Rosamund Nyberg came to see the table at nine o'clock exactly. I know because the break-room microwave clock changed to 9:00 as she walked in. I've never trusted that microwave since.
Imelda was already there with her clipboard. Leopold was there in a tie he had clearly chosen as a defensive measure. Mina sat at the table with a cup of tea, the way she always did at nine. Clement stood by the fridge, guarding the second shelf.
Kip came in behind Rosamund, carrying her untouched glass of water. He looked like he hadn't slept. He mouthed sorry at me over her shoulder.
Rosamund walked once around the table. She looked at the stapler. She looked at the corkboard, at Moberly, at the mug rack. Then she bent down, the way an inspector bends down, and looked under the short leg.
"Is that the tax code?" she asked.
"Volume two," said Leopold. "2014."
"Why?"
"It's the right thickness."
She straightened up. She wrote something with the fountain pen. I would have given a month's salary to know what she wrote.
Noordhaven's general counsel joined by speakerphone. He introduced himself only as "Legal," in a voice that sounded like a filing cabinet closing.
He had read Kip's post. He had read the four hundred reactions. He had read the Phoenix office's sticker, which apparently featured a cartoon elbow.
"Our Code of Conduct," said Legal, "Section 9.4. I'll read it."
He read it. No physical contest, wager or test of strength shall be used to resolve any workplace matter, at any Noordhaven location, at any time.
"At any time," said Legal, "is underlined."
Imelda stepped forward. I had never seen her step forward before. Imelda usually approaches things from the side, like a crab with a law degree.
"Kell & Moberly's practice," she said, "is governed by Form AW-1. Six pages. Mutual and voluntary."
"Either party may concede at any time," she went on. "Page three is a sore-wrist acknowledgment. Page four is the mug clause."
"The what?"
"The winner washes the mugs."
There was a long silence from the speakerphone. I pictured Legal staring at the wall of a glass office somewhere, rethinking his career.
"Injuries?" he asked.
"One," said Imelda. "A sore wrist, March of last year. He iced it for an afternoon and filed a thank-you note."
"A thank-you note."
"He'd won. It was about the good stapler." She checked the clipboard. "Page three covers it."
"Be that as it may," said Legal finally. "Upon closing, Section 9.4 applies to all Noordhaven offices. Including yours."
"And the table?" Leopold asked.
Rosamund answered that one herself. "The table is furniture," she said. "Furniture can stay. The practice ends on day one."
Mina had not said anything yet. She set down her tea and slid the stapler an inch to the left, into the exact center.
"Ms. Nyberg," she said. "Would you like to settle this?"
The break room went very quiet. Pauline, who had been hovering in the doorway in her cape, took one step back into the hall. Clement put his hand on the fridge for balance.
It was a fair offer. Mina never volunteered anybody. She only asked. Rosamund could say no, and the whole office knew it.
"No," said Rosamund.
She said it pleasantly. Then she pulled out the chair across from Mina, sat down, folded her hands on the laminate and looked at her.
The Nyberg Pause.
I saw what was happening before Mina did. This was a match. It just wasn't one with elbows. Rosamund had taken the other chair, and she was holding.
Mina held too.
For a while it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Two women sat at a wobbly table, looking at each other across a stapler, saying nothing.
Imelda's pen hovered. Kip stopped breathing. Somewhere on the third floor a printer jammed, and nobody went to fix it, including me.
At one minute, Mina blinked normally and sipped her tea.
At three minutes, she set down her tea.
At four minutes, I saw her eyes drop to the stapler. That was her habit at the table, and it was the wrong habit here. There was no hand to read and no number to wait out. There was only Rosamund, and Rosamund did not seem to have a number at all.
At six minutes and ten seconds, Mina spoke.
"The practice is opt-in," she said quietly. "Nobody's ever been hurt. It's the only place here where an argument actually ends."
"I'm sure that's true," said Rosamund. She stood and pushed in her chair. "Thank you for the tour."
She left. Kip followed with the water. On the way out he looked back at Mina with an expression I can only describe as a dog who has knocked over a lamp.
I didn't write anything in the Book of Elbows. There was no rule for what had just happened. But Mina stared at that stapler for a long time after they left. Then she got up and washed the mugs, even though nobody had won.
The afternoon session was worse.
Rosamund brought a document called the Integration Staffing Review. It was nine pages long.
Page six listed five junior positions at Kell & Moberly as "under evaluation." Those were the five newest people in the building. One of them had joined in January and still brought muffins on Fridays to make friends.
Leopold read page six twice. "We'd like these five protected," he said. "In writing."
Rosamund looked at him.
He lasted two minutes this time. He was getting worse, not better. At two minutes and five seconds he said, "Perhaps a review is reasonable." Then he looked as if he wanted to crawl under the table and become a second tax code.
Mina tried. She really did.
She had numbers for every one of those five people: billable hours, client retention, the muffin guy's audit accuracy, which was very high. She laid them out in a clean column. Rosamund read it carefully and said nothing.
At five minutes, Mina closed the binder.
That evening the office felt like the parking lot after a fire drill. Nobody quite knew whether to go back in. Pauline sat at her desk in the cape, staring at the thermostat. Clement ate his egg salad sandwich at five in the evening, which was unprecedented.
"It was never about strength," Clement said to me, by the sink. "You know that, right?"
"I've lost to her fifteen times. She doesn't win because she's stronger. She wins because she's patient."
"I know."
"And that woman is more patient." He looked at the table. "I didn't think that was possible. I thought Mina was the end of the scale."
Mina had gone home early. That had never happened either. She'd left the Book of Elbows on my desk with a sticky note on the cover. It said, in her neat capitals, Maybe 213 is enough.
I sat with that for a while. I'm not ashamed to say it got to me. Two hundred and thirteen arguments, ended with a handshake. Somebody had always washed the mugs.
I was turning off my monitor at seven when Kip knocked on my door.
He was still wearing the quarter-zip. He had a manila folder, and he held it the way you'd hold a live animal you'd been told was friendly.
"I feel terrible," he said. "It was my post. Legal never would have noticed if I hadn't posted."
"It's not your fault," I said, which was half true.
"I went looking for Section 9.4," he said. "Who wrote it, and why."
"Noordhaven keeps everything. We have an archive in the Duluth office. It's a whole floor."
He put the folder on my desk. "Per my— Sorry. I found this."
Inside was a photocopy of a company newsletter dated August 1993. The headline said NOORDHAVEN SUMMER PICNIC A SUCCESS. Most of the page was about a potato salad contest.
But there was a photo in the bottom corner. A young woman, twenty-three according to the caption, with a familiar precise haircut. She stood beside a picnic table, holding a small trophy with a sailboat on top.
The caption read: Junior auditor R. Nyberg retains her inter-office arm wrestling title. Undefeated in 61 matches. "I just wait," she says.
Under it, Kip had clipped a second page. It was the original board memo proposing Section 9.4, dated 1998.
It had been written by Rosamund Nyberg.
Up next: Training Camp
Continue to Part 4 →