Chapter 17: Hello Is Terrible

At nine the next morning, Cordelia put a badge on Tiernan's kitchen table and slid it toward me.

It said GWENDOLYN HARCASTLE, CEO, in the same font.

It was laminated.

"I had a second one made," she said. "In case the horse was hungry."

"That's the chair?"

"That's the chair. The resignation letter is in my coat, signed, effective this morning. All you do is walk in with it."

I looked at the badge for a long time.

Tiernan was at the stove, not making eggs, and Nana was reading the paper with her glasses on the end of her nose.

Nobody helped me.

"No," I said.

"Gwen."

"You put it in front of me, and I'm supposed to pick it up, and that's the whole trick. That's the track."

"It's not a trick, it's a gift."

"It's a gift with a ribbon on it that goes back twenty years."

I pushed the badge across the table.

"If I take it from you, I'm copying you, only now the one thing I'm copying is you leaving."

"That's not fair."

"It's true. If I want the chair, I have to get it with no help from you."

Nana turned a page.

"Well," she said, to the newspaper. "That sounds like a Harcastle."

"I need a speech," I said. "My own."

Tiernan put a legal pad and a pen in front of me.

Then he carried the saltshaker and the pepper mill to the other end of the table, so that nothing would offer me an idea.

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