Two Points

Monday started with Ward in the break room, loud enough for the hallway. "You know the type," he said. "Gets one look from somebody and decides every guy in the building's after her. You ask her to lunch, she acts like you asked her to get in the car." Somebody laughed low. A mug went down on the counter. "I'm not even talking about her, I'm talking about the company," Ward said. "What am I supposed to do with somebody who won't take help?" The room was four people deep around the coffee machine. I came in with my cup and the talking stopped before the door had finished closing, the way it does. Four faces turned to the counter. One of them was Rita's, and she was holding a stirrer and looking at the stirrer like it was about to tell her something. Ward's eyes came up to me and stuck there. "Sutt." He said it slow. "You know what you owe me? You owe me one dinner. One meal. And you can pick the place, I'm not picky." "Why would I do that?" I said. "Because I've been carrying you three months, is why." He set his cup down hard on the counter and coffee came up over the rim. "You have any idea what's going around about you right now? People saying you didn't get hired the normal way. You've heard it. Everybody's heard it. Everybody knows whose dinner table you sat at to get through the door here." The room went entirely quiet. The refrigerator hummed. Somebody's phone buzzed against a table and stopped. I filled my cup and turned around to face him. "Say it again," I said. "I said," and he leaned on the counter with both hands, "a girl with a diploma from a school nobody's heard of doesn't walk in here unless somebody walked her in." I held my phone up. Screen toward him. Red bar, numbers running. Three, four, five. "I've been recording this whole conversation," I said. "That last part especially." His mouth opened and closed once before any sound came out. "What for?" he said. "Nothing," I said. "I just like to keep things. For later." I walked out with my cup, and the door did not latch behind me, and I heard the rest of it anyway. Ward's voice, lower than it had been a minute ago: "She's recording me. She says she's recording me. She thinks she can just — " And Rita, right in there with him, low and quick the way she got when the person she was talking about might still be in earshot: "Perry. Come on. She can't do anything with that." I sat down and opened my laptop and there it was, on top, from Ms. Delgado's desk, subject line all caps for something nobody was nervous about. **VISIT — COPLEY TECHNICAL INSTITUTE ALUMNI DELEGATION / PARTNERSHIP** Nine a.m. Tuesday. Two cars. The director of the alumni association and three staff, arriving to discuss the company's co-op placement program. Department heads and named liaisons to the main conference room by 8:45. Attendance mandatory. The attachment was two pages. Page one was the schedule. Page two was the liaison list, and my name was on it, third from the top, spelled exactly the way it was spelled on my intake form. I looked at the line for a few seconds. Then I closed the e-mail and went back to what I'd been doing, which was reconciling a shipping manifest with duplicate entries at the bottom. At five-something, in the elevator lobby, Ward was standing with Rita by the window. He was mid-sentence. He stopped when he saw me and started again with a different sentence, one with my name in it. "Sutt." His chin came up. "Tomorrow. I know you got the notice." "I got the notice." "Good." He adjusted his cuff. "Then here's what you're going to do. You're going to show up, you're going to sit off to one side, and you're going to keep your mouth shut and learn something. These people coming in, these are serious people. You've never been in a room with people like this. You've never seen how an actual grown-up closes a deal. So you watch. Take notes if you want. But don't talk." "Nine a.m.," I said. "Nine a.m. And don't wear something loud." Rita laughed through her nose, one short one. "God, Sutt, seriously, pay attention while you're in there. A chance like this does not come twice." I pressed the button. The doors opened the first time, which was its own small disappointment. "Have a good night," I said, and stepped in, and turned around to face them while the doors came together, and I kept my face the way it was. The numbers went down. Floor by floor, the building letting me out the way it always did. *I'll see you tomorrow, Perry.* I said it in my head. I did not say it out loud.