The Launch

Chapter Twelve

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" I say. I try to grab the laptop back from Ray, but the bastard is holding on tight.

"Just let me do an e-mail," says Ray. He is fighting me off with his elbow and trying to type one-handed at the same time. "The son of a bitch is trying to steal my job and I won't have it."

I push the laptop closed on his fingers and grab it firmly with both hands. "Write it down. You don't get to e-mail, remember?" He still is not letting go and we look at each other for a moment. "Let go, Ray."

"He's making a play," he says. He stops tugging. "I need to be there."

"Let go. Write down what you want to say and I will e-mail everyone you want to carbon copy, blind copy and double forward with additional comments. Just let go."

Ray is sitting there with his two hands on the laptop like it's his job that he's holding onto. He is looking into my eyes, but I see that he's running it through in his mind and not really seeing me. Finally he lets go. "Give me some paper," he says.

I take the laptop and get up from the couch. "Thank-you. I will get you some paper and we will deal with this. So tell me what we're facing here." I put the laptop on the other couch across from Ray and, since he's just sitting there looking like a dude who just got told by his doctor that he has three weeks to live, I walk over and get the pad of paper that's on the table by his elbow and put it in his lap. He doesn't move, so I get him the pen, too. "Ray, speak to me, buddy. What is it? Who cares what some assistant editor thinks?"

"Gerald Spooner is not just some assistant editor. He's my right hand, go-to guy. I brought him along from the beginning. I hired him out of university... all he had was a Masters in Fine Art. He had no useful skills, no work experience, but I could see that he loved comic strips. He'd still be working at Starbucks if it wasn't for me."

"Good. Let it out."

"He's sending me a message. He's sowing the seeds of doubt in their minds. Calling my judgment into question. And I didn't even greenlight the damn thing." He grabs the pen and pad and throws them at the bookcase, getting caught up in his leg chains. He pulls them over the end of the couch to give himself more slack. "Fuck me. I passed on it."

"That's it. Pretend I'm not here."

"Oh, sorry. But you know what I mean."

"Sure."

The e-mail arrived sometime after JC stormed off and I had cleaned up the lunch stuff and sat down to pick up Ray's voice mails. Basically, no one was calling him anymore. We turned the ringer off and just replied by e-mail to anyone that called and left a voice mail. So they got the idea and started e-mailing instead. At first he was getting all voice messages and no e-mails and now it was the opposite, which was a lot easier for us. Along with our own launch, we had to deal with the other minutiae of Ray's office life: 50/50 draws, walks for breast cancer, pornographic pictures from some guy in Accounting, updates from other cartoonists including the guy we relegated to the back burner, some contract stuff with the lawyers, and on and on. Mostly he just told us what to say on the important stuff and we ignored the rest.

When it first arrived, I didn't think much of it because Ray was always getting e-mails from Gerald. Despite his many questions, Gerald had been executing most of what we were preparing for the launch. We uploaded all the strip files for him to have the graphics department prepare them for printing, we got him to issue all the checks to pay for the grand plans we had for the launch and generally we relied on him for everything Ray would normally do if he was back at the office. Even his subject line was bland and unremarkable: "Pretzel Logic strip." If you can't create a little drama in the header, what's the point of blasting your boss in front of the whole company? The guy has no flare whatsoever.