Vienna

The woman in the Monday meeting looked at her notes and indicated that she was going to Vienna the next day for a meeting. I had the image of a trip to Dulles, and a big jet across the water. I let my mind wander a little, thinking about a break from the current hysteria over the Iraq contract.

It would be nice to take a big jet someplace and not worry. We will either keep it, or lose it. There is not a great deal I can do about that from here. Oh, there is one thing I can do, and I am pursuing it.

But it is an oblique and ancillary strategy. If it works, I’ll let you know.

The Vienna the woman was going to is our office at Tysons Corner, the glittering satellite city in Virginia where we are paying too much rent to occupy the floor once home to the defunct accounting firm of Arthur Anderson. My Boss always tries to put the possessive apostrophe in the word Tysons. Common usage now says it is a place, and Tyson, whoever he was, is long dead. It is one of those things I don’t have time to fight about.

We can call the suburban office several things. The Shopping Bag Building, for the shape of the tower with the distinctive arches on the top that make it resemble a gigantic tote bag. Tysons, because that is where it is, or Vienna, because that is the township in which Tysons is located.

Calling it Vienna makes it seem a little more exotic.

If we lose the contract, our quarterly bottom line will suffer. We will not perform as advertised, and our new business unit will not look nearly so attractive to the senior managers, who have been promised double-digit growth. And that will mean that costs will be slashed, and our biggest cost is people.

I am one of those. A person, that is, and a minor cost center all on my own. I am supposed to concentrate on things strategic, which in the government trade means the budget that is still in the process of being created. That is not next year’s budget, which is already on the Hill, or the one that is being spent right now. I am living in Fiscal 2007, time traveling to work on the future. That does not mean a great deal to managers who are trying to wring more money out of the third quarter of 2005.

I write a heck of a newsletter about the government climate in Washington. It is a real hum-dinger, just like the Kipplinger Newsletter, filled with unexpected humor . . .separated by three dots . . .and insight into the people who make this system lurch along.

But I don’t know that will justify staying on the payroll. The Phone Company has reputation for ruthless personnel reductions. They fired a hundred thousand people to save the business after the telecom industry went bust. They are certainly capable of harvesting my job for savings.

What would I do then? I can’t live on my pension, God knows. I imagine I will land on my feet. I always do. But there are people that are counting on me.

So that is one of the reasons my eyes flicked open after four in the morning, and I peered at the clock. There was something I was missing. I look at the MicroSoft calendar religiously before I leave the office in the afternoon to ensure that I don’t have to be in Vienna first thing. I had looked at it late yesterday. I have a luncheon with the former Minority Staff Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee at noon; we are to meet at the top of the Capitol South Metro stop.

I intend to harvest his views on the Intelligence Reorganization, and write up a bit for the newsletter.

Next was a note that I am scheduled to cook dinner for my younger son, and show him how to file his taxes electronically. Stuffed flank steak and mashed potatoes with a chopped salad, I thought, and in between, I was going to work on the newsletter for next month and make some phone calls on my secret strategy. Maybe call my friend in Baghdad and get some scoop right from the source.

But there was something else, something I was forgetting. Oh, shit, I thought. It was breakfast in Vienna with the man from the aircraft manufacturing conglomerate. I remembered the e-mail invitation, and I remembered putting it on the calendar. I hadn’t seen it when I looked yesterday because it was so early, way up in the dark-toned portion of the hourly tool-bar.

Too early to be reflected in the normal working day. Shit.

I rolled out of bed and got some juice, blinking. No story this morning, I thought, and the race through the news was going to be cursory at best. I would have to rely on the BBC for my take on the news, and the body count in Iraq, and the size of the pro-Hezballah crowd in Beirut. I worry about both in the background of conscious thought, part of the constant brain static.

I grabbed a cigarette and a plastic disposable lighter. I have been informed sternly that if I am to continue the vile habit, I will do so in the great outdoors. I stepped out on the patio and felt the cold wind hit me hard. The temperature has dropped forty degrees since Monday, and it is blowing so hard that the pressure slammed the door behind me. It had a certain grim thunk of finality.

I took a drag on my Camel in the chill darkness. It occurred to me that I was locked out.

Now that is a heck of a way to start the day. I have no idea how I am going to get to Vienna now.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

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