The Backup Girl
By JPYoung
Railbound to Adventure!
Train travel was high livin’…
Drake enjoyed trains since childhood. He relished railroad scenes in classic films and toy and model trainset layouts, but most of all, he loved watching the countryside shoot by as he sipped coffee, tea or hot chocolate aboard a train. Alcoholic beverages were out, because he was an interstate and international courier on assignment.
He wistfully prepared for disembarkation, for his trains were never as romantic or adventurous as in his films of yesteryear...
Advent
Usually there was a pre-arranged rendezvous, rarely an announcement over a loudspeaker, but today was an early Halloween…or a vivid surrealist dream…
Her grey suit blended into any business district, but her matching perfectly tilted service hat that she wore over her black bobbed hair screamed ‘chauffeuse’!
The sign she held proved his chief was having fun,
JUST PLAIN DRAKE
‘Just train Drake today.’
She looked over his navy suit and raised her eyebrow,
‘It’s you, True Blue.’
As he looked into her blue eyes, he dove into free fall…
‘Call me Annabella.’
They shook hands.
‘Take me to your fella?’
Drake saluted in the carpark,
‘Permission to come aboard, Ma’am.’
‘Permission granted!’
She opened the backdoor of the labelled company car for him.
‘Thanks Annabella. You’re a gentleman.’
‘A pleasure to serve, Drake.’
Entering the driver’s seat, she performed the rituals of writing in a logbook, then donned riding gloves and sunglasses. She started her car and paraphrased Oh, the Places You'll Go!
‘You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your client is waiting, let’s get on your way!’
‘Doctor Seuss is on the loose!’
For once Drake was pleased at being in a traffic jam, as he had the time of his life chatting with Annabella. She was too intelligent and unpredictable for merely a driver…she wasn’t merely anything…
Rendezvous
Their destination was a virtual office complex; a bricks-and-mortar location for businesses that didn’t have their own building, but desired corporate aesthetics. Virtual offices provided an address in the business hub, mail handling, telephone answering services and a meeting space; all without the need for a traditional office lease.
They were frequently used by fly-by-night operations…
Annabella operated the lift with an electronic card, then led him into the reception area of an office.
He was enthusiastically greeted by his consignee, but he hadn’t connected his initials and common surname with the man he now faced…
It was THE Jack Baker!
He’d once been an aviator and a financial high-flyer who became a celebrity due to his daredevil adventures as much as his greatly admired business acumen, both reported in the world’s press. Everyone from highest society to the lowest common denominator wanted to be with him…or be him…
He’d vanished from the media years ago, but here he was…older, but his voice still had the familiar sound heard around the world so many years ago.
Jack led him into his office, then signed for the envelope Drake presented from his attaché case,
‘Take off your suitcoat and stay awhile. Tea?’
‘I’ve never turned down a cup of tea in my life, sir.’
Jack spoke into his intercom,
‘Could you please bring us some tea, Mac?’
His celebrity raconteur recounted a series of hilarious and thrilling but non-egomaniacal stories.
Wow-wee-wow-wow!
His busty secretary dressed in a short skirt and tight white blouse entered with a tea tray. Annabella was now Miss MacArthur in a blonde wig, brown eyes and perky voice.
Drake said nothing except to thank her.
THIS office provides EVERYTHING…
She departed, the intercom buzzed,
‘Call, sir.’
Jack placed it on speakerphone; it was Drake’s chief requesting him to remain for his consignee’s response.
‘I’m having a presentation. As you’re sworn to confidentiality you’ve my permission to be present. Once I formulate my response, you’ll deliver it to…’
Jack continued his amazing and amusing anecdotes.
He was something wonderful to see as he told his tales. Rising out of his chair and moving with the grace of a professional dancer; his motions bred emotions. He was lost in himself; both men were having fun. However, Jack repeated the first story he told and drifted into rambling.
The intercom buzzed,
‘Mrs. Andrews is here for your presentation, sir. Please leave the intercom on so I can take notes.’
Mrs. Andrews entered; Annabella/Mac wearing an auburn wig, spectacles and well-tailored business suit.
She lowered the screen, then began Death-by-Powerpoint. Her speech was refined as she lectured on Key Aspects of Corporate Change Management.
Drake wished he had a Buzzword Bingo card as she was hitting them all: Strategic Alignment, Clear and Consistent Communication, Active Engagement of Stakeholders, Resistance Management, Culture Change, Reorganising Structure…It was reminiscent of the Fun with Hydrangeas sequence in The Manchurian Candidate where captured G.I.s believed they were trapped in a women’s gardening club when they really were being brainwashed by the Red Chinese.
Like the endless lectures in hot airless corrugated tin sheds in his Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot, Drake not only remained awake but ensured he appeared bright-eyed and bushy-tailed lest he was physically punished by sadistic Drill Instructors.
When her bullshit buzzwords reached the benefits of Reduced Resistance, Improved Performance and Increased Innovation, Jack asked questions that proved he not only was interested in the lecture but understood it!
His questions continued, but he began repeating them. Annabella/Miss MacArthur/Mrs. Andrews must have worn a stiff facial mask as well as a wig; she answered his questions again and again without impatience. Botox was the new stiff upper lip…
She finished by informing Mr. Baker that Miss MacArthur would bring in the completed notes for him to sign for the main corporate office.
Dénouement
When she returned in blonde wig and secretarial dress, Jack was asleep.
‘Siesta instante!’
She replied in a new voice,
‘Transient Global Amnesia, Drake.’
‘Sounds like an airline…’
‘It is…for him…He’s always going new places, meeting new people and doing new things…’
‘That are strangely familiar to him…’
…and he lived happily ever after…
She quoted Lord Byron,
‘”"Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange…stranger than fiction, if it could be told…”’
Drake responded with his own Byron quote as if it was a countersign to a password,
‘”Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.” Now, could you please tell me what’s up?’
As Jack slept, she related that the living legend had dementia. His former wives cleaned him out, but the business he started from nothing and grew into one of the top corporations in the world rewarded him by letting him spend his final days in imaginary business activity.
‘Like all men, what he really wants and needs is an audience.’
His office and home were assets of his former company; his ex-wives couldn’t touch them. She and Jack were on their payroll with all the trappings as lucrative allowable income tax deductions. He’d receive calls, messages, presentations and documents sent by actual couriers, for they knew Drake’s chief was proud to honour Jack Baker.
’So, who are you?’
‘After burning out as a nurse and failing at acting, I became one of his administrative assistants. When Jack went downhill, my bosses noticed my kindness to him. I was asked to stay on with him in the roles you see…and…I’m in love with him…So I’m also his…kept woman…’
‘Cat woman???’
She laughed loudly,
‘I can’t wait to design that costume!’
‘Will Annabella give me a lift back to the railway station?’
‘Our backup girl will take you back up there.’
Scheherazade entered a door in the reception room that she left open, displaying wigs and costumes for her 1001 corporate affairs, including a nurse’s uniform. She didn’t mind changing clothes in front of him and came out casually dressed in her actual hazel eyes and short mousy hair.
‘He won’t wake up for a few hours. When does your train leave?’
Taking him down in the lift, this time she opened the front passenger door for him.
‘You’ve got to be up front with the backup girl.’
Her real name remained a mystery…as it should. She declared Jack wasn’t only the brightest,
‘None of the others had the brains to separate whites from coloureds when they did their laundry…’
But the biggest, the actual biggest…executive she worked for, and the kindest one,
‘Jack was the only one who ever said “please” and “‘thank you”.’
By the time they reached the railway station they were forever friends.
Drake envied Jack Baker…and further emphasised his and his chief’s confidentiality.
‘You’re a straight shooter, True Blue.’
‘Expert pistol and rifle, too.’
‘Is there anything the woman of a dozen personalities can do for you?’
‘”Anything?”’
Pas de Deux
On a railway station platform, commuters were treated to a romantic scene reminiscent of a 1940s movie. The woman in a trenchcoat kissing him lifted her foot behind her. They warmly embraced…
The evocative whistle sounded…Drake boarded his train; the pair waved farewell…
Romance is not where you go or how you travel, it’s who you travel with…
FIN
Author Notes: Cheers, Lucy!
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