Bill looked at his watch and was alarmed to see that it was after 2:00 p.m. He didn’t have time to participate in this electronic chatter, he didn’t even have time to read the rest of his messages. The devil take them, he would get to them tonight. And he was starving, he hadn’t eaten lunch. Hurriedly, he rang Amy and asked her to bring him a sandwich from the snack shop in the lobby.
Now, the stupid report from Fred Loeser. Where was it? Bill began digging, and as he did so a mass of bile sank in his stomach. So, now he knew: George was the sly one in the office. And all of this time he had been on guard against Harv. Oh, how naïve he’d been. And what a masterful performer the president was, pretending to be so innocent, pretending to be a bumbler with his clumsy e-mail messages. Indeed, George and Harv were probably in cahoots. Of course. Hadn’t Bill seen them whispering together at the party? What did they care? They had made their own little bundles, they were sitting on their pretty nest eggs with their large closets of Louis suits and their Mercedes sedans and their vacation homes on the Vineyard. What did they care about straightforward dealings and old-fashioned honesty. Better to know who your true enemies are as soon as possible, Bill thought to himself. In fact, this innocent message from Harv about Benjamin Lloyd was probably a sly trick. Undoubtedly, they had calculated that he would ignore it, with his backlog of appointments, and then they would bury him with it on Monday, reassign the job to Diane or Nate or Sidney. But he was smarter than that. He would, in fact, produce many gigabytes of information about Benjamin Lloyd’s relationship to American pharmaceutical companies. Indeed, he would start on the project at this moment. He began typing. Precious time had been wasted. He decided to initiate three searches on InfoAgent, under the key words Pharmaceuticals, Benjamin Lloyd, Multinational Corporations, in nested links. Let the other junior partners envy and weep. But … he was shocked at how slow his typing had become. His numb fingers jammed keys together, causing repeated mistakes. Faster, faster. One key at a time. His mind was jamming like his fingers, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t think. He stood up and stared into the hallway. Dolores galloped past with a stack of faxes, nearly colliding with Milt Kramer. Beyond, sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling hall windows, which wrapped around Plymouth’s twelve deluxe offices and afforded a stunning view of the city.
Abruptly, Amy appeared, a flaxen-haired young woman in a crumpled orange dress. She set down a corned-beef sandwich with sauerkraut, potato chips, and iced tea on the edge of his desk, careful not to disturb the piles of papers, then hurried from the room. My God, Bill said to himself as he discovered that he had to resort to typing with one finger. He picked up a half-sandwich and ate half of it in one bite, typing with his right index finger as he ate. The mouthful was only partly chewed when he squeezed the rest of the half-sandwich in his mouth, chewed a little, and swallowed. The bread and the meat and the sauerkraut slid uneasily down his throat, bulking and refusing to travel the rest of the way, and he took a swallow of tea. His stomach began burning. What time was it? Continuing to type, so slowly, so slowly, B - e - n - j - a - m -i - n, he grabbed a handful of potato chips and stuffed them into his mouth. Then the other half of the sandwich, covered with too much mustard. His mouth bulged. He swallowed, barely chewing at all. The food stuck in his throat and he swallowed again, painfully. His stomach was churning and rumbling. He was getting hot. Why could he not type faster? Forgetting the appalling condition of his armpits, he flung off his jacket. One finger, the index finger of his right hand, roamed over the keyboard. L - l - y - o - d. With his left hand, he stuffed the rest of the potato chips in his mouth, took a big gulp of tea, and swallowed the whole thing. His chest was on fire. He finally completed instructions for the search, taking three times as long as he should, when the buzzer on his intercom whined. “Fred Loeser, vice president of Total Efficiency Management, is here to see you.” “What?” said Bill in astonishment. He looked at his watch. It was 2:30.
Very shortly thereafter, Mr. Loeser appeared at the door. He was a short, goatish man, wearing a blue suit with white pinstripes and a Phi Beta Kappa key pin in his lapel. “Good afternoon, Mr. Chalmers,” he said, clasping his stubby hands together in self-satisfaction. “I’m sure you are extremely busy.” He glided to Bill’s work table. “It’s warm, warm. We’re not accustomed to your hot summers in Boston,” he said and laughed. “This first meeting won’t take more than thirty minutes of your time.”
First meeting, Bill groaned to himself. That would seem to imply subsequent meetings. In actuality, he had little desire to meet at all with Mr. Loeser and was doing so only because Harvey Stumm had suggested it. Bill had many other known urgencies.
“By now, you must be familiar with our little project at Stanford University,” said Loeser, smiling beneath his coarse, scraggly beard. He continued, mentioning various news media that had covered the project, national repercussions, biographical highlights of the executives of TEM.
Bill nodded as knowingly as he could, as if to imply that he had carefully read and digested the report lying somewhere on his desk. But the boredom and impatience in his face, accentuated by the absence of any detailed comments about the project on his part, indeed the absence of any words at all, would surely have been noticed by the other man had he not been busily pulling reports and documents from his briefcase. These he spread out on Bill’s work table, explaining various columns of numbers and graphs that demonstrated increased productivities. At one point, he stopped to qualify a result with another set of graphs that he had deliciously held back in reserve. “Finally,” said Mr. Loeser, concealing a last, solitary piece of paper, “I will show you Stanford’s consolidated total efficiency index, which we have not yet made public. Eighteen months ago, Stanford’s CTEI sagged at below 0.42. Today, it stands at 0.67.” He paused, to let the significance of this result be comprehended. Then he reminded Bill that what TEM could do for a great university like Stanford it could do for Plymouth Limited, casually mentioned that TEM was also having preliminary discussions with Commonwealth Enterprises, just a few floors down in this very same building, and finally clasped his hands and waited for Bill’s reply.
In fact, Bill had followed the opening phases of the presentation with attention, for the prospect of increasing the total efficiency of Plymouth, and certainly his own efficiency, was not without appeal. But his attention had not lasted long. Soon he began to nod mechanically, and he resumed worrying about the nature of his numbness and the ugly machinations at work in the office. During these preoccupations, he had forgotten to express even a mild look of interest, so that by the end of the presentation he found himself slumping over, almost asleep, and staring idiotically at the monogrammed F. L. on Mr. Loeser’s briefcase.
When the efficiency expert at last stopped speaking, the sudden silence awakened Bill, and he jerked his head up with a start. He nodded again, with much seriousness, unsure what Mr. Loeser expected. Somehow, he must acquit himself honorably, as all this would undoubtedly be reported back to Stumm. He glanced at his watch. It was 2:57. He nodded and waited. Then, with unmistakable deliberation, he set his finger down on one of the graphs and frowned. Loeser jumped from his chair and examined the graph under question. Twisting the hairs in his coarse beard, he began explaining the various assumptions behind the result, the idealizations and approximations, the possible sources of error. Then he returned to the general principles of total efficiency management. “I would wonder …” Bill said, uttering his first words of the meeting, and he walked slowly to his desk. Loeser looked at his watch and noted that it was precisely 3:00. Expressing the hope for a further meeting in the near future, he gathered up his papers and left.
With relief, Bill turned to his computer and went to the Net. There, on the screen, was a summary of results from his InfoAgent search: 30,194 separate listings for multinational corporations, 8,758 listings for pharmaceuticals, 3,785 for Benjamin Lloyd. The cursor blinked silently, waiting for him to select one of the 42,737 Web sites. But Bill
had no time for that now and instead scrolled through another dozen e-mail messages, all he could tolerate in his present condition. Amy buzzed with two phone calls. Let them wait, he told her wearily. With painful slowness, he started to peck out a message to Jasper Olswanger. Teneco ChicagoCorp. He couldn’t concentrate. People were shouting outside his door and thumping down the corridor. What? Could it already be 3:30, the moment of the day when all the Plymouth partners abandoned their terminals and trooped up en masse to the Universe Health and Fitness Club for a few minutes of exercise and relaxation? Someone knocked on Bill’s door. He didn’t answer. Again, someone knocked. “Okay. Okay. Okay,” Bill shouted. He stood up and kicked his desk.
In the Universe, the top floor of the Marbleworth Building, rock music throbbed from the ceiling. Two dozen executives from elsewhere in the building were already installed in the machines, looking wretched. Another few sipped on protein shakes while receiving ten-minute, sitting-up massages, and one man sat meditating restlessly on a pale-green Zazen cushion. Bill had never liked the Universe. Without changing clothes, he climbed onto a Stairmaster, set the speed to the pace of a turtle, and began trudging. David Hamilton emerged from the locker room wearing his customary black Umbro shorts, white T-shirt, and Reebok running shoes. Announcing that he was prepared to do two miles, at eight minutes and forty-five seconds per mile, he hurried to one of the digital treadmills, punched in his desired pace and degree of incline, and was off and running. His reflection bounced back and forth between the parallel mirrors, producing a thousand copies of himself, each slightly less determined than the one before. George Mitrakis presented himself in a sleek In Sport running suit, black nylon with purple stripes, and straddled a recumbent bike. He held up his fingers in a V-sign. Then he adjusted his headphones and began pumping. Others entered in sweatpants, gym shorts, T-shirts and sweatshirts, running shoes and tennis shoes. Diane Rossbane peered out of the women’s locker-room door in a baggy set of sweats, then quickly crept across the floor and hid behind an abdominal crunch machine.
Soon, the good smell of honest sweat and productive exhaustion floated through the air. The partners were pleased with themselves. Nate Linden, almost prone in a recumbent bike, immediately popped opened his phone with one hand and rang up Clemons Manufacturing Group in Chicago, pedalling all the while. Others strained to hear. As soon as he’d pushed the end button, Mr. Linden made a back-to-back call to his secretary, one floor below, and began whispering instructions, accented with his powerful strokes on the machine. All that could be heard was “thirty-five minutes,” “sixty-five thousand,” “tomorrow at nine-fifteen a.m.” Although starting strong, within a few minutes Mr. Linden’s physical pace began slacking, a pained expression came over his face, and his voice diminished to low feeble grunts. He had recklessly set his time for seventeen minutes.
“They think of nothing but money,” whispered Charles Ravenscroft, of Ravenscroft International on the eighteenth floor, to Beatrice Denault, vice president of New England Chemical on the thirty-second. The two executives were jogging on either side of Bill. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Ms. Denault nodded, took a labored drink from her bottled spring water, and cast a contemptuous look at Mr. Linden. “I’ve heard that their janitorial service is twice a day,” said Ms. Denault. “What?” exclaimed Mr. Ravenscroft, staring accusingly at Bill. “I can’t believe it.” “I would kill for that in my office,” whispered Ms. Denault. “You don’t know what slobs my people are. I think they urinate in the halls.” The remainder of their conversation was unintelligible, even to themselves, for someone boosted up the volume on a television suspended over their heads.
“Did Gaffey come through?” George Mitrakis called over to Lisa Theroux, who was furiously trimming her thighs on a Stairmaster.
“We need more data for Digitel,” Ms. Theroux shouted back, mishearing what the president had said.
“Bill,” shouted Mitrakis, “what an ordeal for you, huh. Mugged. Thank God you’re all right. We were worried sick about you.”
Bill looked over at George Mitrakis and managed a smile. What was George really saying to him? Was George staring at him from the corner of his eye?
“You should take it easy for a few days,” said Mitrakis. “I mean that.”
“I agree,” Ms. Theroux panted as she attempted to keep pace with the rhythmic groans of the air purifier machine. Her face was dripping, her mascara long gone. Her cell phone rang. “Hello, Martin,” she grunted, “you got me direct. Who gave you this number?” She listened, a frown enveloping her face. “Tomorrow! You need it tomorrow? I was shooting for Monday. What time tomorrow? … Don’t crap with me, Martin. I don’t want to do that unless it’s one-thousand-percent necessary. You really have to have it by two-thirty tomorrow? … All right. Yes, all right. Yes, I’m sure. Okay.” She called her secretary. “Four-ten,” she said. “Have the Dubonnet file ready. Yes, that’s good.” Looking over at Mitrakis, she managed a tortured smile. “Gaffey finally regurgitated,” she shouted. “Gaffey is a weasel.”
“Damn straight,” panted David Hamilton, who was a half-mile into his two-mile run and sagging badly, his face red and puffy. “We should stop doing business with Gaffey.” He paused to take a heavy swig of his bottled water and let out an exhausted groan. “Shawmut Rubber does nothing for us except give us headaches. They sit on their capital. And we have to deal with Gaffey. I say let’s get out.”
“Tom got us into that one,” came a voice from behind the abdominal crunch machine. “It was another of his so-called long-range plans.”
“Shut up, Diane,” shouted David Hamilton. “We know where you are.”
“Shut up yourself,” shouted Ms. Rossbane.
“Blah, blah, blah,” said Milt Kramer from his massage chair, where he was being pummeled by a sour-looking masseur. “I’m tired of hearing you two bicker. I’m trying to relax.”
Hamilton’s phone rang in his hand. “Six-thirty,” he panted into the phone. “Trust me, I’ll make the recital.… Yes, seven-thirty. Carrie knows I’m not going to miss her recital.” He glanced at the digital display and noted with dismay that his pace had dropped off to nine minutes per mile. “I understand that you don’t have time.… I’ll pick up the food at six forty-five.” Now his pace had plummeted to nine and a half minutes per mile. He was breathing like a locomotive. “I know about the green coat,” he said, struggling for air. “Please don’t start on the green coat again. Just buy it. How’s your day? … Love you.”
For the first time, Bill realized that Hamilton used his affected British accent even with his own family. Everyone was speaking in some kind of fake accent. Bill was tired of listening to people talking, he just wanted to get back to his office. He was getting a headache. What time was it? Could he stop now without being a total wimp? His white shirt flapped around his waist like a surrender flag.
By 4:00, he was back at his desk, his head pounding. Messages flickered like lightning bugs on his screen. Painstakingly, he began pecking a reply to Jasper Olswanger. His mind wandered. Petrov. Should he attempt to change physicians? The process would take weeks. But he could waste months with that coward Petrov. Pulling on his mustache, Bill telephoned his health-insurance company, Commonwealth Health. “Welcome to the Commonwealth automated service center, dedicated to helping you better and faster. If you have a touchtone phone, press 1.… Thank you. Please enter your group policy number, followed by the pound key, followed by your personal ID number.” Bill extricated his health card from his wallet and punched in the numbers. He sighed and waited. “Press 1 if you have an emergency medical need and cannot reach your primary care physician, press 2 for questions about Commonwealth’s new Healthy Lifestyles plan, press 3 for questions about subrogation and coordination of benefits, press 4 if there has been any change in your status or that of your dependents, press 5 for desired changes in your primary care physician or the primary care physician of your dependents, press 6 for a summary of covered services, press 7 for a s
ummary of conditions of termination of coverage, press 8 for premium structures.” Bill pressed 5. “You have indicated a desire to change your primary care physician or the primary care physician of your dependents. If this is incorrect, please press 1 immediately to return to the main menu.… Press 2 if you desire to change your own primary care physician, press 3 to change the primary care physician of one of your dependents.… Press 1 if you know the Commonwealth code of your primary care physician, press 2 if you do not.… Using your touchtone phone, enter the last name of your primary care physician, followed by the pound key. …. The name you have entered is not a participating physician in Commonwealth. We are returning you to the main menu.” “Damn you,” shrieked Bill. He had pressed a wrong key. “I don’t want to be returned to the main menu.” “Press 1 if you have an emergency medical need and cannot reach your primary care physician, press 2 for questions about Commonwealth’s new Healthy Lifestyles plan, press 3 for questions about subrogation and coordination of benefits, press 4 if there has been any change in your status or that of your dependents, press 5 for desired changes in your primary care physician or the primary care physician of your dependents.…” Groaning, Bill sank into his chair and mindlessly pressed buttons. He looked at his watch. Precious time was evaporating away. Finally: “You have indicated that your primary care physician is Dr. Armand Petrov, Suite 403 of the Ambulatory Care Building of the Massachusetts General Hospital. If this is not correct, please press 1 immediately to return to the main menu.… Press 2 for a list of other primary care physicians in your area, press 3 for Bulletin Board information on changing your primary care physician.” Bill pressed 3 and waited. “Due to system enhancements, Bulletin Board information is not available at this time. We are returning you to the main menu.” Bill slammed down the phone. It was 4:23.