Smile Hard

That’s Funny

April, Two Years Prior

Long before I had come into knowledge of it, there was an event. The lot was almost completely vacant of life, located on the brink of Somewhere but mainly falling in the middle of Nowhere.

There were trees that stretched high into the sky near in the distance, but more noticeably was that warehouse. It wasn’t very large but it wasn’t small. It was old, long abandoned by its owner. There were windows near the top, lining its length and a set of double doors out front. It was a bit intimidating during the day, but at night, this establishment was all the more daunting.

There was a figure that stood out front. They were dressed in a bright yellow raincoat with a matching umbrella held firmly above their heads in a desperate battle against the fierce rainfall. There was no thunder or lightning to be seen, fortunately, so they weren’t too scared out of their wits to think clearly. But they should have been.

“Why did I agree to this,” the person asked themselves. Yes, why?

Her name was Gemma. Gemma was a woman of robust taste; hence, the raincoat, a color that would draw too much attention anywhere. Her hair was short, almost like a man’s, but her sensuality kept anyone from saying so.

She was a people person, to say the least, having the ability to make nice with any single person she had met, man or woman. It was as if she knew the person before they met her. She just seemed to know what made them tick. People would say it was her intuitive nature and that she was born for the job. She would usually just take it as a complement, but she knew the real reason for this skill she had was because of her upbringing.

From as far back as she could remember, her father had always instilled in her to be as observant as possible. Although, she would make light of it or think it ridiculous, she could never just toss the advice away and live the oblivious kind of life so many in the world are guilty of. Just couldn’t.

As one could see, she was cautious by nature. Rarely had someone gotten the better of her, and once someone did… my, was she frustrated. She always had to have the upper hand. It was hard to let go of another’s transgression against her, and she knew that that trait would most likely be her undoing someday. She knew she had to get her temper under wraps, especially considering her nature of employment.

There was only one outstanding case of someone getting the better of her. It was around six months before her eerie April, in a much colder month. It wasn’t anything big, but she couldn’t help but count it as a loss against herself. She knew of her effect on men through experience, so it was a bit of an expected thing for a man to bend to her will in some unfounded confidence that he would get a favor in return. They almost never got that favor, but they would feel so stupid from being mentally had by this woman, they wouldn’t dare say anything more about it.

There was a young, freelance photographer that she would see around the office every once in a while. He was a couple years younger than her, but as long as he wasn’t illegal, it would be all the same to her. She knew he was well-acquainted with a certain business mogul and wanted badly to score an interview with that mogul. After all, she was a reporter for the local newspaper, the business section.

The problem was that the mogul in mention never did interviews out of sheer hatred of them, and if cameras and microphones were shoved in her face, she would always respond with the common, “No comment.” This Margot of Margot Magazine was the epitome of splendor and often choked men up. No, this wasn’t like the sensuality that Gemma exuded. This was pure beauty that had come to this world by surprise. No one was ready for it.

Anyway, she asked the guy to score her this favor, but he so outright, so blatantly, so rudely said no. He didn’t even allow her to turn the charm on. He didn’t even allow her to keep prodding at him with her sweet voice. No, this guy must’ve been impotent not to try to be the possible hallowed man of fortune that she had always promised with her gaze. Maybe he was a eunuch in disguise. Well, he must have been lacking something if he just blew away a fake opportunity like that.

Obviously, though, the man had already watched her. He knew her modus operandi from the numerous times he had seen her talking to all sorts of men. Every time he had come to that office, he had witnessed her talking to a different guy, receiving something different from them every time. He was the type to log those kinds of things in his head, because as it turned out, he was the observant type, as well. He had a higher intellect than the average man, and he knew it. Her game was easily recognized by him, and he wouldn’t be the fish for her bait.

Gemma was no quitter, though. She had to know why he was like this. Over the span of two weeks, she had devoted quite a bit of time trying to break through his seemingly impenetrable shell of abstinence. She had started with small references to her original inquiry of him, poking fun at how he was mean for not even trying to get her that interview, but he would always say that Margot didn’t do interviews and let that be it. She was frustrated to the point of anger when the fourteenth day had ended and she had gotten no closer to breaking his defense. This was more like a part-time job than personal annoyance, now.

On one of her nights out on the town with her friends and some guy she had a taste for that night, she wandered into a club barely lit by anything other than the neon lights that flashed throughout the world of white-interior, where the music was loud and the people were all in some fit, sick with dancing fever. Her and her friends soon were able to spot a table to sit and converse loudly over the music, ordering drinks and downing them as swiftly as they hit the table. They laughed bearishly with drunken cheer. Fun.

Instantly, Gemma’s cheer ceased. Across the club, she had seen a single man with three other guys, obviously all being good friends. This man was the man that plagued the thoughts of her mind in her free, less active time. In fact, he was beginning to plague the thoughts of the times she was busy, as well. He seemed to be having so much fun with his friends. It irritated her to see him smile like that. ‘Why wouldn’t he smile like that when I talked to him?’ It bothered her to see someone else managing to crack that Prude shell of his, and when women sat with them, she looked away and diverted her attention back to her friends.

Her friends hadn’t noticed how disturbed she was. Her cheer had taken a complete one-eighty. The guy she was with that night didn’t even care. He was driven by only one thing: Lust. He was kissing her neck, but she had barely noticed, too inebriated to pay him any mind when something else was weighing even heavier on hers.

Every ten seconds or so, she would glance over to the photographer and his group. She clenched her jaws with some sort of envious fury when she saw him leaning in slowly as if he had done it plenty of times with many a woman. So calm and lustful his lips looked as he kissed the other woman, driving Gemma mad in the same way she drove other men mad. It seemed that she was getting a taste of her own medicine, wishing that she knew what she had to do for a favor from him. Except, now the favor of desire had changed drastically. She could care less about some interview with a woman that was regarded as prettier than her, no matter how much praise it would get her from the Editor-in-Chief. Bah! How important was that!? At a time like that, nothing mattered but how his lips would feel against hers.

She pushed away the slug of a man who had latched himself to her neck and drunkenly stomped her way over to the man of her fixation. Even when she had stood directly in front of him, his friends looked at her in wonder, but he didn’t turn his attention away from the woman under his embrace. This only stoked the fires in Gemma and caused her to take ahold of his wrist with a force that scared him and the likes of his entire group.

“Dance with me,” she yelled.

“Wha-”

She yanked him out of his seat to the dismay of his party, and dragged him all the way to the dancefloor where he stood blankly, still confused as to what exactly had happened. However, the music had already began to pump through her body, forcing her to put her sensuality into a physical representation.

As he looked to her invitation, he had finally gotten that feeling that she had long been trying to instill into him. Through the rocking of her tight waist, the bending of her form, and popping of her hips, she had forced her feelings off onto him and cracked his inscrutability. He accepted her invitation, slowly moving his hands along her body, not only to his heart’s desire but unquestionably to hers, also.

She turned around to him as they continued their dance to the deafening music abound. She looked him very directly into the eyes, sweat building on both of their brows. Through shadowed lids, her eyes looked up into his, telling him everything he needed to know at that very moment. The electricity that he felt from the arms that wrapped themselves around his neck reaffirmed her feelings and the gradual, yet ever-so anticipated flight to his lips completed the analysis.

‘I guess she really wanted it,’ he thought to himself --but wasn’t that obvious? She, on the other hand, had remembered her date. Though she didn’t pull away from the photographer’s lips, she wondered how he was taking her betrayal. Then after a literal second of worry, she gripped her man ever closer and danced with him through the night.

It was a sweet and warming story but this drama isn’t a sweet and warming story for lonely Friday nights. In fact, as we move back to April, which is months later from her affair with the photographer, we see her standing in front of that warehouse amidst blinding rainfall.

Why was she out here? Ah, that’s right. It was all for the sake of a story. Abandoning the hopes of scoring an interview with Margot, Gemma relaxed and began writing stories with no real pizazz but did the job all the same. It wasn’t until she saw on the news that a certain businessman and CEO of Maurice Diamond Co. shaking hands with that infamous Margot, symbolizing that they were, in fact, in discussions for a possible partnership. It was strange, because the Margot Magazine was already sponsoring a jewelry supplier who was much more respected and was much more well-esteemed, and this supplier just so happened to be at odds with Maurice. For her to allow her contract with such a prominent figure to end and pursue something with this shady character Maurice was beyond logic and ultimately confusing unless she was looking for something only Maurice could give her. And what was that?

As nosey reporters always do, she began looking into this Maurice and all his former deals and goings-on. She looked at his history and even learned of his ostentatious childhood of his father’s pampering and going to the best of schools and given the best of gifts like a sports car for his first car. He had led a troubled teenage set of years often being the perpetrator of arson and vandalism, even assault on women, but his father always seemed to be closely associated with these stories. It was obvious that his father was convincing everyone that mattered to turn a blind eye, greasing many a palm.

Maurice was apparently a spoiled child with no sense of right and wrong. However, now, he was an adult. If he carried that mind state over into his adult life, learning the bribing practice from his father, then indiscretion was not an unlikely problem for him. In light of that, she dug even farther into the past and into their business dealings and even the common knowledge regarding those dealings. A good amount of the technicalities of the paperwork went over her head, but what was important was to find something, anything that would explain Margot’s decision.

Gemma looked into Margot’s life and found that she was orphaned only a couple months ago, and disappeared shortly after the event for a total of two weeks. She was reportedly grieving in the safety of her home, away from most of the cameras and microphones that would be so obnoxiously and uncourteously thrusted in her face. Gemma felt a bit of pity for Margot, but she didn’t harp on that for too long. Was that reason enough to undo what her parents put in place?

Gemma began to research Margot’s parents briefly but found nothing of any real weight. There were a couple of articles published fifteen years ago about the battle between two suppliers for the sponsorship of this undeniably fantastic magazine in which all who mattered read it. The magazine was originally only partly fashioned-based and dealt a lot with business and its associations, associations dealing a lot with looking the part. An unorthodox magazine it was, and yet, it was well-accepted amongst its kind. It attracted an older audience and yet a younger circle, as well, who were only really concerned with dressing to impress, or at least, different from their peers. The magazine had been around for decades, granting it its acclaim, but it was the late CEO, Margot’s father who had the name changed to the name of his beloved daughter. With that, the enlargement of the fashion section’s priority was put in place, revamping the magazine, so to speak.

During that time all those years ago, there was a death. The deal with the more renowned jewelry company was closed soon after that death. A few, maybe ten years later, the CEO of Maurice Diamond Co. had succumbed to sickness he had been battling for months and finally died. Now, five years after that, there had been two more deaths, and that deal was almost at its end, while another was being talked up with the magazine’s CEO. Everything seemed a bit suspicious. Had Margot known what she was doing? What she may have gotten herself into? The way it was looking, she could end up being a casualty down the road.

This was enough for Gemma to put some questions together and confront Maurice. Repeatedly, she stomped over to his office, demanding an interview, knowing that it was very unlikely for her to get one, but all she needed was something to pin a case on him, and get the proper attention brought on him. Her photographer “associate” would try to warn her against pursuing such a dangerous story, even getting her boss to lecture against it, threatening to put her on leave, but they all knew what kind of person Gemma was. No one was deterring her from a story she had gotten so deep into.

The day came when she had finally caught Maurice in the morning before he went into his building. Though his bodyguard, some guy in a denim jacket, held her back, she still yelled her questions at him with urgency.

“Are the allegations about the suspicious origins of your diamonds well-founded?”

“I don’t want to do your job for you.”

“Is it true you’re trying to muscle out Geoffrey for his position with Margot Magazine?”

“Business is business, little lady,” he smiled.

“And would you kill in the name of business?”

He paused, glaring at her for longer than she was expecting with eyes that searched through the entirety of her knowledge. He didn’t like what he found in that confident gaze of hers.

“Wouldn’t anyone,” he answered.

“Would you care to explain your statement?”

“Not really.”

“It doesn’t have to be, now. I can come back another time when you prepare some answers.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Well, with the story I have, it all seems a bit incriminating.”

He smiled, but didn’t speak. So, she did.

“I wanted to give you the chance to defend yourself against the rumors that’ll start when people hear of Aconite.”

Something spun off center in his head it seemed. The middle-aged, yet youthful man gave her a charismatic smirk before he pulled a pen and paper out. He began to write a small note down as he spoke on.

“Once you’ve reached a certain status in life, nothing is trustworthy. Meet me here,” he passed her the note, “It’s a secure location where we can talk in depth about that story you’re writing.”

“Good,” she said taking the note.

She watched him enter his building then looked down at the note once more, finding it a bit ominous in appearance. She knew this man’s iffy track-record, but she knew that this was her only chance of writing a ground-breaking story that would put her and her newspaper on the map. So, she took a risk.

She went to the location and found herself at that abandoned warehouse in the pouring rain. She walked to the warehouse doors to attempt to open them and seek refuge from earth’s element, or even hide if things got volatile, but the doors were locked. She sighed and hit the door with the butt of her fist, but then she heard footsteps slap against the puddle-ridden ground behind her. Swiftly she turned, her heart racing a mile a minute with an excitement that rushed over her entire body, sending tingles throughout the surface of her skin. But then it all stopped with the impact of two bullets shot from the chamber of a Beretta.

August, Five Months from Present

“Do you remember when I told you that I wanted to be the man that held all the cards?”

“Yes, Alessandro. I do. It worried me then, and now, I see someone probably should’ve intervened.”

“The new drug John’s company founded designed to relieve stress ain’t exactly FDA approved.”

“You were pushing this stuff on the street? With my investment money?”

“As perceptive as always, I see. However, I would be telling you that two and a half years ago, but today I’m telling you something a little different. I’m telling you that this drug was noticed and received very kindly by some very wealthy people.”

“People like who? Another investor?”

“People who wanted it for different reasons. People like Mr. Maurice.”

I put my face into my hands then ran those hands through my hair. I, then, looked to them exasperated by the name Alessandro just mentioned.

“Don’t tell me you got involved with a man with as much pull as Mr. Maurice.”

“Well, I was talking about Mr. Maurice himself. I was just being a little dramatic…”

“I know that, Alessandro! It’s a figure of speech! Why would you get involved with Mr. Maurice!?”

“He’s a fat cat. Why wouldn’t we?”

“Mr. Maurice can be very generous,” Matthew added, “With money, of course.”

Mr. Maurice was one of the most powerful men on the coast. He was no older than forty-five when he took the mantle from his father, who died only a few years back when the family name wasn’t as notorious as it was at the moment. What was the mantle? That’s a good question, but could not easily be answered. The mantle was split in the halves of legal and illegal. Legally, he was a huge stockholder investing in the most promising of businesses, businesses that were sure to bring in a flood of cash for a very long time, which would explain his dealings with Margot Magazine. How he invested or what his method was, I was dying to know.

He earns this investing money from his real occupation. Not the illegal half, yet. No, he earns this money from his diamonds. His company mined diamonds from foreign lands like-who cares-for almost a century and has become the most renowned companies of our time. Everyone knew the name Mr. Maurice, and if you didn’t, you must’ve lived under a rock your whole life. His diamonds were excellent, so they were worth a pretty penny. Naturally, I had to pay through the nose just to get that ring that sat so nicely on Laine’s finger.

Laine.

Mr. Maurice’s illegal half was much less attractive and a bit lackluster. It had nothing to do with diamonds of any kind which might be contrary to what anyone may have believed. This was the farthest thing from diamonds.

The illegal half of his affairs was centered on his underground operation of drugs and selling it to his own country through a network so elaborate and outstretched that it was almost too difficult for police to get ahold of it. They could arrest the mules, but they could never get high enough up the food chain to incriminate Mr. Maurice himself. He was suspected of selling the usual like cocaine to addicts of highs and addicts of parties alike, and with great success. That was the case when Mr. Maurice didn’t have this mantle. When he received the money and power of his name upon his father’s death, he began dissolving his stock in the drug business, phasing out his product. It was habit bribing most of everyone who was important, or at least someone influential. It wasn’t easy to bribe most of everyone that mattered. Those guys would demand a hefty sum. Those who didn’t abide by the wishes of this maniac somehow faced the fury of some looney tune vagrant or project child from the streets. The investigation lasted all of two and a half weeks and brought in no new evidence of any kind, so it’s safe to say that whoever Mr. Maurice was bribing, they had enough power under their belts to squash any curiosities that would interrupt their cash flow. So, with all this, why did he want to deal with four nobodies like my friends John, Matthew, Thomas, and Alessandro?

“What does this drug do,” I asked, “What did I pay for?”

“Pros and Cons. Pros: it relieves stress completely, it relieves fatigue, it relieves anxiety, it relieves pain,” Alessandro answered.

“How does a drug even do all of that?”

“My company only sells the drugs. It’s up to the lab geeks to ascertain the uses and side effects,” John said.

“This drug wasn’t approved. Why?”

“That’s the con. The tampering with the brain and the blood that flows through it gave the test subjects- rats- brain tumors due to its inability to be broken down properly in the blood stream. That’s when it’s injected. When swallowed, the tumors occur in the intestines. It also showed to react a little violent with the stomach’s acid. Other than all that jazz, it takes away the ability to feel pain, which pain plays a big part in not letting you get hurt. You could have your hand in a fire and not even feel it,” answered Alessandro.

“Why would you sell that!?”

“Mr. Maurice got word of our drug and demanded we sell it to him. He didn’t demand for us to give him the drug. He demanded we sell it to him as an investment in our growing franchise, Richard. Now, believe me when I tell you that we thought long and hard over what we were going to do. The fact stood that we could’ve used the extra cash and we couldn’t risk the consequences of saying ‘no’. This was an opportunity to spread our wings and make a real fortune.”

Alessandro looked to me with pleading eyes.

“We can probably get you your money back, so that you can walk away from this, but 10 g’s is going to take some time. We owe Mr. Maurice way more.”

It irritated me how he took my anger and irritation with them and turned it into guilt that I had the chance to walk away and leave them in the woods. I ran my hand through my hair like the old Bill Evans and exhaled loudly. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say.

“What’s the problem? Why did Thomas get shot?”

They all smiled like they just won a game of basketball, our old sport. Soon, Alessandro turned his serious face back on.

“Are you sure? I didn’t really want to ask you because of your relationship status,” he said.

“I’m going to do whatever I can, alright. Just tell me what happened.”

“A product malfunction,” answered John.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that we mixed up Drug with regular painkillers and sold them to Mr. Maurice,” Matthew explained.

“That can be bad, but why didn’t he just give it back to you so you can exchange it. Why did he have to try and kill Thomas?”

“This is where it gets really twisted, Richard. Three years ago, Mr. Maurice expanded his businesses,” Alessandro replied.

“Illegal business, right?”

“Of course.”

“What is it?”

“Underground Fighting, if you’d believe it.”

“Like boxing?”

“No. Just fighting with close to no rules.”

“He gives his fighters Drug?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t he know the side effects? Don’t his fighters know the side effects?”

“Richard, who cares? Really? Come on,” John interjected.

“Mr. Maurice knows the side effects. We made sure he did so he wouldn’t come back to us angry that his fighters were dropping like flies. We also hoped that the side effects would scare his business away from us. He still wanted Drug.”

“I see, so he was persistent. The fact that he gives his fighter this death certificate tells me he’s insane. So he tried to kill Thomas because you all gave him a package of aspirins.”

“Well, his fighters all lost and he ended up losing around five hundred thousand dollars. He invited us into his place of business- you know the building downtown- and had a long talk with us. The talk ended with a firefight with his security and us dragging Thomas out of there.”

“So, you owe me 10 g’s and him 500? How can I even help?”

“Maybe as a fellow investor, you two can strike up some deal.”

There was a lot more to Margot than I gave her credit for in those days. It was petty of me to think that the worries of a young CEO like only amounted to that of some crush she had for me when we were children, and maybe it was narcissism that made me believe it. I was only thinking about what would pleasure myself, thinking that she was thinking of me. Compared to her more recent problems, I was just a half-remembered fantasy.

It turned out that not everyone was in agreement with her business venture with Mr. Maurice. It was common knowledge that he was a man shrouded in malice and a darkness that no one wanted to touch or be any part of. So, why did she? It was beyond the comprehension of most of the people that sat in the large, soft blue room. One wall was of complete glass that displayed the city that was bustling with the movement of the human world. The carpet seemed as though it was a gray in some lights, but then it seemed to be blue in others. The hue was magnificent and directly correlated with the navy blue of the thickly padded chairs that her and her board members sat in. The desk was a smooth, dark-varnished wood that stretched the length of the room in an oval. On one end of the oval sat Margot and on the other sat Mr. Cochrane.

Mr. Cochrane, her number two in the company and on the board, was in stark opposition with her decision and battled with her on its merits and dangers in front of the other board members as often as possible. Maybe this was some sort of ploy to sway the board members to his side. It seemed as though that was the case as time went on, because more and more of the board members were beginning to agree with his words over Margot’s. To be fair, Margot’s direction was an iffy one considering that it led to Mr. Maurice. However, her patience was running thin, tiring of this tug of war between wills, but she couldn’t very well dispose of him since he held the most shares in the company after herself. That morning contained their worst argument, yet.

“You are putting your parent’s legacy in the hands of a madman,” he argued.

“But his business is profitable. What he does after business hours cannot be proven or brought to the light under any prevalent circumstances, thus all aspects of your argument is just conjecture,” Margot forcefully rebutted.

“‘Conjecture’!? Ms. Margot, I adamantly plead with you to reconsider this choice you’re making! You know as well as I that bad publicity can undo a company at its core if its shareholders lose faith! How many shareholders do you think are on the fence, now, and will jump ship when you sign the last document!?”

“With his bonus of two million dollars, I think we can float by without such shareholders.”

“He’s desperate! Think about this reasonably! Why does he want stake in this company so bad!? If he controls the information, he controls his image! He controls us and all of our subscribers! You will be willfully signing over our integrity to such a man! Your own father rejected the Maurices in favor of Mr. Geoffrey! Why would you undo all that your father has put in place!?”

Margot seemed to change a bit with so much mention of her parents. Her pleasant exterior hardened and coldness that rarely escaped from the depths of her being was now felt by most in the room. It was startling to see her in such a way- stern, determined- and for that quick moment of shock, Mr. Cochrane saw the remains of her father in her eyes.

“I see you have this undying loyalty towards my father,” she spoke resolutely; “I appreciate this about you and how much faith you have in the aftermath of my father’s choices. However, my father is gone, and all you have left is me. It’s quite apparent that most of you have none of this said faith in me.”

“Your foolish attempts at a partnership with Mr. Maurice are the best way to lose the rest of that faith,” he urged, warranting the reprimanding from other board members to remain respectful, but he no longer cared. He was done tip-toeing around what needed to be said.

Yet, Margot smiled a bit and sat forward against the table, looking him directly in the eye, wavering his confidence.

“Might I remind you that this legacy you say my father has left behind has been bleeding since his demise? Should I remind you that we lost a quarter of our investors two years ago, and steadily lose more and more as time goes on? Now, we are down to two-thirds of what we used to have, coming dangerously close to half, and have long plummeted under the rate of comfortability. I have talked and talked with these investors and with Mr. Geoffrey, but it seems that they all see my urgency as the desperation of a foolish and young CEO. They don’t see that my motives are noble, Mr. Cochrane. They don’t care. Mr. Geoffrey wants to take advantage of me.

“Might I also remind you that we’re too heavy for times like these? As I said, Mr. Geoffrey is pinching his pennies, and everyone else is leaving, so where do we get the money to sustain the size of our company. We have already tried pay cuts. If we don’t get more money, we have to do damage control, and that means a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. Since you mention my father so much, why don’t I tell you how he felt about that?”

She stood and walked to the wall of windows that she so loved to peer out of.

“My father believed in the bond between he and his employees rather than the bond between him and his pocketbook. I want nothing more than to live by that same moral code. I don’t want to turn away all those that have put most of their being into the support of my legacy just because we want to hold onto our money. These are the people that we need to protect, the people that rely on us. But if we don’t do something fast, only bad things will happen, and we will soon go bankrupt. Before you all take this company away from me, I want to have done all that was in my power to keep us intact. Our contract with Mr. Geoffrey had lapsed and that was that.”

Mr. Cochrane sighed and put his face in his hands.

“Yes, but that does not excuse your choice in partners.”

“No…no, it doesn’t.”