Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“Really?”

“I imagine Todd Muldaur should be makin’ nice to you these days. I know Stratton’s going through some hard times, but at least you’re solvent. Compared to some of his other investments, you’re a cash cow. He could take you guys public, make some real money. Of course, given how long that takes, it might be too late for him.”

“That would take a year at least.”

“At least. Why, they talking about spinning you guys off?”

“No. Nothing about that.”

“Well, Fairfield needs what they call a liquidity event, and real soon.”

“Meaning they need cash.”

“You got it.”

“Yeah, well, they’re up to something,” Nick said. “Really pushing hard to cut costs.”

“Forget that. You know what I always say, when your house is on fire, you don’t hold a garage sale.”

“Come again?”

“I mean, Todd’s so deep in the shit that he’s probably desperate to make a quick buck, sell Stratton quick-and-dirty just to save his ass. I were you, I’d watch Todd’s moves real close.”

The instant he hung up, another call came in, this one from Eddie.

“The small conference room on your floor,” Eddie said without preface. “Right now.”

Ever since they’d had it out at Eddie’s condo, there had been an acute chill in their already frosty relationship. Eddie no longer joked around as much. He avoided Nick’s eyes. He often seemed to be seething.

But when he entered the conference room, he looked as though he had a secret he couldn’t wait to share. It was a look Nick hadn’t seen in a while.

Eddie closed the conference room door and said, “The piece of shell casing?”

Nick’s voice caught in his throat. He was unable to speak.

“It’s bullshit,” Eddie said.

“What?”

“The cops never found any fragment of a shell casing on your lawn.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“What was it, then?”

“It was bullshit. A pressure tactic. There never was any metal scrap.”

“They lied about it?”

“I wouldn’t get on my high horse if I were you, Nick.”

“You’re certain? How do you know this for sure?”

“I told you. I got sources. It’s a fake-out, dude. Don’t you recognize a fake-out when you see one?”

Nick shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, man. Remember when we were playing Hillsdale in the finals, our senior year, and you made that great deke to your backhand at the blue line before you fired a rocket behind Mallory, sent the game into overtime?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Nick said. “I also remember that we lost.”

Nick put his briefcase down in the front hall. Its antique, reclaimed pumpkin-pine flooring — the strip oak that had been there didn’t make the cut, as far as Laura was concerned — glowed in the amber light that spilled from soffits overhead. Without thinking about it, he expected to hear the click click click of Barney’s dog toenails on the wood, the jangle of his collar, and the absence of that happy sound saddened him.

It was almost eight o’clock. The marketing strategy committee meeting had run almost two hours late; he’d called home during a break and told Marta to make dinner for the kids. She’d said that Julia was over at her friend Jessica’s, so it would just be Lucas.

He heard voices from upstairs. Did Lucas have a friend over? Nick walked upstairs, and the murmur resolved into conversation.

It was Cassie’s voice, he realized with surprise. Cassie and Lucas. What was she doing here? The staircase was solidly mortised, no squeaks and creaks like the old house, or like the house he’d grown up in. They hadn’t heard him come up. He felt a prickling sensation as he paused at the top landing and listened. Lucas’s door was open for a change.

“They should have assigned this in physics class,” Lucas was complaining. “Why would a poet know how the world’s going to end anyway?”

“You think the poem is really about how the world is going to end?” Cassie’s husky voice.

He was relieved. Cassie was helping Lucas with his homework, that was all.

“Fire or ice. That’s how the world will end. It’s what he’s saying.”

“Desire and hate,” Cassie said. “The human heart can be a molten thing, and it can be sheathed in ice. Don’t think outer space. Think inner space. Don’t think the world. Think your world. Frost can be an incredibly dark poet, but he’s also a poet of intimacy. So what’s he saying here?”

“Thin line between love and hate, basically.”

“But love and desire aren’t the same, are they? There’s the love of family, but we don’t call that desire. Because desire is about an absence, right? To desire something is to want it, and you always want the thing you don’t have.”

“I guess.”

“Think about Silas, in the last poem they gave you. He’s about to die, and he comes home.”

“Except it’s not his home.”

“In that one, Warren says, ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.’ One of the most famous lines Frost ever wrote. Is that love or desire? How does his world end?”

Nick, feeling self-conscious, took a few steps down the hall toward his bedroom. Cassie’s voice receded to a singsong murmur, asking something, and Lucas’s adolescent baritone rose in impatience. “Some say this, some say that. You feel, like, Make up your friggin’ mind already.”

Nick stopped again to listen.

Cassie laughed. “What’s the rhythm telling you? The poem’s lines mainly have four beats, right? But not the last lines, about hate: ‘Is also great.’ Two stressed syllables. ‘And would suffice.’ Clear and simple. Like it’s funneling to a point. About the ice of hatred, how potent that is, right?”

“Mad props to my dawg Bobby Frost,” Lucas said. “He could flow, no doubt. But he starts with fire.”

“A lot of things start with fire, Luke. The crucial question is how they end.”

Nick debated whether he should join them. He wouldn’t have hesitated in the old days, but Lucas was different now. What was going on was a good thing, yet probably a fragile thing too. Lucas wouldn’t let him help with his homework anymore, and now that he was in the eleventh grade, Nick wasn’t much use anyway. But Cassie had somehow figured out a way to talk to him, and she knew that stuff — she was a natural. A goddamn valedictorian.

Finally, Nick walked past Lucas’s bedroom, which let them know he was home, and made his way to his own room. Removed his clothes, brushed his teeth, took a quick shower. When he came out again, Lucas was alone in his room, sitting at his computer, working.

“Hey, Luke,” he said.

Lucas glanced up with his usual look of annoyance.

Nick wanted to say something like, Did Cassie help? I’m glad you’re focusing on work. But he held back. Any such comment might be resented, taken as intrusive. “Where’s Cassie?” he said.

Lucas shrugged. “Downstairs, I guess.”

He went downstairs to look for Cassie, but she wasn’t in the family room or the kitchen, none of the usual places. He called her name, but there was no answer.

Well, she has the right to snoop around my house, he thought. After she caught me going through her medicine cabinet.

But she wouldn’t do that, would she?

He passed through the kitchen to the back hallway, switched on the alabaster lamp, kept going to his study.

Unlikely she’d be in there.

The door to his study was open, as it almost always was, and the lights were on. Cassie was seated behind his desk.