By now, Bill was a wet rag of sweat. He dashed past the white mandevillas and into the air-conditioned lobby, where the terrible marble clock over the revolving glass doors proclaimed 1:17. So much time had been lost. Yet he was much too bedraggled to take the elevator immediately to his office on the forty-second floor. What was the quickest route to the restrooms? He quickly surveyed the crowded lobby, surprised as always by the huge portrait of Edward Marbleworth floating like a museum banner above the reception desk. Bill had never met Edward Marbleworth, who had made sixty million in the computer software trade by his thirty-fifth birthday and then turned that into three billion in the communications industry. In fact, Mr. Marbleworth had never set foot in his building. However, every Christmas, Bill and the other 326 tenants received a personally addressed e-mail greeting from him, sent over the Internet. The next moment, Bill was jostled from behind as a half-dozen executives shoved through the revolving doors and hurried to the elevators. He jumped out of the way, then walked rapidly past the marble benches to the men’s room and began blotting his face and underarms with toilet paper.
AT THE OFFICE
A few minutes later, Bill stepped off the elevator at the forty-second floor and staggered back in horror. The entire Plymouth staff was gathered in an anxious knot by the elevator. Leslie, the most sentimental in the firm, immediately leaped forward and hugged him. “What?” he muttered softly to her. Dolores strode from the communications room with a bottle of champagne and a computer-printed sign that said “Welcome Back Bill, We Know You Kicked Butt.” “Yes sir,” someone said. “You look great, Bill.” Bodies lunged forward to greet him.
In front was George Mitrakis, president of the firm, beaming among his happy family. George was a big and loose man who never quite had the air of running a company, or anything else. He swung in his new Armani suit and guffawed and patted Bill on the back. “This was all Diane’s idea,” he whispered, trying to give Bill a glass of chardonnay. “I believe she’s in the ladies’ room at the moment but will be out shortly.”
“Diane?” said Bill, attempting to take stock. Was he gripping George’s hand too tightly or not tightly enough? He recalled from the past that the president’s handshake ended generously, with a tentative foundering at first. Bill stared ridiculously at his hand, trying to gauge pressure from the flush of his fingers. He chatted briefly with George, insensible to what he was saying. Next came Lisa Theroux, the prominent transaction specialist. Bill knew that it would be impossible to grip her hand too forcefully, as she prided herself on her level of testosterone, so he clamped down for all he was worth. She winced quietly and smiled. Milt Kramer’s handshake was notoriously phlegmatic. Remembering that, Bill simply placed his hand in Milt’s and let his fingers go limp. “I’ve never known anyone who was mugged before,” said Milt with an admiring grin on his face. Milt was the firm’s specialist in information acquisition and dispersal and began saying something to Bill about the new satellite hookup. Diane’s was a quick nervous twitch, over before it began. She had just emerged from the ladies’ room, looking brilliant and emaciated as usual. Had the mugger gotten his credit cards, she asked between swallows of crackers and Limburger cheese. No? She couldn’t hide her disappointment. What a relief, she said, her credit cards had been lost once and it was like death. From near the reception area Robert pantomimed some message for Bill. What was it? Yes, the appointment with Fred Loeser at 2:30. Bill looked at his watch. It was 1:32. Milt Kramer, having disappeared momentarily to everyone’s notice, was now whining to a maid in the corridor. “You didn’t touch anything on my work table, did you?” “No sir.” “My office is the second from the end.” “Yes sir.” “What’s your name?” At that, the cleaning lady fled down the hallway with her bag of trash, casting a frightened look over her shoulder.
“The office hasn’t been the same without you, Bill,” said Harvey Stumm. The vice president was suddenly beside him, dressed in a gray pinstriped suit, smiling with his small chalky face. Stumm held a glass of red wine, untouched. “I was gone only two days,” said Bill. He stiffened, as he always did with Harvey Stumm. He could feel Stumm’s eyes crawling up and down his body, examining and analyzing him. “We worried about you,” said Stumm. The vice president made some polite conversation and walked to the reception desk.
Bill glanced at his watch: 1:36. Astoundingly, none of his colleagues had yet returned to their offices, even though it was prime time for working the West Coast. But he could see the beginnings of strain. Milt Kramer stood near the reception desk, seemingly casual but repeatedly looking toward the fax machine in the communications room. George and Harv were talking to each other in a corner while Lisa attempted to overhear. Every few moments she reached up to smooth her Chanel suit, glancing at her watch as she did so.
The other junior partners, Diane and Nate and Sidney, huddled in a tight group by the cheese tray. As Bill’s eyes fell upon them, Nate turned toward him and silently held up six fingers, with the well-understood meaning that he had slept only six hours, working the rest of the night from his modem at home. Sidney noted the gesture, snorted, and held out five fingers. What pettiness, what childishness, Bill thought to himself. And to think that just a short time ago, he was just like them, fiercely competing for promotion, obsessed with squeezing work from each minute of the day, backbiting and jealous and petty. Now, with just the mere separation of ten feet, he could see that he was not one of them at all. Larger things ruled life. Promotion was a fine thing, and he certainly wanted his promotion, but … In this particular instance, for example, at this moment, he must not think about the backlog of messages waiting for him at his desk. He glanced again at the clock: 1:40.
People were starting to pace now, to openly examine their watches or the clock over the elevator. David Hamilton, who had been speaking on his cellular phone for the last ten minutes, looked meaningfully at Bill and lofted his index finger in a “one minute and I’ll be with you” sign. This tiny movement broke the dam. “If David’s doing business,” muttered Lisa, “then so am I,” and she fled down the hall to her terminal. Dolores ran after her with a fax document that she had been hiding in her purse. Immediately, John, the president’s secretary, delivered a slip of paper to the boss. Grimacing, George, too, disappeared around the corner to his office. Now the junior partners began heavy fidgeting and glancing. Were they expected to remain in the reception, or get back to their keyboards? Diane left first, avoiding eye contact. Nate stared down the hallway where she had vanished into her office, undoubtedly about to send important e-mails to the West Coast. He looked over at Bill. He glanced at Harvey Stumm, always impossible to read. Then at David Hamilton, still on his phone, slyly being two places at once. Suddenly Nate tossed aside his plastic wineglass and broke for his office. Sidney Wolfson, a graduate of Harvard and Wharton, followed instantly.
“We’ve got to talk,” Milt Kramer said to David Hamilton, who had finally closed up his phone. “About the Sperry deal.”
“I don’t have time to talk,” said Hamilton. “Send me an e-mail.”
“I’ve been sending you e-mails all day,” said Kramer.
“I’ve been tied up with that shithead at Grace.”
“Can we talk now?” asked Kramer.
“Send me an e-mail. I’ve got to answer some messages from Lisa and Harv. Then I’ll answer yours.” Without further conversation, both men hurried off to their terminals and closed their doors behind them.
At last, the reception area was empty. It was 1:42. Bill walked rapidly down the empty hall to his office and closed the door. As he moved toward his desk, he was unexpectedly caught by a wave of brooding. Surely, in all of those dead handshakes, someone had noticed. His colleagues surely must have detected his problem. It now struck him that George had looked at him just one beat too long as they shook hands. Bill replayed the scene in his mind. The president had walked up, suntanned and beaming, said something to Leslie, laughed, patted Bill on the back. Then gazed at him straight in t
he eye. Yes, Bill was certain of it. George had stared at him one beat too long. He had sniffed weakness. Not only physical defect, but incapacity, an ultimate inability to catch everything thrown at him. George had perceived incapacity. And could he be blamed? Was it not his job to ensure that Plymouth operated at maximum efficiency, processed the maximum information in the minimum time? George was a bumbler, but he was shrewd. A person would have to be shrewd to have foreseen the 1994 plummet of the peso. From now on, he would be watching Bill closely, possibly promoting the other junior partners one by one until Bill was the only junior left, a zero in the office. And the president had acted so cordially, smiling and offering him a glass of wine. What a snake! Bill had always suspected that George Mitrakis was not nearly so innocent and good-natured as he seemed. In fact, he was probably even more cunning than Harvey Stumm. Harv, so careful to conceal his suspicions, had barely glanced at Bill after the first greeting and once-over. Harv would be watching him from behind his back. Even Leslie, sweet Leslie. Now that Bill thought of it, there was a peculiarity in the way she had smiled at him, an overwroughtness, a tender pity. Secretaries were like cats. Secretaries had the most acute sense of the changing vibrations in the office—who was getting ahead and who was falling behind. Leslie had known.
With a worried sigh, Bill sat down at his desk. The room had an odd unfamiliarity, as if he had been absent for months. Something seemed different. The furniture hadn’t been moved, he quickly confirmed. The carpet gave easily under his feet. It wasn’t a smell. No, there was something else, possibly a sound. He held very still, and he listened. Between the tiny, intermittent honks of cars far below and the occasional thumps from the health club overhead, he heard the squeals of the fax machine down the hall, voices on telephones in neighboring offices, chairs shifting. Somewhere, muffled as if deep underground, a clock ticked. No, there was some other sound, low and steady underneath. Listening more intently, crouching motionless against the wall, he could hear the wheeze of the motors in the elevator shafts, the breathy flow of the air-conditioning system. The fax machine screeched again and he waited, as if letting his eyes recover from a flash of bright light. He waited until he again heard the faint sounds of the elevator and the air. Then these, too, momentarily subsided, and he could hear beneath them even fainter sounds. The motor of the refrigerator in the communications room. The soft undulations of his computer screen, microscopic waves on a microscopic sea. He switched off the computer, held his head still and continued to listen, and he could hear the tiny whine of the fluorescent lights, like the vibrations of ten thousand minuscule tuning forks. He listened and listened, and the vibrations decelerated in his mind, going slower and slower, descending in pitch, until he could hear each one coming after the other, dissected, atoms dropping to the floor. He turned off the lights, the atoms stopped. In the dark, in the dark there was still something else, even fainter, but steady, something steady and faint. What was it? Straining to hear, he held his breath. Some dim, residual sound below everything else. A hum.
His phone rang, then stopped, picked up by Amy. Two messages marked urgent dangled from his terminal screen. “Fred Loeser at TEM has sent over a report he wants you to read before your meeting—Amy.” Bill looked at his watch. 1:48. Loeser would arrive in forty-two minutes. The second message: “The new satellite feed has overloaded the communications room. None of the documents given to Leslie after 11:00 a.m. this morning have gone out. Everybody is on his/her own for now. I’m working on it.—Milt.” Bill logged on for a quick look at his e-mail before trying to excavate the TEM report.
————————————
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Stumm at PLYM.COM
====> Received: from BUSTER.INTER.COM by INTER.COM with NIO
id AQ06498; Fri, 27 Jun 7:49:36 EDT
for [email protected]; Fri, 27 June 7:49:42 –0400
Press * for message
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Stumm at PLYM.COM
Dear Bill,
Wasn’t sure when you were getting in today. Id like your help with the Sperry situaiton. We’re close to a deal. Please find out what kind of dealings Benjamin Lloyd has had with American pharmaceutical cpmpanies. I’d like something by noonn Monday, if possible. Thank you.
Harv
————————————
————————————
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: ACHALM at AOL.COM
==> Received: from RING.NET.COM by NET.COM with GOTP
id AQ06498; Fri, 27 Jun 9:02:13 EDT
for [email protected]; Fri, 27 Jun 9:02:41 –0400
Press * for message
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Alexander at AOL.COM
Dear Lancelot du Lac and sire,
Sir Tabor said I have a natural ift with the sword and should joust in the first levels of the Middlesex REgiohanl tourney, on September 24. (I did not tell him my father was Lancelot.) Can you come? Please? Besides the art of swroadshmanship, I will need grooming in the fineries of chivalry, so that I might honor your legend and uphold the family name. I eave that yht you. What time are you returning to the castle-keep this eve? Could you return early? I have to be off with the knave Brad at 6:30. I await tyour relply.
Your faithful son, Galahad
————————————
————————————
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: JTOOTH at GWAY.COM
====> Received: from HAL.NET.COM by NET.COM with THL id AQ06498; Fri, 27 Jun 9:12:03 EDT
for [email protected]; Fri, 27 Jun 9:12:07 –0400
Press * for message
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Jason at GWAY.COM
Dear William Chalmers,
We spoke last week about the new transacction initiative at Greenway and you asked for more information regarding terminations. I am providing that to you now withthe understanding that this material is highly confidential, although tentative. Please use your security code when responding. I’m afraid that we will need a definitte and complete reply from you by noon on Monday. Here it is:
Privileges and Rights of participants are currently registered under the Exchange Act. Termination of registration of Common data blocks and associated Rights would make certain provisions of the Exchange Act, such as the limited data transmission provisions of Section 16(b) and the requirement of furnishing backup records pursuant to Section 14(a) and the related requirement of furnishing weekly reports, no longer applicable with respect to ownership of data blocks. Furthermore, the ability of “affiliates” of the Company and persons holding “restricted” blocks of transmission privileges to dispose of those blocks pursuant to Rule 144 under the Act, as amended, may be impaired or eliminated.
Regards, Jason Toothaker
————————————
————————————
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: JTOOTH at GWAY.COM
====> Received: from HAL.NET.COM by NET.COM with THL
id AQ06498; Fri, 27 Jun 9:47:08 EDT
for [email protected]; Fri, 27 Jun 9:47:18 –0400
Press * for message
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Jason at GWAY.COM Dear William Chalmers, Please disregard my last mesage. Sorry for any incovencience. I’ll be in touch with you again soon. Regards, Jason Toothaker
————————————
————————————
INTERRUPT!! URGENT!! INTERRUPT!! URGENT!!
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: MITRAK at PLYM.COM
====> Received: from BUSTER.INTER.COM by INTER.COM with NIO
id AQ06498; Fri, 27 Jun 13:52:21 EDT
for [email protected]; Fri, 27 Jun 13:52:42 –0400
Press * for message
>>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: MITRAK at PLYM.COM Dear Colleagues,
With respect to our negotiations with London, the same, that is to say, the Sperry deal, has been delayed until we send them more data. Can anyone do anything? What, in the in
terim, can we send them? George
————————————
Bill stared at the president’s message, trying to think of some intelligent response. Before he could enter a keystroke, his screen filled with a flurry of opinions and recommendations from his colleagues, all circulated by e-mail from office to office. Diane Rossbane, who often made unkind jokes about people in their absence, quipped from her keyboard that they should send the vice president of Sperry a box of Godiva chocolates. They could e-mail the new Godiva chocolatier in Soho Square. David Hamilton informed the emaciated Ms. Rossbane from his terminal that Ms. Rossbane could use some chocolates herself. At which point Ms. Rossbane shot back that she was considered quite alluring in some quarters and, furthermore, was married, which was more than she could say for some people. Nate Linden announced that a large number of gigabytes, he didn’t know exactly how many, were arriving soon from Chicago and he could forward them to Sperry himself. Several people expressed interest in Mr. Linden’s proposal. Tom McGuinness, in Paris for the week but monitoring his e-mail, typed in that everyone was OVERREACTING. He personally knew Benjamin Lloyd and was sure that Sperry was “just puffing up its cheeks.” McGuinness then loudly excused himself for a late meal and some EXCELLENT FOIE GRAS, on his expense account of course. Milt Kramer whined that this delay was going to impact his pending vacation to the Cape—he didn’t yet know how, but he would take bets that he and Martha wouldn’t get their full week on the Cape, starting on July 27.
Diagnosis Page 12
