Shimmer (6 page)

He doesn't know how to change this. He doesn't know who to ask for help.

How does Robbie see it?

The car hits another plate, lifting and even turning so slightly to the left now, stomach emptied and that glimpse of his mom and for some long second he even thinks that this will be his moment, his epiphany, the second when it comes to him and he sees and, finally, he can touch the very bottom, the very edge of the numbers he doesn't understand.

And of course it is not that moment. You don't see when your epiphanies come. They just come.

And so still, like every night, something, somewhere, does not make sense.

I wonder if I could maybe wake up the kids for a little while.

A longtime regional sales manager was reluctantly confiding to me that easy listening music was, in fact, not very good. “Your average person,” he was saying as we sat together in a conference room during one of the prearranged, informal Tuesday get-togethers I periodically held with managers from the field offices, “your
nonaficionado,
” he continued, “he talks about jazz and he's thinking about easy listening. In his mind, easy listening is really the top of the top.”

He leaned his face close to mine. His breath smelled of mouth-wash. His skin smelled of shaving cream.

“Well, Mr. Case,” he said, “let me tell you a secret, a secret from a humble insider:
It's not true.
”

I smiled. I nodded. I cocked my head to the side. Noncommittal gestures somehow positive yet restrained. “Call me Robbie,” I said to him.

Frequently in my work life, it was the most formulaic of responses that served me best.

The sales manager smiled wide. He slid his bulk forward to the edge of the couch. He settled his heavy fingers on the soft, springy cartilage at my knee.

For the briefest of moments, it was all I could do not to reflexively kick him in the shins.

“And call me Bill,” he said.

The employees of this company all wanted to connect with me. To talk to me. To please me with their performance. To share thoughts about their role, the company's growth, the future we shared.

And, more and more, they wanted to touch me.

They would touch my arm in the hallways, pat my shoulder in an elevator. In meetings they had me trapped, patting my wrist as it lay on a conference table, squeezing my shoulder as they stood to leave the room for a moment, squeezing again as they returned to their seat. Sometimes a particularly bold, usually older, usually male VP would go so far as to stand behind my chair, hands resting heavily on my shoulders. In a break room I once even felt a young woman with the highly tailored appearance of a marketing assistant slowly, carefully, ever so lightly press her shoulder against mine.

This was not an outcome I'd sought when I took over the company. This was not something that made me feel proud. Moreover, all my life, I have never liked to be touched.

I'd spent thirty-five years avoiding unnecessary physical contact.

I didn't let people know I felt this way. Only in the last six months had I shared this with my senior staff—a momentary lapse in personal judgment that had resulted in each of them, every week, creating an opportunity to touch me on the hand, the shoulder, the arm or leg.

Each except Leonard, of course, who lacked even the most basic recognition of irony.

I leaned to the left on the couch now, casually shifting away from the sales manager as I repositioned a security document I'd set on the couch. It was another security review.

Five more investigations under way by Whitley's SWAT team.

Ten more steps I had to take to avoid them.

In my office now, I'd managed to move a safe distance from the sales manager as he started a discussion about the intermingled history of soft rock and modern jazz. But then I realized that Trevor Case, Core's executive vice president for all product sales, had walked into the conference room. Tall, with dark hair and a suit. As always, a suit and shirt and tie and all of it speaking to his complete disregard for everything around him. He was not moving now, still and quiet. Thin eyes staring past the two of us sitting down. The sales manager still hadn't realized Trevor was here.

In all the company—in all of our industry—there was no one more feared than Trevor Case.

Seeing him now, I almost had to stand.

I hadn't known Trevor was in New York, let alone in the building. Working entirely on the road, Trevor was a kind of omnipotent ghost, a powerful yet unseen specter rarely sighted in person but who continually made himself present in the lives of the people around him. He used airport pay phones to hold conference calls with his sales managers worldwide, used poorly lit cybercafés to outline his revenue goals for each region, used waves of overnight deliveries to fire whole teams of underperforming sales reps.

Trevor was also my thirty-six-year-old cousin, one year older than I, and since we were kids he'd been something of a brother to me. A very difficult half-brother, really, who came in and out of my life at uneven intervals, each time inevitably leading me into trouble.

“Consider New Age music,” the sales manager was continuing, leaning back comfortably on the sofa. He still hadn't noticed Trevor. “The average guy, he thinks New Age is folk. Well, Robbie,” he said, shifting in place, his weight resettling from left to right, “it just isn't true.”

He winked knowingly. He nodded conclusively. He reached for my knee another time.

“How are sales?” I asked him, shifting in my seat again, really only trying to make conversation in the midst of Trevor's almost unprecedented daylight appearance. With Trevor I always had a sense of waiting.
Waiting on him to speak or act. Waiting until he took control of the moment.

Even Whitley had no influence over Trevor. “Trevor,” she would say, “is yours.”

“I put people on the street, I sell product,” the sales manager was saying. “I put people on the phone, I sell product.” He shrugged heavily. He draped one arm across the back of the sofa. He held his glass of water like a highball, even tinkling the ice cubes before bringing the fluid so carefully to his lips, then grimacing mightily as he swallowed. “Whatever we do,” he said, “I sell product.”

“That's wonderful,” I said, talking only to fill the space.

He shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, pausing, leaning forward again, and I leaned back easily, crossing my legs, carefully taking myself out of his reach, “if I may, I'd like to say that the word is
extraordinary.
”

I nodded again. I glanced out the window. The sunlight shone brightly, evenly, on the Jersey shore. It was eight
A.M
.

Trevor's voice entered the pause, a sound so fluid filling all space in the room. “But why are you successful?” he asked the sales manager.

The manager had been tinkling the ice in his glass again, but turned now and saw Trevor. The manager's face went red, then pale. He took his arm from the back of the couch. He slid forward on the sofa.

“You've been with this company since the '80s, correct?” Trevor asked, moving now, carefully, in a suit that was blue or black, staring at us with eyes that were thin or small. “Worked for Robbie's father, yes?”

The sales manager spoke quietly. “Yes.”

“And before that, you sold what?” Trevor asked, stepping carefully around the corner of the couch, settling down between the sales manager and me. “Long distance, cable TV? You sold shoes, magazines, aluminum siding?”

The manager nodded. He put his glass on the table. He put his hands on his knees.

“In all your years selling,” Trevor said, sitting now on the very edge of the couch, touching as little of it as possible, “selling hobby magazines and cookware, selling anything. In all your years has anything, ever, come this easily?”

The sales manager put his hands on his knees, then rubbed them together slowly, then put them palm down on the couch. He spoke very quietly. “No.”

“And late at night,” Trevor said, “after you've cashed your commission check, after you've called your broker, after you've talked to your insurance agent and set up your golf game for the weekend, after all that don't you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, and don't you wonder?”

The sales manager was looking down at the floor.

“Don't you wonder?” Trevor repeated, voice getting quiet, and he'd crossed his hands in his lap, the strongest hands I'd ever known, since we were kids his hands had been no bigger or longer or wider than anyone else's but they'd always been the strongest, holding him up in a game, knocking others down in a fight, clutching so easily to a tree or a wall or a windowsill as we climbed, two kids running wild through the neighborhood in summer.

The sales manager glanced toward the window. He was carefully gnawing on the inside of his lip. He turned to me, hoping I would break in. But then he turned back to Trevor. He started to speak, stopped, then finally spoke quietly. “I'm sorry. To you and Mr. Case. Mr. Case,” he said, turning to me, “Mr. Case, I am sorry.”

“There is something unexplainable happening,” Trevor said, leaning forward even more, more than seemed possible, lowering his head just slightly as he stared at the sales manager.

The sales manager nodded. “I'm sorry. I really am.”

Trevor touched the manager's knee. Trevor held it hard. “And so,” he said, “late at night, you wonder, don't you? Tell me. What do you wonder?”

The manager nodded, again looking out the window. Finally he
turned back to Trevor. When he spoke his voice was rough, quiet, not a whisper but a kind of uneasy breath. “I wonder when it will end.”

Trevor was pressing harder on the man's knee. “Don't talk about how easy it is,” he said.

“I won't.”

“Don't talk about how great it is.”

“I won't.”

“You get comfortable and I will fire you,” Trevor said.

The sales manager nodded.

“You start to believe the bullshit Robbie here gives you, and I'll come see you at home,” Trevor said.

The sales manager closed his eyes.

“You get comfortable and I'll come to your house and I'll repossess your car and sell off your clothes and I'll take your kids out of private school and I'll burn down your fucking home while you sit on the curb, crying into your hands, because if you let up for one second, if you let up in your thoughts, if you even have a dream that this is easy, then I will be there, instantly, putting you and your family on the street.”

“Have you ever thought—” I started to say to Trevor, the two of us back in my office.

He interrupted me. “Have I ever thought that we might be better off if I were a soothing and supportive executive in charge of sales?” he asked. “No, I have not.”

“I'm saying you're an asshole.”

“Because I keep that sales manager motivated and focused, that makes me an asshole?” he asked me, smiling, moving now, easily and almost quickly, steadily pacing from window to door in my office.

“You keep him afraid,” I said, feeling thin and light in my clothes, and as always I felt like I was shorter than Trevor, an inch or two smaller, even though I knew we were the same height.

“I keep him selling,” Trevor said, stopping for a moment, his hands in the front pockets of his suit coat.

“I really don't like you, Trevor,” I said.

“And yet, at the same time, you can't help but find me lovable and endearing,” he said, smiling, and he was pacing again.

“Why do you do those things to your people?” I asked.

“Sales are up, the expansion continues,” he said.

I shook my head. Couldn't answer. “Why are you in town?”

“Omaha,” Trevor said, a hand in his dark hair, moving it, slowly, from his eyes. “The acquisition. There are a few assets I do not want us to buy.”

Carefully I sat down in my chair, then turned away from him. I stared out my window. I knew what Trevor meant. It was what Trevor always meant. “Their sales team,” I said.

“Correct.”

“You want them fired.”

“Yes.”

“We talked,” I said. “You and I talked. We agreed you would keep them. I have told them they will stay.”

“Yes,” Trevor said, “but I was lying.”

“How many people?” I asked.

“A group of fifty, I think. Plus support staff. Call it an even sixty.”

When we were kids, Trevor wasn't the bully who beat up other boys at school or soccer practice. He wasn't the kid who shot dogs with pellet guns. What Trevor did was taunt. Quietly, fluidly, relentlessly. He charmed girls until they smiled, showing their braces, which Trevor then made fun of. He befriended heavy kids on the walk home, buying them donuts and grape soda, asking them what they liked to do, what games they were good at and what things they collected, until finally he started to ask why they had no friends, why they ate so much food, why they were so stupid, why they collected baseball cards, why they were so fat.
Why are you so fat?
Still asking as he followed them along the street, across yards, down an alley, all the way to their porch steps.

Trevor had been an awful person. Really, he still was.

I was staring out the window. “I'll call Omaha,” I said. “I'll do the firing.”

“You know I'll do it,” he said.

“I don't want you calling them,” I said. “I'll call.”

“Make Whitley do it,” he said. “Distract her from SWAT for the day.”

“I'll do it,” I said, and realized I could see Trevor's sharp and smiling face reflected in the glass. “No one calls Omaha but me.”

“You do love me, Robbie. Don't you?”

“I really don't like you, Trevor. I wish you weren't here. And never had been here.”