The break-room table weighed fifty-four pounds. I know because we weighed it on the freight scale in the basement, at Imelda's request, for the paperwork.
We moved it to Noordhaven headquarters on a Thursday morning in Leopold's minivan. Clement and I carried it. Kip met us in the loading dock in his quarter-zip, beaming, with a dolly he had signed out under his own name.
Mina carried the stapler. Imelda carried the 2014 federal tax code, volume two, in a padded envelope.
"Chain of custody," she explained.
Pauline didn't come. She stayed back to guard the thermostat.
Before we left she handed Mina the cape, folded, and said, "For luck. It's been through a lot." Mina wore it in the elevator, all thirty floors, with total seriousness.
Kip had not exaggerated. The conference room was mostly window. The city spread out below it in every direction, gray and glittering, as if Noordhaven had acquired that too. In the middle stood a glass table long enough to land a small plane on.
Rosamund was already seated. Her fountain pen lay beside her, and so did her glass of water. Legal sat at her left. In person he turned out to be a tall man with a tired face, a bow tie and a binder labeled SECTION 9.4 in red.
Then she looked up and saw our table coming through the door on Kip's dolly.
She didn't say anything. Of course she didn't.
She watched us roll fifty-four pounds of laminate across her carpet and park it beside the glass. She watched Imelda kneel, open the padded envelope and slide the tax code under the short leg. She watched Mina place the stapler in the exact center.
"We'd like to meet here, if that's all right," Leopold said. "At ours."
Rosamund looked at him for a long time. Leopold, to his enormous credit, did not take it back.
"Fine," she said.
So the most important meeting in Kell & Moberly's forty-two-year history took place at a round break-room table. It sat in the middle of a glass room thirty floors up, next to a much nicer table that nobody used.
Rosamund brought her water glass over and set it down. Mina saw where it landed and adjusted her chair half an inch.
"First item," said Leopold. "The five junior positions."
Rosamund looked at him. Leopold, as rehearsed, looked at Mina. Mina looked at the water.
And the Pause began.
I had a stopwatch. Clement had a legal pad. Kip, I noticed, had a stopwatch of his own, under the table, and kept checking it. Imelda had the Merger Edition of Form AW-1 in a folder on her lap, seven pages, four copies.
At five minutes, nothing had happened. Somewhere far below, a siren went by.
At ten minutes, Legal checked his phone. Rosamund didn't look at him, but he put it away very quickly.
At fifteen, Leopold began, very quietly, to hum. Clement touched his sleeve, and Leopold stopped. Later Leopold told me he had been mentally reciting the 1984 tax season to stay calm. He said he'd made it to April.
At twenty minutes, Mina was still looking at the glass of water. Her hands rested on the laminate, one over the other. She didn't fidget or blink oddly. Her face had the look it gets when a reconciliation is going well and she can see the end coming.
Clement wrote something on the legal pad and turned it toward me. It said She's past my number. She's past everyone's number.
At thirty minutes, I saw something I'd never seen. Rosamund Nyberg glanced at the clock on the wall. It was very brief, but Kip saw it too. He nearly dropped his stopwatch.
At thirty-five minutes, Mina's eyes were still on the glass. I swear the water level hadn't moved in three weeks.
At forty-one minutes, the room got very still. Everybody knew the number.
The bank, the board, the building. Forty-one minutes was where the legend ended. Rosamund's fingers moved on the fountain pen, a quarter turn.
Mina didn't move at all.
At forty-four minutes and twelve seconds, Rosamund Nyberg spoke first.
"Why," she said, "did you bring the table?"
I want to be precise about what happened next, because people have told it wrong ever since.
Mina didn't gloat. She didn't smile or say I won. She looked away from the water glass for the first time in forty-four minutes, straight at Rosamund.
"Because I wanted to ask you properly," she said. "In the right place."
She set the stapler an inch to her left, into the exact center. "Ms. Nyberg. Would you like to settle this?"
Legal opened his binder. "Section 9.4—"
"Isn't in effect until closing," said Imelda, without looking up. "Page seven, paragraph two."
"I checked with your office on Tuesday. You agreed with me on Wednesday. In writing."
Legal closed his binder.
Rosamund looked at the table for a long time. It was a different kind of silence from before. It wasn't a negotiation. It was a person thinking.
"What are the terms?" she said.
Mina laid them out. If Rosamund won, Section 9.4 would apply from day one, and the staffing review would go ahead as written.
If Mina won, the five junior jobs were protected in writing. The table would stay, grandfathered, at the Kell & Moberly office only. Either party could concede at any time. The winner washed the mugs.
"There aren't any mugs," said Legal faintly.
Kip raised his hand. "I brought some," he said. "From our break room. Per my—"
He caught himself. "I just brought them." He unzipped his backpack and set out six mugs with sails on them, in a neat row, like evidence.
Rosamund looked at Kip for one second. Something happened at the corner of her mouth. Then she held out her hand for the form.
Imelda gave her all seven pages. Rosamund read every one, including the footnotes, at a steady speed. On page seven she paused. She checked the box marked Party has previously held an inter-office title. Then she signed and initialed page three.
"Sore wrist," she said, reading it. "Fair."
They set their elbows on either side of the stapler. Rosamund took off her watch and set it beside her untouched water. Their right hands met in the middle.
"Grips even?" I asked. My voice came out higher than I'd have liked.
"Even," said Mina.
"Even," said Rosamund.
I put my hand over theirs. "Both parties consent?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Elbows down," said Mina. Then, after a beat, she nodded across the table, as if offering it. "Ledger's open."
I lifted my hand.
Nobody attacked.
I had refereed two hundred and thirteen matches. Every one of them started with somebody coming in fast.
Clement always did. Kip had. Even the fruit-basket client had, and he was in his sixties.
Rosamund and Mina just held, wrists straight, hands upright, in the exact center.
Ten seconds passed. Thirty. Clement's pen stopped moving. A minute.
Two. Their hands didn't drift more than a finger's width either way. It looked from across the room like two people politely agreeing to hold a door.
Imelda had stopped writing. Legal had leaned so far forward that his bow tie was nearly on the glass table. Down on the street, the siren came back the other way.
At three minutes, Kip whispered, "Is this allowed?"
"Rule three," Clement whispered back. "Elbows down. That's all it says."
At four minutes, Rosamund said, quietly, without looking up from the stapler, "You're very good."
"So are you," said Mina. "Sixty-one and oh."
Rosamund's eyes came up. For the first time since she'd walked into our lobby, she looked surprised. That was when the table moved.
It wasn't either of them. I'm sure of that.
It was Noordhaven's carpet. Our table had spent twenty years on break-room linoleum, and the tax code had never had to grip anything. On the thick gray carpet of the thirtieth floor, it slid.
The short leg dropped about half an inch. The whole table tipped toward the window. And both of their elbows came up off the laminate at exactly the same moment.
Their hands were still clasped in the middle. Everyone in the room froze. Then, all at once, every single person in that glass room turned to look at me.
I was the referee. I'd seen it happen. And I had absolutely no idea what to call.
Up next: Ledger's Closed
Continue to Part 6 →