Fixed because flexible means they expand. Fixed, she said, written into the agreement. And I need to be able to say no to something I think is wrong without it affecting the arrangement. That's the whole point of having you there, she said. He looked at Garrett.
Garrett shrugged, which appeared to communicate something specific in their language. 2 days a week is not 2 days a week until it is. Garrett said, "Make sure the paper says what you mean." "The paper will say what I mean," Sloan said. "I'll have legal draft it, and you can have whoever you want review it before you sign anything." Caleb looked back at her. "Let me think about it." "Of course.
And I want to bring Howell into the protocol development," he said. "He knows the fleet better than I do at this point. It should be both of us. She nodded. Done.
He looked at the hanger around them, the familiar space, the equipment, the morning light coming in through the open bay door at the far end. His face was doing something quiet and internal that she didn't try to interpret. He had spent 14 years in this building. Whatever he was feeling, looking at it now, was his to carry. "You should eat something," he said finally, which was not what she had expected.
She blinked. "What? You look like you've been running on nothing since 6:00 this morning, he said. There's a place two blocks north that does eggs. Garrett knows it.
Garrett uncrossed his arms for the first time since she'd approached them. "Best breakfast in the district," he said, with the absolute conviction of a man who had eaten there many times and was not speaking metaphorically. Sloan looked at both of them and understood that she was being offered something that was not technically about breakfast. "Okay," she said. "Okay," Caleb said.
They walked out through the side door into the April morning, the three of them. And the city was doing what cities do at 9:00 a.m. on a Friday when the weather has finally decided to cooperate, moving with purpose, generating its ordinary noise, carrying its ordinary weight. The trees on the street had that pale early green. A delivery truck idled at the corner. Somewhere nearby, a construction crew was running something loud.
Garrett led them north at a pace that suggested he had made this walk many times and had strong feelings about not rushing it. Caleb walked beside Sloan and didn't say anything for a half a block. Then Mia wants to know if you're coming to her science fair. Sloan looked at him. Excuse me.
She asked me last week if the loud shoes lady was coming to her science fair. He said his expression was carefully neutral, but something underneath it was not neutral at all. I told her I didn't know. She told me to find out. Sloan walked for a moment without answering.
When is it? 3 weeks. Thursday evening. She thought about her Thursday evenings and decided she did not currently care what was in her calendar on any of them. What's her project?
She built a model of how wind affects wing lift using a box fan and three cardboard shapes she cut out herself. He said it works. I've seen her run it 12 times. She knows about wing lift. She knows about everything.
Caleb said it's a significant problem. Garrett made a sound from slightly ahead of them that was unambiguously a laugh. Sloan walked in the April morning and thought about a girl in socks and pajama pants asking questions from a hallway and about uneven braids and about a man who had picked up his tools and walked out of a building with the particular dignity of someone who had decided long before that morning what he was worth and didn't need anyone else to confirm it. "Tell her I'll be there," Sloan said. Caleb nodded.
They turned the corner toward the restaurant, and the morning opened up ahead of them, and none of them said anything for a while, which felt like exactly the right amount to say. The consulting agreement was signed 3 weeks later on a Tuesday afternoon in Sloan's office with Howell present, and a copy sent to Garrett, who had reviewed it line by line and returned it with two suggested amendments that were both reasonable and that Sloan accepted without counter. The terms were fixed, 2 days per week, defined hours, protocol consultation only, full veto on any policy he considered structurally unsound from a safety standpoint. The agreement also contained a clause drafted at Caleb's specific request. That no work performed under this arrangement could be used to compel additional time commitment without a separately negotiated amendment signed by both parties.
It was, Howell said afterward, the most specifically protected consulting arrangement he had ever seen. He knows how these things expand, Sloan said. Clearly, Howell said. Did he write that clause himself? He sent me the language, Sloan said.
I recognized it as accurate and didn't change it. Howell looked at her with the expression of a man who was updating his understanding of multiple things simultaneously. You know, he said carefully, "Some of us who've been here a while, we've been watching what you've been doing, the breakroom visits, the protocol revisions, the policy filings." He paused. People were skeptical at first. A lot of people.