The Edge
Created | Updated Apr 9, 2003
Part Five
Lorgnette sat down, closed her eyes and enjoyed the few moments of peace and
quiet before Wickrain came into the office. No doubt he would come in ranting
and raving about the traffic or the fact that he hadn’t slept with
anybody last night. Lorgnette worked for a printing subsidiary of Metwork.
Unfortunately, nobody had told Metwork that Wickrain was utterly incompetent
and so they’d placed him in charge. Not surprisingly, they hadn’t
had any jobs recently. The last one they had was a banner for an old
people’s home cake sale. They earned a total of £19.56 for that one.
Lorgnette feared the company was going to shut them down. It was surprising
they’d kept them going this long and Lorgnette already had a job lined
with National Printing Ltd.
‘Blooming traffic.’
Without looking up Lorgnette said, ‘Hi Wickrain. How was last
night?’
‘Blooming awful. I try all my best chat up lines and I didn’t
even get a kiss.’
‘Hmm,’ Lorgnette knew about Wickrain’s chat up lines,
‘Wickrain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever thought for one second that people don’t go to
bed with you for the simple reason that they think you are a sexist bigot whose
way of impressing a woman is to ask them to look behind a sofa for ten pence,
so they can phone their mum and you can look at their rear.’
‘Hey, I resent that. It’s so I can look at their legs.’
‘My point exactly.’
‘Any messages for me?’
‘Yes, you got an e-mail this morning from Mr. Pellicle. He wants to
see you for coffee tomorrow at Cafe Lawrence, six o’clock. Says
it’s urgent.’
‘Thanks... If it’s urgent, why is he waiting until tomorrow to
see me?’
‘I don’t know. Oh, yes and this is from your
accountant,’ she handed Wickrain a black five by two foot envelope from
under her English oak desk. Her voice suddenly took on a very solemn tone,
‘it’s your annual expense account. I’d brace myself if I was
you.’
Surprisingly the company didn’t mind that Wickrain’s expense
account could feed a third world country well into the twenty second century,
although the company’s accountant did. Wickrain had found that out when
he was threatened by him in the car park. He took a big breath and as he opened
the envelope he found out that the accountant had found out about his two month
holiday in the Bahamas, three week shopping trip to Harrods and the two hundred
litres of wine he had ordered from France. Wickrain liked the finer things in
life.
He looked, ‘how many zeros!!!’
‘Seven,’ said Lorgnette helpfully ‘Plus two eights and
one three. The accountant says the company will only pay it if you agree to a
pay cut.’
‘But I’ve only got two thousand and five hundred
pounds.’
‘"Pay cut," he said, Wickrain, or nothing. You know the company is
going through a rough patch.’
‘I’m going to see the monument.’ He always went to see
the monument in times of crisis and at the moment this was put under "brown
trousers day". Especially if the accountant had found out where Wickrain had
hidden his spanner.
