Leviathan's Scales

By Jim Slusher

Joe Langston is the embodiment of all that the American work ethic is supposed to produce. He is a good man, a loving husband and father, a competent and dedicated executive. Little can he know that now, just as he is poised to reap the rewards of a lifetime of professional devotion, the values on which he has built his life are about to be rocked to their foundation by the people he trusts most. When personal tragedy strikes, he finds out who his friends are. Leviathan’s Scales is Langston’s story. Beginning with the day he expects to be welcomed into the boardroom of one of the world’s richest conglomerates, the book chronicles his perplexing journey from charmed Golden Boy to tormented persona non grata and the simple realization that helps him find his true identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Slusher
• Release date: Oct 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301693979

Jim Slusher

James C. Slusher, author of "Leviathan's Scales," available on Smashwords, amazon.com and all major ebook sales websites, is an award-winning newspaper writer and editor with more than 35 years experience throughout the Midwest and California. As Assistant Managing Editor for Opinion at the Daily Herald, the third largest daily newspaper in Illinois, he oversees the development of the editorial page and helps define the editorial voice at a 130,000-circulation daily newspaper serving the west and northwest suburbs of Chicago. Slusher works closely with other newsroom managers to establish and monitor policies of the news operation, and he writes a weekly column to give readers insights into the decision-making processes of the Daily Herald newsroom.He also is an accomplished writer in his own right. His first novel, Leviathan’s Scales, was published as an ebook in July 2013 by Dailey Swan Publishers with print publication scheduled for April 2014. He is a contributing writer to the ebook Telling the Truth and Nothing But, published in 2013 by the American Copy Editors Society. He also has produced a novella and numerous essays and short stories and is currently at work on his second novel, with the working title, The Glory of God: A Portrait of My Father in His Year of Trouble. A former high school English teacher, he now teaches a recurring class in “Writing Autobiographical Stories” at William Rainey Harper Community College in Palatine, Illinois. His weekly column “Letter to Readers” has appeared on the Daily Herald editorial page for more than 11 years.Prior to assuming his current duties at the Daily Herald, Slusher worked for seven years supervising a team of senior reporters that developed investigative projects, cultural issues stories, coverage of major breaking news and enterprise stories on virtually all topics. And prior to that, he produced and supervised programs promoting an atmosphere of learning at all levels in the Daily Herald’s 290-person newsroom. He has led workshops on journalism and newsroom leadership for various regional and national organizations, including the Inland Press Association, the National Federation of Press Women, and the American Copy Editors Society.He joined the Daily Herald in 1989 as news editor. In that role, he managed the staff responsible for designing pages, writing headlines and editing copy for all aspects of the paper. In 1992, he became associate editor, expanding his oversight of production issues and increasing his role in newsroom operations. He assumed his present position in 2010.A 1974 graduate of Western Illinois University, Slusher also has taught high school for two years in the mid-’70s, served as news director of a small Iowa radio station and has worked in all newsroom capacities at newspapers in northwestern Illinois, Michigan and California. He and his wife Patty make their home in Mount Prospect, Illinois, where they raised their three sons

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LEVIATHAN’S SCALES

A Novel By Jim Slusher

Leviathan’s Scales

Copyright 2013 Jim Slusher

All Rights Reserved

eISBN 978-1-938862-359

Written by Jim Slusher

Email: [e-mail]

Representation: Nancy Rosenfeld, Principal, AAA Books Unlimited, 88 Greenbriar East Drive, Deerfield, Illinois 60015.

Email: [e-mail]

Published by Jim Slusher @ Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Jim Slusher

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

No part of this book may be copied

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permission of the publisher. Small

excerpts may be taken for review purposes with

proper credit given.

Table of Contents

Part One Company Man

Chapter 1

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

1.

2.

Chapter 5

1.

2.

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

1.

2.

3.

Chapter 8

1.

2.

Chapter 9

1.

2.

Part Two Whispering Hope

Chapter 10

1.

2.

3.

4.

Chapter 11

1.

2.

3.

Chapter 12

1.

2.

Chapter 13

1.

2.

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

2.

3.

Part Three Leviathan’s Scales

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

1.

2.

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Dedication

For Ron, for Viv and for Dennis, Patty and Rob. Above all, for Langston Hughes..

"So, while I’m still here livin’

I guess I will live on.

I could have died for love.

But for livin’ I was born.

You might hear me holler.

And you might see me cry.

But I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,

If you’re gonna see me die.

Life is fine.

Fine as wine.

Life is fine."

– Langston Hughes

Part One: Company Man

"Everyone is saying that loyalty is gone; loyalty is dead; loyalty is over. I think that's a bunch of crap. I think loyalty is much more important than it ever was in the past … But it isn't blind loyalty to the company. It's loyalty to your colleagues, loyalty to your team, loyalty to your project, loyalty to your customers, and loyalty to yourself."

– Tom Peters, Author/Consultant

Leviathan’s Scales

Chapter 1

1.

Len Hoffenecker scratched at his bald red forehead and thought about justice.

He had been, by local standards, an influential man, and deservedly so. He ran the First State Bank of Mount Carroll, Illinois, and there wasn’t a house in the small village or a row of seed corn in the swaying ocean of green stalks that surrounded it every July that didn’t in some way owe its existence to his approval. His was not work of the hands like that of so many of the men, young and old, with whom he breakfasted Saturday mornings at the Busy Corner, but it was demanding labor all the same, and he had pursued it with selfless vigor. The men who sat with him on rugged steel stools covered with cracked vinyl, chewing toothpicks and sipping hot coffee from steaming ceramic mugs and spitting out short bursts of wit in the midst of long silences knew that, and they knew him. They liked him and insisted on buying his drink, though some sarcastic ad-lib – Take this, Mister Banker. I’m sure you need more’n I do. People born ugly shouldn’t have to pay for their coffee, too. Here, this is fer the guy who’s too big to fail. – invariably accompanied the transaction.

Yet, here he was now, shivering in a vacuum of isolation despite the warm appointments of his ample office, a kind of death staring him in the face with raw indifference.

Funny, he managed to stammer, half to himself. I always thought you people did this kind of thing on Friday afternoon. Here it is only Monday.

In a wing-backed chair upholstered in plush green leather, Alan Strand sat across the desk from Len. Behind the carved oak Kiwanis gavel, behind the black plastic nameplate announcing Len Hoffenecker, President, behind the montage of picture frames with the requisite family portrait and individual head shots of wife and sons, behind the small, neat white stack of memos and loan documents tucked neatly into plastic trays, with his hands folded in his lap, his legs crossed. He was, Len observed with a kind of awestruck reverence, the cleanest man he had ever seen. The unwelcome guest’s brown hair was brushed back on the side into soft wings streaming with light streaks of gray against his temples. A gray silk suit hung from his body with the personality of a faithful, well-trained Doberman. His brittle white shirt was stiff as glass, and a bright yellow tie hung casually from beneath his larynx. Until now, Len, for whom neckwear had always been a confining and slightly embarrassing formality, had never really thought that a tie could be comfortable. It was a necessary evil, a part of the uniform of business, to be worn grudgingly and as inconspicuously as possible, usually, though not today, of course, draping from the neck in a wide, loose loop. Today, with the button from his own wrinkled white shirt biting a half-size too small into his throat, he was even more conscious of the contrast. My god, the bastard’s black leather shoes gleamed in the unnatural fluorescent light of a winter afternoon as though slathered in oil. Strand’s fingernails, even his eyebrows, were so faultlessly groomed as to quietly call attention to themselves. Hoffenecker almost felt as though those sculpted fingernails and those manicured eyebrows had a right to fire him.

Strand’s voice carried inflection and tone but no emotion.

There is no timetable for handling necessary jobs, he said, staring into the former bank president’s face, other than immediacy. Times are growing hard for banks. You may have read it on the Internet. Your little enterprise is hemorrhaging cash, and that’s a condition we won’t allow.

Well, I think, hemorrhaging is a bit strong, Hoffenecker bristled. He strove unsuccessfully to control the country twang that twisted and twirled around his words, yet another contrast against his tormentor’s polished steel intonations. We struggle some, but we stay afloat. The economy’s been hard on the bank, hard on farmers, too. Do you really think pushing me out will change any of that?

Don’t actually care, Mr. Strand paused just a fraction before saying the name, Hoffenecker, you simply have allowed too much dead wood to float around for too long. You seem to have forgotten for whom you work.

Hoffenecker shifted his weight and his own green leather chair creaked loudly. He knew damned well for whom he worked, for whom he rose each morning at 5:30 a.m. and stuffed his hairy thighs into baggy slacks and slung a cotton necktie around his throat. He thought of Earl Roeser and the corporate order he had been ignoring to foreclose on the farmer. Roeser was long past due on nearly a million dollars to the First State. The ink had barely dried on Nye Cos.’ contract with Univox, or, for that matter, Univox’s with the stockholders of First State Bank of Mount Carroll (to think, they had all thought that selling out to a major corporation would provide more resources) before he received the letter from Strand. He had thought he would be given more time than this.

I work for the farmers and the people of this town, Hoffenecker spat. The customer. Isn’t that who we’re supposed to be working for? I have gleaming brochures sent straight from San Diego with just that message.

He reached into a drawer at the side of his desk and pulled out a colorful trifold pamphlet. He held it between two fingers. Light danced off its glossy laminate and skittered wildly against the ceiling and walls.

Strand smiled.

Hoffenecker halted. He felt small, isolated, like someone who had gotten the joke only after he’d wandered into it. He sucked in a deep breath of air and struggled to calm his chest as it shook. He looked at the hardwood floor to his right and sniffled hard, as though fighting back a cold.

Thank you at least for giving me a couple of weeks to find something new and to tell the employees myself.

Strand’s expression did not change. He stood and reached for his cashmere overcoat, which he had lain neatly over a sofa hunched against the office’s paneled back wall. A large square Norman Rockwell print of a cop sitting next to a young would-be runaway hung above it with an air of homespun humor that now seemed hideously out of place.

I do trust you will be professional about it, he said. That includes taking care of this Roeser business. We’ll have our new person in here in a few weeks, and I assure you, if you haven’t closed the books on Mr. Roeser, he will.

Hoffenecker pursed his lips. Though lunch was still hours away, he realized he was feeling hungry, and he allowed himself to wonder about today’s special at the Busy Corner. Chicken-fried steak, he thought, and he savored the notion briefly, then wondered how he could be thinking positively about food at a time like this. Positively about anything. Then, he began for the first time to imagine actually walking into the diner in a couple of hours. What would he say? He stood as Alan Strand slipped naturally into his overcoat. Strand’s eye wandered across the Rockwell, down at a stack of Business Week and Fortune magazines and then focused on the door.

You should read more of those magazines, the clean, crisp man with the glossy fingernails and winged temples stated, and your memos. And he added, And skip the brochures.

He shrugged the overcoat onto his shoulders and let himself out the office door. He noticed with mild disinterest the women helping customers from behind their teller windows. He ignored the glance from a sincere-looking man reading the Wall Street Journal behind a small wooden desk in a glass cubicle.

The heavy bank door groaned as he opened it. Many are bigger. None is stronger, read a motto in reverse stenciled in the door’s glass pane, just below the large type of the bank’s name. He stepped out onto the cold concrete steps.

Strand raised his shoulders against a bitter winter breeze and glared at piles of gray soot-peppered snow that outlined streets and driveways he would have believed deserted had it not been for the obvious care taken to keep them passable. He stepped briskly to a white limousine waiting at the curb, its engine running. It would be a 45-minute ride to the Nye jet waiting for him at Rockford, the nearest town with an acceptable runway. He would be late for Walter’s meeting, but that hardly worried him. Indeed, that would be fun.

All in all, it would be worth the hassle.

2.

Walter Nye stood framed in morning sunlight streaming through a large plate-glass window and stared out across Mission Bay.

He savored the vapors streaming from a mug of coffee. The waves of the bay shimmered in the distance beneath dusty cliffs, as the cowardly marine layer began to break up and slink back into the ether, away from the glowering winter sun. Up close, the ocean clawed faint-heartedly at the soft, brown sand. A handful of beachcombers ventured out to trace the shoreline. Joggers bounced along below him with their headbands and firm calves. Behind him, the Coronado Bridge with its endless cross currents of traffic and its insistent offers of help to would-be suicides whipped across the bay in a thin-lipped gray smirk.

Seeing but not seeing, his eyes wandered past tourists arm in arm, readers with books and an occasional Kindle, and, here and there, the lone stroller lost, like Nye himself from the solitary comfort of his plush perch overhead, in thoughts of his or her own.

Your reports, Mr. Nye, interrupted a sweetly professional voice, almost simultaneously with two polite raps on the heavy office door.

Thank you, Lori. Is anyone here yet? Nye's high-pitched, nasal voice sliced through the morning silence like a crack in cold glass.

Lori had pushed a mahogany cart into the boardroom adjoining Walter’s office. One by one, she placed individual packets of reports identical to that which she had just handed Walter and stacked them like place settings at each chair surrounding a large, polished oak table. She set out metal pitchers of ice water sweating with cold condensation on a table just inside the door entering from her reception area, along with an assortment of Danish rolls and neatly arranged fruits; fat red strawberries, trim slices of orange and green melon, green grapes, plump and crisp, along with expertly trimmed sections of orange, apple and pineapple.

Not yet, she called back in answer to her boss, never veering from her immediate duty. Mr. Strand called from the jet. He got delayed by a storm in Chicago. He said he may be a couple minutes late, but ...

She lifted the tops of two large steaming vats of regular and decaf coffee, looked inside and quietly replaced the lids.

Chicago? I thought he was coming off vacation in Miami. What's he doin' flyin' through Chicago?

His Southern accent suddenly sharp and prominent, Nye betrayed peevishness but no surprise. He handed his half-empty cup to his secretary and began to skim the sheaf of papers she had brought.

Apparently, he wanted to check on something involving the Univox purchase, Lori answered, her own tone seeming to take no notice of her boss's pique. That’s all he said. He had to make a stop at one of our new banks. He didn't seem all that worried, though. Looks like he'll be on time, or close. And, everyone else did check in at the Marriott last night, so I'm sure you'll be able to start right at 11.

Yes, said Nye, turning his attention to the papers in his hands. We will.

Lori cleared her throat and stepped back outside to her own desk. Nye began to take stock , again, of the summaries before him. He had been poring over the documents for days He studied them carefully, walking slowly over to his desk as he read. The title page gleamed brightly from a laptop and was projected on a large screen behind his chair but he barely noticed that, preferring instead to paw back and forth through the paper in his hands.

Lori breezed in with his refreshed coffee. He accepted it without acknowledgment. For half an hour, his focus barely shifted from the papers in front of him. They formed for him, for anyone who cared to study them thoroughly, a picture that was far from dismal. In spite of everything that had happened, from the burst housing bubble to the collapsed techno-bubble. From the downturn in the world economy and the general decline in music purchases, attendance at movies and general consumption of many of the traditional products Nye Cos. developed and sold. And in spite of increased competition from Asia and the tottering economy of Europe, Nye Cos. was not floundering. For one thing, the impotent mocking from patrons of a thousand little backwater Busy Corners across the country notwithstanding, Nye Cos. was indeed, at least in the eyes of the federal government, too big to fail. And although its knees had been buckled by the economic events of the past few years, the company had availed itself of enough bailouts, handouts and other federal stimulus to manage a comfortable, if unsteady recovery.

Nor was corporate welfare the company’s sole rescuer. Survival also had required massive restructuring across all lines of business. Nye Cos. had shed itself of tens of thousands of jobs. It had broken unions and cut pay. It had raided pensions. It had converted full-time jobs to part-time and part-time jobs to unpaid internships. To be sure, there were people making money, but not like the heady days of the Clinton years through the end of Bush’s first term. And even those lucky few were mostly people in very high positions. Mid-level executives and below were all being brutalized; yes, Walter knew it, and there was no use shrinking from the word.

That’s where Joe Langston came in. Nye had been watching him operate in the Financial Division for years, ever impressed by a reputation that in spite of all the reigning negativity inspired loyalty and respect at all levels. Three times in the last two years, Langston had had to oversee major staff reductions and severe cutbacks in compensation. Yet, each time, he somehow managed to infuse in his remaining employees a sense of pride and mission. He never complained about upper management or the unrealistic numbers his division was required to hit. Instead, he had all but elicited cheers from his employees for the fortitude and teamwork they were demonstrating in the name of a brighter future. Yes, they blamed top managers for the discomforts they were being forced to endure, all the more so for Langston’s heartfelt defense of leadership’s decisions, but oddly they did not hold it against the company. Many who could left, of course, mostly lured away by Hoople or some other surging newcomer unencumbered by the economic flotsam of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Nevertheless, most of the best stayed. They rallied around Joe Langston and the vision he imposed of a company devoted to improving the quality of life of its customers and bent on rewarding, when it could again someday, the people who committed their energies to that shared purpose.

Now, to complete Nye Cos.’ emergence and position the company for dominance when full recovery arrived, as surely it must someday, Langston’s spirit was desperately needed at the top levels of the corporation. It would be a different thing for him to spread his gospel across the latitudes and longitudes of Nye Cos.’ vast empire, as opposed to the isolated teams of a single division, but Walter knew of no one more capable of accomplishing it. Perhaps, he had often thought, he knew of no one else capable of accomplishing it at all.

But first he had to get Langston a seat here in this room, at the big table. There would be Strand to deal with and that was sure to mean a confrontation, but Nye was anxious to get Joe Langston into the boardroom and he wasn’t about to let the issue drag any longer. He would get his way, of course. It’s just that it would be ideal, especially where the financial press might be concerned, if no rumors surfaced suggesting Nye Cos. was anything but committed to a more employee-friendly strategy going forward.

Walter turned back to the papers before him and sipped at his coffee. He warmed himself for a moment with the recognition of how much he loved reading this stuff. Numbers arranged themselves on the pages before him like oracle bones. He reveled in studying each one and moving them around to see the patterns they could create. They were better than the study of history, for while they certainly described the past, they also foretold the future with unnerving accuracy. He did not like the message of this particular set of reports, but that didn’t diminish his pride in his ability to divine it. Better still, it comforted him to know that in knowing the Future Yet to Come, he had the power to change it.

He sighed, sipped, returned to his perch at the window and stared out over the resolute tide. The buzz of the intercom brought him back to the problems of the present.

Everyone is ready, Mr. Nye, Lori said. Except for Mr. Strand. He called from the airport to say he'll be here in ten minutes.

Well, let's get going, Nye grunted.

He felt his face flush from a surge of anger. Among his disappointing vice presidents, Strand stood out as a disappointing exception. He had style, self-confidence, vision. No matter how poorly he was treated, and for good reason Nye treated him as poorly as he could, he produced results that impressed even the jaded billionaire. He paid scrupulous homage to Nye's uncompromising standards but his every smile masked a sneer. His every accomplishment came tainted with a hint of spite, like a fat, juicy apple with a faint aftertaste of lye.

Lori opened the door from her foyer into the massive boardroom adjoining Nye's office. Looking out through glass walls over the vast blue-green horizon the room was bathed in warm, comfortable light from the late-morning sun. A dozen executives, many trailing assistants or secretaries of their own, began shuffling in to take their places at the gleaming oak board table, alternately chatting, laughing and spicing their greetings with power talk of golf games, children, football, Wall Street and the clichéd yearning for more time. Nye, entering from his office at the north end of the room, tried to put something like warmth into his smile but satisfied himself with brusque hellos and how-are-yous. Lori assumed the social duties, and, as with everything, handled them with grace and efficiency, noticing Virginia Howard's colorful scarf, reacting cheerily to the Frost Belt contingent's obligatory jokes about the San Diego weather and taking drink orders as the executives filed by.

3.

Joseph B. Langston

Journal Entry

February 8, 20—

This feels a little weird. Not that I’m afraid of writing. In eighteen years with Nye Cos., I’ve written hundreds of reports, and I will say I’m pretty proud of most of them. They must have been at least okay. They certainly didn’t hold me back in the company. But a diary or journal or whatever is different for me, at least in adulthood. Mr. Finch required us to keep one in high school English class, and I actually found it kind of interesting, cathartic, even. I’ve since wondered what in the world Mr. Finch needed with reading all those private thoughts of his adolescent students, but at the time I really just found it, well, useful. Soothing. I had a lot of angst, a lot of loneliness as a teenager, and it helped me to just periodically write down a kind of running narrative of my life. I wasn’t troubled in the sense that we think of troubled teenagers today, but I certainly felt isolated and depressed, for what? Grades, girls, losses on the wrestling mat?

All those things, I guess. I just remember it was an outlet during an intense time. Now, I’m entering an intense time of the exact opposite nature. It’s hard for me to imagine life getting any better; a beautiful and loving wife, three great kids, a little money in the bank, impending college expenses and diminishing 401(k) and home values notwithstanding. Plus, now, on this very day, I have every reason to believe that Walter Nye will promote me to some position that will put me on the company’s executive board. He hasn’t said so in so many words, but he’s put me in charge of all these important corporate initiatives. He personally calls me with little projects, and he specifically asked me to be available today in case he needs to call me from San Diego. If, in addition to all this, the foaming rumor mill within Nye Cos. International is even half true, I’m going to be an officer of one of the biggest, most important business conglomerates in the world. It has long been said around Nye Cos. that this would be my destiny, but I held out. Lord knows I’ve had enough responsibility leading individual projects and eventually the Finance Department, so it’s not like I needed this or should have expected it. Especially not a leap this far, and at only 38. But now, apparently, it’s here, and I can’t help but be excited and hopeful.

And anxious, of course, which may be part of the reason for starting these writings. I don’t want to forget any of it. Who knows where it will lead or how long it will last? Maybe it’s just to help calm my nerves. Maybe it’s just for Teddy and Robert and Veronica, a contribution to the family lore. Maybe it’s just for me. I don’t know. But I know I want to do it. I want to write it all down as it happens. I’ll sort it out later.

And speaking of as it happens, that certainly means today. Even now as I write in the early afternoon from my San Francisco office, Walter and the board could be talking about me. As I came to work this morning, I couldn’t keep it in. I pride myself on my self control, even my modesty. It’s the job that matters, I always tell people. The company. The mission. Not me. I just have a role to play. But I couldn’t contain my immodesty this morning. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t answer the damn telephone. Eventually, I had to just break away for lunch and head down to the Embarcadero for a walk.

I walked out to the middle of the ferry terminal pier and just stood there. I gripped the cold steel of the barrier and luxuriated in the cool breeze that pressed itself against my face and neck and hands. Lyle Lovett moaned in the ear buds trailing from the iPhone in my overcoat pocket. The San Francisco Bay Bridge arched its steel spine over the gray water to my right, where cars, trucks and buses swept past with a distant rushing sound, like electrons sweeping anonymous bytes of information across silicon synapses. Only slower. So much slower. A drifting pillow of fog cuddled the bridge and lolled over the hills in the distance.

At last I was alone. I closed my eyes and let myself float on Lovett’s wistful hymns.

"So find a bear and take ‘im on out to lunch today

"Even though the people stop and stare.

"Just remember that’s a bear there in the lunch with you.

"And it just don’t get no better than a bear."

I tried hard not to smirk.

So this was what success feels like. This felt very good. My chest sometimes would swell into what I could think of only as a salty, full-body tear about to pop. I marveled at my good luck.

It was not simply luck that had brought me to this day, of course, and, for that matter, I should not have felt so unacquainted with the rush of accomplishment. By most standards, I am already a successful man of business. Numerous promotions over the years have lifted me above others in the company and carried me back and forth across the country. I have a lot of bills and financial stresses at home, but I have a good income to attack them with. I have prestige, a secure future. More important, I have this near-Rockwellian family; loving wife, two devoted sons who sneak responsibility behind their friends’ backs and show their parents nothing but the normal, almost endearing, wickedness of adolescence, and a precocious five-year-old surprise whose abrupt emotions and unaffected needs remind me daily what I most relish about being a father. And what I most yearn to get past. On top of all this, people like me, or seem to, which as far as I’m concerned is all that matters. I have a reputation for leading projects to nearly impossible goals, but it’s not my brilliance that gets the credit, much as I wish it were. No, I think it’s because the people who work for me like me and respect me. They know I’ll work as hard as any of them and that I’m more concerned with the success of a project than with my own success. Which, of course, isn’t quite true. But it’s true enough so that people will eagerly sacrifice almost anything for me, or, as I prefer to say, for the good of the projects we’re working on together.

We didn’t accomplish this because of me, I had shyly told Alan Strand a couple of years ago at a meeting called expressly to praise the resurrection of a struggling consulting business Nye Cos. had all but written off. We did it because … and I cited in series the selfless acts of at least seven individuals who had offered innovative ideas. Like Tim Brandywine’s clever new marketing model. Or sacrificed personal time, like Sarah Kucinic and Dennis Franklin, who both worked weekends for nearly half a year writing software and training sales people to keep operations afloat in various times of crisis.

Strand had simply managed a polite sneer as he handed me a $50,000 bonus. I was happy about that, let me tell you, but then he arranged to transfer me to his control in the Financial Division here in San Francisco. That wasn’t quite so pleasant; but I manage.

Anyway, most people would call all this success, and I certainly am proud of myself. But it hasn’t been entirely what I had in mind when Janet and I set ourselves on this journey together just out of Harvard. To me, success has always been about getting to a point where I could really make a difference in the management and direction of a company, a big company. A company where people notice what’s going on and will recognize it as important when somebody tries something different that actually works. That’s been my little personal plot to change the world. To do something that works and then watch people copy me. While I’ve felt immense gratitude to Nye Cos. for rescuing me from my dad’s fate as a third-rate accountant in a drafty Baltimore storefront, the fact is I realized early in my career that most who achieved positions of authority in this and other big companies were creeps like Strand. Individuals who convert minor accomplishments into overwhelming personal gain and disguise their incompetence with bombast, deceit and intimidation. I’ve wanted to prove that decent people could manage, too, indeed could even accomplish more than the traditional model.

Now, at last, it seems to be working. From Janet’s excited goodbye kiss when I left the house until the early-lunch escape that took me to that fog-shrouded pier, the air has been charged with the electricity of high expectations. Friends winked as I passed in the hall this morning, or stopped to shake my hand. Morris Shuh, a Nye Fellow who had preceded me by a year at Harvard and became at least temporarily a close friend, called from Pittsburgh to share in the anticipation of the morning.

You’re leadership on Univox was brilliant, Shuh had said. Just brilliant.

Of course it was, I laughed. That surprises you?

No, I’m serious, that was some sensitive shit you were dealing with, man. Now here we are with a former competitor that’s now a subsidiary, a creative team that makes strength out of our weakness, and everybody’s happy about it.

It was a lot of work.

No shit.

And there’s still a lot more ahead.

Of course, but it couldn’t be better positioned for us. I’m going to really enjoy working with you in your new role.

I laughed again. I couldn’t tell if this was sincerity or sucking up. I’ve known Moe Shuh a long time. I chose to assume the former.

Sure. Whatever that is.

Outside in the hall, Patrick Frisk, a 35-year veteran of the San Francisco operation and a justified legend among CPAs, practically had tears in his eyes as he gripped my hand and slapped me on the back. I almost choked up myself. Pat is the epitome of a class act, one of a handful of people who, in my private thoughts, I say I want to be like when I grow up.

I’m so happy for you, Pat gushed, his puffy red eyes brimming. It’s about time the golden ring went to somebody who deserves it.

I returned his grip and grimaced a little.

Come on, Pat, I said. Everybody here deserves the best. Especially you. Especially now.

All this change, Pat said. Everything seems to be falling apart and getting put back together so fast. And, I’ve seen it all, buddy. You know that. It’s amazing. But I’ve never seen anything like this. All these vacant cubes. And you know usually everybody in this place would be freaking out at news like this.

I averted my eyes, mildly embarrassed.

Here we go again. Trim fifty from the bottom, add one to the top. But, Joe, no one is talking like that now. People actually think you deserve this. They actually think this will be good for the company. Me too, buddy. I’m leaving here in six months, and I couldn’t be happier about how those six months will turn out.

I appreciate it. I really do.

And I really did. I have better friends than Pat Frisk, but there’s probably no one in all of Nye Cos. I respect more than him. The guy is relentlessly positive. Never talks about other people. Shares stories of his kids’ successes and his grandkids’ Little League exploits. I can’t remember a word of complaint from him ever, about anything, and there has been plenty to complain about in the last two years. The about time remark had been the closest thing to a criticism I’ve ever heard him utter. Pat just does his work, keeps bringing in new clients and letting everything else follow whatever course it will follow. I feel a special surge of pride that someone like him respects me.

And it was like that all day. Even new recruits and back-office secretaries I know only by sight smiled especially warmly as I passed in the hall.

Greg Bradley tried to maintain the cynical perspective of a longtime friend, but even he eventually had succumbed to impatience.

So, he said, entering my office with simply an offhanded wave to Karen, my secretary, who do you think they’ll put in here?

I looked up from a neat stack of papers I was ignoring and smiled. Greg is a notorious office gossip, but I knew it wasn’t gossip he was after now. It was reassurance.

Who said I was leaving? I grinned.

"Don’t give me that tight-ass corporate bullshit. This is me you’re talking to. I’ve been the lead shoes keeping your feet planted on solid