They walked out through the side door into the April morning, the three of them. And the city was doing what cities do at 9:00 a.m. on a Friday when the weather has finally decided to cooperate, moving with purpose, generating its ordinary noise, carrying its ordinary weight. The trees on the street had that pale early green. A delivery truck idled at the corner. Somewhere nearby, a construction crew was running something loud.
Garrett led them north at a pace that suggested he had made this walk many times and had strong feelings about not rushing it. Caleb walked beside Sloan and didn't say anything for a half a block. Then Mia wants to know if you're coming to her science fair. Sloan looked at him. Excuse me.
She asked me last week if the loud shoes lady was coming to her science fair. He said his expression was carefully neutral, but something underneath it was not neutral at all. I told her I didn't know. She told me to find out. Sloan walked for a moment without answering.
When is it? 3 weeks. Thursday evening. She thought about her Thursday evenings and decided she did not currently care what was in her calendar on any of them. What's her project?
She built a model of how wind affects wing lift using a box fan and three cardboard shapes she cut out herself. He said it works. I've seen her run it 12 times. She knows about wing lift. She knows about everything.
Caleb said it's a significant problem. Garrett made a sound from slightly ahead of them that was unambiguously a laugh. Sloan walked in the April morning and thought about a girl in socks and pajama pants asking questions from a hallway and about uneven braids and about a man who had picked up his tools and walked out of a building with the particular dignity of someone who had decided long before that morning what he was worth and didn't need anyone else to confirm it. "Tell her I'll be there," Sloan said. Caleb nodded.
They turned the corner toward the restaurant, and the morning opened up ahead of them, and none of them said anything for a while, which felt like exactly the right amount to say. The consulting agreement was signed 3 weeks later on a Tuesday afternoon in Sloan's office with Howell present, and a copy sent to Garrett, who had reviewed it line by line and returned it with two suggested amendments that were both reasonable and that Sloan accepted without counter. The terms were fixed, 2 days per week, defined hours, protocol consultation only, full veto on any policy he considered structurally unsound from a safety standpoint. The agreement also contained a clause drafted at Caleb's specific request. That no work performed under this arrangement could be used to compel additional time commitment without a separately negotiated amendment signed by both parties.