By Stanley N. Wright

The realization that her college advisor had misrepresented reality was her welcome to adulthood. It was the cold water splashed in her face at graduation, the announcement that the pretending was over and the real living, with all its negative connotations, was about to begin. She had painted an enticing picture, Professor Reynolds, promoting her chosen field, accounting, with such gusto that it seemed illogical to major in anything else. Yes, the curriculum would be arduous, dry and unromantic, but at the end of the course of study, while all one's contemporaries were standing around with their liberal arts degrees wondering what to do next while it slowly dawned on them that they were headed to some retail job they could easily have acquired straight from high school, a cornucopia of employment opportunities awaited the young prospective accountant. No doubt a young woman of Anna's background and intelligence would be headed to a Big Six accounting firm, the major leagues of finance, where after a couple of years of auditing a vast array of firms, she would acquire her C.P.A. certificate and likely be hired by one of her clients for a near six figure sum to control the finances of the business. She would meet a rising young executive, who would recognize the subterranean sexuality of someone so good with numbers. They would marry, move into an extravagant suburban home, in the garage of which they would park one European sedan and the largest sport/utility vehicle they could afford. Thereafter they might have children who would attend the better schools and follow them into stable careers.

All this Anna took for granted as she floated from class to class, gritting her teeth at the hypnotizing sterility of her curriculum. She was doing the practical thing, something that wasn't much fun now but that she would thank herself for ten years from now when she was comfortable. Yes, she got the tax internship with KPMG, becoming in effect a piece worker plugging numbers into a tax software package. Welcome to the sophisticated world of accounting in the data age. Who needed to know tax law? The program knew all. To feed it was the thing. Give it the numbers. It would do the rest.

She wasn't interested in tax, but the internship was the time-honored way to get an offer as an audit associate. Anna looked good on paper. She carried a low A average. She had the internship, letters of recommendation from her professors. Recruiting partners from three Big Six firms courted her, took her to dinner, attempted to describe their firm, which was exactly like the other five, as something superlative, something superior, as if accounting practiced by the professionals of their partnership was somehow sexy, romantic, even dangerous.

But the offer did not come. The courting of the Big Six ended as did the intentions of many a college man, unconsummated, left without conclusion or explanation. Only silence. For the prospective accountant this was an announcement of diminished expectations. She hadn't measured up. She hadn't possessed the right bean counting stuff. Even Professor Reynolds shrugged her shoulders, pretending to be baffled.

Still, there was that cornucopia of jobs with smaller C.P.A. firms and with corporations desperate to control their businesses. Another round of interviewing ensued, a more harried, scrambling schedule of trying to put something together before graduation. She did not know what to look for. Her whole life had been predicated on two years of audit followed by seduction by a Fortune 500 company. Now this, offers to manage accounts receivable, to work on internal audit teams, to toil with fixed assets. Corporate America suddenly seemed a droll and frightening place full of cubes and PCs and men named Chuck who proposed to be one's boss.

She was finally seduced by a fast talking New Yorker who directed human resources for an Internet company called Exetron, Inc. Here was a man, not much older than she, who seemed genuinely excited, and perhaps agitated, by his work. During her interview his phone kept ringing, and he kept answering it. "Sorry. Sorry," he kept saying. All the calls seemed important. Human resource crises, people calling in about jobs. His office was a cauldron of business activity. Stu Pfeffer, who didn't look old enough to shave, appeared to be nothing other than a rising young executive with a progressive technology company. "Internet's the thing," he said several times. "It's big. Big. It's the future."

The Controller, Ed Smolinski, didn't have any more time for her than Stu did. His phone also rang constantly, but he did not answer it. Good manners, Anna thought. But he was clearly distracted. He kept glancing over her shoulder as if a team of assassins were about to burst through his door. Later she would learn that he never answered his phone no matter who was calling because the person on the other end was very likely attempting to collect on some debt that Exetron was trying not to pay. But on interview day this Internet company seemed a hub of excitement and fluidity, seemed populated by people under thirty orchestrating a takeover of corporate sensibilities. It was rock and roll to the ching ching ching of the cash register.

She took the job, was treated to lunch by Stu Pfeffer and Ed Smolinski. Immediately thereafter she descended into the dungeon of Exetron, Inc. finances, a world where accounts existed in states of neglected disrepair. There were numbers, yes, but whether they meant anything and could be supported by some trail of proof was arguable, although no one in the finance department, least of all Ed Smolinski, was doing much arguing about them.

One thing was clear. The company was losing money. She only had to look at Smolinski's face as payday approached. Would they make payroll? It was a biweekly ritual. Anna could sense the nervousness of her coworkers. Some in marketing and MIS even called her, the new staff accountant, to see if she could be probed for details. Apparently, Smolinski maintained a code of disinformation.

Stuck in her cube, attempting to make sense of receivable accounts whose principals insisted they did not owe the money for one reason or another, Anna felt far away from Professor Reynolds, which was propitious because her thoughts about her college advisor were murderous. Her only entertainment was Stu Pfeffer's daily walk-throughs as he scanned the cubicles for disgruntled faces. Lynn, the accounts payable clerk, told Anna that Pfeffer had a sixth sense about who was going to bolt. Like a good salesman, he knew that it was easier to keep an existing employee than to recruit a new one. He would proceed amongst the cubicles, shaking hands and staring deeply into eyes. If he sensed trouble, he invited one to lunch where a gentle cross examination and confidence building session would ensue.

Stu was the little Dutch Boy with all ten fingers in the dike of Exetron's personnel levy. As he plugged holes, he also poured more water into the canal. Days rarely passed without Anna seeing Stu escorting a job candidate through the office, good-naturedly blowing the same smokescreen he had used on Anna. "Listen, if you're not in an Internet company, you're nowhere. Might as well work for a typewriter manufacturer."

Then came the week that Willard Hall, the Vice President of Sales, quit the company. To avoid Stu Pfeffer's hard press, Hall went home at noon complaining that he had a plumbing problem and from the safety of his home office faxed in a terse resignation statement. Suddenly, all of Stu's metaphors became plumbing related. He came through the finance offices later that afternoon.

"How are the pipes?" he said to Anna. By then they all understood. The rumor had preceded him.

Anna smiled, but her pipes were leaking heavily. Her attempt to reconcile the accounts receivable was being stonewalled by Smolinski, who didn't want to write off anything, even accounts she documented as bogus. "No, no. We won't be writing off any assets just yet." She was having delusional nightmares where she skinned Professor Reynolds alive, where she forced the Big Six recruiters who had abandoned her to stand naked on fire ant mounds. She considered following Hall's example. Instead, she chose to confront Smolinski, attempt to get him to dismiss her. She was naive to the ways of successful corporate parasites. Smolinski appeared to agree with everything she said. He blunted her passionate appeal with skilled diplomacy. He sympathized with her points of view, appeared to be swayed by them, pretended that the things she was saying had never occurred to him before. She left his office believing it would be different, convinced that she had reached him with her thorough, logical arguments.

The effect was temporary. It probably lasted only until she departed. Her life continued as it had before. Her roommate's position as a restaurant assistant manager, for which her Art History degree had qualified her, began to look attractive in comparison to the labyrinth of Exetron, Inc. finances. The next Monday she resigned, laying her letter on Smolinski's desk and absorbing all his attempts to sway her without counter arguing. She agreed to finish out the week which, both she and Smolinski knew, meant that she would have to weather the Stu Pfeffer full court press.

The HR Director did not let the sun set on her resignation. By eleven thirty he was at her desk, inviting her to lunch. He enveloped her in his Nissan Maxima, opened the sun roof to permit a soothing breeze and drove her to an Indonesian restaurant that was the latest corporate rage. Perhaps Stu hoped the curry and onion would moisten his eyes, providing just enough sympathy to sway her to his opinion. Unlike Smolinski, he did not listen patiently to her litany. Instead he launched immediately into his defense, even ignoring his ringing cell phone. "A company doesn't have to make money to survive," he announced. "I know they teach it the standard way in college, but welcome to the wonderful world of venture cap. I've been here five years, and this company has never turned a profit, even in the 900 days."

"The 900 days?" Anna inquired.

"Phone sex," Stu nodded. "We would have made a lot of money if the FCC hadn't changed the rules. After 900 went belly up, we got into prepaid phone cards. Then the margins flattened out there," he shrugged, "and Internet happened."

"It doesn't sound like this company has any kind of game plan," Anna protested.

"We're real flexible," Pfeffer said, nodding his head the way a salesman does who wants one to agree with him. "And we're going to make it..."

"Stu, let me tell you a little something about the financial position of..."

Pfeffer held up one hand and put the other on his stomach. "Not while we're eating, please. Anna, take it from me. I began here five years ago as a phone sex operator. Now I'm HR Director making three times what I did then, and I've got options on twenty thousand shares."

"At what price?"

He hemmed. "Two. Two and a half."

"The stock's at..."

"Please. You're fresh out of school. What do you care what happens here, as long as you learn a few things? We'll give you a T-shirt. 'I Survived Exetron.'" He laughed.

She toyed with her chicken. It was one of those dishes that tasted incredible but was so hot that one had to muster up the courage to take another bite. Her water glass was nearly empty, and she coveted Stu's full glass. Apparently, he had some sort of internal fire extinguishing system.

"So you were a phone sex operator," she said.

"The best."

She smiled. "Who did you talk to? Women or men?"

"Women, of course. That was my clientele. Women who wanted to talk to a gentlemen. Do you know what I mean? Sex talk, but with a debonnaire flair."

"A debonnaire flair."

"Exactly. Like we use in New York. Debonnaire but a little risque."

"Risque. That's you."

"Hey. I was a professional. I did what I had to do to survive."

It was difficult for her to picture Stu Pfeffer talking sex to anyone. In spite of his northern bravado, an unmistakable bashfulness clung to his skin like perspiration. But if the purpose of lunch had been to take her mind off resigning, Stu's mission was accomplished. The peripatetic history of Exetron intrigued her. Had there really been banks of low paid part-timers talking dirty to anyone who called in? Had Stu Pfeffer, rising young executive with twenty thousand worthless stock options, really once plied the tawdry trade, speaking knowingly of bodily indiscretions with complete strangers?

When Stu deposited her back in the Finance dungeon, Anna immediately set out to find employees who may have dated back to that primordial day in Exetron's past, that era when one might stroll through the office and overhear, "I'm touching your Big Bad Daddy. Yes I am."

She soon learned that finding someone who went back that far into Exetron's history was a little like finding a genuine Indian on a Connecticut gambling reservation. The turnover rate at the company was so high that if Anna survived her 90 day probationary period, she would have considerable seniority. It seemed the only people who hailed from those freewheeling days were Stu Pfeffer and J. Mills Langston, the Chairman of the Board and sometime president of Exetron, Inc. Langston seemed an inappropriate person to approach about phone sex. Like many rich executives, he had a secretary whose working relationship with him had survived multiple business ventures and wives. At her desk Isabelle Dolfina was stoic and rude, but in the ladies' room, dabbing at her pancake makeup like a Venetian artist restoring a Da Vinci fresco, she was amenable to conversation. It was there that Anna hazarded to verify that Stu Pfeffer had indeed talked dirty for a living.

The crusty executive secretary laughed. "Stu? Imagine Stu Pfeffer talking about sex! Can you picture that?"

"Not really."

"That's because it's never happened. And certainly not for money. That young man started his career as a night-time telemarketer. As far as I know he never got near the 1-900 operation. Why, it was ten miles from here in another building. Phone sex." She guffawed and then, realizing that it was cracking her makeup, quickly regained her composure.

It was nine o'clock on Wednesday night, and Stu Pfeffer was still at his desk. In his waste basket were a couple of ravaged Chinese food containers still wafting up the aroma of sesame chicken. Outside of his window the Atlanta skyline dazzled the horizon. Stu leaned back in his chair, telephone to his ear, dialing and smiling to keep the good ship Exetron fully staffed with well meaning nincompoops. "You know," he told a candidate jaded by life in the bowels of a major multinational corporation and thus susceptible to the lure of the venture company. "Think of the Internet as the vast, undiscovered Americas, and this year as 1492. Columbus is calling, my friend. You can get on the boat or you can stay on shore and watch it sail away."

"Yeah. Okay. Sure, I'd like an interview."

"Tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning?"

Oh, he was on his game tonight, catching susceptible engineers with their bellies full of pork chops, if married, or frozen pizza, if single. The telephony engineer was the most elusive of prey. Courted by many and tending to be risk averse, it was sometimes difficult to motivate him to visit a venture cap company like Exetron. You had to stay up late to catch them. No half days for Stu Pfeffer. He alone would make his twenty thousand options worth something. He, Pfeffer, with the receiver glued to his ear, with his fingers calloused by speed dialing, would find the key pieces that would make the puzzle of Exetron....

His heroic musings which were usual for this time of night when his conscience spun with fatigue were broken by the telephone ringing. He took a breath and prepared to unleash the Stu Pfeffer charm on another candidate.

"Hello," said a breathy female voice he did not recognize.

"Yes. This is Stu Pfeffer."

"Is this 1-900-GET LAID?"

"Wha? Who? Oh. Anna?"

"I'm looking for some hot sex talk from a stud sex talker like you, baby. I need it real hot, but with a debonnaire flair. You know, kind of risque but classy."

"Oh," he laughed. "I didn't know what..."

"Stu?"

"What?"

"I'm not kidding. The other day at lunch. I got kinda hot thinking about you talking sex to all those women. I wanted to experience what they experienced."

"You'll have to dream about it, sweetheart," he boasted defensively. "Pros only do it for money. Besides, I'm out of practice."

"I don't believe that," she said. "I've heard you're a natural. And I am going to pay you."

"You can pay me by staying at your post, soldier."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about."

He paused and stared out the window at the crystalline night. He had run out of snappy things to say. He felt flushed, and his palm was sweating under the weight of the receiver. "What are you saying? You'll keep coming to work if I agree to...to sex..."

"To show me your debonnaire flair."

"We can't do that. We're coworkers. It would be inappropriate fraternization."

"You can cling to your HR doublespeak, Stu," she said, coming out of her breathy voice for the first time. "But it seems a small price to pay to avoid recruiting another accountant. It might even be fun."

"This is," and he paused to inhale, "harassment."

She cackled at the absurdity of that suggestion and hung up.

Anna sat cross legged on the sofa, holding her drying nails, which she had smeared with a clear nail hardener, out before her. Her roommate, the restaurant managing art historian, Belle Simpson, lay on the floor with a bowl of M&Ms. Her face glued to the television, she slowly popped the M&Ms into her mouth with a regularity that was perfectly rhythmic. They watched a nighttime melodrama about impossibly beautiful young people living a volatile life in suburban L.A. It was their ritual to watch this show on Belle's night off and intersperse its dramatic moments with conversation about their own unremarkable lives. Tonight's topic of conversation was Stu Pfeffer.

"He can't be a virgin," Belle said between candies. "Whoever heard of a twenty-eight-year-old male virgin?"

"I'm convinced of it," Anna said, watching another M&M disappear into Belle's mouth. "He has that look. You know the look."

"What look?"

"That pink-skinned, just out of the bath look. You know, the look of the overaged male virgin."

"Maybe he's gay."

"You say that about all the guys I like."

"Only because the guys you like tend to be weirdos who don't date much, if at all."

"Mark my words, Belle," said Anna, regarding the shining nails at the end of her short fingers. "Virgin. He's a virgin."

"Oh my god. Do you think she's getting back together with Blaine?" This comment was directed at the television screen.

"Maybe it's just an aftershock."