Page 12 of Baby, It's Cod Outside
He only comes back to himself when he hears the voices leaking out through the open conference room door.
“...too many goddamn meetings, that’s the problem with this place,” Tom is saying, frustrated and clearly not trying to keep his voice down. “How the hell am I supposed to do my job if I can’t be on the floor? Then the kid steps in and ‘fixes’ it behind my back. It’s unprofessional. That’s my department. I should’ve been looped in.”
Kent’s reply is softer, a steady counterpoint to Tom’s tirade. “It got handled, Tom. That’s what matters.”
But Tom’s not in the mood to be placated. “It’s those idiots in packaging. How hard is it to read a scale? Are they checking everyone completed grade school during the hiring process?”
Kent spots Ben in the doorway and gives a tight wince. Tom’s complaint dies away under a forced cough.
Ben could say something.Shouldsay something. ‘Tom, if you’re having issues with our employees, in packaging or otherwise, there are proper channels to address it. We can speak to HR after this if you like.’His father would have said it and Tom would have withered.
But Ben isn’t his father. Not even close. He just crosses the room and takes his seat.
Tom narrows his eyes, like it’s Ben’s fault he got caught talking out of turn, but the other managers and supervisors start filtering in, cutting off whatever choice words he had in mind.
The next hour blurs as Ben runs through the agenda: overtime rosters, capital project updates, seasonal prep. His voice sounds steady. His body doesn’t feel like it belongs to him.
But no one in the room seems to notice the binder on the table, or the way his hand stays clenched around the corner of it. And when the formal topics wrap up, everyone looks eager to bolt. Phones come out, laptops snap shut.
Now or never.
Ben clears his throat. “I do have one more thing. I just…when I was reviewing the MarineSelect Waste Services paperwork, something caught my attention.”
Tom interrupts him with a loud snort. “This again? Jesus, it’s not that hard to understand. Production up, waste up.”
Ben clenches his jaw so hard it makes his molars hurt. “Right. But it’s not just about the volume. It’s... it’s thearrangement itself we need to re-evaluate.” He hates the quiet whine in his voice.
Kent, half-focused on a buzzing phone notification, cuts in indulgently. “Kid, this is a mile above the pay grade of everyone in this room.”
A few supervisors chuckle, a polite little ripple. The room slips through Ben’s fingers. Eyes glaze. Bodies angle away.
“Ben, I love your enthusiasm for this blue-sky stuff,” Kent says, nodding at the binder like it’s some idealistic vision board for greener suppliers, not a potential disaster. “But I’m already late for a call. Tell you what. How about you package your ideas into a quick proposal and we can slot it into next month’s strategy block. We’ll give it a full discussion, make sure it gets the focus it deserves, yeah?”
Kent’s tone is reasonable, supportive, kind even. A benevolent brush-off. And not privately, either. In front of everyone.
Tom scrapes his chair back, pointedly loud. “I gotta get to the floor. Some of us have actual work to do around here.”
Kent’s brow creases suddenly with irritation. “Tom. I think you need to watch your tone. Some of us are starting to get the impression that you think you are the only one who knows how to do their job around here. Son, I promise I wasn’t waiting a couple decades for you to show up to fix my shit for me. And I’d ask you to consider whose last name is on the fucking factory before you beak off next time. I’m pretty fucking sure it isn’t yours.”
The color in Tom’s face vacates instantly, and he doesn’t manage to speak before doing the same.
The flush flashes up Ben’s neck, burning hot. Everyone in this room saw another man fight his battle for him. He glances at Kent, who only gives a benign little nod, the meeting alreadydone in his mind. “We’ll circle back to your thing in the new year, alright?”
By then it’ll be way too late. He feels like the air has been sucked out of his lungs.
The room clears around Ben but he’s frozen in place, staring at his screen, stomach twisted like someone’s tied a dozen fisherman’s knots inside of him and pulled them all tight.
Part of him desperately wants to just shove the binder into a drawer and pretend none of this ever happened. But he can’t unsee it: his signature, his name, on a contract heknowshe didn’t sign.
So what the heck is he supposed to do now?
Ben drives, snow tunneling in the high beams, wipers scraping across the icy glass in juddering arcs. He tells himself that seeing MarineSelect’s facility in person will help. That it’ll make this all feel less terrifying.
It doesn’t.
The address in Somerville turns out to be a locked metal door in a crumbling industrial park, one dim light, two listing box trucks. Not a scale or safety placard in sight. No yard. No incinerator. Definitely no way a legitimate hazardous waste processing operation is being run out of this glorified broom closet.
He stands in the slush until his toes go numb, binder tucked under one arm, staring at the ugly gray door. What rattles Ben the most isn’t the fraud, it’s how easily it happened. How no alarms sounded, no questions were raised.
