Give me five minutes. Take your time. He took four. He used them to take three slow breaths, straighten his jacket, and remind himself of exactly what he knew and exactly what he was going to reveal, which was nothing. Raymond's office was a slightly larger version of his own with the addition of a view and a credenza along one wall that held framed photos of golf and tournaments and a f vacation that looked like it had been staged by a catalog company.
Raymond was standing near the window when Marcus came in which Marcus read as deliberate the casual power move of a man who wanted to conduct the conversation on his feet. Close the door, Raymon said. Marcus closed it. Sit down. Sit down.
Raymon waved a hand at the chairs across from his desk, then didn't sit himself, which made the invitation to sit feel faintly like a trap. Marcus sat anyway because standing would have announced something and crossed one ankle over his knee with the specific body language of a man who is entirely comfortable and has nowhere to be. "How was the anniversary party?" Raymond said. "Good," Marcus said. "Good turnout.
I heard you stayed late. Rare for you. It was a nice evening. Raymond nodded, looking at the middle distance, doing the thing he did where he let silence sit and waited for other people to fill it. Marcus had seen him do it in meetings for 3 years.
He let the silence sit. I've been meaning to check in on you, Raymon said finally. About that flag you sent me back in August. The Henderson variance. Marcus kept his face neutral.
He'd known this was coming. He'd known it since Raymond slowed down at his door at 8:17. He'd had until 12:43 to settle into exactly how to respond. "What about it?" Marcus said. "Just want to make sure we're on the same page about where that landed." Raymond finally sat across from him now.
Elbows on the desk, the body language of a man who was trying to look collaborative and wasn't entirely succeeding. I looked into it, like I said, and it was a system artifact from the migration we did in July. The reporting database had some echo data that inflated certain line items. I corrected it. Marcus nodded slowly, thoughtfully.
The way a man nods when he's accepting an explanation. Good to know, he said. I figured it was probably something like that. Raymond held his eyes for a beat. Lukewarm searching.
You didn't forward it to anyone else, did you? Sometimes these things get complicated when they go sideways through the org without context. No, Marcus said. I sent it to you. That's the chain.