Now she sat in the auditorium with virtually the entire staff. At 8:20 a.m., Lor Lu entered and walked to the lectern, brisk and cheerful. She did not allow herself to be encouraged.
“Good morning,” he said. “None of you will be surprised at the reason for this meeting. It’s financial. We are among the more financially secure organizations in the world, but we are not immune to the worldwide Depression.”
Lee’s gut tightened.
“As you know, we are not self-supporting. We depend heavily on financial support from a small number of dedicated major contributors—’financial angels,’ so to speak. None of them are in imminent danger of going under, but they are all strongly impacted by the worsening Depression, and are unable to continue supporting us at the level to which we’re accustomed.
“Our financial operations are monitored, of course, by a review board within the Foundation, all of them graduates of the Millennium Procedures. It is they who provided Rudi and me with the basic data we used in reviewing our financial situation. He and I worked out our adjustments yesterday, and checked them with Dove before he left this morning.”
It seemed to Lee his eyes paused on her.
“No one is being RIF’d, but like most workers in the world who still have jobs, each of us will have his pay reduced, a few as much as fifty percent, some only twenty. Those at the top of the scale will receive the largest cuts. When you return to your desk, you’ll find an envelope with your name on it.”
He grinned then, taking Lee by surprise. “And that’s it. If you have questions, buzz me. I’ll be in my office till 10:30 a.m. Then I’m taking off for New Orleans.”
He left, and the staff followed, flowing out the door. Without any of the eddies and muted babble there’d have been at Mertens, Loftus, and Hurst, Lee thought. There, human vortices would have formed, carried slowly along by the current, murmuring speculations on who got what cuts, and whether in fact top management had been cut at all, or whether they’d voted themselves a bonus for trimming expenses.
Lee went quickly to her office, wondering if she’d been an exception, with a pink slip in her envelope. Intellectually she knew there wouldn’t be, but her guts did not believe her.
There was, she discovered, no pink slip. Her salary had been cut forty-five percent. She breathed a sigh of relief.
* * *
The girls came home from school in down coats, thick mittens, and furry earlapper caps—gear recommended by the school. Arriving pink-cheeked and happy, Raquel was exuberant in fact, full of the day. At afternoon recess, the supply room had issued red fiberglass snowshoes, and everyone who’d wanted to—which meant everyone—had gone outside and put them on. It wasn’t that fourteen inches of snow required snowshoes, but it had been fun! Mostly they’d played fox and geese on them, galloping and falling, and afternoon recess had lasted an hour, instead of the usual thirty minutes. Raquel, despite excellent coordination, had fallen “almost more than anyone,” she claimed, and enjoyed the experience hugely. “Mom, Dad,” she said, “I’m really glad we came here! You’re the best mom and dad in the world!” She distributed hugs. Becca had stood mostly observing, smiling indulgently. Now she too hugged her parents before shedding her boots.
* * *
After the girls’ nine o’clock bedtime, Lee and Ben talked about their day. Christmas was almost upon them, and she’d just had a pay cut of forty-five percent, he of thirty. But they had more money in Millennium’s credit union than they’d ever owned in their lives, and for the moment at least, Lee was not worried. Not even about Mark’s court action, which had been stalled by Millennium’s attorneys.
For Lee, that night, sex was a celebration, not therapy. When she and Ben were spent, they lay talking. “I’m surprised,” Lee said, “that I got cut almost the maximum. I can’t be that near the top of the pay scale.”
“Ah, but you are! Just ask your friendly family representative in Accounting. There is one level above you. That’s all.”
Her eyes widened in the darkness. “Ngunda and Lor Lu?”