The Fearsome Particles (30 page)

“It seems to me,” he began, “you know, we want to be open to good ideas. And Sandy’s got a really interesting one here, with the window filters.”

“Thank you,” said Sandy, giving him a trim smile.

“Yeah, but there’s a lot of issues.” Trick drew his pad close as if to review the many issues. “Acceptance. You know, that’s a big one. How do you make people accept the idea of a window filter that won’t let them see outside? Right? That’s something we have to work on, acceptance. Okay, uh, pricing. We have to figure out, vis-à-vis our regular window screens, do we charge more for a window filter because it filters out stuff, or do we charge less because it won’t let you see outside?”

Across from him, Sandy emitted a long, loud sigh.

“Well, you know, hey, it’s an issue. So, okay …” He drew his pen down the list on his pad. “… acceptance … pricing … Next one, customer service. I think we should plan on establishing a toll-free customer service number, and staffing up with call-centre people, to take the calls from customers who’ve had the filters installed and want to know how the hell they’re supposed to see outside.”

Sandy had begun to agitate in her swivelling chair like the vanes of a washing machine. “Thank you, Mr. Negativity!”

“Once we solve those issues” – Trick made his face and voice sunshine bright – “I think we got a winner!”

Sandy stopped hard and faced Gerald with a hand pointing at Trick. “You see?” She turned on her antagonist. “This is supposed to be a ‘how to’ meeting, not a ‘why not’ meeting.”

“What’s that?” Trick glanced around sunnily. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Go to school,” she muttered.

“Okay, enough,” said Gerald. He looked at Trick. “Is that the extent of your contribution?”

Trick set his head at a reflective angle and shrugged. “Important issues.”

“Well, we need to do more than raise issues, we need solutions.” He pointed at Phil. “You’re next.”

For the next twenty minutes, Phil detailed the financial picture of Spent Materials, including the trends in its debt-equity ratios, its profit and loss ratios, and its inventory turnover ratios. He presented numbers showing the historic performance of new product launches within the building materials sector, indicated what revenues would be required from a new line of window filters within the final three-quarters of the fiscal year to offset increased development and marketing costs in the first. And he presented compelling evidence to support the two-pronged conclusion that Spent Materials (a) desperately needed a new product launch, and (b) would find a new product launch all but ruinous.

Pink Fiber Glas insulation, according to Phil, was the model to shoot for. “Basically,” he said, “either we do a Pink Fiber Glas right out of the box, or we’re screwed.” He underlined his point with a sharp patty-pat of the table, and grimaced.

“Ouch,” said Doug.

Gerald opened his portfolio and wrote,
Discuss debt numbers with Bishop
.

“Hey,” piped Trick. “Maybe we can come up with an animated character. Like Pink Fiber Glas has the Pink Panther, right? So maybe we could have, I dunno, a blind mole.”

“Oh,” said Doug, “I like that.”

“Put little dark glasses on him,” said Trick with a smirk.

“Give him a cane,” cracked Doug.

Trick spread his hands to make a banner above him. “Slogan could be ‘Who needs to see outside anyway?’ ”

Sandy’s chin dropped to her chest. “Hopeless,” she muttered.

Review salary structure re Sandy/Trick
, Gerald wrote. “Doug?” he said. “What have you got to offer?”

Doug was still having a chuckle over the blind mole idea. “I don’t know if I can do any better than that!”

Gerald flashed him a look. “I hope you can.”

Like water down a clogged drain Doug’s grin died away. He rustled some papers in a cardboard folder in front of him and his expression became strained. “As you know, Gerald, I’m not big on making presentations.”

“Doesn’t have to be a presentation,” said Gerald. “Just tell us what you’ve been thinking about.”

“Well, I’ve put some thoughts down on paper.” Doug patted the folder fondly. “If it’s okay with you” – he leaned over the table and began sliding the folder toward Gerald – “I’d prefer to just give you that.”

“Why don’t you summarize –”

“No. Here you go.” Doug sent the folder skittering down to Gerald with a shove.

Gerald opened the folder to a scribbled note on the first page –
Please don’t make me –
and he remembered the first time Doug Allsop had been asked to give a monthly operating report. It was back before Spent had digital projectors and Doug had stood at the front of the room fumbling acetate sheets and reading so softly he could barely be heard above the overhead projector’s humming fan. The more he handled the acetate charts and summaries, the more the sweat on his palms mingled with the blue and green inks, until every new page laid on the glass bore an abstract watercolour smear. When Doug had finally retreated to his seat, Gerald had reached out to see if he could look at one of the pages again, and Doug, perhaps thinking he was being congratulated for surviving his ordeal, had grasped his hand in a cold, damp grip that left a turquoise stain.

“Okay, Doug,” said Gerald. “Thanks.”
Presentation training for Doug
.

“I think we should all have to present,” sniffed Sandy. “That way we know how to evaluate everyone’s contribution.”

“Don’t worry,” said Doug, nodding down the table. “It’s all there. Cost projections, equipment requirements, what-have-you.”

Sandy smiled cleanly. “I’ll just assume it’s negative.”

Gerald rolled himself away from the table. “Okay, Sandy, how long do you need to set up?”

“Five minutes.”

“Let’s break.”

I
n his office, Gerald sat at his desk and called home. The main house number was set to go to voice mail at three rings, and it took four tries of calling and hanging up before someone finally answered.

“Yeah?” said a hazy version of Kyle’s voice.

“Hey, you’re home!” Gerald hunched over the phone as if he had to protect it. “Everything all right, son? Any problems with the car?”

It took a while for Kyle to answer. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

“Can I ask where you were, son?” Gerald looked up to see Bishop standing at his door. He waved him in. “Kyle?”

“Yeah?”

Gerald couldn’t be sure but he thought Kyle might be drunk. He sounded half asleep. Near his desk, Bishop lifted a tentative finger. “One second, son.” He covered the mouthpiece and looked at Bishop.

“Everything okay at home?” Bishop whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Gerald. “Probably.”

Bishop had the tight, suspended body language of someone tiptoeing over delicate ground. “Well, I just wanted to say that I’m about to give Gwyn Doremond a call, you know, to fill him in on what’s happening here. He hates surprises.” Bishop grinned sheepishly. “Always manage up, as they say. Anyway, I thought I’d set up a meeting with you, me, and him for when I get back. Couple of weeks, I’m thinking. You’ll be around?”

Gerald nodded. “Should be.”

“That’s fine,” Bishop whispered. “Well, I’ll make that call
and then I’m off.” His eyes flicked toward the phone. “Sorry to interrupt.” He raised a palm in farewell.

Gerald stood up and grabbed his boss’s hand. He shook it firmly. “Good luck in Phoenix.”

Bishop gave him a fragile smile but a sturdy thumbs-up. “Hope for the best.”

As he watched the older man make a quiet exit, Gerald took his hand off the phone. “Kyle? You still there, son?” He heard the sound of something being dragged over the mouthpiece, or vice versa. “Kyle?”

“Huh?”

“How are you doing, son? Is everything all right?” He heard a kind of chuckle on the other end of the line.

“Just taking it easy, Dad. Just being equa-mouse, you know? Me and Rumsfeld.”

“Kyle, stay away from that cat. It’s not –”

“Hey,” said Kyle, “you wanna hear it purr?”

“No, son, listen …” But he could tell Kyle wasn’t there any more. He heard the rustling of cat fur against the mouthpiece, and the muffled drone of feline ease, then the sound of Kyle hanging up.

A
s Gerald marched back down the hall toward the boardroom, he caught another whiff of burning coffee, and this time, without thinking about it, he veered left into the kitchen. Two of the salespeople were there, chatting. He pointed to the coffee maker on the counter.

“Can you not smell that?”

They looked at him dumbly.

“That coffee has been sitting there, reeking, for nearly an hour.”

They seemed incapable of speech – remarkable for salespeople – so there was no point in waiting for an answer. He pushed past them, grabbed the half-full carafe and poured its rancid contents into the sink. “If you’re not going to go out and make calls,” he fumed, “the least you could do is help out around here.” Then he stuck the carafe under a rinsing stream of cold water and instantly there was a loud snap.

“Uh oh,” said one of the salespeople.

He could see it: a clean crack, north to south, right along the dirty bottom of the carafe. “Yes,
uh oh,”
said Gerald. He flipped the lid of the garbage can and banged the carafe in. “
Uh oh
. Right,” he said. “Well done.” He stormed out of the kitchen. “Good work!”

In the corridor, before he made the last turn for the boardroom, Gerald slowed himself down and stopped next to a framed illustration of mallards floating amid marshy grasses. Hands on his hips, he breathed deeply and tried to regain his balance, and as he did he looked at the mallard print, which had hung on the wall at this particular corner for as long as he’d been employed at Spent. He thought about the fact that someone – possibly Bishop’s first secretary, Gita, whom Bishop often spoke of with fondness – had selected the picture of mallards from a catalogue of reliable office art, and that this decision had affected the lives of hundreds of people for untold years in subtle, unknowable ways. He considered the possibility that
whatever beneficial influence the picture had once had was now long gone. And he decided that his first delegatory act, if he became
CEO
, would be to ask someone to do something about the mallards.

When he arrived at the boardroom entrance, the others were already inside, and Sandy was standing impatiently at the door. She thrust a sealed white envelope at him.

“Now don’t open that,” she warned, “until I say so.”

Gerald squeezed the envelope in his hand. “Sandy, how long is this going to take?”

Her eyelids fluttered and she looked briefly wounded. “I haven’t timed it,” she said. Then she pushed a smile through. “Don’t worry. However long it takes, it’ll be worth it.”

He took his seat and saw that everyone else had been given an envelope too; Doug had placed his squarely on the table in front of him, Trick had shoved his to the side and seemed determined to ignore it, Phil held his in his good hand and hatcheted the table with it to a steady beat.

When everyone was settled, Sandy switched off the lights without warning.

“Oh boy,” muttered Trick. “Here we go.”

She was a silent sylph as she moved through the murk to the back of the room and pressed the button of a digital music player. Slowly an ominous wind effect built up around them, interspersed with sporadic discordant organ notes and menacing, arrhythmic drums.

“Ooo, spooky,” said Trick.

Sandy’s exasperated sigh marked her passage to the head of the room in the dark. When she reached the front she pulled
down the projection screen, wheeled and flicked on the projector in one practised motion.

“This,” she announced, “is the world outside your home.”

On the screen in front of them bloomed chaos and mayhem. Pictures of war and upheaval, of bombed-out cities and wave-battered coasts, of burning buildings, swastikas, assault rifles in raised fists, and skies filled with smoke. Gerald pressed back in his seat, and his retreating feet rolled him to the edge of the room. “Look at it,” she commanded them, and they did, they watched, as Sandy showed them death and destruction, terrorism and madness, while the music and sound effects played.

“What can you do about this?” she asked as the images came. “Nothing,” she told them. “These threats exist beyond your control. If the forces of nature or evil or God above decided time was up for your town, your home, your family, there is
nothing
you could do. Because against powers like these, a man’s curse is his helplessness.”

The wind effects kept coming while the music changed, turned fervent and hip-hoppy as the images on the screen began to morph too. “But some threats,” said Sandy, “are more our size. And those we
do
have the strength to fight.” Scenes of horror and devastation gave way to more personal terrors. Masked criminals on the attack, fanged pit bulls on the loose, the eyes and wounds of impoverished children teaming with larval incursions. Gerald, gripping the vinyl armrests of his chair, watched the images flash by until they began to merge, until they became elements of the same unifying peril.

“And when there’s a chance these threats can be overcome,” said Sandy, “isn’t it your obligation, isn’t it your
duty
, to try?”
They saw pictures of doctors bent over bloodied torsos, of small boys standing up to schoolyard bullies, of smoky streets alive with protest, citizens with placards in their hands and cloths over their mouths, and mothers in rags shielding children from rain that was undoubtedly acidic.

“Now think about this,” Sandy told them as they watched. “What if these dangers were right outside your door?” The wind kept blowing while the music took on a synthy sci-fi throb, all digital flutters and searing strings. And on the screen they saw blown-up images of horror-film creatures, grotesque viral monsters and slavering bus-sized bugs. “What if these beasts were trying to get inside your home, trying to attack your family?” Sandy wanted to know. “What if there was just one thing you could do to protect them?”

Suddenly the screen went dark, and the music stopped. “What if all you could do,” Sandy whispered in the darkness, “was bargain for your loved ones’ safety?”