Does that bother you? He thought about lying. Not about the fact he was incapable of lying convincingly and had more or less given up attempting it, but about the degree of it. Whether to give her the honest, complicated answer, or the clean, professional one, he gave her the honest one. It used to, he said.
When I first started, I thought I thought if I did good work, eventually someone would see it. That's how I believed things worked. He looked at his glass. I was wrong about that. How do things work in your experience?
People see what they're looking for. If they're not looking for you, they don't find you. No matter what you do, she didn't respond immediately. He wondered if he'd said too much. How did you end up in this position?
She said. Operations assistant. You're clearly overqualified for it. Life intervenes. That's not an answer.
No, it isn't. He wrapped both hands around his glass. My wife died 3 years ago. I had a 4-year-old daughter. I needed a job that was stable and had consistent hours and benefits and didn't require me to be ambitious because I didn't have any ambition left to give.
He paused. Your company offered all of that. She was quiet for a moment. I'm sorry about your wife. Thank you.
He waited for her to say something else. Or to change the subject or to do what most people did when he mentioned Nora, make a small sound of sympathy and then look somewhere else because grief made people uncomfortable and the safest thing was to move past it. Victoria didn't do that. What was she like? She said.
And something about the directness of it, the simplicity of it, the absence of performance stopped him. Nobody asked that. People said, "I'm sorry for your loss, and she sounds like she was wonderful, and you must miss her terribly." All of which were ways of talking about death without actually acknowledging the person who died. Nobody asked what she was like, as if Nora was still someone who could be described.
Someone with specific characteristics worth knowing. Stubborn, he said, opinionated. She had very specific views about the correct way to make coffee. And she was not shy about them. She laughed too loud.
And she always knew when I was lying, and she had this ability to walk into any room of strangers and make friends with three of them in under 10 minutes. He stopped. She was better at people than I'll ever be. Victoria looked at him for a moment. So is your daughter, I'd guess.
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. God. Yes. Maya could make friends with a traffic cone. The corner of Victoria's mouth moved.
Just slightly. Just enough, Maya, she said. How old? Seven. Going on 35.
What does she want to be when she grows up? Paleontologist. Possibly a race car driver. She's keeping her options open. Victoria actually smiled.
Then it was brief and it was contained, but it was entirely genuine and it changed her face in a way that he found briefly disorienting because it was the face of someone he didn't know. Someone who had apparently existed behind the CEO this entire time without his noticing. She picked up her bourbon and held it. " Can I tell you something?" She said.
And have you treated as said at a bar, not in an office? Yes. She looked at the glass. I've been running this company for 9 years. I built it.
I made decisions that people told me were wrong and turned out to be right. And I made decisions that people told me were wrong and turned out to be wrong. And I learned from all of them. I worked harder than anyone in that building. And I kept working when the men in the room with me had gone home to their families.
She set the glass down and the most common thing written about me in this industry is that I'm cold. She said the word the way you'd say the name of a medical diagnosis precisely without drama. The way someone names a thing they've decided to stop being wounded by. I know, Adrien said. Of course you know.
You read the same articles everyone else does. She looked at him. Does it seem accurate to you? He chose his words carefully, but not dishonestly. You have a very controlled professional presentation, he said.
I've seen you in a lot of situations over 3 years. I've never seen you be unkind. I've seen you be direct in ways that other people chose to experience as unkind. She looked at him for a long moment. That's a very considered answer.
I'm a considered person. Yes, I've noticed. He looked at her. You've noticed you're the only person on that floor who doesn't perform for me. She said, "Everyone else adjusts when I walk in.
Changes their posture." Their voice, their body language. You don't. You just keep doing what you were doing. I didn't know you'd noticed.
Most people assume I don't notice things because I don't I comment on them. She turned the glass slightly on the bar. I noticed everything. He believed her. He'd worked beside that attention for 3 years and had understood it the way you understand weather present.
Reliable, not directed at you personally. He took a drink. She took a drink. Outside the Friday evening noise of the city moved past the bar's windows, muffled and distant. There's a gala, she said.
Her voice had shifted. Not dramatically, but enough some quality of deliberateness coming back into it. The professional register returning beneath the personal one. I'm aware of it, he said. The Meridian Foundation charity event 3 weeks from Saturday.
I need someone to attend with me. He set his glass down very carefully. Victoria, not as a date. Not for any reason that has anything to do with what you're thinking right now. She looked directly at him.
My ex-husband will be there. Grant Whitmore. Do you know who he is? I know the name. He's on the circuit.
He's been on the circuit for three years telling anyone who will listen that I am brilliant and without human feeling. That I can run a company, but I cannot be trusted with relationships. That my judgment is excellent in a boardroom and dangerously limited everywhere else. She said it with controlled, precise contempt. The merger vote is in 6 weeks.