by Robert WEXELBLATT

Af­ter the meet­ing dur­ing which A., an elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer, pre­sent­ed her de­tailed plan for the company’s next ini­tia­tive, she over­heard a prod­uct man­ag­er, B., in the cor­ri­dor ridi­cul­ing a pro­pos­al and as­sumed he was de­rid­ing hers where­as, in fact, it was a hare-brained no­tion the in­dus­tri­al chemist C. had come up with over drinks the night be­fore, and which, of course, had not been men­tioned at the meet­ing. B. thought A.’s in­no­v­a­tive idea re­mark­ably good, but he did not speak up dur­ing the meet­ing be­cause he was un­qual­i­fied to as­sess its tech­ni­cal as­pects but still more be­cause he was at­tract­ed to A. and did not wish to ap­pear to be in­gra­ti­at­ing himself.

When they ran in­to each oth­er in the cafe­te­ria the next day, and B. be­gan to com­pli­ment her, A. thought he was mock­ing her and gave him short shrift. Af­ter that, when­ev­er B. ad­dressed her, A. ei­ther pre­tend­ed not hear him or replied curt­ly. Mean­while, A. took every op­por­tu­ni­ty to den­i­grate B. to their col­leagues. When he was told what A. was say­ing to oth­ers about him — such things are sure to make the rounds — B. was tak­en aback but re­luc­tant­ly con­clud­ed that A. had con­ceived an an­tipa­thy for him; and, be­cause the pre­sen­ta­tion which he had found so ad­mirable had won her the ear of the high­er-ups, she was in a po­si­tion to do him harm, per­haps even get him dis­missed. B. re­solved to take mea­sures to pro­tect himself.

In this way, a gen­uine en­mi­ty grew up be­tween A. and B. who, but for an un­for­tu­nate mis­ap­pre­hen­sion, might, giv­en that they were both young, un­at­tached, and good-look­ing, have dis­cov­ered that they were fond of Asian cui­sine, ski­ing, large dogs, Russ­ian nov­els, and French cabaret mu­sic; they could have start­ed dat­ing, be­come a cou­ple, might have mar­ried, had chil­dren, sup­port­ed one an­oth­er in their ca­reers, faced the vi­cis­si­tudes of life to­geth­er, and lived con­tent­ed­ly to­geth­er for decades. In­stead, their an­i­mos­i­ty grew to such a de­gree that they not on­ly dis­par­aged one an­oth­er but re­cruit­ed al­lies, es­tab­lish­ing fac­tions, and gen­er­at­ed so much dis­cord in the firm that, notwith­stand­ing their ex­cel­lent qual­i­ties, wor­thy con­tri­bu­tions, and promis­ing fu­tures, their work and that of oth­ers suf­fered and, for the sake of ami­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, man­age­ment fi­nal­ly de­ter­mined that the best thing would be to let them both go.

Filed under Fiction on December 16th, 2022

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