Chapter 24: The Smallest Sum

A year later, at the annual company dinner, three hundred people watched me sign a contract.

The hall was the same one, with the same long tables and the same river view.

Nothing else was.

The head table had been cut in half and set among the others, and the night crews sat at it with their families.

The woman in the gray uniform wore a green dress tonight, and had brought her sister.

The night guard sat beside her in a jacket that fit.

He was telling a story about a pigeon that had lived in the loading dock for a month.

I knew his name now.

I knew forty-one names, and since spring, sixty-three.

Every Wednesday at two in the morning I had gone down to the lobby with a thermos, and learned another.

Across the hall, Richard sat in a wheelchair at a table near the stage.

A blanket lay on his knees, and a nurse stood at his shoulder.

He could say whole sentences now, if he took his time.

Beside him sat Geoffrey, in a suit that was not as expensive as his old ones.

He ran the employee pension office on the fourth floor, on a salary the board had set.

He came to work at seven, like everyone else.

When he saw me look, he raised his glass an inch, and I raised mine.

Camille's name came up once that evening, in a short speech by the new chief executive.

She was a woman who had started in accounts, and the staff had chosen her by vote.

"Ms. Dacre pleaded guilty in March," she said, and the room listened without a sound.