do it.”
“Alan?”
“He has problems cleaning up cat litter, Mr. Costello. I know.”
Mr. Costello brushed the cigar off the table in a mood some would interpret as slight annoyance.
“Jack Fernandez? He’s reliable.”
“He’s out sir. Said something about the Kuziasco account.”
Willie Costello moved his chair in, raked his face with his fingernails, and yawned. “I’ll call someone.” He was expecting a call back from the strippers. No phones near the water cooler. It was an out.
“Mr. Costello, I’m begging you. My throat is drier than Mars. I need some water. We all need water. Alan’s been mumbling sad love poems in my direction again.”
Kristy wasn’t going to leave on her own unfortunately. There was something missing from this team, Willie Costello mused, finding a report to pretend to flick through. There’s no...motivation. No work ethic. There’s me and Jack Fernandez.
Wait. Willie Costello sat up and made eye contact with Kristy. An idea. There was someone missing.
“I don’t need to call someone.” Willie Costello said, concerned, “I know someone who would be perfect for this.”
“Who?” Kristy asked. She’d been ticking things off on her clipboard, hoping Mr. Costello would have something.
“Where’s the temp?” Mr. Costello asked, taking out another cigar, fumbling for his lighter.
“I don’t know. I’ll find her.”
“Good Kristy. You’re smart, you know that? You’ll go places. Do things. Possibly take my position if there’s enough space given the economic climate.”
“Thank you, sir.” Kristy Bain told him, and turned to go. She hadn’t meant that, of course. Willie Costello was prone to empty compliments.
Willie Costello leaned back, a freshly lit cigar pointing skyward. He moved his watch in front of his view of the ceiling. Another two hours until home time.
He heard Kristy yelling for Shellie the temp, then his phone. The dull rings were capable of instant headaches. It was the strippers. That number was drilled into his memory from many, many financially crippling nights of unfulfilling and heartachingly sulky sexual experiences.
He picked up the receiver and mumbled something.
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