alright, umm…there was a problem, that’s what had started all this, i mean, originally, started it all in motion…a problem at work. we’d been taken over recently, i mean, no big deal in theory, happened all the time during the 80s, somebody else takes over, you lose a few of the stragglers, guys who couldn’t keep up…and i do mean “guys” as in everybody, all people here, because it was usually women at that point, not always, but a lot of the time…takeovers were an excellent way to get things back in order, and that’s not just me talking, you know…there’s definitely an order to things in business, and the old boys at the top, the guys you never even see, just their pictures in the hallway…they like things the way they’ve always been. so that’s when a bunch of these women with their m.b.a.s and affirmative action nonsense would get the boot. nothing personal about it, at least i never felt there was…just getting everything spinning back the way it was supposed to be. (BEAT) but not this time. no, this time it was gonna happen, and nobody could tell which way things would end up. everybody at my level; that mid-management level of things…was pretty vulnerable and it came down that we could count on four of us from the salt lake office being let go—that’s where i worked, commuted in from orem every day because of the standard of living that area afforded us—and it’d just be up to fate as to who got the axe. another cliche, right? yeah, well, i’m full of ‘em. or it, full of it, one of the two…can’t be sure anymore. (BEAT) so, that was the story, four of us were going to go, three of which i and everyone else had a pretty good idea of, three that should’ve gone a long time ago, but that last spot…that was the one. the tough call. there was me, who’d been steady and strong and average, you know, just average or slightly above, someone that they could count on, good sense of humor and everything for the past seven years, well liked and i liked everyone. or, most everyone, there was this woman, a few years younger than me and had come in during a wave of new hires about four years back…just plain vicious, i mean, talk about clichés and all that, she was a walking one…the business suit and blunt cut hair thing going, can’t remember ever even seeing her smile, you know what i’m saying… but she knew her stuff, i knew it, we all did, and so did she and she reveled in it. the sales, the numbers, the whole game. we’d gotten off badly…actually, i’d made a mistake once, a board meeting where i’d grouped her in with a “you guys oughta…” meaning that side of the table and she called me out on it…first meeting, or maybe the second, she’d been to and she nails me out loud about my attitude, my limited “chauvinist lexicon” and all this other, just, crap that she fired off. walked out of the room in silence and me and some of the other guys laughed it off over lunch, but i caught one or two of the other women smiling to themselves as the meeting broke up. just this slight thing, but i caught it…anyway, i always felt one step behind her after that, like she made it her job to one up me from that moment on… (BEAT) but she was one. me, and her, because of the short time she’d been there, and a couple other folks that had about the same seniority that i did…and that’s what hung over our heads, each of us, day after day as we’d go into work. it was coming, we knew that, it was going to happen and all we could do was look at each other as we sat there waiting…