by Jack Fuller
Joyce looked at him without expression, which must have cost him a great deal of effort.
“I am glad that you have begun exploring this, Brian,” Chandrahary said to Joyce as if no one else were in the room. “It is characteristic of your forward-leaning leadership. And yet I do think that in such an important area, it is crucial that the board be engaged. I would welcome the chance to have a more elaborate tutorial.”
“Do you have a recommendation?” Joyce said.
“The proposal does not seem ripe for decision,” said Chandrahary.
Joyce scanned the directors.
“If everyone is all right with it,” he said, “let’s table this until next quarter.” He put this as smoothly as if he thought it were a good idea.
Suddenly Gunderman’s voice came from all directions on the speakers.
“Please don’t delay,” he said. When the initial p detonated, hands leaped to ears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t explain the project well. But we have to begin testing this right away. The threats won’t wait. They could be prying us open right now.”
He was finally speaking English, but it was too late.
“Thank you for the note of caution,” said Joyce.
“Installation for beta testing alone will take more than six months, best case,” Gunderman said. “If anything should happen . . .”
“I want to assure the board,” said Joyce, chin down, softly enunciating every word, “that we have complete confidence in the security measures already in place. This is an area in which we always cast very tight loops. Don’t you agree, Sam?”
“Yes, sir,” said Gunderman.
“Tight loops?” Bill Sebold whispered to Rosten. “Is that nautical?”
“Let’s move on,” said Joyce.
Gunderman stepped away from the podium, leaving his last, inscrutable slide on the screen.
“Before you go, could you get us to where we should be?” said Joyce, flicking his fingers toward the monitor.
Gunderman froze, then came to and turned to look. With remarkable speed he returned to the podium and raced through the slides he had not had a chance to show. Then the corporate logo appeared, haloed in silver.
Alexa Snow, vice president of Human Resources, was next up. As Gunderman slouched past her, she leaned back and turned her head away, like someone trying to avoid catching a cold. Her presentation of new software from a company called PeopleSoft went without incident. Then it was Dick Chase’s turn. He quickly won approval of $50 million and change for construction of a new server farm. Sebold reported on the resolution of several lawsuits. Harms compared D&D’s stock performance with competitors’ and quoted two glowing reports by analysts who followed the industry. The last item before the executive session went under the rubric “CEO’s Comments.”
“Thank you, everyone, for leaving us with a bit of time on the clock,” said Joyce, tall in his chair. “I want to use it to put some context around our present situation and suggest some opportunities we want to explore.
“As our CFO’s financial presentation indicated, we are at the beginning of an extended upward cycle.” As he spoke, he moved his gaze down the long table, meeting every eye in turn. “In other words, we have a lot of runway. Moreover, since our stock is outpacing a robust equities market, it is an appealing currency with which to acquire what we need.”
Several of the directors looked across at their colleagues; strong currency can burn a hole in CEOs’ pockets. But Joyce did not go directly to the possibility of a major acquisition. Instead, he turned to what the company might sell—the NumbersBank subsidiary. It had built a good, though not leading, position in the management of routine corporate archives, and it faced savage price competition.
“Do we really want the cash?” said Chandrahary, because a company with big reserves was as attractive to predators as a rich widow.
“I believe we will be able to find uses for the proceeds,” said Joyce. “I’m sure I am not alone in this room in thinking that we still don’t have the scale or breadth to take advantage of the growth opportunities in an increasingly data-driven world. Data is going to be very big. We cannot afford to be small.”
“I’m not understanding why we need cash if we’re confident of the strength of our stock,” Chandrahary said.
There was a palpable gambler’s rush in the room as directors began to sense the size of the bet they might be asked to make.
“If the opportunity is big enough, we might need both cash and stock,” said Joyce, hands open upward. Then he brought them back to earth. “I want to assure you that we have not had any external conversations—beyond our bankers, of course—nor will we have any without a full airing in advance with you. That goes without saying.”
“Good that you said it though,” said Leavitt.
With that, Joyce nodded, and Rosten and his colleagues filed out into the Green Room.
The executive session went on for quite a while before Rosten heard a rustle inside the boardroom. He was on his feet by the time the corporate secretary opened the Green Room door and said, “They’re done.” Always first into the hallway, Rosten made himself available in case there were questions. Chandrahary approached him.
“Good initial effort,” he said.
“I wondered why you weren’t all over me,” said Rosten.
“When it becomes important,” said Chandrahary, lilting into the accent he usually suppressed, “you can be sure that I will be.”
“I’ll try to be ready,” said Rosten.
Chandrahary gave a little bow, probably the same one his Sikh ancestors had given the British, knowing them to be unworthy of it.
The rest of the senior team had poured into the hallway and was making conversation with the directors as they climbed into their overcoats. Joyce went to the elevator hallway. He liked to see them all the way to the front door, to make sure they didn’t return.
The long table in the boardroom belonged to management again, and Rosten went directly to his customary chair, the one where Leavitt had sat.
“Could you believe Gunderman?” said Snow, arranging the front of her jacket just so.
“I didn’t think Human Resources would ever be surprised by something as human as a case of the nerves,” said Rosten.
“Well, there’s more for him to be nervous about now,” said Sebold.
“He should have taken a lesson from Teddy Diamond and cast a tight loop,” said Chase.
“Diamond’s world is imploding,” said Sebold, “and you did not even see a quiver.”
“It was excruciating,” said Rosten.
“It was Teddy’s finest hour,” said Chase.
“Teddy can fend for himself,” said Rosten. “I was talking about Gunderman.”
“I thought he was going to burst into tears,” said Snow.
“At some point in your life you must have felt shame, Alexa,” said Rosten.
“It has no place in a boardroom,” she said.
“What doesn’t?” said Joyce, who had come silently through the door.
“Tears,” said Rosten.
“What is there to cry about?” said Joyce. “We won.”
He sat, leaned forward, and bounced both hands on the board table like a boy with a ball.
2
Gunderman sat on the couch looking at the sand-colored rug through the top of the end table.
“Maybe it would have been better for all concerned if they had just fired me.”
“Did you want that?”
“You mean a package.”
“Package?”
“Severance. They call it a package. Guys laugh about it. ‘Alexa Snow will handle your package.’”
“You weren’t forced to accept the new position.”
“I have a daughter in high school.”
“And a wife.”
“Yes, a daughter and a wife.”
“Is it really only about providing?”
“Did the company ask you to push me toward the doo
r?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Sam.”
“They’re paying for these sessions. Your Eames chair. The upholstered couch. The box of tissues. The clock that always faces away from me.”
“I’m sure they don’t need my help to let you go. In any case, I don’t seek or accept guidance from the company on what we do here. Day and Domes is just another third-party payer, like an insurance company.”
“There’s a comfort.”
“The only contact I have had was my initial conversation with your supervisor, which we have already discussed.”
“His first idea was for me to take lessons in oral presentation. I should have done it. When I declined, he pushed me to come to you. Obviously I wasn’t cutting it. Go see him, Lawton said. Try him out. An executive coach, he called you. He didn’t say psychiatrist.”
“Psychiatrists are MDs. I’m not.”
“No pills.”
“Doctor of philosophy.”
“What kind of philosophy?”
“They call what I do self psychology. I help explore the person an individual has come to live inside.”
“Sounds totally subjective.”
“The subjective is who we are.”
He arrived home early, not having called. Her Lexus wasn’t out front, but he tarried in the garage in the old Toyota anyway. She was a presence, even when she wasn’t there. He dreaded having to tell her. But he’d have more time for her now. He could put that out there. She would want to know about pay. There would be no cut in salary, but he wouldn’t be getting the annual increases and bonuses that they were used to. You can’t have everything, honey. Not as much money, but more of me. She wouldn’t buy it. In the double-entry bookkeeping of their relationship, assets never equaled liabilities.
The only way to deal with his demotion wasn’t pluses and minuses. Just say it is what it is. We’ll be fine. Don’t worry. It’s all good. And so on.
So why was he sitting in a cold car behind an empty house?
“It isn’t punishment, Sam,” Dell Lawton had said as they had sat in his office, the glass wall exposing them to the whole IT Department. “Think of it as a fresh start.”
“They didn’t give me a chance to explain,” Gunderman said. “They didn’t cut me a millimeter of slack.”
“They never do. They expect you to cast a tight loop every time.”
Lawton had dropped a lot of weight since the operation. Too much. He looked the way Gunderman felt.
“I should have gone to charm school like you wanted me to,” Gunderman said, unhooking the wire hangers of his glasses from behind his ears and rubbing at his eyes. “I lost everyone in the room.”
“Not Tom Rosten,” said Lawton.
Charlene buzzed. Lawton lifted his hands in apology and took the call. Gunderman put his glasses back on and looked toward the shelves above the credenza, resting his eyes on the portrait photos of Lawton’s stunning wife and his children by her predecessor. No more babies now unless the current Mrs. Lawton had one started already. Gunderman had heard of couples who banked sperm before the surgery. He couldn’t quite imagine the woman in the photo making a baby that way. In fact, he couldn’t really imagine her at all or what it would be like to be with such a woman, let alone to be too damaged to make her happy in a world full of other men who would love to try.
Other than the photos, the only things on the shelves were the kind of corporate trophies that Gunderman shoved into boxes in the attic: awards encased in plastic, embossed pencil holders, group photographs taken at forgotten off-sites, little ovals and obelisks mounted on soft wood. Not a book in sight, not even The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
In contrast, in Rosten’s office the shelves bore finance monographs, military histories, fat biographies of statesmen. Separate from these was a small group of volumes, most of them slim. He recognized only the sonnets of Shakespeare. One day Rosten had caught him turning his head horizontal to read the spines.
“A boss of mine once told me to ditch those,” Rosten said. “He told me they made me seem unserious.”
“Joyce?” said Gunderman.
“This was before D&D,” Rosten said. “Once, even before that, I actually had a boss who hired me just because of books like those.”
He swiveled, rose, and took down an old volume, which he handled as if it were blown glass.
“He gave me this,” he said, opening it to the title page and handing it across the desk.
Personae of Ezra Pound. London. Elkin Mathews, Vigo Street. MCMIX. Signed by the author and dated September 15, 1909. Gunderman did not know anything about rare books, but he recognized the poet’s name.
“Aren’t you afraid it will be stolen?”
“Pound is out of favor,” Rosten said.
Gunderman opened to a few pages at random then returned it, holding it out flat on his palms, an offering.
“Did you see the inscription?” said Rosten.
“It says ‘Ezra Pound.’”
“The other one.”
Rosten found the place and turned the book so Gunderman could read it. In the white space was this message, written in a small, shaky hand:
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization.
Ernest Fisherman
Dec. 22, 1989
“Who is he?” Gunderman asked.
“That’s more than we have time for,” said Rosten. “Anyway, he went out of favor too.”
Then Rosten closed the book and replaced it on the shelf carefully but surely, the way a librarian might.
Lawton’s call was dragging on. Gunderman stood. He was being traded away. There was really nothing more to say. As he turned to leave, Lawton held his finger out and made a show of struggling to push the call to a conclusion. Finally, he succeeded and put the telephone back into its cradle.
“It isn’t that I don’t see your value,” he said to Gunderman.
“And Rosten went along,” said Gunderman.
“The new regulations under Sarbanes-Oxley,” said Lawton. “He needed someone with your skills.”
“Which is a different thing than needing me.”
“It was Joyce’s idea, actually.”
“Joyce,” said Gunderman.
“He’s not the man you think he is.”
“I guess Rosten didn’t have much choice then.”
“This isn’t passing bad cards to the left to improve your hand,” said Lawton. “I believe Rosten is genuinely pleased.”
“I wonder what made him think I could be an auditor.”
“You’ll mainly be checking up on me, actually,” said Lawton. “I’ve always been good to you, haven’t I, Sam?”
Gunderman went from Lawton’s office to Rosten’s, where his new boss could not have been more direct and businesslike in laying out the responsibilities of the job. Gunderman would be reporting to Max Poole, director of Internal Audit, but in the Finance Department they did not stand on ceremony.
On the shelf over the credenza, the Shakespeare and the other slim volumes were still there.
“Whatever happened to the boss who wanted you to get rid of the books?” Gunderman asked.
“He’s the CEO of a Fortune 500 company,” Rosten said. “I get a Christmas card from him every year with a picture of him with his wife and grandkids. Sometimes on skis.”
“And the other boss, the one who gave you the signed book,” Gunderman said. “He must not have liked you very much to write what he did.”
“I don’t think his mind categorized things by like and dislike.”
“He called you an old bitch gone in the teeth.”
“That wasn’t me,” said Rosten. “It was the cause we served.”
The steering wheel had turned to ice. The windows had fogged and were becoming laced with frost. Gunderman wasn’t going to find the right words for Maggie here in the garage. He took the key out of the ignition, climbed from the car, and locked it.
At first the house was silent around him, for which he was grateful. Then came a voice.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, sweetie,” he said, turning toward the family room, where she sat among textbooks.
“I made you jump,” she said.
“Not as big an accomplishment as you might think,” he said, accepting a sidelong hug, which she had learned when she began to fill out.
After releasing him, she went toward the refrigerator.
“You want anything?” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“Then stay a while.”
She knew how to make him feel awkward. Women seemed to have an instinct for it.
“Might as well, right?” he said.
“Mom’s not home,” she said.
He removed his coat and put it on a hook by the back door.
“We wouldn’t have hot chocolate, would we?” he said. “I’m a little chilled.”
“Don’t tell me the car heater’s out again,” she said. “You seriously should get a new one. A red convertible.”
While she was warming the milk, he settled himself in the family room, where she gazed at him from every point of the compass—in person through the wide door to the kitchen, of course, but also from over there on the bookshelf snowshoeing in the woods, from next to the television posing in front of the net in pads and skates, from the end table at eighth grade graduation.
“Do you have a game tonight?” he said.
Silly question. Hockey was always. Games at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, at Easter. Games on Father’s Day. In summer the local rink was available to the girls’ team at reasonable hours, but boys had priority during the winter, so her team had to use a distant facility late.
“At 8:30,” she said.
“May I drive you?”
“It would be better in a convertible.”
“Maybe Mom will let us use her car,” he said.
“She’s going somewhere, I think.”
“Well, then, you’ll just have to scrunch down in the seat so nobody will see you.”
She brought him a steaming Day and Domes mug. He warmed his hands on the list of the company’s values: innovation, integration, intensity, inspiration, integrity. The five I’s.
“Of course I feel I have integrity. They must think so too. They’re making me an auditor.”
