Adam in Eden

Chapter 4

As always, I assembled my colleagues for a meeting on the day after the Feast of the Three Kings. Today, few countries celebrate the Epiphany, the arrival in Bethlehem of the Magi Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar bearing gifts for the newborn baby Jesus. I suppose that in Mexico we commemorate the Magi to celebrate the end of our only real holiday season, which begins with las posadas, the nine days before Christmas, and continues into the New Year until Three Kings Day. Then we scatter little holidays here and there such as the Feast of The Presentation of the Lord in February, Benito Juárez’s birthday and the anniversary of the expropriation of oil in March, more of the same in April, Mother’s Day in May. We take comfort in the fact that the only reason Spaniards have more saints, and therefore more holidays, than we Mexicans do is that they had a head start on us. We’re playing catch-up. That’s only difficult because we don’t invoke such Aztec gods as, say, Saint Huichilobos.

While getting all spiffed up and thinking about the holiday, I’m getting off subject. I, your humble narrator, have little to celebrate this January 6, when I walk into the boardroom to deal with matters of the utmost urgency with my business associates: I know them extremely well; I do not hire strangers; I want my entire team to be trustworthy and not just, as the tongues wag, inferior to the boss, to me, as though a superior man — or woman — could, somehow, even slightly diminish the image that I have of myself, an image that is no way presumptuous. My career proves that I’ve achieved all I have through my own efforts, which now gives me the right to choose whomever I please to work with.

The gossip is that my associates are deferential and meek. The gossips say that I won’t admit anyone smarter than I am into my inner circle. That type of accusation has only been made by those left outside of what one columnist has called “the magic circle that surrounds Adam Gorozpe.” I knew there was a reason I kept that columnist on my payroll.

All right then. Today I walk into the boardroom, glancing at my watch, hurrying and relaxed at once (another secret of my success), without looking at anyone in particular. Some assistant I can’t see pulls out my chair for me. I sit. I fix my eyes on the files. I review the documents, deriving pleasure from confirming that they are all blank, and that the world is deceiving itself! I remove my glasses and wipe them with a Kleenex from a box on my left (thinking sarcastically that the little snots are on the left). I put on my glasses, and I finally look up to give my attention to the eleven consultants — not twelve, because that would make me number thirteen, and saviors tend to wind up crucified, I say to myself on this day when I resume work rested, alert, tanned by the Caribbean sun, no longer on vacation.

My eleven associates are wearing dark sunglasses.

They are not looking at me.

Or they are looking at me in darkness.

Eleven pairs of sunglasses.

“No need to exaggerate,” I joke. “It was pretty cloudy in Cancún.”

My joke is met with silence.

Twenty-two dark lenses stare at me.

Without mercy.

What happened?