Chapter 5: The Head of the Table

On Friday morning Margot put me at the head of the conference table and took the chair on my left.

"You sit there," she said. "They'll walk in and see you before they see me."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because I want to see their faces."

Gus took the chair at my right with a legal pad and no sandwich, which told me how seriously he was taking it.

At ten past ten the door opened and Nigel walked in talking.

"Ms. Tornquist, thank you for having us, I know how busy you are, I think you'll find the platform really speaks to your residential..."

He saw me and stopped.

Justine was behind him with a laptop bag on her shoulder.

She ran into his back.

"Nate," Nigel said, and then he laughed, a short wrong laugh. "What are you doing here?"

"Mr. Boyle is our project director for residential," Margot said. "He'll be evaluating your plans. Please sit."

Neither of them sat for a moment.

Then Justine pulled out a chair, and Nigel took the one beside her, and I watched his hand shake once on the table before he put it in his lap.

He opened his mouth toward Margot as though to say something.

"Ms. Tornquist," he said instead.

"Mr. Clery," she said. She did not smile.

He had not looked at me again since he sat down.

He was looking at her.

Nigel gave the pitch anyway. He was good at that.

For six minutes he clicked through slides of my plans, with his name in the corner of each one, and I let him.

"And these layouts," he said, "come out of a design philosophy I've developed over the past four years."

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