The First Part of Chapter 9: The New Arrangement

It was the 4th of September, and James and Clarissa were preparing dinner at home in anticipation of hosting a friend. The friend, Jonathan, had known James through a previous job at Scotiabank, where Jonathan still worked as a strategist and Maurice, looking for another client, had pulled some strings, and the result was that they had invited Jonathan and his wife, Iris, over for dinner. James was preparing bread, and Clarissa was roasting a pheasant. As it turned out, James had managed to burn the bread, as the cooking time recommended by the cookbook seemed to be ten minutes longer than the bread actually needed under normal conditions, and the oven’s thermometer was out of commission, which James had only just noticed. The pheasant, which was also in the oven, seemed to have been undercooked, a fact only noticed when Clarissa was carving into the bird. The atmosphere was unimproved when Iris slipped on the front step, and Jonathan got his trousers caught on a hook somewhere (James spent the night looking for said hook). Jonathan and Iris, however, didn’t pay much attention to these details, cared much more for James and Clarissa’s personalities rather than their cooking, and complimented them on everything they could think of, in an effort to keep up their flagging spirits, and out of human kindness.

“It’s so nice to see you here after five years,” said Jonathan. “It’s nice to see you’re taking care of yourself.”

“I don’t really try,”

“You’re still looking great,” said Jonathan, although he said this more in the fashion of reassurance than sincerity; James appeared as if he had put on a few pounds since he had left Scotiabank, and seemed to have moved up in terms of pants size.

After dinner had been finished and the guests departed, James expressed his dim opinion of that dinner to Clarissa.

“I’m glad that’s over,” said he. “It was so embarrassing when Iris slipped on the front step; I think I should have swept the leaves off,”

“It was just luck, and there aren’t any leaves on the steps; it was the rain.”

“The bread burning wasn’t luck,” said James.

“The thermometer breaking was. How old’s the oven?”

“Five years; I bought it when I purchased the house,”

“Well, there’s built-in obsolescence for you; they sure don’t make them like they used to,”

Jonathan and Iris, driving home from the same dinner, were also discussing the night’s events.
“James seems like a nice person, if a bit of a duffer; that wasn’t how I remembered him,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate that the pheasant was rare,” she added.

“They seem like quite a happy couple together, not like us; we’re constantly arguing over the small things,”

“––And then we make up for it at night.”

“I think that would be because they were just married in August, while we have been together for ten years. We also have kids, you know,”

“I know––what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Figure of speech, honey,”

“Hmm; ah yes, kids: they throw a wrench into every possible plan. I was looking forward to a
nice, quiet afternoon, and then little Vivienne wanted to know what happens when you microwave a goldfish.”

“That would be uproariously funny to an outsider,”

“But it caused no end of irritation to us, and particularly me. I had to clean the microwave of fried goldfish guts.”

The conversation continued in this vein until they were some way south, driving along the river, when the topic of conversation turned to work: “So, Scotiabank is pushing into other markets in South America; it’s a part of their overall growth strategy.”

“Yes, I hear that the Latin American Economies are doing quite well, for those who are reasonably well off.”

“’Reasonably well off’ is a key term; but, as you know, the companies are indifferent to the inequality in a country. We let governments deal with that.”

“I hope, for your sake, that it doesn’t blow up into some bubble, like that housing fiasco in The States two years ago,” said Iris.

“I think a key part of the success has been the personality of the management,” added Jonathan, changing the subject. “You see, there was a company that applied for a loan back in 2000. They paid their employees reasonably, but the management treated those under them like dispensable tools, you know, like a toaster, or a battery. The employees liked that little; they organised into a union, made all sorts of demands for improved conditions, and last year, they filed for bankruptcy, and now they no longer exist. This other company, Venneris, which makes newsprint, a dying industry, as you know, really values its workers, and I saw from that clandestine trip I took to Corner Brook last year that they prefer to retain workers, and employee turnover there is four percent.”

“So, the average employee will spend over half of their working life there.”

“That’s right; and for a company in a shrinking market, it’s holding up surprisingly well; they remain productive, and went through the recession nearly unscathed.”

“Luck also has a large part to play, of course. It might have been that Venneris took out a loan at a fixed rate in 2007, before the credit market dried up; other companies, who needed no credit at that particular time, did not take loans, and thus when they needed money, it was unavailable. Now, here we are, three years later, and Venneris is still making newsprint.”

“Oh yes, luck is a key component of success; you see it all the time in business: ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’, as they say. So much depends on serendipity.”

With that, the rest of the trip home to their small village passed uneventfully; they had chosen to live in that village due to its quietness, and the fact that they could get to know all of their neighbours, which neither of them thought would be the case had they chosen to live in a larger city like Toronto or Montréal.

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