The Northgate boardroom had a long walnut table, twelve leather chairs, and a glass wall facing the open office. That glass wall turned out to matter. By ten-fifteen on Friday morning, half the fourth floor had found a reason to stand near it.
Gordon introduced Bev and me as "engagement consultants." We sat in two chairs against the back wall. Bev had her seeds. I had my velvet jacket, my stopped watch, and a feeling in my stomach like the first night of a residency.
Ingrid sat at Gordon's right hand. She had the Apexion file in front of her, the calculator beside it, and the ceramic hen on top of the whole stack. Nobody asked about the hen. I think people assumed it was a corporate gift.
Danny Okoro sat beside her with a laptop. He'd been promoted, unofficially, to Keeper of the Spreadsheet. He looked terrified and thrilled in equal measure.
Kevin sat at the far end, his lanyard down to six badges. I didn't ask.
Trent Whitlow arrived at ten-thirty with two associates and a rolling case. He was wearing the headset, which was even stranger in person. The room was the size of a two-car garage. We could all hear him perfectly well.
"Team Northgate," he said, shaking hands all the way down the table. "Gordon, my man. Ingrid, legend. Who are these two?"
"Consultants," said Gordon.
"Love it." Trent pointed at me. "Great jacket. Very retro, very brand."
He set up at the front of the room. The screen lit up with a logo, a stylized letter A exploding into stars. Underneath it, in huge white letters, was the word I had come to fear.
Ingrid looked at the screen. She didn't cluck. Reading it didn't count. She simply wrote the time on her notepad and placed her finger on the calculator.
"So," said Trent, spreading his arms. "Let's talk synergy."
Bawk.
It was crisp and confident. It sounded like it had been rehearsing all week. Trent stopped mid-gesture.
"Sorry," he said. "Was that—?"
"Please continue," said Ingrid. She pressed a button on the calculator.
Trent looked at Gordon. Gordon looked at the ceiling, which he had learned from Ingrid. Trent looked at his associates, who looked at their shoes. Then he laughed, a big hearty sales laugh, and decided he had imagined it.
"Okay! So. Apexion is about one thing. Unlocking the synergy—"
Bawk.
"—between people and platforms," Trent finished, more slowly.
Outside the glass wall, somebody snorted. The crowd had grown. Somebody was holding a coffee mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST ACCOUNTANT.
I've watched a lot of performers in my life. I know the moment a man realizes the room has changed under him. Trent Whitlow realized it at about slide six.
He tried to avoid the word. He reached for it and swerved, and the sentence came out sideways. "Our cross-functional, uh, collaborativeness." "Our joint, um, team-ness."
Once he said "togetherization," which I don't believe is a word. Danny typed it into the notes anyway.
It was no good. The word was load-bearing for Trent, like a wall you can't remove without losing the kitchen. Whenever he relaxed, it slipped out, and Ingrid clucked and pressed a button. The rhythm was almost musical.
At slide nine, Ingrid raised one finger.
"Mr. Whitlow," she said. "A number, please."
"Sorry?"
"You've told us Apexion's model will deliver exponential value. Could you give me a number for the value?"
Trent smiled. "Great question, Ingrid. Love that energy. So the value is really in the synergy—"
Bawk. Click.
"—of the combined platform," he finished.
"That isn't a number," Ingrid said. "That's a bird."
Outside the glass, the fourth floor lost its composure. A woman in a blue cardigan had to turn around and face the copier. Kevin put his face in his hands at the end of the table. His shoulders were shaking.
Beside me, Bev was coughing into her seed bag again. I glanced at her. She waved me off without looking up.
At slide fourteen, Ingrid set down her pen.
She did it quietly. But the way she did it made the whole room stop, Trent included. It was the way a judge sets down a gavel she hasn't used yet.
"Danny," she said. "Would you bring up the vendor file?"
Danny clicked. The big screen switched from an exploding letter A to a plain Northgate spreadsheet. It was the Q3 vendor costs, the ones Danny had brought to her on Wednesday. One row was highlighted in yellow.
Synergy Enablement Workshops. Vendor: Apexion Dynamics. $380,000.
Ingrid did not cluck at that. She read it with her eyes, and reading didn't count.
"Last year," Ingrid said, "Northgate paid Apexion three hundred and eighty thousand dollars for a series of workshops. They were approved by our People and Culture department."
At the end of the table, Kevin lifted his face out of his hands. He had gone the color of printer paper.
"I reviewed Apexion's revenue this morning," Ingrid went on. "Mr. Whitlow, your company made just under six hundred thousand dollars last year. Over sixty percent of that came from us."
She folded her hands. "You're asking us to pay forty million dollars to buy our own workshops."
The room was silent. Even the crowd outside had stopped breathing.
Trent opened his mouth. He closed it. He took off his headset, which felt symbolic.
"I think," he said slowly, "that the deeper value here is the long-term synergy—"
Bawk.
And Ingrid pressed the button one last time. She turned the calculator around and slid it down the table toward Gordon. It read 47.
"Forty-seven times," she said. "In fifty-one minutes. And not one number I could put in a spreadsheet."
Gordon looked at the calculator, then at Trent. Then he stood up, and he did something I had not seen him do all week. He zipped up his fleece vest. All the way to the top.
"Trent," he said kindly. "Thank you for coming. We're going to pass."
Trent and his associates packed up in under four minutes. At the door, he paused and turned back. He clearly had a closing line prepared, and he was a man who couldn't bear to waste one.
"Well," he said. "Maybe we just didn't have the right synergy."
Bawk.
The door closed behind him. For one second there was perfect quiet.
Then the glass wall erupted. The fourth floor was applauding. People were banging on the glass with flat palms and whooping. The woman with the WORLD'S OKAYEST ACCOUNTANT mug was holding it above her head.
Ingrid sat very still and looked at the people behind the glass. They weren't laughing at her. I knew the difference. I'd been on the wrong side of it for twenty years.
Gordon put a hand on her shoulder. "Nineteen years, Ruthie," he said. "Never once wrong about a number."
"I'm still not," Ingrid said. Her voice was a little unsteady. "Forty-seven is correct. I double-checked."
Kevin walked slowly down the table and stood in front of her. He unclipped his lanyard and laid all six badges on the table.
"I signed off on those workshops," he said. "I thought it was a good idea. Everyone kept saying it was a good idea. I'm sorry, Ingrid."
Ingrid looked at him for a moment. Then she slid one of his badges back across the table toward him. It was the one for having the other badges.
"Keep that one," she said. "And put a dollar in the jar."
At noon, Ingrid came to find me. She closed the door to Collaboration Pod B and lay down on the couch Bev had dragged in on Tuesday.
"All right, Leonard," she said. "Take it out."
I pulled out my watch, but I didn't need it. She was asleep before it finished its second swing. The tension simply went out of her, like a held breath let go. She'd finally stopped auditing.
"Ingrid," I said softly. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes," she murmured.
I reached into my pocket for the clicker. My fingers closed on nothing.
I checked the other pocket and the jacket lining. Then I looked at Bev.
Bev turned her purse upside down onto the table. Out poured sunflower seeds, a tissue, and a lipstick from 1996. No clicker.
"I had it this morning," Bev whispered. "I swear I had it."
I looked at my right hand. I took a deep breath, and I snapped with everything I had.
It made a sound like a small dry twig. In the hush of that room, it was barely there.
Ingrid didn't move.
"It has to be loud enough," I said. "She has to hear it."
Bev looked at me. Then she looked through the glass wall of Collaboration Pod B at the fourth floor. There were a hundred and forty people out there, still buzzing from the boardroom.
"Leonard," she said slowly. "How many hands do you need?"
Up next: The Great Suggestion
Continue to Part 6 →