TORCH PASSING

Scott Karambis

1.

In the end, they chose the new CEO from outside the organization, a Japanese garden designer famed for his ability to grow plants outside their zones, a process known as ​pushing.​ I spun my laptop around to show Jill the image of a great lawn bordered by ornamental fruit trees, framing a prospect of humpback whales breaching the royal waves of the South Pacific. That was Hugh Jackman’s. Then I showed her Melinda Gates’s. The one in Romania. Pockets of cherry blossoms glowed like gifts from an alien civilization surrounded by the largest old growth forest on the planet. “I didn’t know they could survive at that altitude,” I said.

“I thought you were the next in line,” Jill asked in a tone that resembled sympathy. “Where is this line?” I asked.

Jill shrugged and looked out the window at a parade headed down the broad avenue. From our height, the crowd sounded like the muffled vibrations of a jet engine.

I said, “I know it’s hard to imagine that famous gardeners or gardeners to the famous still exist unless you think about it for five, full seconds.”

Jill leaned against the glass and stared down as if something interesting was happening out there.

“One,” I said. “Two...”

“What kind of skills is this gardener bringing to the table?” she finally asked in a tone that might be consoling. She was a fast learner.

“Go literal,” I told her.

“Cross-pollination?”

I raised my open palm as an invitation to a high-five, but she looked at me like I was lifting a kitchen appliance over her head.

“When can I be in those meetings,” she said, “in ​the room​.”

Jill had been working for me for two years. She was talented, ambitious, undamaged. She was 27 or 32 or 19 or 41. We hide that now, along with anything that might suggest corrosion.

“Are you quoting Hamilton?”

Jill rolled her eyes. “I can’t afford Hamilton.”

“But are you?”

“Why did you pick me?” Jill’s voice had a ragged edge. She’d been awake for two days, plus or minus. I was pushing her hard. She’d appreciate it later.

“I mean it,” she said. “Why ​me​?”

The truth is I picked her resume like a card from a magician’s deck. When I called to tell her the news, I said she was ​the one.​ It’s true, you amazing children. Every day is another opportunity to be your best self.

“This experiment has been tried before,” I admitted, “but management thought it was worth trying again.”

“Stop being old,” Jill said.

“It’s my secret sauce.”

“No secret.” Jill smiled in spite of herself.

Who can resist a good line? Not people like us.

Jill groaned and rubbed her eyes before turning to the papers I’d placed carefully on her desk in three neat piles. “Make me believe,” I said.

She murmured into her breath as she thumbed pages filled with detailed accounts of yearnings that could never be satisfied, but not for lack of trying.

2.

Alejandro, the next choice, was raised in São Paulo and trained in Mexico City, Mumbai and Raleigh, N.C. At the company-wide meeting, he explained that his understanding of the Global South would help us in the Global North rediscover the soul of the company. Alejandro pronounced the th in South the sh in hush. He pronounced the th in North as a hard dental t. In our private meeting, I asked: “What songs of summer have you brought to our icy, imperial shores?” He offered me a sidelong smile as he poured ​mate​ from a small ceramic pot. Earlier that day, my network of spies informed me that he’d chosen Louis Benavides, a childhood friend from Majorca, to replace me.

Jill was waiting beside the elevators as I emerged. “Did he mention the spices his mother left beside his bed during the rainy season?” She asked it casually, as if making conversation, but there was a slight skip in her step. Who could blame her?

I lowered my hands in a ​mudra​ that expressed acceptance of the universe’s mysteries. “But I’m sure you have a plan.” she said.

“Most problems go away on their own,” I said.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Not in this particular case.”

3.

Our third new CEO was a legendary veterinarian surgeon who had invented a stent for small dogs. Dachshund fanciers thought of her as the Marie Curie of toy-dog heart disease.

“Empathy?” Jill said, bursting into the office. She looked harried.

“Close,” I said. I was in a good mood. I’d had my office moved the previous night. She’d been looking for me all day. I was pleased my colleagues still valued my contributions to company culture.

“If you let me in the room,” she said, “this kind of shit wouldn’t happen.”

Oh, the fire of youth. In her early days, Jill arrived in the season’s dramatic fashion: boots, dark leggings, capes. Now, she wore sneakers, jeans, a fleece. She looked pale, but that’s the way it goes in the Global North.

“The hardest thing about being a Vet—” I began. She screamed in an operatic way.

I held my hands up in case anyone was looking.

“You don’t get to play the victim,” she said. I felt my heart constrict in my chest. She was right.

“Maybe I can help?” she asked. “There’s still time.”

Who knows what that means? It called up an image of puppies, bathing one another with their small, pink tongues. I made a series of gestures with my hands and pointed at her.

“That’s not sign language,” she said. “It’s insulting. Probably actionable.”

I performed an elegant soft shoe and flipped an invisible hat into my hand, head cocked at a jaunty angle.

Jill stood completely still, jaw set, not even allowing herself to breathe.

Scott Karambis went to Penn in the late 80's and, thanks to the support of Alan Filreis, straight to The Iowa Writers' Workshop. Back then Scott had a few stories in GQ and The Quarterly. More recent fiction has appeared in StoryQuarterly and The Beloit Fiction Journal.