“They’re all on that shelf over there.” She pointed to a row of stacked issues. “Was there anything in particular?”
“No. You go ahead home.”
The assistant seemed reluctant, but she picked up her purse and headed out the door. Sanders went to the shelf. The issues were arranged in six-month stacks. Just to be safe, he started ten stacks back-five years ago.
He began flipping through the pages, scanning the endless details of game scores and press releases on production figures. After a few minutes, he found it hard to pay attention. And of course he didn’t know what he was looking for, although he assumed it was something about Meredith Johnson.
He went through two stacks before he found the first article.
NEW MARKETING ASSISTANT NAMED
Cupertino, May 10: DigiCom President Bob Garvin today announced the appointment of Meredith Johnson as Assistant Director of Marketing and Promotion for Telecommunications. She will report to Howard Gottfried in M and P. Ms. Johnson, 30, came to us from her position as Vice President for Marketing at Conrad Computer Systems of Sunnyvale. Before that, she was a senior administrative assistant at the Novell Network Division in Mountain View. Ms. Johnson, who has degrees from Vassar College and Stanford Business School, was recently married to Gary Henley, a marketing executive at CoStar. Congratulations! As a new arrival to DigiCom, Ms. Johnson . . .
He skipped the rest of the article; it was all PR fluff. The accompanying photo was standard B-school graduate: against a gray background with light coming from behind one shoulder, it showed a young woman with shoulderlength hair in a pageboy style, a direct businesslike stare just shy of harsh, and a firm mouth. But she looked considerably younger than she did now.
Sanders continued to thumb through the issues. He glanced at his watch. It was almost seven, and he wanted to call Bosak. He came to the end of the year, and the pages were nothing but Christmas stuff A picture of Garvin and his family (“Merry Christmas from the Boss! Ho Ho Ho!”) caught his attention because it showed Bob with his former wife, along with his three college-age kids, standing around a big tree.
Had Garvin been going out with Emily yet? Nobody ever knew. Garvin was cagey. You never knew what he was up to.
Sanders went to the next stack, for the following year. January sales predictions. (“Let’s get out and make it happen!”) Opening of the Austin plant to manufacture cellular phones; a photo of Garvin in harsh sunlight, cutting the ribbon. A profile of Mary Anne Hunter that began, “Spunky, athletic Mary Anne Hunter knows what she wants out of life . . .” They had called her “Spunky” for weeks afterward, until she begged them to give it up.
Sanders flipped pages. Contract with the Irish government to break ground in Cork. Second-quarter sales figures. Basketball team scores against Aldus. Then a black box:
JENNIFER GARVIN
Jennifer Garvin, a third-year student at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, died on March 5 in an automobile accident in San Francisco. She was twenty-four years old. Jennifer had been accepted to the firm of Harley, Wayne and Myers following her graduation. A memorial service was held at the Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto for friends of the family and her many classmates. Those wishing to make memorial donations should send contributions to Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. All of us at Digital Communications extend our deepest sympathy to the Garvin family.
Sanders remembered that time as difficult for everyone. Garvin was snappish and withdrawn, drinking too much, and frequently absent from work. Not long afterward, his marital difficulties became public; within two years, he was divorced, and soon after that he married Emily Chen, a young executive in her twenties. But there were other changes, too. Everyone agreed: Garvin was no longer the same boss after the death of his daughter.
Garvin had always been a scrapper, but now he became protective, less ruthless. Some said that Garvin was stopping to smell the roses, but that wasn’t it at all. He was newly aware of the arbitrariness of life, and it led him to control things, in a way that hadn’t been true before. Garvin had always been Mr. Evolution: put it on the shore and see if it eats or dies. It made him a heartless administrator but a remarkably fair boss. If you did a good job, you were recognized. If you couldn’t cut it, you were gone. Everybody understood the rules. But after Jennifer died, all that changed. Now he had overt favorites among staff and programs, and he nurtured those favorites and neglected others, despite the evidence in front of his face. More and more, he made business decisions arbitrarily. Garvin wanted events to turn out the way he intended them to. It gave him a new kind of fervor, a new sense of what the company should be. But it was also a more difficult place to work. A more political place.
It was a trend that Sanders had ignored. He continued to act as if he still worked at the old DigiCom-the company where all that mattered were results. But clearly, that company was gone.
Sanders continued thumbing through the magazines. Articles about early negotiations for a plant in Malaysia. A photo of Phil Blackburn in Ireland, signing an agreement with the city of Cork. New production figures for the Austin plant. Start of production of the A22 cellular model. Births and deaths and promotions. More DigiCom baseball scores.
JOHNSON TO TAKE OPERATIONS POST
Cupertino, October 20: Meredith Johnson has been named new Assistant Manager for Division Operations in Cupertino, replacing the very popular Harry Warner, who retired after fifteen years of service. The shift to Ops Manager takes Johnson out of marketing, where she has been very effective for the last year, since joining the company. In her new position, she will work closely with Bob Garvin on international operations for DigiCom.
But it was the accompanying picture that caught Sanders’s attention. Once again, it was a formal head shot, but Johnson now looked completely different. Her hair was light blond. Gone was the neat businessschool pageboy. She wore her hair short, in a curly, informal style. She was wearing much less makeup and smiling cheerfully. Overall, the effect was to make her appear much more youthful, open, innocent.
Sanders frowned. Quickly, he flipped back through the issues he had already looked at. Then he went back to the previous stack, with its year-end Christmas pictures: “Merry Christmas from the Boss! Ho Ho Ho!”
He looked at the family portrait. Garvin standing behind his three children, two sons and a daughter. That must be Jennifer. His wife, Harriet, stood to one side. In the picture, Garvin was smiling, his hand resting lightly on his daughter’s shoulder, and she was tall and athleticlooking, with short, light blond, curly hair.
“I’ll be damned,” he said aloud.
He thumbed back quickly to the first article, to look at the original picture of Johnson. He compared it to the later one. There was no doubt about what she had done. He read the rest of the first article:
As a new arrival to DigiCom, Ms. Johnson brings her considerable business acumen, her sparkling humor, and her sizzling softball pitch. She’s a major addition to the DigiCom team! Welcome, Meredith!
Her admiring friends are never surprised to learn that Meredith was once a finalist in the Miss Teen Connecticut contest. In her student days at Vassar, Meredith was a valued member of both the tennis team and the debating society. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, she took her major in psychology, with a minor in abnormal psych. Hope you won’t be needing that around here, Meredith! At Stanford, she obtained her MBA with honors, graduating near the top of her class. Meredith told us, “I am delighted to join DigiCom and I look forward to an exciting career with this forward-looking company.” We couldn’t have said it better, Ms. Johnson!
“No shit,” Sanders said. He had known almost none of this. From the start, Meredith had been based in Cupertino; Sanders never saw her. The one time he had run into her was soon after her arrival, before she changed her hair. Her hair and what else?
He looked carefully at the two pictures. Something else was subtly different. Had she had plastic surgery? It was impossible to know. But her appearance was definitely changed between the two portraits.
He moved through the remaining issues of the magazine quickly now, convinced that he had learned what there was to know. Now he skimmed only the headlines:
GARVIN SENDS JOHNSON TO TEXAS
FOR AUSTIN PLANT OVERSIGHT
JOHNSON WILL HEAD NEW
OPERATIONS REVIEW UNIT
JOHNSON NAMED OPERATIONS VEEP
TO WORK DIRECTLY UNDER GARVIN
JOHNSON: TRIUMPH IN MALAYSIA
LABOR CONFLICT NOW RESOLVED
MEREDITH JOHNSON OUR RISING STAR
A SUPERB MANAGER; HER SKILL IN
TECHNICAL AREAS VERY STRONG
This final headline ran above a lengthy profile of Johnson, well placed on the second page of the magazine. It had appeared in ComLine only two issues ago. Seeing it now, Sanders realized that the article was intended for internal consumption-softening up the beachhead before the June landing. This article was a trial balloon that Cupertino had floated, to see if Meredith would be acceptable to run the technical divisions in Seattle. The only trouble was, Sanders never saw it. And nobody had ever mentioned it to him.
The article stressed the technical savvy that Johnson had acquired during her years with the company. She was quoted as saying, “I began my career working in technical areas, back with Novell. The technical fields have always been my first love; I’d love to go back to it. After all, strong technical innovation lies at the heart of a forward-looking company like DigiCom. Any good manager here must be able to run the technical divisions.”
There it was.
He looked at the date: May 2. Published six weeks ago. Which meant that the article had been written at least two weeks before that.
As Mark Lewyn had suspected, Meredith Johnson knew she was going to be the head of the Advanced Products Division at least two months ago. Which meant, in turn, that Sanders had never been under consideration to become division head. He had never had a chance.
It was a done deal.
Months ago.
Sanders swore, took the articles over to the xerox machine and copied them, then put the stacks back on the shelf, and left the press office.
He got on the elevator. Mark Lewyn was there. Sanders said, “Hi, Mark.” Lewyn didn’t answer. Sanders pushed the button for the ground floor.
The doors closed.
“I just hope you know what the fuck you’re doing,” Lewyn said angrily.
“I think I do.”
“Because you could fuck this thing up for everybody. You know that?”
“Fuck what up?”
“Just because you got your ass in the sling, it’s not our problem.”
“Nobody said it was.”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you,” Lewyn said. “You’re late for work, you don’t call me when you say you will… What is it, trouble at home? More shit with Susan?”
“This has nothing to do with Susan.”
“Yeah? I think it does. You’ve been late two days running and even when you’re here, you walk around like you’re dreaming. You’re in fucking dreamland, Tom. I mean, what the hell were you doing, going to Meredith’s office at night, anyway?”
“She asked me to come to her office. She’s the boss. You’re saying I shouldn’t have gone?”
Lewyn shook his head in disgust. “This innocent act is a lot of crap. Don’t you take any responsibility for anything?”
“What-”
“Look, Tom, everybody in the company knows that Meredith is a shark. Meredith Manmuncher, they call her. The Great White. Everybody knows she’s protected by Garvin, that she can do what she wants. And what she wants is to play grabass with cute guys who show up in her office at the end of the day. She has a couple of glasses of wine, she gets a little flushed, and she wants service. A delivery boy, a trainee, a young account guy. Whatever. And nobody can say a word because Garvin thinks she walks on water. So, how come everybody else in the company knows it but you?”
Sanders was stunned. He did not know how to answer. He stared at Lewyn, who stood very close to him, his body hunched, hands in his pockets. He could feel Lewyn’s breath on his face. But he could hardly hear Lewyn’s words. It was as if they came to him from a great distance.
“Hey, Tom. You walk the same halls, you breathe the same air as the rest of us. You know who’s doing what. You go marching up there to her office . . . and you know damned well what’s coming. Meredith’s done everything but announce to the world that she wants to suck your dick. All day long, she’s touching your arm, giving you those meaningful little looks and squeezes. Oh, Tom. So nice to see you again. And now you tell me you didn’t know what was coming in that office? Fuck you, Tom. You’re an asshole.”
The elevator doors opened. Before them, the ground-floor lobby was deserted, growing dark in the fading light of the June evening. A soft rain fell outside. Lewyn started toward the exit, then turned back. His voice echoed in the lobby.
“You realize,” he said, “that you’re acting like one of those women in all this. The way they always go, `Who, me? I never intended that.’ The way they go, `Oh, it’s not my responsibility. I never thought if I got drunk and kissed him and went to his room and lay down on his bed that he’d fuck me. Oh dear me no.’ It’s bullshit, Tom. Irresponsible bullshit. And you better think about what I’m saying, because there’s a lot of us who have worked every bit as hard as you have in this company, and we don’t want to see you screw up this merger and this spin-off for the rest of us. You want to pretend you can’t tell when a woman’s coming on to you, that’s fine. You want to screw up your own life, it’s your decision. But you screw up mine, and I’m going to fucking put you away.”
Lewyn stalked off. The elevator doors started to close. Sanders stuck his hand out; the doors closed on his fingers. He jerked his hand, and the doors opened again. He hurried out into the lobby after Lewyn.
He grabbed Lewyn on the shoulder. “Mark, wait, listen-”
“I got nothing to say to you. I got kids, I got responsibilities. You’re an asshole.”
Lewyn shrugged Sanders’s arm off, pushed open the door, and walked out. He strode quickly away, down the street.
As the glass doors closed, Sanders saw a flash of blond in the moving reflection. He turned.
“I thought that was a little unfair,” Meredith Johnson said. She was standing about twenty feet behind him, near the elevators. She was wearing gym clothes-navy tights, and a sweatshirtand she carried a gym bag in her hand. She looked beautiful, overtly sexual in a certain way. Sanders felt tense: there was no one else in the lobby. They were alone.
“Yes,” Sanders said. “I thought it was unfair.”
“I meant, to women,” Meredith said. She swung the gym bag over her shoulder, the movement raising her sweatshirt and exposing her bare abdomen above her tights. She shook her head and pushed her hair back from her face. She paused a moment, and then she began to speak. “I want to tell you I’m sorry about all this,” she said. She moved toward him in a steady, confident way, almost stalking. Her voice was low. “I never wanted any of this, Tom.” She came a little closer, approaching slowly, as if he were an animal that might be frightened away. “I have only the warmest feelings for you.” Still closer. “Only the warmest.” Closer. “I can’t help it, Tom, if I still want you.” Closer. “If I did anything to offend you, I apologize.” She was very close now, her body almost touching his, her breasts inches from his arm. “I’m truly sorry, Tom,” she said softly. She seemed filled with emotion, her breasts rising and falling, her eyes moist and pleading as she looked up at him. “Can you forgive me? Please? You know how I feel about you.”
He felt all the old sensations, the old stirrings. He clenched his jaw. “Meredith. The past is past. Cut it out, will you?”
She immediately changed her tone and gestured to the street. “Listen, I have a car here. Can I drop you somewhere?”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s raining. I thought you might want a lift.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Only because it’s raining.”
“This is Seattle,” he said. “It rains all the time here.”
She shrugged, walked to the door, and leaned her weight against it, thrusting out her hip. Then she looked back at him and smiled. “Remind me never to wear tights around you. It’s embarrassing: you make me wet.”
Then she turned away, pushed through the door, and walked quickly to the waiting car, getting in the back. She closed the door, looked back at him, and waved cheerfully. The car drove off.
Sanders unclenched his hands. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His whole body was tense. He waited until the car was gone, then went outside. He felt the rain on his face, the cool evening breeze.
He hailed a taxi. “The Four Seasons Hotel,” he said to the driver.
Riding in the taxi, Sanders stared out the window, breathing deeply. He felt as though he couldn’t get his breath. He had been badly unnerved by the meeting with Meredith. Especially coming so close after his conversation with Lewyn.
Sanders was distressed by what Lewyn had said, but you could never take Mark too seriously. Lewyn was an artistic hothead who handled his creative tensions by getting angry. He was angry about something most of the time. Lewyn liked being angry. Sanders had known him a long time. Personally, he had never understood how Adele, Mark’s wife, put up with it. Adele was one of those wonderfully calm, almost phlegmatic women who could talk on the phone while her two kids crawled all over her, tugging at her, asking her questions. In a similar fashion, Adele just let Lewyn rage while she went on about her business. In fact, everyone just let Lewyn rage, because everyone knew that, in the end, it didn’t mean anything.
Yet, it was also true that Lewyn had a kind of instinct for public perceptions and trends. That was the secret of his success as a designer. Lewyn would say, “Pastel colors,” and everybody would groan and say that the new design colors looked like hell. But two years later, when the products were coming off the line, pastel colors would be just what everybody wanted. So Sanders was forced to admit that what Lewyn had said about him, others would soon be saying. Lewyn had said the company line: that Sanders was screwing up the chances for everybody else.
Well, screw them, he thought.
As for Meredith-he had had the distinct feeling that she had been toying with him in the lobby. Teasing him, playing with him. He could not understand why she was so confident. Sanders was making a very serious allegation against her. Yet she behaved as if there was no threat at all. She had a kind of imperviousness, an indifference, that made him deeply uneasy. It could only mean she knew that she had Garvin’s backing.
The taxi pulled into the turnaround of the hotel. He saw Meredith’s car up ahead. She was talking to the driver. She looked back and saw him.
There was nothing to do but get out and walk toward the entrance.
“Are you following me?” she said, smiling.
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Yes, Meredith. I’m sure.”
They went up the escalator from the street to the lobby. He stood behind her on the escalator. She looked back at him. “I wish you were.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m not.”
“It would have been nice,” she said. She smiled invitingly.
He didn’t know what to say; he just shook his head. They rode the rest of the way in silence until they came to the high ornate lobby. She said, “I’m in room 423. Come and see me anytime.” She headed toward the elevators.
He waited until she was gone, then crossed the lobby and turned left to the dining room. Standing at the entrance, he saw Dorfman at a corner table, eating dinner with Garvin and Stephanie Kaplan. Max was holding forth, gesturing sharply as he spoke. Garvin and Kaplan both leaned forward, listening. Sanders was reminded that Dorfman had once been a director of the company-according to the stories, a very powerful director. It was Dorfman who had persuaded Garvin to expand beyond modems into cellular telephony and wireless communications, back in the days when nobody could see any link between computers and telephones. The link was obvious now but obscure in the early 1980s, when Dorfman had said, “Your business is not hardware. Your business is communications. Your business is access to information.”
Dorfman had shaped company personnel as well. Supposedly, Kaplan owed her position to his glowing endorsement. Sanders had come to Seattle on Dorfman’s recommendation. Mark Lewyn had been hired because of Dorfman. And any number of vice presidents had vanished over the years because Dorfman found them lacking in vision or stamina. He was a powerful ally or a lethal opponent.
And his position at the time of the merger was equally strong. Although Dorfman had resigned as a director years before, he still owned a good deal of DigiCom stock. He still had Garvin’s ear. And he still had the contacts and prestige within the business and financial community that made a merger like this much simpler. If Dorfman approved the terms of the merger, his admirers at Goldman, Sachs and at First Boston would raise the money easily. But if Dorfman was dissatisfied, if he hinted that the merger of the two companies did not make sense, then the acquisition might unravel. Everyone knew it. Everyone understood very well the power he wielded-especially Dorfman himself.
Sanders hung back at the entrance to the restaurant, reluctant to come forward. After a while, Max glanced up and saw him. Still talking, he shook his head fractionally: no. Then, as he continued to talk, he made a subtle motion with his hand, tapping his watch. Sanders nodded, and went back into the lobby and sat down. He had the stack of ComLine photocopies on his lap. He browsed through them, studying again the way Meredith had changed her appearance.
A few minutes later, Dorfman rolled out in his wheelchair. “So, Thomas. I am glad you are not bored with your life.”
“What does that mean?”
Dorfman laughed and gestured to the dining room. “They’re talking of nothing else in there. The only topic this evening is you and Meredith. Everyone is so excited. So worried.”
“Including Bob?”
“Yes, of course. Including Bob.” He wheeled closer to Sanders. “I cannot really speak to you now. Was there something in particular?”
“I think you ought to look at this,” Sanders said, handing Dorfman the photocopies. He was thinking that Dorfman could take these pictures to Garvin. Dorfman could make Garvin understand what was really going on.
Dorfman examined them in silence a moment. “Such a lovely woman,” he said. “So beautiful . . .”
“Look at the differences, Max. Look at what she did to herself.”
Dorfman shrugged. “She changed her hair. Very flattering. So?”