Content, page 16
part #1 of Content Series
The Content Coordinators stood silent. Jim rubbed his temples.
Tim treaded lightly. “Is it…anything…illegal?” he asked.
“Probably, yeah,” Chet said. “The lines get blurry. But I’m not trying to hurt anyone, I’m just—you know—fucking with him. Swapping out the dill for bread and butter, putting extra yeast in the bread, that type of thing.”
“Good god,” Jim muttered.
“And the crazy thing? People don’t seem to mind. If you watch the shop—and I do—they’re doing better than ever.” He stared off into the corner. “Makes me think I should open up my own place sometimes.”
Jeanette exhaled. “There anyone who can corroborate this?”
“Been staying with a buddy up there,” Chet said. “He’d confirm, if you really need that type of thing.”
Jeanette and Jim walked to the door and knocked for it to be opened. While they waited, Jeanette turned back to the two men at the table.
“You’re free to go,” she said to Chet. Then she looked at Tim. “He’s not a traitor. He’s just an idiot.”
When the door to the interrogation room opened, Jeanette and Jim filed out and Chet got up from his chair to leave as well.
“Talk about intense,” he said, and patted Tim Dent on the shoulder. “God, that was embarrassing, sharing that.”
“That all true?” Tim asked.
Chet nodded. “There’s a right and a wrong way to do things, Tim. You can’t just let people pollute the world with their nonsense.”
He turned to go and was met by Barry Corn, clad in khakis and a silk shirt, and standing in front of the door.
“What?” Chet said. “Move it, pal. They said I was free to go.”
Tim Dent lunged forward. “No, Chet, that’s—” He turned to the boss. “Good morning, Mr. Corn.”
Chet stiffened. He digested the words and his eyes went foggy, like he’d witnessed a particularly violent murder. “You’re kidding,” he said.
“You must be Chet,” Barry Corn said, and stuck out a hand. “Greetings.”
Robotically, Chet shook the boss’s hand.
“I hear you’re not stealing company secrets,” Barry Corn said. “Congrats on that.”
“Yeah,” Chet said, a touch ethereally. “Yeah, right on. You too.”
Barry Corn nodded. “Would you mind giving Tim and me a minute? We have a few things to discuss.”
Chet agreed and floated toward the door. His face remained pale. “Far out,” he muttered, and exited the room.
They were alone then. Barry Corn motioned for Tim to sit.
“I may have been wrong about you, Tim,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“They say you judge a man by the people he surrounds himself with.” Barry Corn paced the room. “Grammatically questionable, sure, but there’s some wisdom there.”
“Mr. Corn,” Tim said, “they just cleared him. It was a misunderstanding.”
“That he was stealing from us, yes. But what has he been doing?”
Tim drummed his fingers on the table. “Flying to Detroit on the weekends to sabotage his ex-wife’s new husband’s sandwich shop.”
“And would you consider that a sign of a sound mind?”
“I—well, you could say no, certainly.”
“First your friend from Texas,” Barry Corn said, hands clasped behind his back, “and now this. People are who they associate with, Tim.” He shook his head. “Grammar, again. Let me put it this way: what are you hiding, Dent?”
“Nothing,” Tim Dent said vehemently. “You know everything about me. Even if I tried to hide something, you’d find it out.”
Barry Corn nodded.
“Like, I’m sure you know about Brooke,” Tim said.
The boss nodded. “Nice work.”
“Thanks.”
“My point is this, Tim: there are plenty of psychos working here. You have to be a psycho to churn out that pig slop we call content on a daily basis.”
Tim Dent listened.
“But to be a Content Coordinator?” Barry Corn said. “One of the three people working—” he motioned with his hand, “—directly underneath me? I don’t believe there’s room for psychosis there.”
“I disagree,” Tim said. Barry Corn’s eyes widened at the challenge. “I think a psycho is exactly what you need,” Tim continued. “Schmidtmann was a psycho, but as you said, his results spoke for themselves. These other two—” he motioned toward the door, “—they’re lap dogs.”
“Lap dogs, you say?”
“Yeah. They’re fine, and they had a little bite here in the interrogation room, but if you want progress, you need someone a little looney. Most of the greats are. I would bet you are in some ways, Mr. Corn.”
Barry Corn watched him and took a deep breath. “Be careful, Tim,” he said. Then, he exhaled, blowing all the air out of his lungs, and put his hands on the vacant metal chair. He smiled and cleared his throat. “Okay then, Tim Dent. Okay. Tell me: are you a psycho?”
Tim shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
Thirty-Nine
The Extravaganza that night was held at a gigantic hotel/resort/spa/ecosystem ten miles outside of Denver. The place was over half a million square feet and contained 1,500 guest rooms, plus an indoor riverwalk with six bars and restaurants, a small casino, and its own weather pattern. Barry Corn had rented the whole place.
Brooke didn’t come; she and Tim decided it was a conflict of interest due to their new relationship. Tim spent the night drinking scotch with Chet and trying to make sense of the week’s events.
“I think it’s good you got Schmidtmann’s job,” Chet said. They sat at a black wire metal table overlooking the fake river, each man’s hand on a lowball glass. “I’m a bit of an expert on the subject—being that I’ve met you both—and I would give you higher marks in most areas.”
“Thank you,” Tim said.
“You definitely didn’t deserve it,” Chet continued. “You really don’t deserve anything you’ve gotten. Both Magnus and America were more committed and more productive than you. You understand that, right?”
“Yeah, but one quit on her own and the other blew up the break room.”
“And they’re still better candidates for the job, is what I’m saying.”
Tim took a drink. “I might not have it long. Barry Corn seemed pretty unhappy with me today.”
“Fickle to rise, fickle to fall.” Chet considered it. “What were his specific charges?”
“Mostly that I hang out with you guys,” Tim said.
Chet nodded. “A red flag.”
Tim Dent asked if he was still planning on making weekend trips to Michigan to fuck with his ex-wife’s new husband’s deli. Chet said he wasn’t sure.
“I didn’t plan on it to begin with,” he said.
“Just found yourself buying a plane ticket and boarding the plane and renting a car and—”
“You’d be surprised,” Chet said, “what life can spring on you.” He drank his whiskey and held the glass up in the air. “To the founding fathers,” he said.
“Nary a better group of guys.”
“They set the groundwork, you know,” Chet said, motioning around with his free arms. “For all this; comically huge hotels in the middle of nowhere. Entire industries based off meaningless words.”
“When you put it that way,” Tim said, “I’m not sure we should be toasting them.”
Chet waved his hand. “There’s always gonna be collateral damage when you let people do what they want. Be happy you get to have an opinion on it.” He took another drink and looked at the glass, and returned to the previous conversation. “Smooth as a baby’s ass,” he said. “I don’t know, Dent. Feels like my work up in Michigan is done.”
“Good,” Tim said. He balked then, deciding whether or not to tell Chet more about his conversation with Mr. Corn. The thing sat oddly with him.
Chet noticed the hesitation. “Spit it out,” he said.
Tim fought a self-conscious smile, heading it off before it fully took over his face. He squinted. “I keep thinking about the conversation with Barry Corn,” he said. “I told him I wasn’t a psycho.”
“As one would, yes.”
“But that was right after I told him he needed a psycho,” Tim said.
“For what?”
“Huh?”
Chet leaned back and cradled the whiskey glass. “That was right after you told him he needed a psycho for what?”
“Oh,” Tim said. He returned his gaze to the table. “To fill Max Schmidtmann’s job.”
Chet nodded. “Your new job,” he said.
“Thing is, I don’t know if that’s the truth or not,” Tim Dent said. “I don’t think psychos know they’re psychos.” He turned to Chet and tilted his head. “Am I, do you think?”
Chet inhaled and slouched lower in the chair. He looked out over the man-made canal. “You would ask that, you know.”
“What’s that mean?”
Chet ignored it. “Let me ask you this, Dent: when you walk into that shiny new office, how do you feel? Do you feel like you can get the hang of it? Or do you feel horribly uncomfortable?”
“Horribly uncomfortable,” Tim replied. “Terribly, horribly, awfully.”
“Then there’s your answer,” Chet said, watching the water move. “You, my friend, are not a psycho. I am sorry to report this. You’re just one of us.”
Tim Dent turned to him. “Says the guy who flew to Michigan to sabotage a sub shop,” he said.
“Yes, yes,” Chet said. “Sound zinger. But you’re confusing insanity with balls. Some people still believe in right and wrong.” He turned to Tim. “Ben Franklin was a bit of a psycho, you know.”
“Yeah,” Tim said.
He went home early and slept deeply.
On Friday, Tim Dent did nothing. He wandered around the empty office, and twice picked up the cardboard box of decorations and set it down in a different spot on the floor. He browsed the camping blogs and the current offering of Bing Getaways. Tim logged into the content management system and poked around, but saw everything was taken care of by his underlings. He waited for fires to put out but there were none.
For dinner, he ate a frozen pizza alone in his apartment. Brooke was down south for another audition. At eight, with Tim kicked back in front of the TV, the grease-blotted cardboard pizza bottom sitting empty on the coffee table. His phone rang.
No Caller ID
“Hello,” Tim said.
“Good evening, Tim,” Barry Corn said. His voice was tranquil through the phone speaker. Smooth, reassuring. “I must apologize for calling so late.”
“No apology needed,” Tim said. He was standing now.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation the other day.” The boss paused to let Tim speak.
“Which one, sir?”
“Tim,” Barry Corn said, “please cut the ‘sir’ shit. On Thursday you looked me in the eye and told me my Content Coordinators were inadequate.”
“I…I believe the word I used was ‘fine.’”
“Fine, sure. The point is, I want to talk to that guy tonight. The straight shooter. Can you find him for me, Tim?”
Tim Dent swallowed. “Of course.”
“That thing the other day. At the end of our discussion about your friend, the idiot.”
“Chet.”
“Yes, Chet,” Barry Corn said. “You told me you were not a psycho.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes. I just wanted to confirm with you that that’s your official position. Non-psychosis.”
Tim thought about it. “I believe it is, yes.”
“Very well,” Barry Corn said, exhaling. “Tim, one small piece of advice, if I may?”
“Yes,” Tim said, “please.”
“Sometimes cliches are true,” he said. He let the words sit. “One of these is, ‘it’s lonely at the top.’ But that also doesn’t mean it’s bad at the top, you see what I mean? Speaking in general terms, the top is favorable to the bottom, or even the middle.”
“Okay,” Tim said.
“But it’s far from easy. No, wait—that’s a dumb way to say it,” Barry Corn said. “What I mean is that it’s not easy. Perhaps you’ve noticed my eccentricities when it comes to the Extravaganza.”
“I have.”
“Then you know what I mean. It’s very often troublesome.” Barry Corn cleared his throat and let out a gentle sigh. “One more thing, Tim: your friend Chet. The spaz. Would you say he’s well suited for his job as a Content Provider?”
Tim thought about it. “Well, I don’t have his numbers or anything, but he seems to be doing fine.”
“But is he suited for it, Tim?”
“Hmm.” Tim ran his hand through his hair. “Honestly, he never struck me as a desk job person.”
“No,” Barry Corn said, satisfied. “Me neither. Goodbye, Tim.”
“Goodb—” Tim started, but the line went dead.
Forty
On Saturday, Tim Dent went camping alone. There was a meadow between peaks where—after a three-mile hike—he spread out a tarp and erected his tent. The landscape was covered with short, wispy greenery and spotted with purple wildflowers. He made a small fire and cooked an entire six-pack of hot dogs.
When the sun dipped behind the mountains and the sky turned that brilliant pink of a late summer evening, he donned a knit cap and threw another log on the fire and waited for recruiters to emerge from the landscape. They did not. Tim thought a lot about work and a little about Brooke. He thought about America and Magnus, and about Chet, who would surely soon be fired. Timothy Dent wondered if Chet wouldn’t be better off—wondered if all three of them wouldn’t be happier elsewhere, one multi-state manhunt notwithstanding. He tried to picture himself making new friends in the office. Jeanette and Jim were nice enough, he supposed.
The wind picked up as the sky cooled to a dull slate blue. It would be night soon.
Finally, Tim wondered about his own psychosis. He wondered if perhaps everyone was a little crazy, because all the things that had happened to him were not signs of a sane world. There was nothing sane about the content game. Not the consumer, and not the producer.
Tim heard a rustle in the sage a hundred yards away. Up poked the head of a black bear, ears twitching in the wind, nose raised to catch the scent, little black eyes affixed to one Timothy Dent. Relieved to see it was not a recruiter, Tim was nonetheless startled by the beast’s presence, and he stumbled backward and knocked over his small camp stove. The noise spooked the bear, and before Tim Dent could fully appreciate the encounter, it ambled off through the sage.
Forty-One
When he arrived at his office Monday morning, the lights were already on. Next to his desk stood Jeanette and Jim, eyes bloodshot and faces contorted, poring over a single sheet of paper.
“Tim,” Jim said, “you’re going to want to see this.”
It was a letter from Barry Corn. As of that morning he was out of the country, Jeanette said, and he’d left a single note.
Content Coordinators,
Apologies for the brevity, but I’ve decided to go away. While I cannot be sure of the duration of my trip, I do know that it won’t be brief, and there remains a small chance it’s permanent. Plan on finishing the year without me at the very least.
What can I say? My time with you all has been wonderful! Rest assured that my departure has nothing to do with my satisfaction—or lack thereof—with your job performance, or the performance of the company. The Ranch is stronger than ever, and I know that it will continue to be. In a way, this is a testament to the foundation we’ve built; ContentRanch.com is a well-oiled machine, and it can thrive just fine without Barry Corn. You should all be proud.
In my absence, please turn control of the company over to Timothy Dent. Backfill his position as Content Coordinator immediately with an in-house candidate. Perhaps Chet deserves a look.
Tim, you know what to do, even if it might seem like you don’t. Trust your compass. For what kind of man would self-identify as a psycho? A fraud, that’s who. But the man who’d deny psychosis—while at once understanding that’s the exact ingredient needed for success—is the right man for the job.
Yours,
Barry Corn
Jeanette and Jim stared at Tim Dent.
“We had a handwriting expert analyze the letter,” Jeanette said. “It’s him.”
“He does this,” Jim said, walking circles. He ran his hand through the front of his hair. “Remember the time he disappeared to Bermuda? He was gone four months.”
Jeanette gave a wary nod, again looking at the paper. “This one’s different.”
“How? How do you know?” Jim asked, his breathing growing heavy. He ran his hand through his hair faster. “That one time he disappeared nine days—never told us where he went—and was back like nothing happened.”
“Didn’t leave a letter then,” she said. Her eyes were tired. “This one’s different.”
“But we can’t—”
“It’s different,” she said, and pointed to the paper. “Says at least the rest of the year. He’s never lied before.”
Jim continued walking in circles. Tim Dent asked how many times Barry Corn had disappeared. A half dozen, Jeanette guessed. But he’d only left a note once—the Bermuda time.
“This one has a different tone,” she said. “He means business. We need to prepare for the possibility that he’s gone a very long time.”
Jim mumbled something and placed his hands on the surface of the desk. He looked ill.
“Huh,” Tim said, again examining the note. He put his hands in his pockets. “I guess I’m the boss.”
Tim took the secret elevator to the penthouse. He stepped out at the top floor and the secretary gave him a smile.
