Live and Let Live

     "You know, I've been the only one with the guts to stand up to him, and now I find myself fighting this battle alone.  He has a way of drawing others into his scheme of things so that they are not in a position to say anything about it."

     Patrick was silent.

     Before leaving, Bill said, "Well, I finally got a free lunch out of the bastards."

     As they walked out into the parking lot toward their cars. Patrick said, "If you walk away from this deal with nothing, I'll punch your lights out."

     "You can try, if you feel up to it.  But you won't get out of it without a few punches of my own."

   Carter said, "Womald and Adamson have been crapping on you for twenty years, and to a certain but lesser extent, on me, too.  I feel that you have taken the brunt of the abuse during the past twenty years, and it is time that they get a dose of their own medicine. Pick up your cell phone and call my wife and ask her what I told her.  I told her that if anything should happen to me about getting sick or dying, she should call you because you are the only person I trust to treat her fairly."

     Bill said, "See ya later."

     On the day before his departure in one last-ditch effort to convince him to stay, Carter said, "You know, Adamson said to me, he says, 'I'm just going to drag him out as long as I can.  When we complete one evaluation of his shares, I will reject it and insist on another, and another, and keep doing that as long as I can.  He'll run out of money before we do.'"

      "I wouldn't expect anything else from him.  But I'm not going to worry about him now.  As I told you earlier, I'll work with you to sell the company.  Outside of that, I'm out of here."

      His final day at Ocean Zephyr was a sad day, indeed.  Setting aside the disunity, the vendettas and clashing between the partners in toiling at cross-purposes with each other, it was a day of mixed emotions.  Bill would miss the gratifying nature of the work itself, and the friends he had made.  For a few minutes, a feeling of relief came over him that all of the corruption, arrogance and bullshit would be left behind.  He went around, saying goodbye and thanks to all those people who dedicated their time to the jobs they were getting paid to do.  Adamson, Carter and Levi were not among them.

     But while booting down the QEW toward his home, tears blurred his vision and a dull sorrow tugged deep in his throat.