Clause 22

Fiction: A corporate executive breaks away from her shadowy employer.

Olivia clutched her keys as the car hit a minor pothole, her body tensing at the jolt.

“Sorry,” said the driver in a heavy accent, glancing into his rearview mirror with slate gray eyes.

“No, it’s fine,” said Olivia, reassuring herself as much as him, shoving her keys in her pocket alongside her phone.

She preferred humans to auto-drives, even if she rarely spoke to the drivers. There was something reassuring about having another human conveying her through the crush of the city, someone to trust in if things went sideways. It was the upcoming meeting putting her on edge—not the driving, not the pothole. Gazing out the window, Olivia saw the soft gray mist hanging low over the water. People walked their French Bulldogs and Bichon Frises along the bank in a leisurely way. Who were these people? Didn’t they work? Everything Olivia did was intense and focused, pushing from one appointment to the next. One crisis was crushed and another would rise inexorably like an ocean swell. Some days she thought she might drown, but she fought the current.

It was a familiar drive from her luxury riverside apartment to the sky-soaring concrete of Stahl-Barrons corporate HQ. Although she mostly worked remote, she had gone in once a week for the last twelve years. This would be her last visit, she mused, with the anxiety that precedes the relief of making a bold choice, of finding release from an erstwhile triumph that has grown stale.

“Stop for a latte?” asked the driver, slowing as he neared the popular coffeehouse on Lexington Avenue. 

“No, thank you,” said Olivia to the driver who remembered her and her preferences, but whose name she did not and probably would never know. 

Coffee could be savored tomorrow, in the midst of secretly packed moving boxes as she said goodbye to this life she’d lived for twelve years. Olivia remembered her first ride to Stahl-Barrons for her interview. She’d been straight out of Yale Law, the icing on her MIT degree. She remembered they’d sent a smooth and good looking young exec with the most elegant Hermes wristwatch to meet her at the curb. He had handed her out of the car and escorted her to the conference room on the 44th floor. She’d said yes, of course. She took the magnificent salary and the exquisite apartment with the river view, adamantly closing her ears to her friends’ misgivings about the corporation. They were jealous of her dazzling heights, afraid to ascend, she’d told herself… and assorted Midtown bartenders at closing time over the years.

“Stahl-Barrons,” announced the driver in his earthen, gravely voice, “Have a good day at work, miss.”

“I’m Olivia,” she said impulsively, as she prepared to exit the car. “What’s your name?”

“Igor,” he said with a nod. “It’s a pleasure.”

---

Olivia sat in the same conference room on the 44th floor, now inured to the dazzling cityscape view, to the Pininfarina chairs, even unimpressed with Erik Stahl himself, her boss’s boss and the founder’s grand-nephew. She met the older man’s gaze full on as she sat upright in the mesh-and-graphite chair dashed with Ferrari blue. She was wearing torn jeans and her MIT hoodie to convince herself of her nonchalance, to show them with sartorial punctuation that she was really going, that she didn’t care and wouldn’t play their game. Surprisingly, there was no resistance, little questioning, no counter-offer. The VP smiled benignly at her, and instructed Max of the Hermes Watch to bring her exit paperwork to sign.

“You’ve done well for us, Olivia. We consider you one of our best investments,” said Stahl. “I hope you feel you’ve been well treated in your time here.”

“Yes, no complaints, I just have a different path in mind,” she stammered, avoiding the elephant in the room—the massive rumored investigation into Stahl-Barrons for fraud, tax evasion and racketeering. She’d defended the corporation vehemently when her friend Lucy had questioned her last month, Lucy who lived with her mandolin-playing boyfriend in a shabby apartment in Queens and worked self-righteously for some woebegone non-profit that very likely had its own issues with mismanagement and poor transparency. But when she left Lucy-and-Mandolin-Man's run-down walk-up that smelled nostalgically of Simple Green and Ring Pops, Olivia had headed to the nearest corner dive, weepingly lamenting her life choices and singledom to the bartender. She’d passed out. Someone had given her a ride home. That night was Olivia’s breaking point, and it had led her here.

She stared at the sleek gold bezel, the cocoa leather wristband, the tiny dials and the little moon on the watch as Max set out the termination paperwork for her to sign. Beside it, he set a Montblanc pen, carefully positioned so it could not roll off the polished ebony table. She felt ill, panicked.

“Could I do Docusign?” she asked almost timidly, feeling like a schoolkid in her jeans and hoodie, instead of casually defiant as she’d planned.

“We prefer ink,” said Stahl decisively, as Max gently moved the pen closer to Olivia’s hand. The VP’s voice and the underling’s movements worked in synchronicity as though one being.

“And please remember to initial Clause 22, which we discussed when you joined us,” Stahl noted. “It reinforces the NDA. Standard procedure for someone with your high level of access, Olivia, when they decide to leave the company.”

“Is it safe?” she asked nervously, feeling smaller and more insignificant as she signed away this job, her source of her status, livelihood and confidence her whole adult life.

“Oh, it’s very safe,” said Max, almost whispering in her ear, with a reassuring smile and a silken voice. “One of your old professors at MIT developed it, Hasegawa. It’s surgically precise. You’ll keep all your long term memory… Blue Jay Orchards, the Sycamore Drive-In, your grandmother’s porch in Bethel… this is just to protect the company, and free you up to enjoy your next chapter with no worries.”

It felt strangely intrusive hearing this Stahl-Barrons yes-man talk about her hometown, her childhood. In her mind, that small town Connecticut life was a world away, untainted. She needed to go home, and to never hear these corporate voices again.

Olivia signed. No worries, Max had reassured her. Clause 22 is why they were letting her go so easily. It was good for everyone. No burden of guilt and anxiety for what she’d been party to, no worries for Stahl-Barrons about what she might say on a witness stand. With the memory wipe, they would both be free to move on.

She stood and nodded to Stahl, who was at the far side of the conference hall, then shook Max’s hand. He had a good, confident handshake, a winning smile. Still handsome twelve years later, she noted, with just a touch of gray in his neatly clipped sandy hair.

“Goodbye,” she said firmly, remembering the strength with which she’d intended to take on the morning. “We won’t meet again.”

---

One hand on the steering wheel, Olivia fiddled with the single button of her Givenchy blazer. It was a little dressy for Danbury, but she felt more comfortable presenting sharply for meetings. She sipped at the remnants of her morning coffee, feeling energized and ready for the interview. A new start, a new life. She tipped the driver handsomely and strode with confidence and hope into Four Seasons Mediterranean. 

She announced herself. “Olivia Lamb—”

“Welcome! Your party is seated,” said the host, cutting her off. He guided her to a discreet private table where her follow-up interview would be held. This was good. She felt at ease. They had come out to her home turf, more or less. She had the advantage.

She saw familiar faces at the table, ones she recognized from her first-round video interviews. There was the older woman, the older man, and the amiable younger man around her age.

“Olivia, welcome,” said Joan, also wearing a single-button blazer. Olivia was fitting right in. All the signs were positive.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have my resume, because—”

“Of course,” said the older man reassuringly. “Your previous employer sent us everything we needed to see. It’s not unheard of today to hire someone who has undergone the Hasegawa wash. There will be some limitations, and so your salary may be initially not up to the grade of your peers, but with diligence you can quickly gain ground.”

“Yes, of course,” she said eagerly, “thank you for considering me.”

“You have impressive credentials: MIT, Yale, and you did very well for your last employer. Let’s start with the calamari and the salmon carpaccio, shall we? This is not an interview, Ms. Lamb, we are offering you the position along with a relocation bonus, and you are needed in the office on Monday. Oh, and here are the keys to your apartment. It’s got a beautiful view,” he noted, sliding them across the table toward her.

Olivia was flushed with excitement and pride. She barely noticed one waiter setting out the water and pepper grinder, another pouring the wine. She stood up to shake hands, thankful, but the older executives were out of reach across the table. Instead, she glowingly shook the hand of the nice looking thirty-something man standing next to her.

“Thank you so much,” she said, with a glance at his beautiful Hermes watch. She picked up the keys to her new riverside apartment and clutched them happily. “Of course I’ll accept, and thank you Mr. Stahl and Ms. Barrons. I’ll do my best for you.”

“We know you will,” said Mr. Stahl, and raised a glass.

---

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