Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“Nick, glad you called,” Jerome Sundquist said, in a tone that was both cordial and distant. “It’s about your son.”

Fenwick Regional High was a big brick-and-glass complex with a long traffic oval and the kind of juniper-and-mulch landscaping you found at shopping centers and office parks — nothing fancy, but somebody had to keep it up. Nick remembered when he came home after his first semester at Michigan State, remembered how small everything seemed. That’s how it should have felt when he visited his old high school, but it didn’t. The place was bigger — lots of add-ons, new structures, new brick facings on the old ones — and somehow plusher than it was in the old days. Plenty of it had to do with how Stratton had grown over the past couple of decades, with a valuation that broke two billion dollars three years ago. Then again, the higher you got, the longer the fall to the bottom. If Stratton collapsed, it would bring a lot of things down with it.

He stepped through the glass double doors and inhaled. As much as the place had changed, it somehow smelled the same. That grapefruit-scented disinfectant they still used: maybe they’d ordered a vat in 1970 and were still working through it. Some sort of faint burnt-pea-soup odor wafting from the cafeteria, as ineradicable as cat piss. It was the kind of thing you only noticed when you were away from it. Like the first day of homeroom after summer vacation, when you realized that the air was heavy with hair-styling products and eggy breakfasts and cinnamon Dentyne and underarm deodorant and farts — the smell of Fenwick’s future.

But the place had changed dramatically. In the old days everyone came to school on the bus; now the kids were either dropped off in vans or SUVs or drove to school themselves. The old Fenwick Regional had no blacks, or maybe one or two a year; now the social leaders of the school seemed to be black kids who looked like rappers and the white kids who tried to. They’d added a sleek new wing that looked like something out of a private school. In the old days there used to be a smoking area, where longhaired kids in Black Sabbath T-shirts hung out and puffed and jeered at the jocks like Nick. Now smoking was outlawed and the Black Sabbath kids had become Goths with nose rings.

Nick hadn’t spent much time in the principal’s office when he was a student, but the oatmeal curtains and carpeting looked new, and the multicultural photographs of tennis champs on the court — the Williams sisters, Sania Mirza, Martina Hingis, Boris Becker — was very Jerome Sundquist.

Sundquist stepped around from his desk and shook Nick’s hand somberly. They sat down together on two camel-colored chairs. Sundquist glanced at a manila file he had left on his desk, but he already knew what was in it.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Nick said.

“My office, or the school?”

“Both.”

Sundquist smiled. “You’d be surprised how many two-generation families the school has now, which is a nice thing. And obviously the district has been very lucky in a lot of ways. When the parents prosper, the schools prosper. We’re all hoping the downturn isn’t permanent. I appreciate you’ve got a lot on your shoulders right now.”

Nick shrugged.

“You were a pretty good student, as I recall,” Sundquist said.

“Not especially.”

Sundquist looked amused, tilted his head. “Okay, maybe ‘indifferent’ would be closer to the mark. I don’t think I ever persuaded you about the glories of polar coordinates. Your interest in trig was more practical. All about what angle you could use to slap a puck between the goalie’s legs.”

“I remember your trying to sell me on that at the time. Nice try, though.”

“But you always did okay on the exams. And, Christ, you were a popular kid. The school’s blue-eyed boy. Brought Fenwick Regional to the state semifinals, twice, isn’t that right?”

“Semifinals one year. Finals the next.”

“That’s one area where we haven’t kept up. Caldicott has kicked our ass for the past four years.”

“Maybe you need a new coach.”

“Mallon is supposed to be good. Gets paid more than me, anyway. It’s always hard to know when to blame the coach and when to blame the players.” Sundquist broke off. “I know how busy you are, so let me get right to the point.”

“Luke’s been having problems,” Nick said with a twinge of defensiveness. “I realize that. I want to do whatever I can.”

“Of course,” Sundquist said, sounding unconvinced. “Well, as I told you, Lucas is being suspended. A three-day suspension. He was caught smoking, and that’s what happens.”

So Lucas would have even more time to light up. That was really going to make things better. “I remember when there used to be a smoking area.”

“Not anymore. Smoking is forbidden on the entire campus. We’ve got very tough rules on that. All the kids know it.”

Campus was new. When Nick was at school, the school only had grounds . Campuses were for colleges.

“Obviously I don’t want him smoking at all,” Nick put in. “I’m just saying.”

“Second offense, Lucas gets thrown out of school. Expelled.”

“He’s a good kid. It’s just been a rough time for him.”

Sundquist looked at him hard. “How well do you know your son?”

“What are you saying? He’s my kid.”

“Nick, I don’t want to overstate the situation, but I don’t want to understate it, either. It’s pretty serious. I spent some time this morning talking to our crisis counselor. We don’t think this is just about smoking, okay? You need to appreciate that we have the right to search his locker, and we may do some surprise searches, with the police.”

“The police?”

“And if drugs are found, we will let the police prosecute. That’s the way we do it these days. I want to warn you about that. Lucas is a troubled kid. Our crisis counselor is very concerned about him. Lucas isn’t like you, okay?”

“Not everybody has to be a jock.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Sundquist said, not elaborating. Another glance back at the manila folder on his desk. “Besides which, his grades are going to hell. He used to be an honor student. With the grades he’s been getting, he’s not going to stay in that track. You understand what that means?”

“I understand,” Nick said. “I do. He needs help.”

“He needs help,” Sundquist agreed, tight-lipped. “And he hasn’t been receiving it.”

Nick felt as if he were being graded as a father, and getting an F . “Jerry, I just don’t see how suspending him or — God forbid — expelling him is the right thing to do. How is that helping him?” he asked. Then he wondered how many times those words had been spoken in that office.

“We have these rules for a reason,” Sundquist said smoothly, leaning back a little in his chair. “There are almost fifteen hundred kids in this high school, and we have to do what’s in the best interests of all of them.”

Nick took a deep breath. “It’s been hard for him, what happened. I get that he’s a troubled kid. Believe me, this is something that’s very much on my mind. I just think that he’s been hanging out with a bad crowd.”

“One way to look at it.” Sundquist’s gaze was unwavering. “Of course, there’s another way to look at it.”

“How do you mean?” Nick asked blankly.

“You could say that he is the bad crowd.”

“Luke.”

“What?” He’d picked up his cell phone on the first ring. The deal was that if he failed to answer a call from his father, he’d lose the phone.

“Where are you?”

“Home. Why?”