The Proviso (37 page)

“And I want to tell you something else. Karen faked
your test. She beat it. She knew what it would say about her if she
did it honestly and she needed this job. I don’t even know why you
bothered hiring a marketing executive if you weren’t going to use
her or listen to her. I’m leaving,” he muttered as he dropped the
pads of paper into his backpack. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that, he brushed past her and walked out. Eilis
barely made it home before she broke down and cried.

* * * * *

Eilis was tempted to stay home the next day without
calling in. She was the CEO. She could do that. Sebastian Taight’s
opinion of her couldn’t get any lower.

She hadn’t slept. She’d spent the night at her
kitchen table with a pencil and a pad of paper it’d taken her a
half hour to find. What she wanted to write there, she didn’t know.
The only thing she’d written for the longest time was “Karen
Cheng.”

Then she wrote down what she knew about Karen, which
was everything she’d learned that day and nothing more.

Then she wrote her assistant’s name, Louise Brummel,
and everything she knew about her, which wasn’t much.

Then she wrote her CIO’s name, Michael Pritchard,
and what she knew about him, which was that he went to MIT and
wouldn’t use the screening tests and was all of twenty-six years
old. End of list for Michael.

She went through every executive and every employee
whose names she could remember and after Michael’s very short list,
none of them had any entries. Eilis knew nothing about her
employees.

Each and every one of her employees and everything
about them couldn’t be known; she understood that. What she needed
to know was that the rank and file were being managed well enough
that they were productive and she couldn’t know that without
knowing their supervisors.

HR Prerogatives had always had a good name as a
caring employer. It paid well, it provided good benefits. All Eilis
asked in return was a good day’s work, but how could she get that
from people who hated their jobs? Management style flowed directly
from the top, so did that mean that she was that bad at managing
people?

In three days, Sebastian Taight knew more about her
employees and what they needed better than she ever had or ever
would have if he hadn’t pointed it out to her.

Eilis ripped her piece of paper off the pad and made
a notation to look at her tests again with a new eye. Karen beat
it. Who knew how many others had? Sebastian had estimated half her
workforce could have beaten it, so if it was that flawed, she
didn’t want it out in the marketplace.

At the thought of Sebastian, of Karen, of Michael
and his programmers, an idea occurred to her that she scribbled
down before she could forget it. Perhaps the
test
wasn’t
flawed at all.

No one was at work when she got there, which she had
planned. She couldn’t face Sebastian’s derision or Karen’s
bitterness, but she couldn’t stay away; that just wasn’t done.
Besides, she had things to do today.

She closeted herself in her windowless inner sanctum
and wrote on her single sheet of paper until she’d covered it front
and back, and it curled. She had no more lined paper in her office,
so she emerged to get another pad or two.

Sebastian stood at the mezzanine window, his hands
behind his back. Eilis didn’t think he would want to talk to her,
so she went downstairs. When she came back with a bundled package
of legal pads, he was no longer at the window. Instead, he lay on
the sofa in her office, his head on the arm rest, one expensively
loafered foot on the floor and the other hanging over the opposite
arm rest. One arm was thrown over his forehead and the other
dangled uselessly over the floor.

His eyes were open and the only indications he gave
that he was even alive was the occasional blink and the steady rise
and fall of his chest. She wondered if that was normal for him,
because she couldn’t imagine this man sleeping, much less
resting.

After a minute hesitation, she proceeded past him
and sat at her desk. She bent back over her task once she’d opened
her package. If he didn’t intend to speak, then Eilis would attempt
to block his presence from her mind and concentrate on remembering
who worked for her. He said nothing for an hour, and Eilis was
ashamed to realize she’d marked the time.

“Eilis,” he said, “we need to talk.”

Uh oh. She carefully put down her pen and folded her
hands over her paper. He didn’t
sound
angry. “All
right.”

He didn’t move a muscle, except to speak. “Now, you
understand that when I go into a business, I don’t mess around with
the product, right?”

“Yes, I know that.” The product usually made the
company money in spite of itself.

“I find myself in a unique position with HRP because
I deal with people and numbers, but in your case, your
people
are your product. Quite frankly, Eilis, you don’t
know shit about people.”

She swallowed. He still didn’t sound angry, but
there was a note of—something—in his voice she didn’t
understand.

“I looked at your list while you were gone and
congratulations, by the way, for graduating to paper and pen.” She
thought she saw a trace of a smile. “It’s a nice start. Question:
When you came in and saw me lying here quiet and still, what did
you think?”

There was no right answer to that. “I don’t know
what to think about you, Sebastian,” she said quietly. “I’ve never
met anyone like you.”

He grunted. “Sure you have. You just didn’t
recognize them. I’ll tell you what I was doing. I was working.”

Eilis’s brow wrinkled. “You were lying there doing
nothing.”

“Wrong. I was working. Some things require minimal
brain power. Some a lot. Most of the time, if I’m sitting doing
nothing, I’m working something through, letting my mind wander
where it wants, laying the groundwork for the solutions to my next
sixty problems. What you need to understand is that lots of people
do that. Your product is people, but you’ve completely
disenfranchised that portion of the population that represents the
best this country has to offer.”

That made no sense.

“Sure it does,” he replied when she said that. “This
country was built on the back of ADD and its comorbid personality
disorders. It’s heavy in the general American gene pool because it
self-selected. You know, Darwin? Immigrants came here, pioneers.
They were of one type, though on a broad spectrum of that type:
They were risk takers. They built things. They succeeded. They
defied a king and waged war on the most powerful country on earth
at that time, and they won. The United States of America is what
they built, and my ancestors not only helped win a war and build a
country, they made a fortune doing it.

“So back to my unique position. I’m going to mess
with your product, contrary to my usual M.O., and I would like to
request that you just ditch the screening test altogether.”

“It brings in a lot of revenue,” she said
quietly.

“I know, but it’s flawed.”

She hesitated for only a microsecond. “I’ve been
thinking about that. I don’t think the test itself is flawed. I
think the scoring criteria are.”

He said nothing and then, “Eilis, I can think of
only two people in my very, very large tribe who would pass your
test without cheating and that’s Knox and Fen, and if he weren’t
dead, Oliver, either. That’s not coincidental.”

Eilis struggled to keep her cool.

I’m always willing to look at options if they’re
presented to me logically.

She took a deep breath and said, “Let me explain my
reasoning, please.”

He continued to lie still and quiet, so she went on.
“I think that the test itself did what it was supposed to do, which
was to pinpoint your personality type and learning style. The only
thing that was off was the label the program assigned to your
score. You only failed because the grading scale said you did. My
idea is that if the scoring criteria were based on categorizations,
no one would fail; it would only suggest in what capacities those
people would do well and where they shouldn’t be put at all.”

He said nothing for a long while, still staring at
the ceiling. Eilis waited and waited. “I’ll agree to that,” he
finally said, surprising her. “But I want you to get it
restructured by a psychologist who specializes in personality
disorders—and, by the way, I hate that term. It’s just convenient
to use—as if we need to apologize for or medicate a big segment of
the population just because the looters and moochers don’t like
it.”

Looters and moochers?
“All right.”

He sat up, then stood, shaking out his pant legs.
“I’m going to spend the rest of the day and tomorrow talking to
people. It’s about time someone did,” he growled, glaring at her.
She truly did flinch that time, but he’d turned by then and started
his long stride out of her office, so he didn’t see it. “Monday,
I’ll clean your house.”

Eilis breathed a sigh of relief. That wasn’t the
worst dressing down he could’ve given her and he hadn’t seemed to
hate her and he didn’t seem that angry, either. She figured she got
off light and thanked her lucky stars. She set about researching
the type of psychologist Sebastian had specified and started making
phone calls.

Sebastian came back to her office at the end of the
day with yet another of those pads filled with notes. “When I get
finished Tuesday, I want you to administer that test again to those
who remain. You’ll do that Wednesday before the lunch. You will
make it very clear that it won’t be scored in the normal way, that
it is imperative that they do it honestly and that their jobs
depend upon their doing it honestly.”

“How will you know if they don’t?”

He dropped the pad on her desk. “I’ll know. Believe
me, I’ll know.”

She looked into his cold blue eyes and felt herself
beginning to think of entirely different things altogether. His
scent was odd, one she’d never encountered. One part man, one part
expensive cologne, and one part chemical compound of some sort, a
solvent maybe. Even with that mixed in, it wasn’t offensive in the
least bit. In fact, it was so
not
offensive that she was
getting aroused. Fortunately, the makeup and contacts would hide
that from him.

Sebastian picked up his pad and turned. “I’ll see
you tomorrow, Eilis. Have a good evening.”

* * * * *

35:
KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR

It had been three days since Giselle left Bryce in
the park, and she hadn’t seen him or talked to him. Two
unbelievable days, two incredible nights—a completely unexpected
turn of events—and then nothing. He would not pursue her any
longer. He would wait for her to make a decision and inform him of
it, which she couldn’t do until she actually made one.

Giselle missed him desperately. They’d been together
for less than forty-eight hours and she felt the loss of his
presence beside her as keenly as if she’d spent years picking his
brain and wandering through his soul; she felt the loss of his body
in bed with her as sharply as if she’d slept with him for years.
She needed to see him, to touch him, to hear his voice, to smell
him, to taste his skin.

Thursday morning she went back to the gallery, to
her bodhisattva, and sat in front of him cross-legged most of the
day, meditating, turning over and over every second of the time
she’d spent with Bryce, every word of every conversation, every
touch, every kiss, every orgasm, from that first glance in Hale’s
office to the moment she’d walked away from him.

Turning over and over what Knox had said. Knox had
always had wisdom beyond his years and he gave good advice. He
chose to ride the ride each and every time he came across the
opportunity to love a woman regardless of the inevitable
outcome—but he paid a very high price for it.

Turning over and over what Sebastian had said, his
insight, his ability to cut through the bullshit to the core
principle. Sebastian, who had begun to inject courage into her soul
before she’d graduated from diapers, was angry that she would let
her fear hold her back from what she really wanted and hurt someone
else in the process.

Turning over and over exactly what Bryce had given
her that was as precious as what she had given him.
I don’t know
when I fell in love with you, Giselle, but I don’t remember a time
when I wasn’t.

Turning over and over the dreams she’d had before
she met Bryce, that he’d fulfilled the most important one, the odds
of ever finding that again with someone who wanted children—and how
long that would take.

The thought of having to wait another sixteen years
made her chest collapse.

*

Andrew knelt before Giselle in the living room of
the house he shared with Knox, his wrist bent back to its limit,
keeping him there while she lectured him on how to correctly
execute the technique.

Her untied canvas gi jacket floated over her tee
shirt and around her hips. Her sleeves snapped the air properly
when she moved quickly enough. Knox sat at the kitchen table
staring through them as he waited for his study group to arrive.
She took Andrew’s other hand to emphasize the importance of the
ability to do a technique left- or right-handed.

Giselle had put Andrew on his knees again before he
knew what hit him and he grimaced in pain.

“
See, Andrew, that’s why she has the brown belt
and you have the blue one.”

“
Oh, ha ha ha. Screw you, Hilliard.”

The front door opened to admit the first of the law
students Knox expected. Giselle’s attention was distracted for a
second—and her breath caught in her throat.