First impression. Marcus was quiet for three full seconds. He's very comfortable, he said finally. Victoria tilted her head. Meaning meaning he's the kind of man who decides how a room is going to treat him before he walks into it.
And the room usually complies. He paused. That works well in business. Depends on the situation whether it works everywhere else. She looked at him for a long moment.
Something moved behind her eyes that he couldn't name. That's the most precise thing anyone has said to me about him in 2 weeks, she said quietly. I just call it how I see it. I know. She picked up the tablet again, which he understood as the signal that the personal part of the conversation was over.
Thank you, Marcus. He stood. Anything else you need? She started to say something. He could see at the beginning of a sentence a thought that crossed her face before she pulled it back.
And then she said, "No, that's everything. Thank you." He left. He stood in the elevator on the way down and looked at the buttons on the panel. He had replaced three of those buttons in the last year.
He knew every one of them. He thought about the sentence she hadn't finished. He thought about it for a long time. Ava noticed at first the way Ava noticed most things. It was a Saturday, 2 weeks after his meeting with Victoria, and Ava had somehow ended up at the office because Marcus had brought her in on weekends occasionally when he needed to run quick inspections and couldn't find coverage for her at short notice.
She was used to the building used to wandering with a book while he worked, and the staff adored her because she was 10 years old and already operated with a social grace that most adults spent their whole lives chasing. She was sitting in the maintenance breakroom reading when Victoria walked past the open door, saw Marcus's daughter, and stopped. Marcus was across the room going over the work order for the week, and he looked up and watched without saying anything as Victoria Langford knocked on the open door and said, "Hi, you must be Ava." Ava looked up from her book completely unbothered. "And you must be the boss," she said.
Victoria blinked. Then she actually laughed. A real one short and surprised. Nothing like the practiced laugh she used in meetings. That's what they tell me.
She said, "My dad talks about this building a lot." Ava said he loves it. He won't say he does, but he does. Marcus said from across the room. Ava, what?
It's true. Victoria glanced at him. He gave her the face of a man who had long since surrendered to being outmaneuvered by a 10-year-old. Victoria looked back at Ava. "Can I ask what you're reading?"
Ava held up the cover. It was a worn paperback copy of A Wrinkle in Time. "It's my mom's copy," Ava said. She used to read it to me before she got sick. The room went very still.
Marcus watched Victoria's face. He watched her absorb the information, not with practiced sympathy, not with the automatic and slightly distant condolence that most adults offered when they found out Angela was gone. She absorbed it the way someone absorbs something that actually reaches them. She had good taste, Victoria said quietly. She had the best taste, Ava confirmed.
She studied Victoria with the frank openness that only children maintain past the age of self-consciousness. You don't seem like a regular boss. No, regular bosses don't knock. They just walk in. Victoria looked at the door, then back at the girl.
I'll remember that, she said. She glanced at Marcus one more time. Something in that look, something that arrived and departed quickly, like a door opened and then closed before he could see what was behind it. Then she said, "Nice to meet you, Ava." And she was gone.
The breakroom felt different after she left. Ava went back to her book. Marcus looked at the work order in his hands and realized he hadn't read a single line of it. "She's lonely," Ava said without looking up. Marcus looked at his daughter.
"What, Victoria? She's lonely. You can see it if you look." Ava turned to Paige. You should be nicer to her.
I'm perfectly nice to her. You're professional to her, Ava said. That's different. Marcus didn't have an answer for that. He went back to the work order.
He read the same line four times before he retained it. The following Monday, Hawthorne made his first move. Marcus heard about it from three different sources within 90 minutes, which was how fast information traveled through a building where people worked in close quarters and had opinions. The story confirmed by all three sources and consistent enough to be reliable was this Hawthorne had gone to two board members over the weekend and proposed accelerating the merger timeline. The deal originally scheduled for a final review in 2 months was now being pushed for announcement within 3 weeks.
And attached to the announcement according to the version that reached Marcus through the facilities coordinator on 12 was a personal element. Hawthorne intended to propose to Victoria at the announcement event in front of the board, in front of the cameras, in front of everyone. Marcus put down the wrench he was holding. He was in the mechanical room on seven mid-repair on an HVAC coupling, and he set the wrench on the floor and sat back on his heels and looked at the ceiling. He thought about the sentence she hadn't finished in her office.
He thought about the way she'd looked the night of the gala when she walked through the crowd composed correct alone in a way that had nothing to do with how many people were in the room. He thought about Ava saying quietly over a worn paperback, "She's lonely." He picked up the wrench. He finished the repair. He went home that evening and made eggs and listened to Ava talk about her ecosystem project and then did dishes while she did homework and put her to bed at 9:00 and then sat at the kitchen table in the quiet and thought about what kind of man he was.