44. The Second Wave

44

The Second Wave

NICOLE LAMB

Monday morning, Nicole was back at work at Sidewinder, hanging out in the lab, swathed in white papery Tyvek like a mummy, and hiding her red eyes behind scratched plastic safety glasses.

Everyone had noticed her, said hello, hovered for a moment in case she wanted to process her emotions, and then went off to do their work.

Machines hummed and clanked, and keyboards clicked around the lab.

Arvind had double-swiveled at her when he’d shuffled in. “I thought you were out for the week.”

Oh, trust Arvind to poke the grumpy boss-beast.

She couldn’t be chipper, so she kept her voice level. “I changed my mind.”

Her words came out grim, dang it.

“Well, good,” Arvind said, “because I’ve got a problem with face deformation on the new women’s club, the Cascabel.”

The Cascabel driver was their new women’s low swing speed driver with a thinner face for more spring when the club hit the ball.

They were running out of good rattlesnake names for their clubs, however. The Cascabel was a South American rattlesnake, along with the Marajoan and the Rupunini.

Rupunini.

No matter that Nicole thought it was a cool name, marketing would not like that one.

Pickin’s for names were getting slim.

Within a few years, they were going to have to expand their nomenclature to the rest of the pit viper snakes. Nicole was looking forward to designing a driver that would be named the Copperhead. Excellent name.

“But the Cascabel isn’t due for production until next summer,” she said to Arvind, confused.

“Yeah, but I’ve got some data that calls into question whether we should be using our usual glue formulation to attach the driver’s face to the body of the club. The face must be thin to get that bounce at low speeds. The failure rate is too high.”

Changing glue formulations from their standard recipe would add months and millions of dollars to the club’s development. “Oh, no. Let me see.”

Every phone and computer in the lab simultaneously beeped or chimed in a flurry of delivered emails like they were living inside a pinball machine.

Everyone looked up, worried eyes meeting through plexiglass visors or goggles before reaching for their devices.

Nicole’s phone screen opened to her glove-thumbed passcode, and a new email at the top of her inbox from [email protected].

The subject line read, October Layoffs.

Way to break it gently, buddy. Could that silent investor be any more callous? No wonder no one spoke his name.

As she read the email about the impending second wave of layoffs at Sidewinder, her trembling turned to anger.

Twenty-five percent cuts this time, which meant two or three more of her people would be gone.

More pings chimed through the lab.

No more emails showed in Nicole’s inbox. “Who got the second email?” Nicole asked the room.

“I did,” Selma said, dark eyes narrowed behind her round glasses and visor.

“Who else?”

Arvind raised his eyes from his phone. “Me.”

Bobert, the guy who calibrated all their equipment so that it worked, raised a blue-gloved hand.

This was insane. These cuts would make it impossible to do her job.

Last Chance was cutting off the feet and wings of the goose that laid the golden eggs.

“We’re not taking this lying down,” Nicole said.

The white-clad people turned toward her, facing her with their visors and safety glasses surrounded by their clean suits.

“Lab work is canceled for today,” she announced. “I have the boxes of cards in my office. Only eighty-five people are left in this company, and the Last Chance management is offsite. We can walk around the offices and do this out in the open.”

The lab techs were swiveling to look at each other, to gauge the reaction of the herd for flight or fight.

“The whole sales team is at the big golf show in New York,” Selma said.

“Meghan and Morgan can join when they get back. Ben was wobbly anyway.”

And Kingston Moore could take a long walk off a short roof of a New York skyscraper for all she cared.

Really.

“We only need thirty percent of the eight-five employees to sign to be recognized, which is twenty-six people,” Nicole said. “The more we get, the better it looks, though. Let’s degarb and get those signatures. Let’s go.”

After they’d all stripped off their rustling paper over-suits in the changing room and the others had marched off to her office to get the cards, Arvind whispered to her, “I was worried today might be your last day.”

“Those venture capitalist jerks can’t lay me off,” she said. “I would never answer another question about the dev projects, and then they’d be screwed.”

“I was worried you were going to resign because of—you came back early from your—paid time off.”

Yeah, Arvind was sharp. “Yeah, well, maybe that would have happened, but not now. I’m going to stay right the hell here and fight these jerks.”

“Ooo,” Arvind said. “You said hell.”

“Yeah.” Nicole grinned at him as she fluffed her hood-flattened hair and re-slicked it back into a ponytail. “I did.”

Arvind glanced at his phone again. He was degarbed, so Nicole could see a quizzical frown dip his eyebrows. “That’s strange.”

“What?”

He showed her the second email.