Vainglorious
Author
Linda Eastman
Author Bio
Linda Eastman is a writer of contemporary fiction who primarily focuses on the personal and professional antics of characters found in urban workplaces. Vainglorious is her first novella, which is intended to form part of a series.
Description
Vainglorious tells the story of two consultants who are involved in an intimate relationship while working together at a Chicago consulting firm, and their dangerous co-dependence which binds them together. While they manipulate and plot their way to an empty existence, they torment collegues, undermine the firm’s culture, and indulge their pathological obsessions with wealth, material possessions, attention and odd rituals. Willow Warren, determined and ambitious, arrives in Chicago with a revamped life story and a plan. After landing a job at a prominent consulting firm working for Robin Miller, a senior (albeit, reviled) partner in the firm, she works her way into becoming his pet and girlfriend as a means to advancing her career. Willow is clever, and calculates to exploit all of Robin’s vulnerabilities to achieve her goals: wealth and prestige, as well as a large couture wardrobe. Along the way, she tortures her colleagues and indulges all of her personal wants and desires. She shuns relationships with her peers, treats clients poorly, backstabs Robin, lies regularly and consumes herself with achieving a partnership in the firm while doing as little work as possible. Likewise, Robin Miller, a delusional and amoral man who has secured a powerful position through political charades, manipulates Willow as a means to keep her attached. His life revolves around plotting and playing games, and hiding his insanity. He manifests quirks and disorders, blackmails his partners to get his own way and primarily functions as Willow’s agent in her ascension to greatness in the consulting world. While neither Willow nor Robin truly love or even like one another, they are deeply intertwined by their shared needs. In order to survive together, they slip into deeper and darker places. Nevertheless, their obsessions with money, control and status keep them going every single day, and as attached as paint on a post. Given the path that they have chosen to take, it is apparent that neither of them can survive without the other. Most people who have worked for any stretch of time know a Willow and a Robin, and understand the havoc that they wreck in any workplace. Their names are different, but they are the simply the senior executive with much undeserved power and his enterprising girlfriend who chose not to stand on her merit in advancing her career goals. They are the people who everyone in a workplace fears, obsesses over and is disgusted by. They are vainglorious and dangerous, but they are everywhere.
Book excerpt
Chapter 1 On a cold Chicago morning, a middle aged man and substantially younger woman walked with awkwardly linked arms towards the office building where they both worked. He was a short, thin and rather pasty man, with a mostly bald head that had turned red due to the subzero weather. She was tall, zaftig and carrying a black designer handbag that was almost the size of her companion. The fact that she was struggling along in six inch heels made him seem even smaller, and made it hard for him to keep his diminutive arm linked with her much larger one. As they got closer to their office building, they unlinked and slightly separated. Although their entire consulting firm, where they had worked together for years, knew about their intimate involvement, they maintained some semblance of professionalism because they were both partners in the firm. They entered the building and headed towards the elevator bank. Many of their colleagues were waiting for elevators, but the woman neither spoke to nor made eye contact with a single other person as she waited and then rode to their floor. Looking tired and devoid of any makeup, she maintained her usual petulant expression, and conveyed deliberate disgust with every other human being in her presence. She looked down and away, and played with the buttons on her oversized pea green couture coat. The man, by contrast, wore a cheery expression and was chatty, mostly because he was so proud to be in her company and equally due to his daily meds. He was also strangely proud to be carrying her fluffy pink tote bag filled with business papers, spare shoes and other personal items. In fact, he carted her wares each day and seemed to be only occasionally embarrassed about how silly he looked doing so. Upon arriving at their floor, they separated to their respective offices. He sat in the corner office and she was in the one next door. This made it particularly easy for him to spend a large portion of his work day bringing her treats and snacks since she virtually never left her seat, but needed to eat constantly due to a supposed endocrine disorder. She usually lifted herself up only to go to the ladies room – oddly, only once per day – perhaps due to the difficulty that she had walking on the stilt-like heels that she always wore. They shared a secretary which helped him to keep tabs on her when she became secretive about her whereabouts, as she periodically did. His concern in this regard was, nevertheless, completely unwarranted. When she went missing, it was almost always to get a manicure or to shop for hoards of expensive, yet unattractive clothes and shoes; she would never have considered stepping out on him because she was really dead inside. Speaking of this, the jury is still out on whether he had killed her or it was a suicide. And so, that morning began just like almost any other. She – Willow Warren – plopped herself into the chair that faced her oversized red lacquer desk. The desk was like a second home to her, covered with personal trinkets, random jewelry, pretty colored pencils, flowered tissues in a decorative box, numerous clocks, fashion magazines, stacks of promotional material about her and her career, and an unimpressive fruit basket that was sent to her each week by him – Robin Miller, senior partner. She took a small mirror from her desk drawer and admired her newest purchase of carnelian earrings which were stuck fiercely into her fleshy ear lobes. She snuck a bite of a glazed doughnut that had been waiting in her oversized purse, and begrudgingly turned on her computer to begin work. Then, just like almost every other morning, she called out for her secretary to enter her office immediately. “These are the stupidest people,” she shrieked in reference to two junior consultants who were working on research for an article that they were ghost writing for her. “I am not going to tolerate this bullshit from people who shouldn’t have graduated from high school. They did not follow my instructions again and I am sick of having to do all of the work. Get them in here.” With that, her terrified secretary scurried off to retrieve the condemned employees for their upcoming lashing. Eyes bulging, Willow turned back to her doughnut which she shoved down quickly since no one was looking. From that moment on, her foul mood was confirmed for the rest of the day. She would email compulsively, take a few calls from clients, do a bit of online shopping, have a meeting or two and make her one trip to the ladies’ room, but her mood was low and unpredictable. Her only saving grace was that she could self-medicate by abusing others. All throughout this episode, Robin Miller, senior partner, was oblivious, comfortably sitting in his cozy office chair and eating his glazed doughnut while chirping on the phone with one of his few remaining clients. He was also reading the news online and plotting, as usual. His newest plot, which was occupying a lot of his time, was to contrive a marketing trip which would really be a vacation with Willow. This way, the firm could pay for their vacation and he would not have to. Robin hated to spend money, loathed to part with anything that he could save in a bank or under his mattress. Luckily, he had a client in Arizona who owned a spa and resort so he could create a good ruse. He just needed to figure out how to get Willow to lose some weight. She had an unfortunate figure to begin with, and had gained a lot of weight lately. He did not want to be embarrassed by the sight of her in a bathing suit in front of his client. He reflected and made a mental note to bring a snack later that day to a pretty, young colleague who might be a good replacement for Willow in the future. He was sick of spending money on Willow, and sick of her sour attitude towards him. At the moment, however, Willow was Robin’s only ally at the firm. His other partners rarely even spoke to him and, truth be told, they all hated him – a fact which he knew well and fundamentally did not mind. Instead of attempting to mend fences with his peers, Robin spent inordinate amounts of time prowling the firm’s premises and stealing from conference rooms any food that was left over from meetings and client events. He would deliver these delicacies to Willow, as well as to his favorite female underlings. Of course, he would slip himself a snack or two whenever he located these treasures and would always eat his free treats first, before beginning on his delivery route. He figured that he did all of the hard work, locating and stealing the items, and therefore he deserved to have first pick on the bounty. That day progressed just as all days usually did for Willow and Robin. During the late afternoon, Robin was visited by Helen Taft, the firm’s chief administrative officer, with whom he maintained a mutual flirtation. The premise here was that the understated and plain Helen believed that Robin had a special affection for her. In a way, she was right. Helen controlled the purse strings at the firm, and Robin Miller, senior partner, loved anyone who could get him something for free, perks and financial resources, all in that order. After a pleasant exchange with Helen, he packed up to go home, retrieved Willow and headed towards his Lake Shore Drive apartment – carrying Willow’s pink bag and relinked with her, arm in arm. This is the story of Willow and Robin, and how they ended up this way. Author Website Best place to buy your book http://www.amazon.com/Vainglorious-Linda-Eastman-ebook/dp/B00KLP6NQ4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401433732&sr=1-1&keywords=vainglorious
