Page 11 of Marcellus: House of Drakos

The stairwell door flew open and the personal valet to the lord of the manor ran down those stairs so fast he nearly fell twice. When he reached the bottom stair, he flung open the door and hurried up to Bernard Bertrand, the manager of the estate of Marcellus Drakos and the head of household.

Bernard sat at the table in the servants’ quarters, along with his employees, and sipped his morning coffee and ate his baguette.

As the only Frenchman of African heritage on staff, early on he had to terminate many servants who questioned his authority.

But after twenty years on the job with unquestioned authority, he no longer had that issue.

Other than Mr. Drakos himself, Bernard was the most respected man on the estate.

The valet knew not to speak out of turn, there were rules to domestic service in France, so he stood by the chair of his boss and waited to be recognized. But his heart was pounding and he could hardly wait to tell the news.

When Bernard finally looked his way, he blurted it out. “There’s been another crash, sir,” he said so fast that his tongue was almost flipping over his words.

Bernard and every servant at that table were stunned. “Another one?” asked the chef.

“Any fatalities?” asked a maid.

“Everybody on board is dead,” the valet said. “Over two hundred people.”

Audible gasps were heard in the room. “Good Lord,” said Bernard.

Catalina Habershem, the housekeeping supervisor, quickly grabbed the remote and turned on the television. She had to flip through frivolous channels to get to the news:

“. . . has endured numerous crashes over the last few months. A total of seven in all. Although the previous crashes had a combined total of ten fatalities from the same model Drakos 903sa, the aircraft maker was heavily criticized for not grounding that model sooner than it finally did. But this was the first airliner to crash, a D-940, one of their largest jets. And unlike the other crashes and near-misses the aircraft maker had endured over the past few months, this crash claimed the lives of all two-hundred-and-seventeen passengers and crew onboard. There were no survivors. The NTSB was on the scene last night, and are continuing their efforts this morning. The head of the FCC, who is scheduled to hold a press conference later today, has already said that the frequency of these incidences were troubling. Drakos Aeronautics nor their Chairman and Founder, Marcellus Drakos, have had any comment at this time. After a stellar history of safety that Boeing and Airbus envied, something is going horribly wrong with the third-largest aircraft maker’s engines. And nobody’s saying what or even why.”

Then the bell rang. When they all looked and saw it was coming from the boss’s bedroom, Bernard jumped to his feet. “Turn it off,” he ordered.

“It’s strange though,” said Miss Habershem. “No safety concerns for years, and now every week there’s a crash or a near-crash? I’m with that reporter. Something’s wrong over there.”

“I don’t care who you’re with,” Bernard said firmly. “Turn it off.”

“Yes sir.” Miss Habershem didn’t hesitate. She quickly turned the television off.

“Prepare his breakfast,” Bernard ordered the chef.

“Yes sir.” The chef jumped up too.

“Come with me,” he ordered the valet as he began walking away. “No comment is the order of the day should any news person approach you,” he said as he walked. Then he glanced back at his staff. “Understood?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Bertrand,” they all said in various iterations. Another requirement of the job: fluent English, although the boss could speak fluent French. But English was his preference.

Bernard and the valet hopped onto the elevator and hurried to the top floor.

“Prepare his bath,” Bernard said to the valet as the elevator door opened. “Run the last hot when he enters.”

“Yes sir,” the valet said as the two men parted. The valet quietly opened the door to the master bathroom from the hallway so as not to disturb the boss. Bernard walked around to the double door entrance into the master bedroom.

Seated on the settee outside of the bedroom doors was a beautiful young lady that had obviously spent the night.

Just like all the others who had come and gone, she too had regret and disappointment on her face.

As if she thought spending the night with Marcellus Drakos was going to be her ticket out.

Especially when he singled her out and took her home with him.

But instead it was a ticket just like all the tickets that the other pretty ladies had cashed in: A ticket to a one-night stand that would never be repeated.

A ticket that didn’t even satisfy the man if her expression was to be believed. A ticket to nowhere.

He'd picked her up at an island party no doubt. Another fresh-face twenty-something with the body type the boss liked.

Bernard, like all the other times, escorted the young woman onto the elevator and then out of the home from a side exit.

A car was waiting to transport her away from the estate.

Bernard pulled out an envelope filled with cash and handed it to her by order of the boss, as was his standing order.

And that particular woman, just like all the other women before her, accepted the cash.

They never refused it. They never came into the house of Marcellus Drakos as a whore, but they always left as one.

Bernard felt bad for those young ladies who were too full of themselves and foolish to understand how defining a moment that would be for them: To accept cash for sex. Easy money that many of them would try to replicate with other men.

But he felt bad for the boss too, who had been used and abused by women for so long that he now preferred to pay them for one-night stands rather than suffer the indignity of pretending that they wanted him. He knew what they wanted, and that was why, every morning after, he gave it to them.

Once the young lady got into the backseat of the car and the car drove away, Bernard made his way back upstairs to the master bedroom. He knocked first and then slowly opened the doors.

The boss was in his bathrobe roaming around his room yelling into his cell phone.

Although the phone was on Speaker and Bernard could hear every word, he knew to wait as if he were as lifeless as the furniture until the boss was ready to acknowledge his presence.

In the world of domestic service, the staff heard everything, and nothing at all.

But Marcellus could be so salty in his English language that it was most difficult for any of the staff to not hear him. Especially when he was on the line with one of his children, whom he entrusted to run his massive corporation.

“Your ass told me you had it under control,” he yelled into his phone. “Didn’t you tell me that?”

“We do have it under control.” Bernard recognized that voice as his oldest son Olivier, his CEO. “Once we grounded 903 we’ve been doing everything we possibly can to keep it under control.”

“We went two weeks with no problems,” said Marcellus.

“I thought we had it resolved. We isolated the issue and had it resolved. Now just like that one of my biggest planes fall out of the sky killing every soul onboard. And you have the nerve to tell me you don’t even know if it’s the same malfunction as the other crashes? Are you fucking kidding me!”

“That’s because it wasn’t like the other crashes,” said Olivier. “The m.o. is not the same.”

“Has the black box been recovered?”

“If it has the NTSB isn’t saying yet. I doubt it,” Olivier added.

Marcellus leaned his head back. Then he yelled into his phone once again. “By the time I get to Chicago you’d better have answers for me, Ollie. And I don’t mean this bullshit you’re telling me now. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir,” his son said.

“Motherfuck!” Marcellus yelled and then threw his phone violently across the room. Bernard had to ease his head slightly over to avoid getting hit. Then he stood back upright. “You rang, sir?”

Marcellus leaned his head back again and placed both hands on his hips.

It had been another night of partying. This time in Monaco.

Deciding against going home alone, he issued an invitation to yet another young woman eager to accompany him for the remainder of the night.

Which led to yet another let down. She, nor any of the other ladies before her, had been able to satisfy him for years.

He wondered why he kept going through the motions of it when he didn’t even like it anymore.

He didn’t want them, and they just wanted to use him. What was the point?

Loneliness was part of the point. He hated sleeping alone.

Didn’t like living alone either, but that couldn’t be helped.

No way was he ever giving any of those girls any hint of a chance beyond that one night in bed with him unless she was the woman he’d been looking for all of his adult life and never found.

Unless she was so remarkable that she was amazing.

Only one woman had ever come close to anything near it, and she turned out to be a disappointment too. He’d given up on ever finding that one true lady ever since.

Bernard continued to stand in the bedroom that reeked of a mixture of sexual encounter, perfume, and cologne.

It was a combination Bernard was accustomed to.

But when he saw his boss standing there with his head back, looking like a man exhausted with life itself, his heart went out to him.

His entire life was superficial. He was a good man in Bernard’s eyes who treated his workers great and paid them even better. He deserved so much more.

“I saw your guest safely off the premises, sir,” he said. “The valet is preparing your bath, and Chef is preparing your breakfast. Is there anything else you need, sir?”

“I’ve got to return to the States a bit earlier than I had hoped. The full staff will accompany me. We’ll be staying at my Chicago mansion for the foreseeable future. Or at least until I can calm the waters. We’ll leave before the morning light.”

“Yes sir.”

Then Bernard hesitated. Although he had more liberties than anybody else in the household, he still had to tread carefully. But he felt he needed to say it. “I saw on the news that there was another incident overnight. I am so very sorry, sir.”

“The skills of the pilots saved us from losing any more souls than we’d already lost in those prior crashes. We weren’t so fortunate this time.”

“No sir. But you know what they say: When it rains it pours.”

“Or it just rains. We’ve been blessed not to have any downpours at all. Now it’s our turn. Prepare the staff.”

Bernard was hoping for more. Maybe even a moment for the boss to let his hair down and let Bernard in.

But it wasn’t to be. Marcellus was looking at his estate manager as if he wasn’t about to allow him to cross that invisible line that would always keep them employer and employee and never friends.

A line Bernard knew not to cross uninvited.

“Yes sir,” he said, backed out, and closed the door once again.

Marcellus leaned his head back again and exhaled. He was hard even when he meant to be soft. Which made the mere attempt at being friendly a useless act to him.

He spent his entire life fighting to get ahead. And then once he got ahead, he spent all his days staying ahead. But now all of a sudden his engines were failing. His aircraft were risking the lives of their passengers. His ass was on the grill.

He showed his face in America once a month only whenever he could help it, and that was to see his children, meet with his board, and handle any situations that only he could handle.

Now he had no choice in the matter. His planes were falling out of the sky and nobody knew why.

Stocks were down. Critics were yelling. His corporation, for the first time since its inception, was in trouble.

He made his way to the bathroom where his valet had just finished preparing his bath. “Is there anything else, sir?”

“No. Thank you.”

The valet bowed and backed out of the same side door he had entered.

And as soon as he closed it, Marcellus Drakos, a man known for his free spirit and refusal to live in the limelight, felt boxed in.