The Fearsome Particles (23 page)

“They’re not finished yet, Avis.”

The agent hesitated, and blinked. “It’s Thursday.” For a moment this fact seemed sufficiently weighty to Avis that it was possible she might say nothing more. Then, for extra heft, she added, “I’m bringing the Webbs tomorrow.”

Vicki left the window and started through the dining room toward the foyer. “There’s still one room I need time with.”

Avis was frowning as she whipped the scarf from the handles of her purse. “Houses this expensive don’t have streams of potential buyers, which I know you appreciate.”

“I do.”

She arrayed the scarf in a haphazard tumble around her neck and gripped the clasp of her purse as Vicki passed silently across the guilloche tiling on the way to the front door. “Tomorrow is when I’m bringing the Webbs,” repeated Avis. “They have been expecting to come that particular day. Mildred made space in her schedule.”

“What time?”

“Two,” she said, her face full of concern. “That was the opening she gave me. It was two and nothing else. It doesn’t matter to Alan, he’s like the last buffalo roaming the plains, but Mildred has a schedule. Aren’t you afraid, Victoria, that you might be cutting it rather fine?”

The door, as it opened, produced the suckling sound of airtight seals temporarily letting go, which Vicki always found one of the great comforts of a new home.

“It has to be right,” she said, standing aside to give Avis room to leave.

Avis was again shuffling through her purse. When she seemed to find what she was after, she lifted her head and turned as if her intent was to enter the small bathroom tucked away to the right of the stairs. Then she shook her head at an unspoken thought and murmured, “I have water in the car.”

Near the entrance way she wedged her stocking feet into her shoes, then faced Vicki at the door.

“Two, tomorrow,” said Vicki, smiling.

“Two,”
emphasized Avis. She stepped out into the sunshine and turned to face Vicki as if she had one more thing to say. Then something pulled her gaze downward. “You still have Hella working for you?” she said.

“Yes.”

Avis directed a finger at the ground. “There’s a cigarette butt.”

Vicki, standing on the threshold with her thoughts cast forward to a more distant hour, didn’t watch Avis bend to pick the cigarette up. But she heard her gasp and saw the new distress on her face when she straightened. Wordlessly, Avis placed the flattened butt in Vicki’s hand. Then, her mouth set at a tormented skew, she reached into her purse, pulled out a narrow leather folder, flipped its plastic pages and produced a tan card.

“My pedicurist,” she rasped, suddenly hoarse. “Do you never look down?”

I
n his office, Gerald dialled extensions one by one. It was extraordinary –

“Trick? Hi. Like to meet with you in the boardroom in about ten minutes. Bring your market percentage projections. Yup.”

– it was extraordinary how invigorated he felt after taking decisive action with Kyle. One snip of a cable, and suddenly anything –

“Sandy? I want you to come to this meeting with Trick. Bring all your papers from our talk last night. That’s right.”

– suddenly anything seemed possible. He tried not to think of all the times in his life he’d worried himself into paralysis in the face of a challenge, because today he was making things happen.

“Hi, Doug. I want you in on a meeting in the boardroom at nine-thirty. We’ll probably get into budgets a bit, so bring all your numbers. Thanks.”

One snip of a cable. And Kyle hadn’t even flinched. That was surprising. Gerald had half expected an explosion of pent-up
something – anger or grief or whatever had gotten stuck inside him over there, before the military had washed its hands of him. Part of Gerald, while he was climbing up the ladder, had fervently hoped for it. But it hadn’t happened, and he chose to believe his son had not been indifferent but rather had measured the fatherly resolve Gerald was discharging like sparks and understood it was game over! and nothing could be done. Regardless, the best result was not that he’d put an end to the betting spree, but that he’d prodded his son out of his chair, out of his room, and into the light. Kyle had walked down to the back porch while Gerald was putting the ladder away. He was still there when Gerald returned, eating half a bagel trowelled with cream cheese that Vicki had evidently given him. And instead of blasting anger or noise at Gerald, his son had simply held out his hand.

Under the circumstances, having taken his Internet away, and being pleased to see him breathing outdoor air for the first time in a week, it had seemed petty to quiz Kyle over what he planned to do with the car. Though in hindsight, after he’d handed over the keys, while he was sitting in the passenger seat of Vicki’s Camry as she grudgingly drove him to work, Gerald had suffered through a pang of doubt so strong it made him see colours.

But that was momentary. That was behind him. Now he was back on the determined track and rustling up a strategy session
of potentially company-shaking proportions. As he thought about who else to include, Gerald’s finger hesitated over his phone’s grey-gumdrop buttons. In a situation like this protocol dictated that he call Bishop, but Bishop was sinking deeper into his Susan fog. Just minutes ago, Gerald had glanced out his window and discovered his boss standing at the edge of the grass that stretched from the main Spent building to the ditch next to the Service Road, looking as lost as if he’d forgotten where he’d parked his car.

He punched in Phil Barbuda’s number. “Phil, it’s Gerald. Sorry for the late notice. I’m getting a meeting together in the boardroom at nine-thirty and it’d be good to have finance there. … Great.”

A
t 9:35 in the main boardroom, as he waited for the last of his invited attendees (Trick Runiman) to arrive, Gerald stared at Bishop’s empty chair and imagined himself being purged.

This was his great career-related fear. Often, when he sat with the business pages in the breakfast nook at home, he wasn’t reading whole stories, he was focusing on one word: purged. Someone had been purged. Someone would be purged. There were rumours of purgings to come. It happened every time a CEO was fired. Gerald read the stories as he ate his breakfast and imagined the new board-appointed chief executive spreading around sweet jammy gibberish about getting to know the current team before making any snap decisions, about relying on the current team’s expertise to persevere through the challenging times ahead, when everyone knew the current team was
as gone as fuzzy milk, and the most gone of all, the dead body most dead, was the second-in-command, the CEO’s right hand man, no matter what cinnamony claptrap was being sprinkled. Gerald saw in Bishop’s empty chair intimations of performance reviews and emergency board meetings, he saw the founder of Spent Materials, its heart and soul, being ousted and publicly shamed, thrown from a figurative roof, sucked down a figurative drain, and he saw the inevitable news item to follow, the insignificant inch of type on the business section’s third or fourth page, he saw the words in his head –
Reports surfaced yesterday that Spent Materials’ Gerald Woodlore would be purged –
and he smelled toast.

“Sorry. Sorry I’m late.”

The arrival of Trick Runiman, flushed and carrying a laptop that trailed its cord along the floor, offered Gerald the chance to refocus. Everyone was here: Doug Allsop in tie and short sleeves, setting up a series of pens, points aligned, on the table in front of him; Sandy at the end of the table, near the projector, clasping the leading edge of her notebook as if it buoyed her; Phil Barbuda, slumped in the chair opposite Sandy, drumming the edge of the table in a jouncey hip-hoppish rhythm; and now Trick, looking for a place to plug in his laptop.

Trick pointed to Phil Barbuda. “Can I sit there?”

“Why?” said Phil, continuing to drum.

“There’s an outlet behind you.”

Phil lifted his right hand off the table – but maintained the beat of the left – as he bent around to look for the outlet.

“There’s one over here,” offered Doug, from the other side of the table.

“This one’s closer to the chair though,” said Trick. “My cord isn’t very long.”

Sandy seemed to examine the leather grain of her notebook and shook her head almost imperceptibly.

“Those things work off batteries you know,” said Phil, drumming.

“I know. I didn’t –”

“Thought maybe you didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Trick. “I forgot to plug it in last night, that’s all.”

Gerald cleared his throat pointedly. “Can we get started? Phil, can you stop that? Trick, can you find a place to sit? Thank you all very much for coming.”

He stood up and walked to the front of the room. The projector screen was lowered into position and he tugged on it to make it roll up and out of the way to reveal the large whiteboard mounted on the wall behind it. When he turned around Trick Runiman was still standing.

“Trick, please.”

“But …” Trick extended a hand to indicate Phil’s continuing illegal occupation of the outlet-handy chair. Then, sighing loudly, he bent down to plug his cord into the outlet, and made his way to the seat at the centreline of the table.

“Okay, thanks everyone. I know this was short notice. But something’s come up and I thought we should all be here to discuss it.”

Doug Allsop, cleaning his glasses, gave a small wave to catch Gerald’s attention. “Where’s Bishop?”

“This is preliminary,” said Gerald. “It’s too soon to involve
Bishop. As soon as we have a sense of direction, then of course I’ll be taking it to him for approval.”

“See?” Trick held his laptop at table height but an arm’s length away from the edge. “The cord doesn’t reach.”

Sandy raised a hand and showed Gerald a surplus of teeth. “Did you want me to say anything?”

“Not yet.”

In the midst of bending over to set his laptop on the floor, Trick suddenly surfaced and looked over at Sandy. “Why would you be saying anything?”

Sandy managed to smile broadly, shrug innocently and avert her eyes toward Gerald in a single, balletic motion.

Beside her, Doug swivelled left and right in his chair, surveying the cabinet acreage along the wall, then exchanged glances with Phil Barbuda and mouthed the words “No doughnuts.”

“Can I get everyone looking up here? Trick?”

“Sorry,” called Trick, once again below the table, “this is how I have to work now.”

“Well, I’ll let you know when I need your data, all right?”

“Sure.” Trick sat up, red-faced from the pressure of being doubled over, and set his eyes on Sandy.

Gerald found a blue marker along the whiteboard’s ledge and picked it up. “Now, can I say, first of all, that what I’m going to talk about here is not meant to reflect negatively on any one person, either in this room or outside of it.”

“Uh, oh,” said Phil, giving the sides of his chair a foreboding thumpa-thump.

“I have been made aware of something pretty shocking – shocking to me, anyway. It’s the fact that Spent Materials, in
terms of its window-screen market share, is now at its lowest point ever, in its history.” He paused to make sure he had everyone’s attention. When he focused on his sales and marketing director, Trick hesitated, then startled into life.

“Did you want …?” He made a move toward his laptop.

“No. I think what you’re going to tell us, Trick, is that our market share percentage is around three something.”

Trick was caught halfway between the table and his laptop. “Close, I mean, if I could look here I could tell you exactly, but once our Q-three spending kicks in, it should be up near four. But let me just –”

“What I’d like to know,” said Gerald, “is what our share is at this moment. Do you have that?”

“I’ll see,” called Trick, his voice sounding squeezed. Bent over and tapping away on the floor, he appeared to be tying his shoes. When he straightened, his chest heaved. “Whew! Hard to breathe like that.” Then he turned his chair back to the table. “Sorry, that number must be in another file.”

Sandy gave a short, specific cough.

“Well, it doesn’t matter because I already know the number,” said Gerald. “It’s two point five.”

There were no audible gasps from either Doug or Phil, the only two people in the room who should have been surprised. Each of them, looking at Gerald, appeared unfazed. Gerald turned and wrote the number 2.5 on the whiteboard behind him. He tapped it with the marker.

“Am I the only one who’s astounded by that number?”

Around the boardroom table, faces moved. Doug regarded
Phil and Trick. Phil looked at Trick and Doug. Trick focused exclusively on Sandy. Sandy kept her eyes to the front.

“Phil,” said Gerald. “Did you know we were at two point five?”

Phil placed his hands on the armrests of his chair, and pushed himself into a fully upright position.

“Yes.”

“What about you, Doug?”

Doug appeared to suppress a burp. “I had an idea.”

It seemed to Gerald the only solid thing in his life, the only thing he could count on, was the blue whiteboard marker in his hand. At least Sandy had come to him with the truth; where had the rest of them been when the company that kept them alive was sliding into the crapper? Where had
he
been? And where was the loyalty to Bishop? In the fist that hung at his side, next to his pants pocket, Gerald squeezed the blue marker as if he could choke answers out of it. And he reached for the granite strength of will he’d showed just a few hours before, in the face of the forces overwhelming his son. It was a cable of apathy that had them all in its grip, and he was going to frigging well cut it.

“Here’s what I think,” said Gerald. “I think this company’s headed for trouble.
Big
trouble. Okay? I think that because we make window screens and furnace filters a lot of you” – he looked at the men – “have the idea we don’t need to be creative and energized and strategic. And that’s the kind of attitude that’s made us eleventh out of eleven. Or let’s make that eleventh out of ten. Because we’re now actually
behind
a company that’s
out of business.” He reached and tapped the number on the board with his marker. “Two point five. I don’t know about you” – he looked at the men – “but to me that’s obscene. And we should all be disgusted with ourselves.”