Loose Cannon

Chapter 3

The conference rooms at Loose Cannon are called Tank and Beast. Joel thought the rooms needed aggressive names to help with culture-building. Tank holds four people and Beast holds eight. I guess you could consider the kitchen our third meeting area, but you can’t have a 1:1 in the kitchen because of Brendan the pescatarian.

I am sitting in Tank on Friday at 2:00 p.m. Adam will arrive within the next sixty seconds. I know this because the man is pathologically punctual. He shows up at 1:59 for 2:00 meetings. I’ve seen him hovering outside doors holding his Stanley cup, eyes on his watch, waiting for the second hand to push him over the threshold.

I’ve got my notebook, a pen I stole from a Marriott in Cleveland, and absolutely nothing to drink.

I’m also wearing what I think of as my Power Outfit, which is really just jeans, a black turtleneck, and gold hoops so big they brush my shoulders. I topped it all off with eyeliner, which kind of makes me look like a surprised anime character, but whatever.

My work ethic blankets me like a custom-fitted shield. The forty-one page document has written observations in the margins. In pencil. The observations are good. They are insightful. They include, but are not limited to: kickoff template is, grudgingly, an improvement.

I am going to walk into this 1:1 like a woman who was born to discuss a spreadsheet.

The door opens at exactly 2:00 p.m.

He's wearing the same thing he always wears, which is, somehow, working. White oxford, sleeves rolled. Pleated chinos. Watch with a brown leather strap. Stanley cup with flip straw-nice touch. He has his laptop in one hand and his portfolio in the other. He smells, even from over here, like the inside of a Banana Republic.

"Hi, Nora."

"Hi."

I have, over the last twelve hours, rehearsed exactly what I wanted to say when he came in. I was going to say Hi, Adam, thanks for setting this up. Instead, what comes out of my mouth is Hi.

He sits and sets his Stanley cup down with a small, polite click. He opens his laptop, then his portfolio. He looks at me. The look he gives me is level. Not warm. Not cold. Level. The kind of look you give the crazy person threatening to do bodily harm.

"So," he says.

"So."

"I thought we'd just talk for a bit, get to know each other. I have a few process pieces I want to flag, but I don't want this to feel like anything formal."

"Cool," I say. “Great."

I reach for my drink, then remember I’m not allowed to handle liquids. But I’m doing fine. I’m a competent professional in a turtleneck.

"How are you finding the agency?" he asks.

"Oh — like, in general?"

"In general."

"It's good. I've been here three years. The people are great. Tomi’s great. Joel is, well - Joel. Mira is Mira. Brendan is, you know…" I’m not sure how to finish Brendan.

"Mm."

"It's a good place and we do good work. I'm proud of it."

This is true-I really do like my job. In three years, I’ve written copy for a hot sauce, a sonic toothbrush, a gel mattress, and a dog food brand that’s used my tagline in subway ads across the city. II short, I’m a damn good copywriter.

He nods. He writes something in his leatherbound notebook. I don’t try to see what he wrote.

"That's good to hear. Mira and Joel speak highly of your work — specifically the WellNest pitch. They wanted you on it immediately."

"Oh."

I did not know this. I knew Joel had named me lead, but I didn’t know that Mira had advocated for me as well. I feel my face wanting to do things, but I don’t let it.

"Anyway," Adam says. "I wanted to flag a few process pieces."

"Sure."

"Timesheets."

I feel my left eyelid attempt a small, optional rebellion. I quickly scratch it.

"Sure," I say again.

He turns his laptop slightly so I can see the screen. There is a spreadsheetwith rows, and headers and columns. The columns have headers. One of the headers is my name.

"This is the last six weeks of submissions.” He’s speaking gently. "I'm not asking you to log every minute, I just need the basic categories filled in by Friday at five — client, project, hours. You're at about forty percent compliance right now. That's actually higher than I expected. But for the Hartfield process, we need to be at a hundred."

"Mm." I feel my eyes narrowing, so I concentrate on keeping them fully open.

"It matters for billing, and for the audit. Honestly, I think you'd come out of it looking really good, because once we tag your hours properly, the agency's going to see that you're significantly more productive than the data currently reflects."

Is he trying to flatter me into doing my timesheet?

"Cool," I say.

"Cool?"

"Cool, yeah."

"Does that mean you'll do it?"

"I mean —" I pause, the way I pause when I’m considering something unwise. And even though I know it’s unwise, I can’t stop my mouth from taking the bait. "I just think it's funny, your whole system. Like, I came up with my last tagline in the shower. Where does that go on the spreadsheet?"

"Under 'creative dev,'" he says. "There's a category." He points to the row in question.

"In the shower, Adam. You want me to categorize my showers?"

"You can call it a scrub down session in the notes field if it's important to you."

The corner of his mouth does a microscopic thing. I clock it, and my nostrils flare.

"Okay," I say, "but, like — philosophically."

"Philosophically."

"Yeah. I mean, we are eleven people doing creative work. I feel like the second we start optimizing for Hartfield we kind of stop being —"

"Profitable?"

"Loose Cannon," I say sharply.

He looks at me for a long minute.

"I hear you," he says.

God, give me strength. "Do you, though?"

"I do."

"It's just…” Here’s the pause again. The pause I perfected at seventeen, when I realized that going on the offensive was the best way to crush the curse of vulnerability. "I came here because Joel and Mira said it was a place that made weird s**t and paid you for it. And I just don't know, I feel like the second we start clocking in like good little minions, the weird s**t dies. I think people on this team can feel that. Maybe I'm the only one who'll say it."

"Okay," he says.

“Okay what?”

"I think," he says evenly, "that's kind of a stretch."

"Or," I say — and this is the line, the line I will cross — "or, maybe I'm just not a person who optimizes my entire personality around what's billable."

He looks at me for a full beat too long. His face doesn’t move. “Are you saying you won’t commit to keeping an accurate timesheet?”

“I’m saying it’s not an efficient use of my time.” My voice is sharp and tight.

His hand on the laptop moves an inch to the left, like he really wants to close it.

Now, you’d think I would shut up at this point, wouldn’t you?

Oh, no.

“I’m saying micro-managing creatives is bad business.” I have never referred to myself as a creative in my life. I feel an itch begin to crawl up my neck as he looks at me with steady, stony eyes.

"I'm going to take a break," he says.

He stands and picks up his Stanley and his laptop. He doesn’t look at me on his way out.

The door clicks, and I am alone in Tank.

I sit there for ninety seconds.

I sit the way I have many times over the years, considering my mouth and who actually controls it.

I close my notebook. I go to the kitchen and get a cold brew.

After messing with my coffee for far too long, I walk to Adam's glass-walled office, but he isn’t there. However, the cup and laptop sit alone on his desk. I keep walking.

There’s a fire-escape door Joel uses to vape. The door is propped open with a copy of Atomic Habits, which has served exclusively as a doorstop for over a year. I see, through the gap in the door, the back of a white oxford shirt.

I stop.

Adam is standing on the fire escape with both hands on the railing, facing away from me. His head is slightly bowed and his shoulders are…moving? Rising, holding, falling.

Inhale, four counts.

Hold, seven.

Exhale, eight.

I know what this is.

The year after my mother died, I downloaded Headspace because Wren begged me to. I probably used it three times before announcing it was a waste. But I do remember the soothing man with the English diction, saying the words four, seven, eight.

Inhale, four.

Hold, seven.

Exhale, eight.

Adam’s back, under the white oxford, expands and contracts.

Have I run him out onto a fire escape to do four-seven-eight breathing? Adam, the man who’s been at this job for nine days?

I back away with the care of someone who’s just seen something she was not supposed to see. I retreat past Adam's empty office, past the kitchen, past Tank.

I go to my desk and open Slack.

The Slack I want to send begins with hey i'm really sorry.” But to apologize would be to admit that I had seen him. And I’ve already done enough damage for today.

I close Slack and open my phone.

nora: think i was kind of a d**k to the guy at work. about timesheets.

wren: what

wren: was it new guy

nora: kind of

wren: were you actually mad about the timesheets

I look at the message for a long time.

I do not respond.

I see him, fifteen minutes later, walking back into his glass-walled office.

He sets his Stanley cup down. He opens his laptop and answers, I assume, an email. He is the spokesman for calm and composed. I watch him through the glass walls of his office for what is, in retrospect, an unprofessional amount of time.

I grab my bag and leave.

Even though the bridge is forty-five minutes and the train is twenty, it has the advantage of being long enough that I can, by the time I walk to the other side, pretend I did not see what I saw.

But the pretending thing doesn’t really work. I get most of the way across the bridge before I stop and lean over,look at the water, and remember that my mother was twenty-eight when she had me. The water roils below my feet. A man on a CitiBike yells at a tourist for walking in the bike lane. I start walking again.

When I get home, I put on the playlist Wren made me in 2019 called bops for the bitches and make a frozen pizza. Arson sits on the counter, which he’s not allowed to do, but I don’t shoo him off.

Later, after I’ve gone to bed, my phone buzzes.

wren: u ok tho

I look at the message until the screen goes dark.

I don’t know how to answer it.