Chapter 21: Chapter 21 – Fired

Karen sits at her work computer, opening up various websites in different tabs to pretend that she’s working. She clicks Jezebel and the main banner has a story about the shooter and his stream. it denigrates Disney and calls Karen out, by name, as one of the people working for Disney’s live streaming development arm— information publicly available on LinkedIn. Karen stares at the computer, contemplating the vague rage and irritation she used to feel at the people called out in Jezebel articles she’d read in the past. She couldn’t remember any of the names of or faces of those people, so she hoped that anyone reading this article about her wouldn’t remember her name or face, or experience anything toward her beyond that vague rage and irritation reserved for strangers. 

She checks her LinkedIn and has a few notifications about strangers visiting her profile. It’s not more than usual but she can’t help but think it’s all people who now hate her. She checks The Cut, and there is another article about the “Disney Stream.” She doesn’t bother opening it in an incognito window to read beyond the paywall. She clicks on her bookmark for The Atlantic, and there are already three separate think pieces about Disney’s big scandal. 

She then gets an e-mail alert for a calendar event on Outlook called “Let’s celebrate!” It’s occurring in five minutes. She’s not sure what it’s for, but she’s expecting someone’s birthday, or some type of corporate event like an upcoming update to the employee benefits package. 

She feels sick as she looks out her office window, out at the endless stream of cars on the 101 freeway. The sky above Van Nuys is an unpleasant flat gray blue. She grabs her Hydro Flask. It’s not empty enough to warrant a trip to the kitchen, but she doesn’t feel like sitting at her desk so she gets up anyway. She feels dead. She feels like everyone she walks by is simultaneously staring her down, hating her, and also looking right through her, not noticing her at all. She enters the kitchen. The unpleasantly crisp midnight blue of the backsplash is decorated by white mickey mouse heads. She fills her Hydro Flask, staring at the wall in front of her. She thinks of the lives lost to the stream. The families destroyed. She wasn’t sure why it took the shooter calling out his and her employer directly, but it finally made it impossible for her to ignore her participation in the evil. She had paid for the bullets in her encouragement of the company’s pursuit and monetization of the shooter’s stream. Her hand feels wet and she hears the water from her overflowing Hydro Flask drip onto the floor and onto her gray New Balances. 

The assistants are bringing in cakes, and they’re accompanied by depressed looking caterers. Karen admires the red headed assistant’s butt as she leans over the counter to check the flavor of each cake. She clears her throat. “Hey, do you know what this celebration’s for?” The redheaded assistant turns and looks at her, smiling politely but devoid of any interest. 

The other assistant turns around to speak. She’s considerably less attractive but much warmer. “It’s to celebrate Disney’s new digital launch! Based off the success of the streaming development department, we can invest even more money into future digital projects.” 

“Oh…” The red headed assistant is already back to focusing on the cake. She’s cutting it into neat, uniform rectangles. “What flavor is that one?” Karen asks, throwing out a line again, despite herself. The redheaded assistant is about to answer, when an I.T. officer approaches Karen. 

“Hey— I was looking for you. Would you mind coming to your office real quick?” 

“Yeah. I was actually getting some cake, I’ll be right over in a few minutes.” 

“No, sorry actually — they just need us to swap out your computer and they said it’s time sensitive, so gotta do it as soon as we can.”

Karen looks at the red headed assistant again, but she isn’t looking back. Karen sighs. “Okay.” She walks in front of the I.T. officer, who trails close behind. He’s tall and seems to block out the lights behind her head, throwing vague, blue shadows on the floor in front of her as she walks to her office door. There are a few large security guards waiting in her office when she gets there. She turns to the I.T. officer. “What’s going on?” 

He smiles plainly at her. “No idea. That is above my pay grade. We just need you to get logged in here so we can authorize that you’ve received your termination notice and get your computer wiped so we can give it to someone else.” 

Karen looks at him, disgusted. “What? I don’t understand.” 

He lets out a dry chuckle. “I know, right? You’d think a company this big would be able to afford more computers but they just move ‘em around the building from desk to desk until they break. Cheapskates right? Oh well.” 

“No… I mean… I’m fired?” 

One of the security guards approaches Karen. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to comply with this gentleman’s instructions so we can get you out of here.” He places a hand on his belt, which has a holstered handgun. Karen sighs and then sits at her desk. She logs in and the email notification explaining her termination pops up onto her desktop. 

“Okay, I saw it, do I have to talk to HR or something?” 

“I don’t know. I’ve never been fired,” The I.T. officer responds.

“This is bullshit,” Karen exhales. 

The security guard steps forward again. His junior officer steps forward with him. “Ma’am, you need to come with us now. We will have to physically remove you from the building if you don’t comply with our verbal orders. This is your last warning.” 

Karen stands up. “I get it, okay? I’m fucking going.” She starts grabbing objects off her desk. The security guard grabs her wrist hard. “Woah, what the fuck?” Karen cries out in shock. 

The security guard snarls, “All of this is considered company property and may be registered as evidence if the company finds reason to file a criminal investigation against you. You can take your car keys, phone, and sunglasses, but everything else here is to be left as potential evidence in the investigation.” 

“Investigation?” 

“When an employee is terminated for violating their contract, the company has to protect itself in case of potential lawsuits.” 

“Okay…” 

The guard lets go of Karen’s wrist. She picks up her car keys and phone. They escort her to the elevator banks and the I.T. the officer eagerly sits down at her desk, getting to work as though nothing had opened. Now people really are looking at her. Half of the office floor is getting cake in the kitchen and they stare in a variety of shocked expressions as Karen walks out, accompanied by the hulking security guards. “I think I got it from here.” 

“No. We’re bringing you to the parking lot. Protocol.” The elevator opens and she steps in. the guards follow. 

“Can I look at my phone?” 

“I don’t give a fuck.” 

“Okay.” She opens a text message. It’s a link to a Deadline article: Key executive responsible for streamed shooting monetization ousted at Disney. The picture for the article is her LinkedIn profile picture. She’s five years younger and 40 pounds lighter. 

#

Peter pulls into his driveway. The lights are on inside and the frosted glass of his house’s modern windows glow a pleasant warm orange, lit from within. He puts his Tesla in auto park mode and scrolls on Instagram for a second while the car does the tedious work of parking itself on the open, flat driveway. Peter enjoys the electric hum of his car for a moment before pressing the button to turn it off. He gets out and walks up the modern cement stairs to the ten foot metal doorway. He waves his magnetic house key against the vertical door rail, and with a click, the door swings open slowly on its hinge. He enters his stylish home and tosses his keys into the bowl, and pushes the door so it swings slowly and automatically back into its frame. 

“I’m home.” he calls out to the large, empty open concept living room. His voice cracks when he calls out, so he clears his throat, and calls out again, “I’m home, honey.” He walks in farther. He feels like a guest early to a dinner party, or a middle schooler arriving late to a pool party, walking through the strange house while all the kids are playing and yelling outside. The photos of him and his wife look like photos of some other family. He doesn’t recognize himself in them. As he walks toward the living room, he can hear Tucker Carlson’s angry monolog playing from the TV: 

Wow… and if you didn’t already think the liberal media was doing its damndest to tear apart the bonds of Western Civilization… Here's your undeniable proof. The whole time, this psychopath, lone-wolf, mass killer was terrorizing us, he was being funded and protected by Hollywood producers and executives. Can you believe that? The same people rallying for stricter gun control, and saying they’re the tolerant ones… so-called “progressives” were funding the deadliest mass killer in world history.

It makes me want to rip my hair out. Shame on you, Peter Chang. Shame on you. And that …. I’m not allowed to say this on air but it rhymes with bunt and it’s not a baseball term… Karen Smith… I hope the both of you rot in prison for the rest of your lives. I mean, is the death penalty on the table in situations like this?

“Where are you?” his wife calls out to Peter from her place on the couch. 

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“I’m coming in.” He walks into the living area. His wife is huddled up in the corner of the couch, with her feet up, looking at her iPad screen. He picks a place on the couch a few pillows away from her and sits down. The fabric is cold to the touch. “Hey.” She doesn’t look up from her iPad. “What’d you say you wanted to talk about earlier?” His wife sets her phone down. 

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” She looks at a pillow and plays with the fringe on its edges. 

“What, the New York Times article that came out? It’s stupid bullshit” he says unconvinced, even to himself. 

“Mmm... yeah and the LA Times one, and the Deadline one, and the one on MSNBC, and every single fucking Instagram story of every single person I follow.” 

Peter tries to keep it light and sardonically remarks, “Guess news travels fast these days.” 

“You’re a fucking monster.” Peter’s wife doesn’t look at him when she says it. 

“Honey, come here.” Peter gets up and scoots over to her to put her in an embrace, the same hugging and kissing tactic that had diffused so many arguments before, had replaced so many previous answers to difficult questions, and prematurely ended so many important conversations in the past. It doesn’t work this time. Instead of the usual play fighting, or fake pouty struggle she’d normally put up, his wife hits his hand, hard, and stares up at him, with her jaw set and her eyes wide. 

“Don’t fucking touch me. I mean it.” She’s shrill and hateful. It’s a tone he’d never heard from her before. He steps back a little, feeling the coffee table bite into the back of his calf. 

“Okay, I get it. You’re not happy with me. But I can explain. Let’s talk this out. First, let's shut this idiot up.” Peter looks for the remote to mute the television set. 

“What the hell is there to talk about?” That tone again, but much louder, like a shriek. “All that success, all that money you were bringing home, was blood money. You fucking ruined Disney for everyone in the world. Do you know you’ve destroyed my childhood? You’ve destroyed so many people’s childhoods. Do you get that?” 

Peter sighs. “Listen, if you looked into any corporation, and looked at their history, you’d find out that they’ve all done something that would ruin your childhood. Seriously, do some digging, and you could write that Op-ed about any company. Some other thing will happen next week– no, tomorrow even, and everyone will talk about that and you won’t hear another peep from your friends about Disney because they’ll already have forgotten about it.” 

His wife sneers at him. Another new expression he’d never seen from her. “You think this is just about what my friends think? You made money off those shootings. You probably paid for this house with those shootings. You’re fucking responsible for the taking of how many innocent lives?” 

“No. No— you can’t blame me for that. I didn’t kill anyone…” His voice sounds weak and far away. His throat feels like he’d swallowed a lump of lead. 

“No— you could never kill anyone in person. You’re too much of a coward.” She stands up and starts screaming in his face. He can’t back away, so he sits down on the coffee table while she berates him, looking down on him now. “But your actions led to those deaths. You profited from those deaths— just like those tobacco companies. You weren’t literally the cancer in their lungs, but you were the closest thing to it.” 

Peter nods. There isn’t much he can say. At this point, it feels like he’s just fighting for the sake of fighting. He addresses the imported Italian granite floor. “Look, if we didn’t do it, someone else would have done it. The guy was getting so many people watching his stream, literally any ad placement was more valuable than Super Bowl ad time… someone was going to jump on it eventually, and we just happened to get there first. I know it’s ugly and sounds bad— it is bad— but it was already happening. We just made money from something that was already happening.” He keeps looking at the floor, feeling like he could actually win this thing, and then looks up at his wife. She’s not looking at him. She doesn’t look angry. She’s just staring into space like she’d just woken up from an unpleasant nap. 

“I should’ve known this whole time. You were always such a spineless coward. You always wanted the easy way out of things. You never had any morals or principles. I don't think you ever even loved me.” 

He interrupts her, “Honey.” And he stares up at her pleadingly. He grabs her limp hands and she lets him. 

She looks down at him, unfeeling. “You never did. And I was an idiot to let myself believe you did. I don’t think you’re even capable of loving anyone but yourself. No, I don’t even think you can do that. You’re just nothing. You’re like a bug or something. A piece of fungus on a tree. You just go here or there, mechanically, and leech off whatever it is in front of you because you need food. You need to grow just because. But you’re just empty. There’s nothing to you besides the desire to eat and the mechanisms you evolved to feed yourself. And I take it back. I don’t think I ever really did convince myself I loved you. How could I love nothing?” 

She sits back down on the couch, and puts her feet back up, like a huge weight had just been lifted off her. She pulls the remote from between the couch cushions and changes the channel on the 80 inch flatscreen from FOX to watch a pre-recorded episode of Below Deck: Med in 4k. Beautiful B-ROLL of Capri, bikinis, and yachts flash by. Peter stands up again, pathetically. He reaches for her hand. She doesn’t break eye contact with the TV. “So, we’re done, huh?” 

“What the fuck do you think?” 

He trudges toward the door, and calls back to her, “I’ll have my assistant come by to pick up my things.” 

“I don’t care.” 

He grabs the keys to his Tesla and pulls on the handle of the enormous door. It opens on its hinges slowly. He walks outside and looks up at the sky. It’s purple now, and he sees a flock of birds in silhouette as they fly by in a somewhat organized fashion. He looks back down to the street in front of him and sees his neighbor’s daughter walking their dog. She’s in her early twenties and her gray sweatpants bely her ample ass. He gets in his Tesla and puts it in unparking mode. It pulls out of the driveway. He texts Daisy and asks her if she wants to hang out at her place. She immediately responds “sure :)” and he offers to bring drinks and snacks. He's feeling hopeful now and strangely excited. As he drives down his neighborhood’s tree-lined side streets towards the freeway, he feels like he’s finally free, for the first time since he started dating his soon to be ex-wife. There was no longer a need to sneak around, or to feel guilty whenever he checked out another woman. He could finally be himself and follow his own bliss. Instead of staying at his stupid ass job, he could take some time off to travel and discover his passion, as there was no more need to bust his ass to support some imaginary family down the line. Jason Derulo’s “Ridin’ Solo” plays on the radio and he puts it on full volume. He sing-yells and dances whitely to the serendipitous lyrics, welcoming the stares of passing cars and drivers, who largely ignore him. 

At Ralph’s he picks up a 40 oz. handle of Tito’s tequila, along with a few 12 packs of Lacroix. He swings around the snack aisle to pick up some bags of lime-hinted tortilla chips and a few different jars of salsa for good measure. The nice thing about dating college students is they’re very easily impressed. Also, they don’t like to eat too much for fear of looking fat— and they’re always down to do something quirky or in the vein of what they've heard college students like to do. 

#

He zips up his hoodie before walking to her building’s stairwell door, with the bags of groceries he could easily pass as a Postmate, and there was no need to draw any extra attention to himself while on campus at this hour. It wasn’t like he was doing anything illegal, but sometimes it felt like it, and he didn’t feel like being frowned upon at this moment. The plastic Ralph’s bags dig into his palms while he stands by the stairwell door. Then, it opens, and her smile warms his entire body. “You made it!” She gives him a hug, and grabs one of the bags to lighten his load. She walks up the stairs ahead of him, and he admires her supple ass cheeks as they peek out from under her gray terry cloth shorts with each of her steps. 

She swipes her ID card at the door at the top of the stairwell, opens the door, and holds it open as she lets Peter through. He kisses her gently, and then walks through the threshold into the dormitory hallway. It’s warm inside. She leads him to her dorm room. He looks at the crêpe paper streamers and construction paper posters that decorate the walls of the hallway and marvels at how similar they look to the ones that were in his dorm building when he was in college. So many years ago, but the memory has a quality of something that could’ve happened last week. 

They ente her dorm room. It’s bathed in warm yellow light from the string lights hung up around the room. There are two twin size dorm beds against opposite walls, a sink in the corner and two wooden desks under the windows on the wall opposite the door. The carpet is short and gray, tightly wound so it has the texture of gravel, but soft enough underfoot to walk on barefoot. A black and white world map hangs above one of the beds. “My roommate went home this weekend, so we have the place to ourselves.” She kisses him, then sets the Ralph bags on top of one of the desks. The executive sets his bags on the desk too, then sits on the rolling desk chair, worn from countless asses in various states of excitement, stress, and boredom. 

He hugs her around her waist and looks up into her eyes. “Aren’t you sweet?” He massages her ass. 

She asks, “Want a drink?”

“Want one? I need one… I think I might die if I don’t have one.” 

“You’re so depressed and cool, aren’t you, Mr. Executive?” She opens the bottle of tequila. “Ooh, I love Tito’s. Good pick.” She removes the plastic stopper in the lip of the bottleneck and tosses it into the trash can. “Cups… cups…” She looks for cups. “It’s okay, we can just drink it straight from the bottle and chase it. Or mix it in the cans. Is that cool?” 

“Sure, I was in college once.” He breaks out the chips and they drink and talk and drink some more and talk some more and pretty soon his mind is in a pleasant haze and the articles and Tucker Carlson and his wife are far removed from his concern. Daisy is sitting on his lap and kissing his neck. Her mouth is hot and wet against his skin and the heat emanates from his neck through his whole body like he’s sitting in front of a fireplace. She runs her fingers through his hair, even the thin area around his bald spot, so lovingly. He’s drifting off. So safe. He feels like he’s never been loved like this before. The warmth from her body illuminates his and he might as well be in the womb again. She slurs her words when she asks, “Did you get a chance to read my script?” 

Not fully comprehending her, he grunts affirmatively, squeezes her tightly, and says, “Whatever it is…. you have it.” He then blacks out.

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