a day in the life of larry the accountant

This was the first of our topics chosen without the use of Wikipedia. It was essentially a phrase dreamed up by one of my compatriots.

Enjoyed playing around with this one, turning the conventions of villainy/supervillainy over and seeing what I found underneath. Another typical day in the office, apparently…

Family Business

It was ten seconds into their conversation when the suspicion began to dawn on Larry that initiating it had been a huge mistake. He had greeted Wanda as she made her way through accounting on some unknown mission for her superiors in HR, and had stalled shortly after saying hello. Her hard blue eyes looked down upon him, glinting with what might have been suspicion, or contempt.

“So… how are you today?” he asked, somehow swallowing the quaver that wanted so badly to edge its way into his voice.

She took a moment, her nostrils flaring as she drew in a deep breath, before offering a response. “Ok,” she shrugged. Larry was less than impressively built, and the busty blonde’s own titanic proportions added menace and icy indifference to the gesture. Larry was caught in the avalanche now; there was no choice but to run with it and pray that he might keep his feet. To attempt to draw the conversation to an immediate close could well see him buried.

“We don’t see you down in our quiet little corner very often. It’s nice to see a different face down here.” Larry could hear himself being carried away by his words, but was unable to stop. His traitor mouth was now in control. “Yes, it’s nice to see you down here. Not you specifically, just – you know – you as in someone other than the usual.” He drew in a desperate breath. “You haven’t been sent down to fire someone, have you? Ha ha ha ha.”

Wanda blinked heavily mascaraed lashes at him, curving hooks that seemed to ask, What is this thing and why is it talking at me? The rest of her was apparently feeling more charitable, for it responded with a question, albeit one that had nothing to do with what he had just said. “You’re new here, aren’t you? How did you end up working here?”

Larry could feel the blush spreading in twin blooms from somewhere between his eyes, and hated it with as earnest a hatred as he reserved for anything. The harsh neon strip lighting that shone about Wanda’s head stung his eyes.  “I’ve been here four years. I’m Larry. Vincenzo Sospiri’s son. He’s my dad. I’m his youngest son.”

Her eyes widened, the first overt display of emotion she had accomplished since she had appeared. “You’re Mr Sospiri’s son?” she asked, apparently unsure what to do with this piece of information. Could it defeat her overwhelming disinterest?

“Er… yes. Yes, that’s me.”

Her eyes widened further still, as the realisation that it was probably exceptionally unwise to have anything to do with the CEO’s immediate family stole across her. “I’ve got to go,” she said hurriedly, and this time it was her voice that fought not to shake. She spun about and hurried off in the direction that she had originally been headed, her glorious bum still wiggling seductively as though it didn’t know how else to behave.

As soon as she had departed, Paul’s spectacles emerged from behind the huge monitor where they had been lurking, followed shortly afterwards by Paul’s face. “Smooth moves, Romeo,” he drawled. “Who knew a living person could move that fast?”

Larry shook his head, offering Paul a dark look as he trotted back to his desk.

“You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty damned hilarious,” Paul continued his unsolicited commentary. “If she knew how little your dad gave a shit about you, she’d be less impressed than ever.”

Larry threw himself back into the snarl of the spreadsheet he was working on and, after about five minutes of prodding and teasing, Paul noticed that his jibes were being pointedly ignored and got back to his own tasks. A period of focused work and the ticking of keyboard keys ensured, but it wasn’t long before Paul grew tired of balancing the books on the company’s racketeering and interests in the port district. His head reappeared, this time filled with a different tact for whiling away another dull day.

“What did you do last night?” he asked Larry.

Larry stared at the column of huge figures on the screen in front of him once more before answering. “Not much. Dinner in front of the TV. Nothing much was on. I went to bed early to read the new Hamilton book.”

“Hamilton? That hack? I’ve told you – the only SF worth reading is Asimov, Dick and Wyndham. Everything after is just a long, unnecessary footnote.”

“I like Hamilton,” said Larry, a little more high and petulantly than he had intended. “Besides, I’ve read all of the stuff those three wrote. Am I just supposed to give up reading after that?”

“To be honest, between work and… you know… your family, I’m surprised you have any time for that stuff. I stick to banal and harmless non-fiction these days – musical biographies, collected volumes of humorous blogs and the like. That fluff is much more soothing. It spares me the horrors of thinking too much.”

“There is such a thing as too boring. I like SF. There’s something comforting about these worlds with a sense of natural order and justice.”

Paul gave him a look somewhere between pity and contempt. “Lucky for us, the world isn’t like that.”

The phone rang. Answering it, Larry was subjected to a long, rambling monologue from an underling from the docks, begging, wheedling, threatening and attempting to bargain with him over some petty matter. He remained silent, occupying himself by twisting the telephone cord about his fingers, drawing designs for elaborate torture devices on his blotter and gazing at the clouds that scudded across the autumn sky. After a time, the man on the other end of the phone realised that he was pissing in the wind, and, as he drew his diatribe to a close, Larry stepped in smartly and smoothly.

“Look: I’m not going to clear your expenses claim without the proper clearance from higher up. I don’t want to upset them. Now if you want to go upsetting them over an incomplete delivery on their firearms order, that’s entirely up to you. Think about it.”

This was followed by an awkward pause. The man promised, very politely, to do his best to clear up the matter before putting his claim through, and wished Larry a good day as he hung up. Larry sighed to himself as he replaced the phone. He hated to admit it, but sometimes a good old threat, offered calmly and in his best imitation of his dad’s chilling tones, was the easiest way to get the job done.

“More harassment from the henchmen?” asked Paul.

“It’s all we seem to get these days.”

“That’s the problem with these large scale operations. People think that we’ve gone legit, that they can mess around and screw us, that we’re just a bunch of toothless accountants and bureaucrats. There’s something to be said for the old school organisations, where the boss was a force you met every day, one that could blow you or your colleague away for one word out of turn. Or if he was just having a bad day.”

“I know what you mean. It’s a bit different when you live it though. Mum used to get so tired of washing the dried blood out of dad’s shirts. She would appreciate this change. You know, if she was still around. And as for accountants and bureaucrats, that’s pretty much all you and I have going for us. I don’t mind it so much.”

Larry’s mind wandered to his older brothers. Simon was a member of the board, the firstborn and natural successor, ready to step into their fathers shoes on his death, whether it came by natural or the more likely violent means – though on days like this it felt like Vincenzo might outlive them all. And there was Michael, the family genius, putting his skills to use in the science division on the 26^th floor. Larry had found himself half-forgotten down on floor 15, left to make use of an aptitude that leant itself far more to accounting than mayhem and doomsday. Well, for the most part, he thought, glancing at the doodles on his blotter.

The day marched on in a cascade of calculations and balances, formulae blooming across his spreadsheets as order was wrung from the chaos of a thousand of interests, endeavours, projects, businesses and petty gangs from the very local to the international. He fielded the odd call that had wormed its way through the fierce watchdogs on reception and made a few of his own to check a figure or chase up an invoice. POs were generated, wages calculated and taxes whittled down into the fringes of existence.

Larry was beginning to think about lunch when his phone rang again, cutting through the quiet tapping of keys in the office. Thinking more of his growling stomach than anything else, he snatched up the phone without stopping to see who was calling.

“Hello?”

There was a momentary pause, which Larry thought annoying but was soon to recognise as a carefully crafted and by now unconsciously dramatic flair. “Good afternoon, son,” the voice rumbled down the line.

Larry swallowed, feeling the bottom drop out of his stomach. His mind began flicking through the possible reasons for this call, all of them bad. “Oh, hi dad,” he stammered. “How are you?”

“Quite well, son. Quite well.” The gruffness was there, but the harshness that had rattled his childhood world was surprisingly absent.

“Is everything alright, dad?” he ventured, feeling brave.

“Oh, yes, quite alright.” Was it hesitancy he now detected in his father’s voice? Was such a thing even possible from such a powerful, imposing man? “I’ve just been going over your latest report and the board and I are very pleased with your work. I can practically hear the taxman crying and wailing in pain from here.” Sospiri laughed his rough laugh that had turned so many gallons of blood to ice. “We’re all very pleased.” A pause. “I’m very proud of you, Lorenzo.”

Larry found himself at a complete loss. He could not recall ever receiving approval from his father. The feeling was strange; he did not know how to process it; did not entirely trust it. He felt as he did when receiving surprising news, as if things weren’t really happening to him, the experiences occurring behind a transparent screen, in a tank of water where everything moved with a sedate grace.

“Er… thanks dad,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic, despairing at the false uncertainty he heard in his voice. Confusion was beginning to give way to a warm feeling from somewhere in the area of his solar plexus. “Listen dad, I-“

Through the phone came a crackle of static, a roaring sound and a high note of breaking glass. “Shit,” came his father’s voice over the noise, a wonderfully concise exclamation imbued with oceans of cold fury.

“Dad?! Dad?! Are you alright?”

Vincenzo gasped, but the voice that followed was strong. “I’m fine, son. Just some interlopers. Probably governmental busybodies. Nothing to worry about.” His father roared something unintelligible, presumably at his assailants. “Listen Lorenzo, we’ll catch up over dinner tomorrow night. Vito’s place. My treat.”

Larry opened his mouth to respond with an affirmative, but the line went dead before he could speak. At the same time, the building’s intruder alarm began to blare, the white glare of the lights switching to a warning crimson that painted the world black and red. Outside, the sky was a menacing shade of twilight grey. It looked like a storm was blowing in.

Larry and Paul exchanged looks and let out simultaneous sighs. Larry saved his work and crawled down under his desk, well out of sight of any heroes on the rampage. From a small black box that sat in the corner, ready for such occasions, he withdrew a compact revolver. It always paid to play it safe.

As his ears grew accustomed to the sirens and began to edit them out, he thought he could hear gunfire and the sound of booted feet pounding down empty hallways. He wasn’t worried about his dad – the tough old bastard could look after himself – being more concerned with where tomorrow’s dinner-time conversation would go and what he might wear. His suits all had an old, lived in look to them by now. Perhaps, he thought, he should stop out in his lunch break tomorrow and get a new one. He occupied himself with picking dirt out of his nails, but when it became clear that the red alert wouldn’t be ending any time soon, he carefully groped up to retrieve his book and a folder of invoices from his desk. He shifted into a more comfortable position in the spacious-but-not-spacious-enough gap beneath his desk. It looked like they were in it for the long haul: another late night at the office.

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