Chapter 15: The Partners

Margaret did not take the partners to lunch.

The managing partner phoned her at ten and said, very politely, that the studio's conference table was free at noon.

She came anyway, with Lindsey and a man in a gray suit who carried her briefcase.

The partners had moved the conference table into the middle of the open floor.

Thirty desks stood around it, and every chair at every desk was turned to face it.

Nobody had told them to.

I sat at my own desk by the south window with a pencil in my hand and my heart in my throat.

Margaret stopped at the edge of the room and looked at the audience.

"I understood this would be a private lunch," she said.

"It was going to be," said the managing partner. "Then the studio found out, and they asked to stay."

"They have work to do."

"They're on their lunch hour."

She walked to the table and didn't sit.

The two other partners were already there, a woman who ran the budgets and a quiet man with silver hair.

The managing partner had his pencil back in his hair.

"I'll be brief," Margaret said.

"Please," said the woman who ran the budgets.

"The Stanhope Family Foundation has funded the north-side library for three years."

"We have another eleven million committed over the next three."

"We know," the partner said.

"I am prepared to renew every dollar of it."

Somebody near the back set down a cup.

"I only ask that the foundation's family member be released from her contract at once, on medical grounds."

"Her desk can go to someone who isn't ill."

"The letter from her physician is in your inbox."

"We called the hospital," the partner said. "The hospital cleared her for desk work."

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