“That’s right.”
“Okay. I’ll leave soup on. I’ll see you when you get here.”
Cindy placed a stack of files on his desk. When Sanders hung up, she said, “She already knew?”
“She suspected.”
Cindy nodded. “She called at lunchtime,” she said. “I had the sense. The spouses are talking, I imagine.”
“I’m sure everybody’s talking.”
Cindy went to the door, then paused. Cautiously, she said, “And how was the lunch meeting?”
“Meredith was introduced as the new head of all the tech divisions. She gave a presentation. She says she’s going to keep all the division heads in place, all reporting to her.”
“Then there’s no change for us? Just another layer on top?”
“So far. That’s what they’re telling me. Why? What do you hear?”
“I hear the same.”
He smiled. “Then it must be true.”
“Should I go ahead and buy the condo?” She had been planning this for some time, a condo in Queen Anne’s Hill for herself and her young daughter.
Sanders said, “When do you have to decide?”
“I have another fifteen days. End of the month.”
“Then wait. You know, just to be safe.”
She nodded, and went out. A moment later, she came back. “I almost forgot. Mark Lewyn’s office just called. The Twinkle drives have arrived from KL. His designers are looking at them now. Do you want to see them?”
“I’m on my way.”
The Design Group occupied the entire second floor of the Western Building. As always, the atmosphere there was chaotic; all the phones were ringing, but there was no receptionist in the little waiting area by the elevators, which was decorated with faded, taped-up posters for a 1929 Bauhaus Exhibition in Berlin and an old science-fiction movie called The Forbin Project. Two Japanese visitors sat at a corner table, speaking rapidly, beside the battered Coke machine and the junk food dispenser. Sanders nodded to them, used his card to open the locked door, and went inside.
The floor was a large open space, partitioned at unexpected angles by slanted walls painted to look like pastel-veined stone. Uncomfortable-looking wire chairs and tables were scattered in odd places. Rockand-roll music blared. Everybody was casually dressed; most of the designers wore shorts and T-shirts. It was clearly A Creative Area.
Sanders went through to Foamland, the little display of the latest product designs the group had made. There were models of tiny CDROM drives and miniature cellular phones. Lewyn’s teams were charged with creating product designs for the future, and many of these seemed absurdly small: a cellular phone no larger than a pencil, and another that looked like a postmodern version of Dick Tracy’s wrist radio, in pale green and gray; a pager the size of a cigarette lighter; and a micro-CD player with a flip-up screen that could fit easily in the palm of the hand.
Although these devices looked outrageously tiny, Sanders had long since become accustomed to the idea that the designs were at most two years in the future. The hardware was shrinking fast; it was difficult for Sanders to remember that when he began working at DigiCom, a “portable” computer was a thirty-pound box the size of a carry-on suitcase and cellular telephones didn’t exist at all. The first cellular phones that DigiCom manufactured were fifteen-pound wonders that you lugged around on a shoulder strap. At the time, people thought they were a miracle. Now, customers complained if their phones weighed more than a few ounces.
Sanders walked past the big foam-cutting machine, all twisted tubes and knives behind Plexiglas shields, and found Mark Lewyn and his team bent over three dark blue CD-ROM players from Malaysia. One of the players already lay in pieces on the table; under bright halogen lights, the team was poking at its innards with tiny screwdrivers, glancing up from time to time to the scope screens.
“What’ve you found?” Sanders said.
“Ah, hell,” Lewyn said, throwing up his hands in artistic exasperation. “Not good, Tom. Not good.”
“Talk to me.”
Lewyn pointed to the table. “There’s a metal rod inside the hinge. These clips maintain contact with the rod as the case is opened; that’s how you maintain power to the screen.”
“Yes…”
“But power is intermittent. It looks like the rods are too small. They’re supposed to be fifty-four millimeters. These seem to be fiftytwo, fifty-three millimeters.”
Lewyn was grim, his entire manner suggesting unspeakable consequences. The bars were a millimeter off, and the world was coming to an end. Sanders understood that he would have to calm Lewyn down. He’d done it many times before.
He said, “We can fix that, Mark. It’ll mean opening all the cases and replacing the bars, but we can do that.”
“Oh sure,” Lewyn said. “But that still leaves the clips. Our specs call for 16/10 stainless, which has requisite tension to keep the clips springy and maintain contact with the bar. These clips seem to be something else, maybe 16/4. They’re too stiff: So when you open the cases the clips bend, but they don’t spring back.”
“So we have to replace the clips, too. We can do that when we switch the bars.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. The clips are heat-pressed into the cases.”
“Ah, hell.”
“Right. They are integral to the case unit.”
“You’re telling me we have to build new housings just because we have bad clips?”
“Exactly.”
Sanders shook his head. “We’ve run off thousands so far. Something like four thousand.”
“Well, we’ve got to do ’em again.”
“And what about the drive itself?”
“It’s slow,” Lewyn said. “No doubt about it. But I’m not sure why. It might be power problems. Or it might be the controller chip.”
“If it’s the controller chip . . .”
“We’re in deep shit. If it’s a primary design problem, we have to go back to the drawing board. If it’s only a fabrication problem, we have to change the production lines, maybe remake the stencils. But it’s months, either way.”
“When will we know?”
“I’ve sent a drive and power supply to the Diagnostics guys,” Lewyn said. “They should have a report by five. I’ll get it to you. Does Meredith know about this yet?”
“I’m briefing her at six.”
“Okay. Call me after you talk to her?”
“Sure.”
“In a way, this is good,” Lewyn said.
“How do you mean?”
“We’re throwing her a big problem right away,” Lewyn said. “We’ll see how she handles it.”
Sanders turned to go. Lewyn followed him out. “By the way,” Lewyn said. “Are you pissed off that you didn’t get the job?”
“Disappointed,” Sanders said. “Not pissed. There’s no point being pissed.”
“Because if you ask me, Garvin screwed you. You put in the time, you’ve demonstrated you can run the division, and he put in someone else instead.”
Sanders shrugged. “It’s his company.”
Lewyn threw his arm over Sanders’s shoulder, and gave him a rough hug. “You know, Tom, sometimes you’re too reasonable for your own good.”
“I didn’t know being reasonable was a defect,” Sanders said.
“Being too reasonable is a defect,” Lewyn said. “You end up getting pushed around.”
“I’m just trying to get along,” Sanders said. “I want to be here when the division goes public.”
“Yeah, true. You got to stay.” They came to the elevator. Lewyn said, “You think she got it because she’s a woman?”
Sanders shook his head. “Who knows.”
“Pale males eat it again. I tell you. Sometimes I get so sick of the constant pressure to appoint women,” Lewyn said. “I mean, look at this design group. We’ve got forty percent women here, better than any other division, but they always say, why don’t you have more. More women, more-”
“Mark,” he said, interrupting. “It’s a different world now.”
“And not a better one,” Lewyn said. “It’s hurting everybody. Look: when I started in DigiCom, there was only one question. Are you good? If you were good, you got hired. If you could cut it, you stayed. No more. Now, ability is only one of the priorities. There’s also the question of whether you’re the right sex and skin color to fill out the company’s HR profiles. And if you turn out to be incompetent, we can’t fire you. Pretty soon, we start to get junk like this Twinkle drive. Because no one’s accountable anymore. No one is responsible. You can’t build products on a theory. Because the product you’re making is real. And if it stinks, it stinks. And no one will buy it.”
Coming back to his office, Sanders used his electronic passcard to open the door to the fourth floor. Then he slipped the card in his trouser pocket, and headed down the hallway. He was moving quickly, thinking about the meeting with Lewyn. He was especially bothered by one thing that Lewyn had said: that he was allowing himself to be pushed around by Garvin-that he was being too passive, too understanding.
But Sanders didn’t see it that way. When Sanders had said it was Garvin’s company, he meant it. Bob was the boss, and Bob could do what he wanted. Sanders was disappointed not to get the job, but no one had promised it to him. Ever. He and others in the Seattle divisions had come, over a period of weeks, to assume that Sanders would get the job. But Garvin had never mentioned it. Nor had Phil Blackburn.
As a result, Sanders felt he had no reason to gripe. If he was disappointed, it was only because he had done it to himself. It was classic: counting your chickens before they hatched.
And as for being too passive what did Lewyn expect him to do? Make a fuss? Yell and scream? That wouldn’t do any good. Because clearly Meredith Johnson had this job, whether Sanders liked it or not. Resign? That really wouldn’t do any good. Because if he quit, he would lose the profits pending when the company went public. That would be a real disaster.
So on reflection, all he could do was accept Meredith Johnson in the new job, and get on with it. And he suspected that if the situation were reversed, Lewyn, for all his bluster, would do exactly the same thing: grin and bear it.
But the bigger problem, as he thought it over, was the Twinkle drive. Lewyn’s team had torn up three drives that afternoon, and they still didn’t have any idea why they were malfunctioning. They had found some non-spec components in the hinge, which Sanders could track down. He’d find out soon enough why they were getting non-spec materials. But the real problemthe slowness of the drives-remained a mystery to which they had no clue, and that meant that he was going to
“Tom? You dropped your card.”
“What?” He looked up absently. An area assistant was frowning, pointing back down the hall.
“You dropped your card.”
“Oh.” He saw the passcard lying there, white against the gray carpet. “Thanks.”
He went back to retrieve it. Obviously, he must be more upset than he realized. You couldn’t get anywhere in the DigiCom buildings without a passcard. Sanders bent over, picked it up, and slipped it in his pocket.
Then he felt the second card, already there. Frowning, he took both cards out and looked at them.
The card on the floor wasn’t his card, it was someone else’s. He paused for a moment, trying to decide which was his. By design, the passcards were featureless: just the blue DigiCom logo, a stamped serial number, and a magstripe on the back.
He ought to be able to remember his card number, but he couldn’t. He hurried back to his office, to look it up on his computer. He glanced at his watch. It was four o’clock, two hours before his meeting with Meredith Johnson. He still had a lot to do to prepare for that meeting. He frowned as he walked along, staring at the carpet. He would have to get the production reports, and perhaps also the design detail specs. He wasn’t sure she would understand them, but he should be prepared with them, anyway. And what else? He did not want to go into this first meeting having forgotten something.
Once again, his thoughts were disrupted by images from his past. An opened suitcase. The bowl of popcorn. The stained-glass window.
“So?” said a familiar voice. “You don’t say hello to your old friends anymore?”
Sanders looked up. He was outside the glass-walled conference room. Inside the room, he saw a solitary figure hunched over in a wheelchair, staring at the Seattle skyline, his back to Sanders.
“Hello, Max,” Sanders said.
Max Dorfman continued to stare out the window. “Hello, Thomas.”
“How did you know it was me?”
Dorfman snorted. “It must be magic. What do you think? Magic?” His voice was sarcastic. “Thomas: I can see you.”
“How? You have eyes in the back of your head?”
“No, Thomas. I have a reflection in front of my head. I see you in the glass, of course. Walking with your head down, like a defeated putz.” Dorfman snorted again, and then wheeled his chair around. His eyes were bright, intense, mocking. “You were such a promising man. And now you are hanging your head?”
Sanders wasn’t in the mood. “Let’s just say this hasn’t been one of my better days, Max.”
“And you want everybody to know about it? You want sympathy?”
“No, Max.” He remembered how Dorfman had ridiculed the idea of sympathy. Dorfman used to say that an executive who wanted sympathy was not an executive. He was a sponge, soaking up something useless.
Sanders said, “No, Max. I was thinking.”
“Ah. Thinking. Oh, I like thinking. Thinking is good. And what were you thinking about, Thomas: the stained glass in your apartment?”
Despite himself, Sanders was startled: “How did you know that?”
“Maybe it’s magic,” Dorfman said, with a rasping laugh. “Or perhaps I can read minds. You think I can read minds, Thomas? Are you stupid enough to believe that?”
“Max, I’m not in the mood.”
“Oh well, then I must stop. If you’re not in the mood, I must stop. We must at all costs preserve your mood.” He slapped the arm of his wheelchair irritably. “You told me, Thomas. That’s how I knew what you were thinking.”
“I told you? When?”
“Nine or ten years ago, it must have been.”
“What did I tell you?”
“Oh, you don’t remember? No wonder you have problems. Better stare at the floor some more. It may do you good. Yes. I think so. Keep staring at the floor, Thomas.”
“Max, for Christ’s sake.”
Dorfman grinned at him. “Do I irritate you?”
“You always irritate me.”
“Ali. Well. Then perhaps there is hope. Not for you, of course for me. I am old, Thomas. Hope has a different meaning, at my age. You wouldn’t understand. These days, I cannot even get around by myself. I must have someone push me. Preferably a pretty woman, but as a rule they do not like to do such things. So here I am, with no pretty woman to push me. Unlike you.”
Sanders sighed. “Max, do you suppose we can just have an ordinary conversation?”
“What a good idea,” Dorfman said. “I would like that very much. What is an ordinary conversation?”
“I mean, can we just talk like normal people?”
“If it will not bore you, Thomas, yes. But I am worried. You know how old people are worried about being boring.”
“Max. What did you mean about the stained glass?”
He shrugged. “I meant Meredith, of course. What else?”
“What about Meredith?”
“How am I to know?” Dorfman said irritably. “All I know of this is what you told me. And all you told me is that you used to take trips, to Korea or Japan, and when you came back, Meredith would-”
“Tom, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Cindy said, leaning in the door to the conference room.
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Max said. “Who is this beautiful creature, Thomas?”
“I’m Cindy Wolfe, Professor Dorfman,” she said. “I work for Tom.”
“Oh, what a lucky man he is!”
Cindy turned to Sanders. “I’m really sorry, Tom, but one of the executives from Conley-White is in your office, and I thought you would want to”
“Yes, yes,” Dorfman said immediately. “He must go. Conley-White, it sounds very important.”