Chapter Two: The Conference Room Windows
Part C - Meet Eddie Rose, that fuckstick
Note: If you’re a new reader, start with CHAPTER ONE: A GOOD LIFE RUINED or even the ABOUT page—and see you back here soon. This is Chapter 2: Part C. Here’s Chapter 2 Part A and here’s Part B. To access all contents on the site, click on the rose icon in the upper left corner or HERE.
Part C - Meet Eddie Rose, that fuckstick
Just inside the swinging lobby doors of Rose & Rose, Iz the receptionist frantically attempts to work an enormous new office phone console. Iz looks about 65. She should be able to put someone on hold. Still, she acts like any phone manufactured after World War II is cutting-edge technology straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey—even though today is October 6, 2003, as we noted at the start of this chapter. Her short reddish bobbed hair makes Iz resemble Shirley MacLaine, if Shirley MacLaine was a neurotic wreck and Jewish. The picture below of Shirley MacLaine in 1977 at age 43 doesn’t quite capture Iz, but it was the best one I could find in the public domain. Take this picture of Shirley MacLaine, add twenty years and a halfhearted dye job, and imagine her laughing like she’s about to have a nervous breakdown. Iz does that a lot.
Iz’s grandparents were from Vienna, but they didn’t come here seeking jobs and a better life for their children. They didn’t come here at all. Iz’s parents met each other as teenagers on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi Germany, separately put aboard by Iz’s two sets of grandparents, who they would never see again.
Across the wide Rose & Rose lobby, Eddie Rose stands talking on his Blackberry in front of the conference room windows. This is like being on a stage since the lobby’s recent renovation. Let’s see if I can explain this:
The Rose & Rose lobby is now a sunken room that makes Steve think of the original Playboy Mansion, or what he imagines the inside of the Playboy Mansion looked like when Hugh Hefner was still frolicking with Playboy Bunnies on Chicago’s Gold Coast, just a couple of miles straight north of the IBM Building, back in the 1950s and 60s. In 2003, Hugh Hefner is an even more pathetic version of his previous pathetic self, spending his wrinkled elderly years in pajamas at the Los Angeles Playboy Mansion and imagining people believe the Bunnies he consorts with are really having sex with him. Still, after decades of breathless media descriptions of the original Chicago Playboy Mansion, a sunken room makes Steve think of Hefner’s first digs.
The new lobby also makes Steve think of Rob and Laura Petrie’s wholesome suburban living room in The Dick Van Dyke Show, because the Bertolucci family watched so many reruns of Dick Van Dyke, which ran weekdays at 6:00 pm on WGN. It’s a strange combination, but that’s memory for you.
At the far end of Rose & Rose’s new sunken lobby, steps rise to an elevated walkway running the length of the room. This is where Eddie Rose now stands, checking email on his Blackberry, holding the cell phone like a scepter with which he rules the business world. Behind Eddie is a wall of windows, also running the length of the room, and behind that transparent wall is the conference room. That transparent wall is what everyone is going to mean when they start talking about “the conference room windows,” referenced in this chapter’s title. The conference room windows, really an interior glass wall, have recently replaced a boring old normal wall that no one could see through.
As you stand at the swinging lobby doors of Rose & Rose, then, you look across the sunken lobby; up the steps and over the walkway; through the wall of windows now called “the conference room windows”; and finally into the conference room. That means you’re looking right through to the conference room’s floor-to-ceiling exterior windows, which are filled with a breathtaking view of the Chicago River highrise canyon. The eastern corncob tower of Marina City looms in the foreground. Everyone always says it looks like a postcard.
Here’s an old curled up postcard of the Chicago River. It’s not the view Steve and his Rose & Rose colleagues see through the conference room’s exterior windows in 2003, but Marina City still dominates. What year is this view? Let’s see: There’s no IBM Building next door—looks like ground isn’t even broken yet, it’s still a parking lot wedged between State Street and Wabash. I’ve added a big arrow pointing to the site, and labeled the streets. This picture must have been taken between 1964, when Marina City was finished except for its theater, and 1969, when construction began on the IBM Building. The Sun-Times Building in the right foreground is still fairly new, having been finished in 1957.
It’s hard to believe the IBM Building will fit into that tiny space where the arrow is pointing. Imagine the day in 1966 when an aide pushed 80-year-old Mies van der Rohe in a wheelchair up to that oddly shaped sliver of land, so the famed architect could inspect the site for what would become his last highrise. Mies looked around. “Where’s the site?” he demanded.
The Sun-Times Building, you’ll recall, is where Trump Tower stands now. In the 1800s, it was the site of one of the city’s first meatpacking operations. Look closely, and you’ll see the Sun-Times Building bears two names at the top in cheesy yellow letters: “Chicago Sun-Times” and “Chicago Daily News.” That’s because the Sun-Times owner, Field Enterprises, bought the Chicago Daily News in 1959, then sold the considerably more impressive Chicago Daily News Building in 1960 and moved the News staff into the Sun-Times’ new riverside quarters.
Back to the gorgeous new Rose & Rose lobby. The elevated walkway becomes an office hallway on both ends of the lobby, leading to the rest of Rose & Rose. Go right to reach Steve’s office in the tax department. Go left to reach Bill’s office in auditing, or the offices of new managing partner Eddie Rose and recently semi-retired founder and managing partner Sol Rose, Eddie’s father.
Eddie is talking again into his Blackberry. Do you even know what a Blackberry is? Blackberry was the first major cell phone that allowed users to send emails. Would you believe it—the screen was black and white, no color. It wasn’t a touch screen either. You actually had to press tiny individual buttons on a tiny keyboard.
Younger businessmen were just starting to get addicted to Blackberries in 2003—the phones were often called “crackberries” due to their narcotic effect. iPhones wouldn’t come out until 2007. For years afterward, businessmen clung to their Blackberries, considering themselves superior to the artsy, frivolous types who wanted the latest iPhone. The artsy types considered themselves superior to boring conservative geeks who used Blackberries.
Eddie’s Blackberry, above. This early cell phone got its name because the tiny buttons on the keyboard reminded someone of the tiny sections of a real blackberry, below. As we enter the Rose & Rose lobby, Eddie has just upgraded to the first Blackberry with onscreen color. The colors are so muted, they may not register as such to more modern eyes, used to CGI and other forms of augmented reality.
Fun Fact that could’ve won you some pantyhose in 1972: Young, unripened blackberries aren’t green, they’re red. More on that later.
Eddie is the younger half of Rose & Rose, but he isn’t truly a younger businessman. He’s fiftyish, desperately trying to be fortyish. Some days, he incorrectly believes he could pass for 39. I guess he’s just young enough to be excused for not remembering what that has to do with legendary comedian Jack Benny. But he really should know. When he was a kid, Eddie’s grandpa always pointed out Jack Benny on TV. “He’s Jewish,” Eddie’s grandpa would announce. The emphasis on “he” meant “like us.” Then Eddie’s grandma would add, “Born Benjamin Kubelsky,” in a sing-song voice reserved for precisely these occasions. The sing-song voice meant “He can’t fool us.” They did that for all the Jewish entertainers who’d changed their names so the general gentile public wouldn’t know they were Jewish. Eddie’s grandparents were like an announcing team, color and play-by-play, as if watching TV was one long Jewish sport.
Eddie’s grandparents immigrated here from a tiny shtetl in Ukraine after a particularly vicious pogrom, which means they fled for their lives. By now you have guessed that they were also searching for jobs and a better life for their kids. They were thankful when Eddie’s dad, Sol, waited to be born until after their arrival, providing the family with an instant U.S. citizen.
Eddie’s grandparents, now deceased, would not begin to understand the life their grandson leads. Eddie is tan year round from regular visits to tanning beds at a spa, not from days spent in a field digging up root vegetables; fit, from regular workouts at the posh East Bank Club rather than manual labor that actually accomplishes something; stylish, sporting a precision haircut and dye job from a pricey salon on Oak Street in the Gold Coast, not a buzz cut administered in a tiny apartment kitchen with clippers borrowed from a neighbor. And did he just get an eye job or something?
Most of the approximately 75 employees of Rose & Rose are milling about on the sunken lobby floor. They keep one eye on Eddie as they chat, drink coffee and snack on a complimentary buffet of croissants and bagels. This is, it seems, the precursor to a meeting. Either way, it’s an excuse to start work late. What mysterious purpose could have caused Eddie Rose to gather all his employees together in the lobby today, and even spring for food? The room buzzes with curiosity, and a strong undercurrent of trepidation. With Eddie, surprises can be hazardous.
“Mr. Rose is in a meeting,” Iz squeaks into the phone. “Can you hold?” She gathers herself and shouts above the din: “Eddie! Eddie!”
Eddie grimaces. “Just a minute Sam,” he tells the Blackberry and directs a withering gaze from up on the walkway, all the way across the sunken lobby, and down at poor Iz. “It’s ‘Mr. Rose,’” he sniffs. “What is it.”
“That woman from the copier leasing company says it’s urgent!”
“Transfer it to my Blackberry,” says Eddie, turning away.
“Sam, can I call you back?” he asks the Blackberry.
Out in the hall, Steve has finally finished re-tying the shoe that wasn’t untied in the first place. He stands back up and pulls the knot of his tie down a bit, as if it was too tight. But it wasn’t too tight, so now it’s too loose, and he has to adjust the knot back up again. Finally he edges carefully through the swinging lobby doors.
Normally Steve would stop at Iz’s desk, chat, and pick up something from Iz’s candy dish. Today, with those black eyes, he’s happy to see he can get away to his office without a single word, because Iz is desperately scanning the blinking, threatening new phone console. She tentatively extends a finger at the phone console, as if it’s a crab waiting to snap at her.
Steve slips by just as Iz chooses a button she hopes will transfer the woman from the copier leasing company to Eddie’s Blackberry, and punches it. The light winks out. She gasps and starts jabbing every button in sight. One of them has to work. It just has to.
Across the sunken lobby, Eddie begins to splutter and punch those tiny buttons on his Blackberry, trying to pick up the call. It’s a good stage show for the audience below, who didn’t even pay to get in—Eddie pays them, every two weeks.
Everyone watches Eddie’s face purple in anger. How long before he screams “IZ!”?
“Hey Maria,” hisses Abe from HR, observing everything from a spot near the bagels. “You taking bets?”
Heads swivel to nearby Maria Alvarado, head of auditing and the last hire by semi-retired founding partner Sol Rose. Her parents came here from—oh wait, actually, her parents are in California, where Maria grew up. It was her great-great grandparents who came here from Mexico for jobs and better lives for their children, toiling in the blazing sun as migrant laborers. They succeeded so well that Maria is sensitive about the fact that she is not fluent in Spanish. But she’s the one with a head for numbers in a room full of people who think about numbers all day. Maria nods at Abe. Her eyes narrow as she considers the timing and odds--based on the color of the spider veins on Eddie’s nose. Strange he hasn’t had those taken care of yet. They are a reliable tell.
“I set the over and under at 50 seconds, the usual VIG,” Maria announces, sotto voce.
“Gimme fifty on the under,” mutters Abe, reaching for his wallet.
“Wait, what’s the usual VIG again?” somebody frantically whispers.
“Eleven to ten,” says Maria as the huddle surrounding her seethes with money changing hands.
It’s the perfect opportunity for Steve to slide along the righthand lobby wall, nip up the steps to the walkway, and disappear down the righthand hallway seeking safe haven in his office. No one saw him.
Bill, having slung his briefcase into his office while Steve was tying his shoes out in the hallway, has come back to the lobby for that buffet. What a treat. He would normally make do with a bag of Jays potato chips for breakfast. Now he can save the Jays for lunch. “Can’t stop eating ‘em,” he thinks happily. There’s a crush of people at the buffet, so first he makes for Iz’s candy dish. It’s filled with hard butterscotch candies, round, wrapped in lovely yellow cellophane. Bill picks one out and starts unwrapping it.
“IZ!!” howls Eddie, waving his Blackberry over his head and dancing in fury on the walkway above everyone’s heads.
Iz ducks down behind the reception desk. The thick knot of people circling Maria at the buffet turns back into a flurry of flying money.
“Hey Iz,” says Bill to the top of Iz’s head, hovering just below the reception desk counter. He’s used to talking to Iz’s hair.
“Ya know I like butterscotch, but ya know what I’d really love to see here sometime?”
“Hmmm?” says Iz, warily straightening up as Eddie turns back toward the windows, wildly poking his Blackberry keys. “Sorry,” she murmurs, looking around. “There’s something—I know there’s something I’m supposed to get done but I can’t remember what...”
Iz succeeds in looking even more worried than usual, but Bill can’t tell the difference. His mind is on one thing:
“Rootbeer barrels,” Bill trills. “Hunh? Hunh? Remember those? Rootbeer barrels? About this big” --Bill holds his index finger and thumb about a half inch apart--“dark brown, shaped like a little barrel, with the lines on the sides and everything, and they tasted just like a glass of rootbeer from Dog ‘N Suds.”
“Gee, I don’t remember the last time I saw those,” says Iz. “I liked those too. I’ll keep an eye out for them. I wonder who’d carry those anymore.”
“Thanks, Iz. So what’s this meeting about anyway. Nobody seems to know.”
“Eddie wants to show everyone the new conference room windows,” shrugs Iz.
Bill rolls the butterscotch candy around in his mouth as he looks over the milling, buzzing, curious crowd and considers Eddie across the sunken lobby, standing on the walkway and playing with his Blackberry.
“God I hate that fuckstick,” Bill muses.
“Bill!”
“Sorry Iz, sorry! But c’mon, you hate him too. Everybody hates him. Who doesn’t hate him? His wife? Oh my God, she hates him more than anybody!”
“I don’t know, I think she likes him,” says Iz doubtfully.
“OK, well what about the conference room windows. What about ‘em? He’s gotta make us all stand around here holding our dicks—sorry Iz, sorry--so he can tell us they put in some windows? Or maybe he thinks we’re birds and we don’t know the windows are there, and he’s afraid we’ll all run into ‘em and knock ourselves out. What an asshole.”
“I guess he just likes those windows,” shrugs Iz. “They’re pretty big.”
“Well why doesn’t he tell anyone about it? Why’s he gotta make us all stand around wondering? You’re the only one who could tell me what was goin’ on. What makes you so special?”
“I guess I was just here,” says Iz. “I’m always here,” she adds glumly, then explodes in a short peal of nervous, crazy laughter that stops as abruptly as it started and leaves Iz looking a bit disoriented, like she just tripped and got back up. Bill doesn’t notice; he’s used to it.
“You seen Steve yet?” he asks.
“Sorry, what?” Iz looks around her reception area like she’s never seen it before. “There’s something I’m supposed to…Never mind, I’ll think of it. No, I haven’t seen him! Isn’t that strange. He’s usually fifteen minutes early for everything. Something-something time, he calls it. But he’s not here yet.”
“Oh, he’s here all right,” laughs Bill. “Wait’ll you see ‘im.”
“Why?” says Iz.
Behind them, Steve is slowly wending his way across the sunken lobby.
NOTE: Due to email constraints, this chapter is split into four sections, A-D. This is the end of Part C. Go on to Part D - Heeeeere’s Johnny!, the final section, if you’d like to find out what the hell is so special about those conference room windows. A tiny rose will signify the absolute end of each chapter.
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