Curtis Lindqvist had found his quiet place, and it was not quiet.
It was a stretch of carpet between gates B41 and B43 where the concourse widened and a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass looked out over the ramp, and it had seemed quiet when he first saw it, with only a janitor working a dust mop along the far wall and a woman with a toddler asleep across two seats. Then a youth hockey team from Saskatoon had arrived and sat down in a loud red wave twenty feet away, and someone's phone had started playing a cartoon at full volume, and now he had one finger jammed in his left ear and the other hand pressing his phone so hard against his right that his cheekbone hurt.
"No, I hear you, Pete. I hear you. But they signed the letter of intent. Ridgeline signed. I've got the signature."
"A letter of intent," said Pete Dunleavy, Vice President of Sales for the Mountain West Region of Halvorsen Commercial Climate Systems, from the kitchen of his house in Castle Rock, where Curtis could hear a coffee grinder and what sounded like a dog being told to get down, "is not a contract, Curtis. It's a love letter. You know what they do with love letters in procurement? Nothing. They put them in a drawer. Toby Fisk is meeting them on Wednesday. Toby is going to be in that room with a twelve percent discount and a PowerPoint about heat pumps, and you're going to be where?"
"I'm going to be there Tuesday."
"You're going to be in Seattle."
"Seattle's two hours from Spokane, Pete. I fly over on Tuesday morning. I'm doing the thing with my mother on Monday and I'm in Spokane on Tuesday at ten."
The coffee grinder stopped. "The thing with your mother."
"My dad's ashes. I told you. I put it in the calendar in August."
"Right." A pause in which Curtis could hear Pete deciding how much sympathy this was worth. "Look. Nobody's saying don't do it. I'm saying this is the account that decides whether you're a regional director next year or you're Toby's regional director. I'm saying Toby doesn't have a mother."
"Everybody has a mother."
"You know what I mean."
He did know what Pete meant. That was the problem. He knew exactly what Pete meant and had known it for twenty-two years, since the day he'd started at Halvorsen at twenty-five with a cheap suit and a firm handshake and a talent for remembering the names of facility managers' kids. You were what you closed. You were what you caught. Everybody else in the world was either a customer or in the way.
His phone buzzed against his ear. A second call coming in. He glanced at the screen. MOM. That was the fourth one. He hit decline.