Lou Standifer, President. The man beamed at his own name on the glass panel in his office door. He’d paid someone five-hundred bucks to hand-paint it on there like you’d see in old detective films. A ‘business expense’, he thought for about the thousandth time since he’d had his assistant, or ‘his girl’, as he liked to refer to her, call around to find the painter. He was specific about it, too, telling her, “I don’t want any artsy-fartsy bullshit, get someone who makes signs for a living.”

Lou had ‘founded’ this non-profit with his friend, Shaun. Not really a friend, despite what Shaun thought. Lou had his own mission – get money and get seen. He never made it as a singer. Never even recorded an album, he told Shaun, lamenting one day about lost dreams. Shaun had an idea for an organization that connected autistic kids and children with other disabilities with service-animals-in-training. Between a slew of local investors and a grant from the city, they’d raised ten-million dollars for this project. Ten-fucking-million, Lou thought, dreaming of what he would be able to buy with all that dough. A new ‘company’ BMW or Porsche SUV. And some ‘work clothes’ from the Men’s Warehouse. And a new pair of shoes for every day of the month.

Shaun’s eagerness to get to work, to start hiring (and paying) trainers got on Lou’s nerves. “We need to present a good image first,” Lou would remind him. “Make people think we’re legit.” Think we’re legit. That’s what he meant, too. There was no need to truly be legit so long as you portrayed the image of legitness. Shaun had fought against expensive sofas and real-wood desks. Thousand-dollar office chairs, the eighteen-camera security system. Even putting real art on the walls – that is, not prints – was an unnecessary luxury, he’d say. Lou knew that Shaun was a people-pleaser. It didn’t take much hammering on the issue before Shaun would give up and give in. His desire to work overcame his desire to argue and Lou intended to take full advantage of that.

“My brother,” Lou had noticed that people took to him better when he called them some familiar term of endearment. When he used this soft, pompous tone. “We have ten million. What’s twenty or thirty grand? Nothing. But think about it, some investor comes in here and they see IKEA furniture and motivational posters on the wall. What are they going to think? They’ll probably think that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing. There goes our next ten mil.” Dichotomy worked best in these situations. Shaun was smart enough to see through it, but not assertive, nor dense enough to try to explain the middle-ground in that scenario to someone who was pretending not to get it. Someone who argued in hyperbole. Not that Shaun and Lou hadn’t had “deep” conversations before. Shaun liked to wax philosophical and Lou liked to find ammo for subtly manipulating people later.

Once they were all ‘settled in’, as far as Lou was concerned, he would start his job. He had the easiest job in the company, which was the way he liked it. Shaun did all of the logistical work, the running of the company. Lou was supposed to be the ‘face’ of the company. He was supposed to be making promo materials for the company and connecting with people in the industry online, but that kind of thing bored him. Lou would prefer to go out for drinks with investors and clients. He liked to show off his collection of Stacy Adams oxfords and wingtips and spring for expensive bottles of aged scotch, even though he hated the taste. It did taste slightly better when coming out of the expense account, though. Fuck the straight-to-business approach. The best deals were made once he’d gotten someone good and sloshed first. When their decision-making capacity was at the lowest. That’s when he’d bring out the contracts.

Shannon, Lou’s portly wife, a propane tank on toothpicks, spent most mornings milling around the black-and-white, contrived-minimalist, six-room office suite that was situated in a posh, rent-by-the-month edifice on the white-flight side of town. They’d recently converted to digital signboards in the lobby and by the elevator on each floor. Too hard to keep up with the ever-changing rosters of this tech startup or that crypto-trader. Aside from Shaun, Shannon was the only one who ever did anything in line with the company’s mission. It was work that Lou’s ‘girl’, his assistant, if you will, should have been doing. Responding to Lou’s emails, making calls, scheduling appointments.

After going to a nearby overpriced, don’t-call-us-fast-food chain, Shannon would sit at the desk, across from Lou, and fill him in on any important interactions that she’d had on his behalf. Anything he might need to know about if they came up in conversation later. Lou grunted in response to each item as he shoveled a salad, slathered in shredded cheddar cheese, bacon crumbles, and ranch dressing into his mouth. He didn’t bother trying to remember any of this. He’d just ask her later, or pretend that he knew what the person was talking about. That’s what he usually did. He’d only ever been called out on it once.

This was part of the daily routine. She talked, he ate. He liked to have a routine, even if it was the couple of hours he got to spend each morning at his sprawling rosewood desk, scrolling Facebook and 4chan, while chugging down his venti caramel frap, extra whip, followed by a one-liter bottle of Diet Coke. The mini-fridge in his office was crammed full of them. Another business expense.

After lunch, Shannon would leave to pick up her son, Lou’s step-son, Jaxxson, from school. Jaxxson was visually-impaired and autistic. He was the catalyst for Lou to meet Shaun. It was how Lou met a lot of people. Compassionate people. The kind who wanted to make a difference. The kind who Lou had always managed to coast on the coattails of. Shaun had just finished training his first proof-of-concept companion. She wasn’t a guide-dog for the blind, but did a variety of services for people with comorbid behavioral conditions. Lou liked to use that word. Mostly because Shaun hated it – and it was one of the few things that would bait him into an argument. Aside from regular obedience, Shaun’s dog could fetch meds, do seizure support, lay on the handler to offer anxiety compression, gently bite the arm to help with PTSD and dissociation, maintain social boundaries on behalf of her handler. She also had some police-style K9 training, she could attack on command or even disarm a weapon from an assailant. Shaun maintained that this wasn’t something he had done for practical purposes. Tsebaj had a non-stop play-drive, so he did it to help her get out her zoomies. They also practiced jumping hurdles and other agility events when the weather was nice.

Lou had been looking for a way to get a service animal “donated” to Jaxxson. His plan was to write it off as if he’d paid for it himself, then sell the mongrel a few months later for cash and write the creature off a second time as a loss. Shaun was trying to find support for his new training program, certain it would be successful on rescues just as well as a purebred goldendoodle. After all, Tsebaj was a rescue mix. Almost everyone Shaun had ever lived with were of the Heinz-57 variety. The plan for “Psychiatric Therapy Service Dogs”, the non-profit, would be to simultaneously rescue unwanted animals and provide a valuable service to struggling young people. None of this twenty-grand for a purebred-a-doodle. That wasn’t accessible to the people who needed it most. Once the training regimen had been worked out, all Shaun had to do was find some trainers and administrative people to make it happen. Lou could see immediately that this idea had the potential for a profusion of grants, tax-deductions, and donations.

Shaun had expressed an open distaste for working booths at community events, going to meetings, generally interacting with the public-at-large in that sense. A demonstration with Tsebaj now and again was fine, but they had videos online that showed each of her abilities. Shaun even shared in these recordings how he trained each command. Anyone could do it at home with their own critters (fur or skin) if they had the patience and consistency. That’s what people don’t have, which is probably why he didn’t like working with them. No, a few qualified trainers and some general staff was enough human interaction for him.

Part of Lou’s regular routine, after his wife left to get ‘their’ son, was to have Danielle, his assistant – some roly-poly little batfaced girl – a nineteen-year-old version of Shannon, come into his office to clean the mess from his lunch. She’d then close the aspenwood vertical blinds and climb under his desk. Lou would undo his distressed snakeskin belt, letting his hairy, distended belly hang into his lap. He’d search ‘BRCC’ or ‘DVDAO’ or ‘hairless teens’ on Porntube and lean back in his overstuffed leather ‘executive’ desk chair while she would spend the next fifteen or twenty minutes servicing him.

The hi-res security system and dedicated servers that Lou had insisted on buying during his inaugural shopping spree would end up being his undoing, in part. The problem with having all of this equipment is, if you don’t know how to use it better than everyone else who has access, they’ll be able to see your every move. Every email. Every shady liaison. In this case, Lou was about as tech-savvy as a one-legged porcupine. That’s the problem with having a man behind the curtain. They can make the Oz great and powerful, but they also have the ability to take it away. To reveal the man pulling the levers and turning the knobs.

Danielle would finish her job, then open the blinds. Each time, she would come out of the office backwards, pretending to write on a yellow legal pad and saying, “Yes, Mr. Standifer,” or, “I’ll get right on that, sir.” Then she would go back to her desk near the entrance of their suite and proceed to scroll Pinterest or Instagram for the rest of the day while the emails piled up for Shannon to take care of the next morning.

In the afternoon, Lou would hang around the cocktail bars in the recently gentrified midtown neighborhood. This was where all the big players hung out. City council members, car dealership owners, real-estate agents. The bars sucked, but he had to chase the cash.

The neighborhood was seated on the demarcation between haves and have-nots. The line that a homeless person or drug addict or psychiatric-episode sufferer should only dare cross if they’d like to have a ‘friendly’ interaction with the local police. There were hip music clubs south of here, in the neighborhoods where the cops and well-heeled drove the city’s destitute and unpalatable. He could find an open-mic night or cover band that might let him sit in for a few. Instead, he sat around tiny tables with paunchy old men, taking turns buying rounds.

Shaun was starting to get sick of Lou. He was burning through their capital on frivolous material items. It had been months since they’d moved into the completely unnecessary office space – all of the work could be done from home or on the road – and Lou hadn’t made a single useful connection or contributed any content for their website and advertising projects. He’d take his friends out for steaks and whiskey on the company dime, then would act surprised and disappointed when their investment ‘fell through’.

It only took a couple of clicks for Shaun to switch his browser window over to the security platform. He never used it – didn’t like to spy on his staff – but in this case, he had to get some solid evidence. To a flash drive, and then another, he copied hours of footage, hundreds of emails, thousands of lurid texts. Lou had set his iPhone to sync with his desktop computer. Possibly the one thing he was able to use a computer for besides his regular social media channels. They were all in the server, too, Lou’s 4chan posts and alternate Facebook account. Shaun didn’t bother with those, he wouldn’t be needing them for his plan.

When business hours officially ended, and everyone had left for the weekend, Shaun would put the first part of his impromptu Ocean’s One mission into action. It was the norm for him to be the first one at work in the morning and the last one to leave the office, so no suspicion was aroused when he sat at his desk that Friday night, furiously typing and clicking away in the otherwise-darkened bank of glass cells that surrounded their ‘conference room’. The last employee said, “Goodnight, Shaun,” into his doorway as she headed to the two-inch-thick glass doors with polished stainless-steel handles that marked the entrance to the rented suite.

On another duo of flash drives, Shaun copied all of the essential business documents, the designs and licenses, Lou’s version of ‘the books’. These, he put in his pocket, exchanging them for the otherwise identical pair. With the videos that he’d saved earlier, he created a picture-in-picture highlight reel of Lou and Danielle in the office, blinds closed. In the other picture, the one that’s in the first picture, Shaun put an over-the-shoulder shot of Lou’s desk and computer screen. Lou had insisted he have two cameras in his office to keep an eye on his curio cabinets of autographed footballs and baseballs. His collections of vintage rock’n’roll memorabilia. Broken dreams that he lived vicariously through, Shaun imagined. His sporting career had been cut short with a back or a knee injury, he claimed. It changed based on the situation. That was when he took up singing. Granted, he was ‘that guy’ at karaoke night who blew everyone out of the water. But when it came to being able to make it as a singer with a band, he’d failed time and again. None of the memorabilia in Lou’s office was anything of his own. Nothing that he’d created or accomplished, that is. Gold records from his favorite bands. A Heisman trophy. Every square-inch of wall-space filled with conversation pieces and consumerist glory. A stark contrast to Shaun’s office, which, aside from a few pieces of art on the wall to match the aesthetic of the suite, contained a U-shaped sit-stand desk bearing four displays that he’d brought from home. In the alcove of the pod was a single gaming chair. There was one other, moderately comfortable, but not stay-all-day comfortable, green-cotton chair on the outside of the only side of the desk that wasn’t burdened with monitors and peripherals and dozens of multi-colored sticky notes. He’d put a couple of his own memorabilia items up on the wall behind him. A magazine article about a gallery opening, a couple of 6”x9” prints of his own work that he’d sold or donated the originals of, autographed 8×10 glossies that he’d got when he met Tommy Wiseau and Pete Best. Shaun was never a starfucker, nor paid much attention to celebrity, but in both of these cases, they were there, signing at a convention that he was also appearing at, so he figured, why not? Pete wasn’t interested in swapping merch, saying he had no idea who Shaun was and calling him a “chocker”, whatever that meant.

Now that the office was abandoned and Shaun had the data he needed, he rounded the superfluous eighteen-seat table in the center of the room and walked to Lou’s office. He wasn’t worried about being caught. The security system had remote door-locks that he was able to activate from the same console that he’d copied the videos from. The same system that was, for the moment, not writing to the cloud or server drives.

In the bottom drawer of Lou’s desk, next to a mostly-empty, delftware-looking bottle of Clase Azul Añejo, was the bottle of bacon-flavored lube that Danielle hated so much. Lou said it “brings out” his natural aromas, according to the video. The drawer above was full of ketchup and mayonnaise packets. Kraft and Hidden Valley. Buried in the sea of oils and vinegars was the tiny bottle that had been designed to look like radioactive waste that Shaun had been searching for. The rear of the black-and-yellow pill bottle of Mad Dog 357 read:

I agree, as indicated by my opening this bottle, as follows in connection with my purchase of this product:

1. Due to the extreme hot nature of this product, this product shall be used as a food additive. This product can cause serious injury if directly consumed, ingested or applied to the body.
2. Due to the extreme hot nature of this product, this product shall be used with extreme care in very small amounts only.
3. This product is to be used at my own risk, and I fully understand the potential danger if used or handled improperly.
4. If I give this product as a gift, I will make the recipient fully aware of the potential danger if used or handled improperly.
5. I hereby disclaim, release and relinquish any and all claims, actions and lawsuits that I, or any of my dependents, heirs, family members or legal representatives, may have against any party relating to any damage or injury that may Result, or is alleged to have resulted, from the use, consumption, ingestion, contact or other use of or from the product.
6. I am not inebriated or otherwise not of a sound mind, and I am fully able to make a sound decision about the purchase of this product.

Shaun alleviated the hot sauce of a few drops, adding them to the bacon lube. Not enough to change the taste too much. Who knows, maybe it would bring out Lou’s natural aromas better. He gave the transparent anal-torpedo tube of flavored water and glycerin a few vigorous shakes and returned it to the drawer, careful to put it, and the hot sauce, back in the exact positions he took them from. Not like Lou would notice. If it were his desk, Shaun would notice. But if it were his desk, it wouldn’t be full of condiments and pork-flavored cock-grease.

Back at his own desk, Shaun typed out an email and scheduled it to send at 3:18 am on Tuesday:

“D– You’re great and all, but S is getting suspicious. We’d better cool it for a while. I swear, once this company takes off, I’ll dump her and marry you like I promised. In the meantime, keep your distance, okay? PS – I might have herpes again or something.”

Most Mondays, Lou would want anal with his caramel frap. That was the day that his wife volunteered at Jaxxson’s school. After all weekend with Shannon, he’d tell Danielle as she wiped barbecue sauce or macaroni salad from the polished wood around his keyboard, he needed a real release. He wouldn’t bother to wash up before his post-lunch fellatio. If she was lucky, he’d let her wipe him down with one of the organic, unscented baby-wipes she kept in her desk. In that way, the bacon flavor had to be at least a scintilla of an improvement.

At 7:15 am that same morning, two other emails would go out:

“Shan, Shaun says something is up with the servers, so don’t worry about coming in today, k? Love you xoxox.” It was one thing to tear Lou down. Shannon would face enough collateral damage as it was, no need to subject her to any additional humiliation.

And, “Re: [No Subject]

“What do you mean again? I was waiting to tell you, but I’m pregnant and I don’t want our baby to come out with herpes sores all over its mouth. I’m going to Planned Parenthood this morning to get tested. I’ll be in after however long it takes, then we’re going to figure out how you’re going to deal with this.”

Next, Shaun hid his crudely-edited home movies in a folder buried eight layers into the Program Files directory of each computer on the network. They’re named jspqnyt_dmd.tmp, but really they’re mp4 files. Shaun typed up a crude script to rename the file to Lou-and-Dani.mp4 and move it to the desktop of every console at a designated time. 2:55 pm, Tuesday. An extra buffer in case Shannon brought lunch that day. Shaun wanted to make sure she was nowhere near this place when his objective began to come to fruition.

After formatting and shutting down his computer, Shaun stacked his collection of framed photos and painting reproductions atop one another and turned off the lights. In the darkness, he used his key to unlatch one side of the hefty glass doors. The electronic sensors clicked and hummed – the cycle of the digital security cameras and their night-vision, as they came invisibly to life to capture the events happening in their sensor paths. Silhouetted by the light of the community hallway, a light that was never turned off, Shaun locked the door behind him. When the sensors had stopped their chorus, he pressed hard against one side of the key to break it off in the lock.