“I have big news,” Gloria told the Klatch. She spoke softly and leaned in low over the lunch table. “I signed up for Project Hydra.”

Her companions all responded noisily. “Ladies, ladies,” interrupted Alana, slapping her meaty palm on the table hard enough to rattle their trays. There was a reason her nickname at work was Alpha. “Let her talk. Okay, chicklet, spill.”

“Nothing to spill,” Gloria said. “I still don’t have a clue what the project’s all about.”

“Okayyyy,” said Alpha. “So why’d you sign up?”

Gloria shrugged and poked at the half-eaten salad on her plate. “It’s a high-profile project, right? And given the way things are going around here, I figure I could use a little insurance against getting my ass downsized out the door.”

“I hear that,” said Beth, Alpha’s lover, naturally known as Beta. “Maybe I’ll enroll too.”

“Over my dead body,” Alpha said. “You’re going nowhere, pumpkin.”

“That’s the problem,” Gloria responded. “We’re all of us going nowhere.”

“Tell us how you really feel.”

“Just being honest. We’re like the lobsters in the tank at Hunan Wok, waiting to be plucked out and boiled.”

Nobody had anything to say to that. It was no secret the company had brought in Kansas Consulting for a major cost-cutting and reorg; the only questions were how big the hit would be and when it would occur. And who would be deemed expendable.

“When do you get project details?” asked Eun-hee, in her usual clipped monotone. With her arctic stare and no-nonsense attitude she tended to alienate people. Even her smiles looked bitter, sarcastic.

“There’s a kickoff meeting on Thursday from two to three thirty,” Gloria said. “We’ll find out more then.”

Landing her palm on the table again, Alpha declared, “Emergency Klatch meeting Thursday at four,” and everyone agreed.

Throughout the entire conversation, Mia listened intently without contributing a word. The quietest member of the Klatch, she faded into the background at any group event and often wound up overlooked or ignored–which was how she liked it. Mia preferred to hover around the edges, to gather info and assess. It didn’t hurt that she was tiny as a kewpie doll. Alpha once joked that Mia could hide inside a box of spaghetti.

When they finished eating and the others rose to carry their trays to the conveyor for recycling, Mia lingered behind. “Let me get that,” she said, piling Eun-hee’s trash on her own tray. At four months pregnant, Eun-hee had quite recently developed a belly bulge and now walked with the backward-leaning gait of a woman with two hearts.

“So what do you think?” Mia asked her as they made their way slowly to the conveyor.

“I think I trust this company as far as I can fart a boiled egg.”

“Eww.”

“Sorry. It’s the estrogen talking. I think she’s nuts, that’s what I think. There’s something seriously wrong with any project they expect you to volunteer for without telling you what it’s all about.”

“Figure there’s something shady about it?” Mia placed the trays on the conveyor. On the other side of the window, a woman in a hairnet rapidly snatched them away for a cursory cleaning and restacking before the next shift of diners arrived.

“You kidding? Management here doesn’t know how to tell the truth. Ask them if it’s raining and they’ll convene a task force for six months to draft a hundred page legalese document saying maybe.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning of course there’s something shady about it,” Eun-hee said. “It’s what they do.”

*****

That afternoon Mia keep alert for an opportunity to sidle up and speak with Gloria, since they both worked as HR business partners reporting to the same boss. But they covered different divisions of the company and their paths didn’t cross that day. The next morning Mia made it a point to be in early and to accidentally bump into Gloria in the ladies room.

“So they’re really pushing this thing,” Mia said while washing her hands, nodding at a flyer for Project Hydra taped to the mirror.

Gloria shut off the faucet and dried her hands. “You heard what Harv said at the last team meeting. The company’s banking its future on this project.” Harv was their mutual boss, loud and aggressive and incapable of sharing the spotlight with anyone. Anything his direct reports accomplished was automatically credited solely to Harv.

“Did they say anything about additional money or anything?” Mia asked.

“Not directly. They hinted it would be good for our careers.”

“Doesn’t it seem kind of … creepy to you?”

Balling up the paper towel and dropping it in the basket, Gloria leaned her butt on the sink. “Wally’s been out of work for eighteen months and hasn’t landed a single interview that whole time. Job market’s dead. Too many people out of work, not enough jobs. We’re barely making ends meet. If there’s anything I can do to make sure the bills get paid, I’m going to damn well do it. No matter how creepy.”

The look in her eyes said she wasn’t happy about it, though.

*****

Thursday afternoon the Klatch convened at Alpha’s desk at four. Gloria was last to arrive, straight from the Project Hydra kickoff, which ran overtime. “I’m not allowed to talk about it,” she said, holding up her hands before they could ask. “They made us sign a contract with a nondisclosure clause.”

“Okay, understood, no problem, you can’t talk about it,” Alpha said. “So spill. What’s it all about?”

“I honestly don’t know. It’s a big deal, that’s for sure. Lots of money being poured into it, supposed to change the way we do business.”

“How?”

“You got me. It’s experimental, I know that. We have to move into dorms for the duration of the project.”

“What?” Eun-hee said, looking like she’d bitten a peach and tasted a lemon.

“You are definitely not signing up,” Alpha told Beta.

“How long is ‘the duration?’”

“No telling. It’s open-ended. That was one of the first things they said; if we couldn’t commit on that basis we should leave right now and we’d be taken off the volunteer list. They made it sound like that was committing career suicide. Nobody left the room.”

“So you’re still in?” Beta asked.

“I’m in for keeps. I need this job, and with my a-hole boss hating my guts I need all the security I can get.”

Harv doesn’t hate you, Mia thought. He simply doesn’t give a damn. She said nothing.

“Does Wally get to bunk at the dorm with you?”

“Nope. We wave goodbye to the outside world and walk in cold. No personal belongings, no communication with friends or family, no nothing.”

“Sounds lovely,” Beta said.

“I don’t know, I’m kind of considering it a vacation. Wally and I have been going through some rough spots lately. Maybe time apart will help.”

“All I can say is they better give you one hell of a bonus after this,” Alpha said.

Mia kept her mouth shut and watched Eun-hee’s jaw muscles clench and unclench.

***

Tell us: Would you sign up for a project you knew nothing about for some extra cash?