A Merry August to Us All My Dears; God Bless Us

A Corporate Carol ... a fable of August 14, the deadline day for CEOs to swear that every figure in the quarterly and annual reports they sign is accurate--or risk 20 years in prison and a $5-million fine.

Marley was dead, and good riddance, as far as Screw was concerned.

E. Benezer Screw had not founded the company. That was old man Marley’s work. Screw had merely swooped in to do that leverage-buyout voodoo that he could do so well, and Marley became just a name on the letterhead, and over time, Screw’s solidly Swiss account balance had three commas in it.

Now Marley had been put under the sod today, and that night, Screw’s brow was unfurrowed.

So what was Marley doing there in Screw’s bedroom, his old face on the big plasma-screen TV that was bigger even than the one Screw had installed in his bathroom, which he could watch through the $6,000 optically corrected glass shower door and see every putt at St. Andrews, as he cleansed his expensively toned self?

“I don’t believe this,” said Screw to the screen. “You may be an indigested drop of 25-year-old single malt, a fragment of underdone fugu fish.” Marley, who was getting more TV face-time dead than he ever had alive, repeated sepulchrally, “The reckoning is coming. Beware the ides of August minus one.”

Screw knew his tyrants: ides minus one--August 14. Tomorrow. Like he’d believe Marley. If Marley had known anything about business as the big boys play it, he and not Screw would be the one with the three-comma Swiss bank account.

Screw dozed off until he heard his clock, the one that had once ticked away the hours of the last Empress of France, chime midnight, and another face flickered on-screen.

It was Screw’s ex-girlfriend. God, she looked awful. No wonder he’d dumped her. He was surprised it had taken him as long as it did. She’d actually cried when he offered to give her plastic surgery for Christmas. Women.

“I am the Ghost of Vulgar Excess past,” she said. “Look upon this, you rat.”

And up on the screen came his unbelievable 40th birthday party, right after he’d bought the studio. He’d flown everyone to Cannes, then to Greece, all on the company tab. He didn’t know anyone had taped all that!

Then--look, there was that hilarious Halloween party where everyone dressed poor and did a parody of the annual meeting, playing those 10-share stockholders who show up whining and begging Screw not to clear-cut some forest in someplace Screw couldn’t pronounce, or knock down an old library where some geezer had written some novel or another. Fabulous stuff!

He was still smiling when his ex-girlfriend came back on screen. “Adios, creep,” she said. “Next, the Ghost of Vulgar Excess present.”

The clock struck one. The screen flickered. It was his assistant, Deb. Good ol’ Deb. He hadn’t given her a raise in seven years, or maybe it was eight, but her common-stock options--better than cash, someday. That’s what he’d told her.

Sure, the stock had dropped, all right, nose-dived, but that’s the market. No guts, no glory, no gold, he told her. “No gold,” Deb echoed now.

Behind her was a news montage. Other CEOs, men he knew, being perp-walked down Wall Street. Footage of old men, stockholders, pushing brooms at McDonald’s, after their nest eggs went rotten. Old ladies, stockholders, outside Ken Lay’s mansion, pounding spoons on empty tins of cat food, all they could afford to eat.

“Don’t go away--there’s still the Ghost of Vulgar Excess future,” Deb was saying. “I gotta go look through the neighbors’ trash for recyclables.”

Screw must have dozed again, for when he awoke, it was 2 a.m., and a new figure filled the screen, terrifying and spectral: cheap suit, bad haircut, raucous gift tie--a federal prosecutor.

Screw watched as the figure floated down long gray corridors, and stopped in front of a gray door with a small barred window. The figure’s forefinger, ragged with hangnails, beckoned the camera closer, then pointed slowly to a sign: “Federal prisoner No. 0115389, Screw, E.B. Parole date: 2022.”

Screw fell sobbing to his knees. Not him! Not the highest-flying CEO in the flock! He looked down, fully expecting to see prison stripes, but there were his $300 Egyptian-cotton jammies. He was still home! Safe! It was only a dream! “The shadows of things that would be, may be dispelled!” he wept. “They will be! I know they will!”

And so Screw promised to honor truth and to seek it out, to give Deb a raise, to stay up late and drink coffee and sweat over the figures with his calculator before he signed his reports, to stop pocketing 300 times a salesclerk’s salary plus options and expenses, and to sell the smaller yacht and the second beach house--in short, to keep August 14 in his heart, always.

We’d like to say that Mr. Screw was as good as his word, and also endowed a children’s hospital and an animal sanctuary, but it’s August, not December, and even the tooth fairy is on vacation.

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@ latimes.com.