Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

He thought about this woman, Cassie Stadler. She was not only seriously attractive, but she was unlike any woman he’d ever met before. And she — who, of course, had no idea what he’d done — was clearly as attracted to him as he was to her.

No message from the Atlas McKenzie guys — the mammoth deal that had unaccountably fallen through — but that didn’t surprise him. He was going to have to confront them on it, find out what the reason was, see if there was a way to sweet-talk them back on board.

Marjorie wasn’t in yet, so Nick placed the calls himself. It was 7:10 A.M. The Atlas McKenzie guys were usually in by then. Ten digits away. Not a lot of work to press those ten digits on the telephone keypad. How many calories did this take? Nick imagined a tiny scrap of the twiggy cereal Julia wouldn’t eat: that many calories. Why wouldn’t he place his own calls?

The woman on the other line was really sorry. Mr. Hardwick was still in conference. Nick imagined Hardwick making throat-cut, I’m-not-in gestures.

There it was. That was a reason not to place your own calls. To spare yourself the humiliation of dissembling secretaries. The smile in the voice that accompanied the sing-songy formula I’m sorry . The micro — power trip of putting one over on a CEO. Fun for the whole family. He wondered whether the waitress at Terra really had spit in his arugula salad. She’d brightened a little when she brought it out, hadn’t she?

Nick felt a little acid come up his gullet as he stared at the silver-mesh fabric panels in front of him. There were certain things that money and position protected you from. There were certain things that it didn’t. When his driver’s license needed renewing a couple of years ago, he didn’t stand in line at the DMV, the way he once had to. The CEO of a major corporation didn’t wait in line at the DMV. Some young staffer from the corporate counsel’s office did, and it got taken care of. Nick couldn’t remember the last time he’d waited in line for a taxi at an airport. Senior execs had cars; you looked for the guy holding a sign that said CONOVER. And senior execs of major corporations didn’t haul their own baggage. That got taken care of, too, even when Nick was flying commercial. But when the weather was bad, it was bad for you too. When your car was stuck in traffic, it didn’t matter what your company’s valuation was; traffic was traffic. Those things were the Levelers. The things that reminded you that you lived in the same world and were going to end up in the same place as everybody else. You thought you were a master of the universe, but you were just lording it over a little box of dirt, the tyrant of a terrarium. Having a kid who hated you — that had to be a Leveler too. And so was sickness.

And so was death.

Next he tried MacFarland — that was the name of the Nixon look-alike. But his assistant apologized: Mr. MacFarland was traveling. “I’ll be sure to let him know that you called,” MacFarland’s assistant told him, with the bright artificiality of someone from a casting director’s office. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

Twenty minutes later came the faint settling-in noises, the heavy vanilla smell of Shalimar: Marjorie was in.

Nick got up, stretched, stepped around the partition. “How’s the novel coming?” He tried to remember the title. “ Manchester Abbey, was it?”

She smiled. “We did Northanger Abbey a few weeks ago. This week is Mansfield Park .”

“Got it,” Nick said.

“I think Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey first, but it didn’t come out until after her death,” Marjorie said, turning on her computer. She said distantly, “Amazing what comes out after people die.”

Nick felt as if someone had touched his neck with an ice cube. His smile faded.

“ Persuasion did too,” she went on. “And Billy Budd, which we read last year. I didn’t know you had such an interest, Nick. You ought to come to our book club.”

“Let me know when you decide to do the Chevrolet Suburban Owner’s Manual — that’s what I call a book,” he said. “Listen, I’m expecting a call from those Atlas McKenzie guys. Hardwick, MacFarland. Let me know when they’re on the line. Wherever I am, I’ll take the call.”

Nick spent the next couple of hours in conference rooms, two back-to-back, bun-numbing meetings. There was the supply-chain-management team, whose seven members had reached an important conclusion: Stratton needed to diversify its suppliers of metallic paint. They were bubbling with excitement as they reviewed the considerations they had taken into account, like they’d discovered penicillin. Then there was the industrial-safety team, which always had more lawyers than engineers, more concerned about lawsuits than limbs. Nobody came to spring him. No message from Marjorie.

He gave Marjorie a questioning look as he made his way back to his desk.

“The Atlas McKenzie people — they were supposed to get back this morning?” she asked.

Nick sighed. “I’m beginning to feel like I’m getting the bum’s rush. I phoned first thing today, you know, and they said Hardwick’s in conference, MacFarland’s on the road, they’ll get back to me.” Then again, they were supposed to return his call from yesterday too. Apparently they had other priorities.

“You think they’re trying to dodge you.”

“Could be.”

“Want to get them on line?” Marjorie looked sunny but sly. It was a good look.

“Yup.”

“Let me have a go.”

Nick took a few more steps toward his desk as Marjorie made a couple of phone calls. He couldn’t hear everything. “That’s right,” she was saying. “United Airlines. We’ve located the lost baggage, and he gave us a cell number to call him at. James MacFarland, yes. He seemed frantic. But the clerk must have written it down wrong...”

A minute later, an intercom tone told Nick to pick up his Line 1.

“Jim MacFarland?” Nick said as he answered the phone.

Cautiously: “Yes?”

“Nick Conover here.”

“Nick. Hey.” Friendly, but with a tremor of unease.

Nick wanted to say, Do you realize the amount of money and man-hours we’ve spent designing your goddamn prototypes? And you can’t be bothered to return my calls? Instead he tried to sound breezy. “Just wanted to touch base,” he said. “About where things stood.”

“Yeah,” MacFarland said. “Yeah. I meant to give you a call about that. About the current thinking.”

“Lay it on me.”

A deep breath. “Thing is, Nick — well, we hadn’t realized that Stratton’s on the block. Which kind of changes the picture for us.”

“On the block? Meaning what?” Nick struggled to keep his voice calm. At the start of his career, Nick figured that being the boss meant not having to kiss ass. A nice thought, anyway. Turned out there was always somebody whose ass you had to kiss. The commander in chief of the free world had to suck up to farmers in Iowa. It’s good to be the boss — wasn’t that what they said? But every boss had a boss. Turtles all the way down. Asses all the way up.

That was how it felt sometimes, anyway. That was how it felt just now.

“It’s just that Hardwick’s always real concerned about stability when it comes to sourcing and support,” MacFarland was saying. “We hadn’t realized things were in flux that way. It’s not like you had a big ‘For Sale’ sign over the front door, right?”

Nick was dumbfounded. “Stratton’s not for sale,” he said simply.

There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Huh.” Not the sound of agreement. “Look, Nick, you didn’t hear this from me. We use the same law firm in Hong Kong that Fairfield Partners does. And, you know, people talk.”