The Contractor and the Chairman

She was obnoxious when she drank. Obnoxious, loud, and tactless. It wasn't as if she needed to be the center of attention as a general rule, but when the alcohol started flowing so did her mouth.

It's not clear why she didn't check herself, especially since she was on the clock. It was a conference, after all, and it was her duty as the lead contractor to make sure that it went off without a hitch. She was pretty good at her job, though, so she felt like she should be able to relax and let loose a little after the sessions concluded. She needed it. They all did.

The organization was huge. Major companies. Big name companies in the industry. A lot of money invested. It had over fifty thousand members, and pulled in millions in membership dues and fees. They had hired her small firm to do much of the coordination of the sessions, including the website updates. It was a good gig.

No one liked the fourteen hour days, to be sure. It had become tradition to relax afterwards with a drink or seven, away from the public and scrutiny of the press and members so that the Board of Directors and staff could decompress. They'd invited her as well as the other contractors, since she had been integral to the organization of the event. It was a courtesy as much as a thank-you.

Four days. Three nights. Long Days. Short Nights. The need to unwind was practically a matter of life and death.

"What are you drinking, Brie?" she was asked. Wine. White? Red? Doesn't matter. Wine.

Brie held the glass of red loosely in her hand as she bounced on the suite's large chair. She looked like Lily Tomlin's "Edith Ann" character, a tiny girl sitting atop a comically large seat. A middle-aged woman looking like a tiny girl in her surroundings.

She couldn't sit still. She bounced back and forth between different people trying to get their attention. It was fun. It was time to let her hair down.

"Ooh! Can you dance?" she asked Leon, one of the Board members.

"Not really," Leon replied good-naturedly.

"Come on, let's dance!" Brie jumped up eagerly and put her wine glass down on the coffee table. Someone caught it before it fell over as she grabbed Leon's hand and pulled him onto a tiny bare space on the carpet.

Leon hadn't been lying. Even if he had more than a space the size of a postage stamp, he wouldn't have been very impressive. "Wow," Brie said. "You really suck!"

He took it in stride. "Told you. I'm usually the DJ," he said.

Brie clapped her hands together. "Oh! Play some music!"

Leon looked over to the suite's entertainment center. Music was already playing. Brie raised her hands over her head and closed her eyes and started swaying. She was already deep into her own internal soundtrack. Leon looked around the people in the room as if to say, I'm not missing something, am I?

He moved to sit down, but Brie pulled him back up again. It was quite amusing to everyone else as Leon topped the scales at over three hundred pounds, while Brie didn't even make a third of that. Nevertheless, she managed to keep him standing up.

It was all in good humor, of course. No harm, no foul.

"Where are you from, Leon?" Brie asked. Before he had a chance to say anything, she answered her own question. "I am from Chicago. Have you ever been to Chicago?"

"Oh yeah," Leon answered. Nothing ever riled him. "I've been to Chicago all the time. As a matter of fact, one time I was -"

"You have?" Brie asked, surprised. She seemed to be on a bit of a time delay. "Have you ever been to a Cubs game?"

Leon smiled, giving up on having any chance to finish a story. "No, I haven't. Is it fun?"

Brie's eyes widened as if he'd told her that he was from Mars. "Whaaat?" she drawled. "Oh my god! You have got to go see the Cubbies! Where's my wine? There it is!"

She reached for the glass and downed the remainder. "I need more wine!" she announced to the room in general.

As it happened, one of the staff had gotten up to refill her own glass. "I'm on it!" Leslie called.

"Love you, girl!" Brie called across the room, carrying over at least half a dozen other conversations.

The door opened and he walked in. The Chairman. If you didn't know that was his role, you would never have figured him for the job. Average height, slightly overweight, but dressed sharp and stylish. He looked about twenty years younger than his nearly fifty years. He still had a baby face, though some slight greying in the temples gave him away. It was a true distinguishing look for him.

Brie had never met Jerome Martin for any extended length of time. A few emails back and forth, a quick conversation on the show floor, but nothing for more than what it took to cover brief discussions about conference issues. She'd probably only really spent less than five minutes chatting with him about anything. She didn't report to him; she reported to a guy who reported to a guy who reported to him. She thought he knew who she was, but she couldn't be sure.

He went over to the bar to pour himself a drink. Brie watched with curiosity, but with his back to her it was impossible to see what he was going to choose. It didn't look like he was thrilled with any of the options, but quietly made a selection and poured something into a glass.

When he turned around, she waved to him. "Jerome!" she called. "Over here!"

He scanned the room to see where he was being hailed from, and caught Brie's eye. The room had gotten crowded and there wasn't much space for maneuvering, but he managed to make it close enough to where Brie, Leon, and others were chatting.

"Hey there," he said cheerfully. "Having fun?"

Leon grinned a big smile. He and Jerome were good friends. "Come on, buddy," Leon said. "You can sit on my lap."

He patted his knee. In reality, there wasn't much room on Leon's "lap" for another person - his girth didn't provide much in the way of seating space. Jerome played along, though, and bent over as if he was going to accept the offer anyway.

Leon pushed him away. "Get outta here!" Leon laughed.

"Oh my god!" Brie squealed. "You were going to do it!"

Jerome grinned, but was looking at Leon. "You didn't seem to mind the last time," he teased.

"The last time you were a bit smaller," Leon teased right back.

Jerome made a face that conceded the point. "Fair," he said. "Then again, so were you!" He was still grinning. Leon made the same face. It was true. Jerome settled against a wall.

Brie saw an opportunity. "You can sit by me!" she said, scooting to the edge of the seat. It was almost as much of a joke. Brie took up almost no space on the chair, and it was practically empty as a result.

Jerome looked at her and then the seat, contemplating. He was affectionate with people with whom he knew and was close, but he didn't know Brie at all. She reinforced her offer with a pat on the cushion.

"Well, I've been on my feet all day and could definitely take a load off," Jerome admitted. He stepped around Leon and sat down on the other side of Brie, sharing the chair.

"What are you drinking?" Brie asked, indicating his glass.

"Not sure," Jerome confessed. "It was wine. It was red. Now it's in my glass. Soon it will be in mah belly." He sad the last in his best Mike Meyers "Fat Bastard" voice, which was surprisingly accurate.

Brie laughed a little too hard. She didn't see him raise an eyebrow at the force of her laughter at his little joke. It might have been amusing, but it probably wasn't that funny.

Someone else got Jerome's attention. "How has the conference been going so far, Jerome?"

It was a standard question. There was a standard answer. "Good, good," Jerome recited. "It's good to see everyone in person again."

The woman who asked the question, Ellen, nodded sagely. "I know what you mean," she said. Standard response. "I've almost forgotten what it was like to socialize without a Zoom or WebEx screen."

Brie got an idea. "So, what was the most fun thing you did in the past year?" she asked the group in general. Then she zeroed in on Jerome. "You go first."

"Fun, what's that?" Ellen asked. "Are we even allowed to have fun any more?"

"I don't know," Leon said, thoughtfully. "I built some new servers for fun."

Jerome laughed. Leon's sense of fun was strongly related to how much geeky hardware he could get his hands on. "Oh, come on," Brie protested. "That's not fun."

"It is for Leon," Jerome laughed. "Give him a soldering iron and he's practically in heaven."

"Speaking of which," Leon said, "I just got a brand new one for really cheap that is amazing."

Brie wasn't having any of it. "No, no, no," she protested. "I mean, something fun." She looked at Jerome again.

He took her question seriously. "The most 'fun,' eh?" He looked up at the ceiling as if it would help him sort out his thoughts.

Ellen started pondering her most fun anecdote as well. "I gotta tell you, I'm having fun just sipping this tequila right now."

"Is it good?" Jerome asked.

"Oh yeah," Ellen said. "I don't usually sip tequila straight, but this one goes down smooth."

"May I?" Jerome asked. Ellen passed the glass.

"Yeah, I mean," Brie continued as Jerome raised the tequila to his lips, "It could be something as simple as hot wax dripping off your finger..."

Jerome sputtered the tequila.

"I'm sorry, what?" Leon asked, whipping his head around from his other conversation to refocus on Brie. "What did you say?"

He turned back to his new conversation partner. "I'm sorry, Leslie, I heard hot wax and it just grabbed my attention."

Leslie shook her head, thoroughly amused. "Not a problem," she said, her face registering amusement and curiosity as well. "I want to know too."

"Well, then," Jerome said, his smile turning uncertain. "This line of questioning took a turn."

Brie laughed, and leaned in to put her head on Jerome's shoulder in a playful side-hug. She didn't sense him stiffen awkwardly. The immediate cohort of people were all abuzz, laughing at the implied innuendo. In today's climate, it just wasn't something that happened very much any more. There was an uneasy feeling in the air. Could this be... okay?

Apparently, not for Jerome. A wall shot up that wasn't going to come down any time soon. This was dangerous territory for a Chairman to be in, and he was applying the brakes. He simply smiled and said nothing.

Brie completely misread his reaction for shyness. "Oh, you're an introvert!" she teased. "I can tell."

Jerome just smiled. "Don't worry," Brie said, her mouth struggling to enunciate the separation between the "w" and "r" sounds of the word. The alcohol was certainly having an effect. "I'm just like Pandora - I'm full of surprises."

She leaned in and lowered her voice conspiratorially as others continued to talk about "hot wax" around them. "But we probably shouldn't talk about my Box, should we?"

Her eyes went wide at her own bold statement and she started giggling hysterically. "What?" Leon asked, seeing her sudden fit. Apparently he hadn't heard her sotto voce.

Jerome shrugged. "Brie was just telling me about her favorite selections of Pandora."

Brie giggled even harder, but Ellen took the pun at face value. "I think we've got the music on Spotify, though."

Jerome looked at Brie. "Oh well," he said vaguely. "There you go."

Brie waved away Jerome's comment, as if it had some substance worth dismissing. "I'm the kind of girl who isn't afraid to say what she thinks," she informed him.

"I can see that."

Brie turned to face him, sending non-verbal cues to the rest of the group that she wanted to only talk with Jerome. She lowered her voice again. "I mean, I'm a girl who-" she stopped abruptly. "I mean, I guess, the right thing to say is that I'm a cis-gendered, heterosexual woman."

Jerome wasn't sure whether or not she was messing with him. Then again, she had thrown out quite a few non-sequiturs already.

"And my partner is a man who identifies as a lesbian."

Oh come on. She had to be screwing with him, right? Why on earth would she just announce this?

She blinked and swallowed, as if the last gulp of wine hadn't quite gone down right. "And we're committed. I mean, we're in a committed relationship."

Jerome honestly had no idea how to respond. If they had been talking about this subject, or even something close to it, he may have had an idea about what to say. This just came out of the blue, though. He didn't know whether to laugh, make a joke, or simply nod wisely.

He settled on the latter. He didn't know where she was going with this, and felt like he was swimming in dangerous waters. In his experience, those words did not mean "safe to talk."

She suddenly looked thoughtful. "You know what I mean?" she asked. She stressed the last word and cocked her head as if she were trying to impress something signifiant in the word.

"I'm aware of the concept, yes," Jerome said. He still had a note of amusement in his voice, but he was paying attention more from curiosity about what she was going to do next than any true interest in what she was saying.

"Brie, Brie," Leon said from her other side, trying to get her attention. She spun back to him and resumed her bubbly banter with him. Jerome took the opportunity to stand up.

The movement didn't go unnoticed. "Where are you going?" she asked.

He smiled a crooked smile. "Bed."

"Oh, come on!" she complained. "It's not that late!"

"It is for me," Jerome said. "I've been up since 1 a.m. to catch the flight here."

"Yeah, that'll do it," Ellen said.

"Me too," Leslie said, trying to stifle a yawn. She stood up and grabbed her purse.

Trying to step over the cluttered limbs of people who were crammed into too small of the space, he and Leslie made their way towards the door. "Ooooh," Jerome said to Leslie in a mock singsong voice. "Leaving together. People will talk, Leslie!"

Leslie laughed, and they left the suite. Brie watched them go, but then turned back to Leon to keep the gentle flirting going.

The next morning, it was back to work as usual. Brie didn't appear to suffer a hangover or any other side-effects from the previous evening's fun, and Jerome was kept busy with non-stop meetings. Brie waved to him at one point and he returned the favor, but they didn't speak.

Towards the end of the day, the conversations turned to the evening plans. Retiring to the suite was something of a tradition, so it was sort of assumed that people would congregate there. Sure enough, the usual cast of characters found themselves exploring the remainder of the alcohol selection at the suite's bar.

"So who's going to make it tonight?" Leslie asked.

"I think JP and Wilson are going to be here," Ellen said. Just as she said it, both JP and Wilson walked through the door. They went straight for the bar.

"What about Leon and Jerome?" Brie asked.

"Don't know," Ellen confessed. "I think they had a meeting tonight."

Brie looked at her phone to check the time. "Now?" she asked, incredulous. She was already on her second glass and couldn't imagine anyone needing to work at this hour. "It's almost 9:30!"

"Yeah, well, that's what happens when you're on the Board of Directors," Leslie said. "Everyone wants your time."

"You think they'll come up later?" Brie asked.

"Well, Leon probably will," Ellen said. "I don't know about Jerome."

The way she said it made Brie feel uneasy. "Why not? What do you mean?"

"I don't know what you did to the poor boy," Ellen said, laughing. "But you must have really made him feel nervous last night."

A chill went through Brie. What did she say? She had tried a little flirting, sure, but had she really done something so terrible?

Another thought struck her. Had she let her sense of humor get out too much? Jerome was the Chair of the organization, for crying out loud. Had she offended the fucking Chair? Oh god, what did she say? What had she done?

She felt her stomach leap into her throat. She was a contractor. They had no obligation to renew her contract. Her mind raced as she started to realize that the approval of her contract had to go through Jerome. Had she just screwed herself?

Ellen saw the look on her face and laughed. "Don't worry, Brie," she said. "I'm just teasing you."

Brie gave a weak smile to Ellen, who then bounced off to the bathroom. She was oblivious to Brie's anxiety.

Brie downed her nearly full glass of wine and then made her way over to the bar. She found the tequila that Ellen had talked about the previous night and gave herself a generous pour. She wasn't usually fond of the hard liquor, but she felt like she needed to take the edge off her nerves.

Ellen had been right. The tequila was smooth, and Brie appreciated the slight burn didn't feel like it was ripping at her throat. She settled onto the sofa next to Leslie. Leslie asked her a question, but it didn't register.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Did you hear about the argument today?"

Brie shook her head. "No, what argument?"

"I can't believe you didn't hear about this!" Leslie leaned in with excitement. There was juicy gossip to share. "Jerome had an argument with some journalist today," Leslie said.

"A journalist?" This couldn't be good. You didn't want to risk bad press.

"Yeah," Leslie said, smiling. "It was glorious. Apparently the journalist was all upset because Jerome wouldn't give him an interview, so he threatened to write an article saying that the organization was deceiving its members at the conference."

Brie was confused. "Deceiving its members?"

Leslie waived her hands, indicating that that wasn't the important part. "Yeah, the reporter was making stuff up," she said. "He was saying that he was going to write that the Board of Directors was using the conference to push broken technology that we know doesn't work."

"That's not true!" Brie protested. She thought about Leon, Ellen, Jerome, and the other members like JP and Wilson who she didn't know very well but could feel that they weren't like that.

"I know, right?" Leslie was almost giddy, like there was a great punchline just over the horizon. "So this asshole starts making all kinds of accusations, like we're actually on the bring of bankruptcy and that we are under investigation by the government. All kinds of crap like that."

"Oh no!"

"I know, right?" Leslie said again. "And Jerome was all like, 'There is nothing to those accusations, and you know it. You're just upset because you weren't given an exclusive about tomorrow's announcements.'"

Ellen came back from the bathroom. "You talking about Jerome and that reporter today?" she asked.

Leslie nodded. "Oh, this is awesome," Ellen said, and sat down.

"Was Jerome yelling at the guy?" Brie asked.

Both Ellen and Leslie shook their heads. "No, that's the thing," Leslie said. He was super calm and collected. He just said, 'you may want to be very careful about writing things that you know aren't true.' And the reporter goes, 'Look, it doesn't matter what you say, because as soon as it's published they're going to believe it anyway.'"

Brie felt a chill. It sounded like Jerome was going to be in trouble.

"So Jerome tells the guy, 'You know, there are a lot of other reporters and analysts here at the conference too,'" Leslie continued. Ellen started laughing and slapping her knee, knowing what was about to come next.

"And the reporter goes, "Yeah, so what? I'll just write that this was an investigation and a whistleblower came to me during the conference."

"What an asshole!" Brie exclaimed.

"Wait for it," Ellen said. "Just wait."

Leslie nodded. "So anyway, Jerome takes a step closer to the reporter and lowers his voice real low. He says, 'So, let me get this straight. You're upset because I didn't give you access to our announcements beforehand, so you're going to deliberately write an article that you know is completely false just to show me you have all the power. Is that right?"