“There are more important things in life than money, Guster,” Lassiter said. “We do this because we want to make a difference in the world.”
“Well, people always seem happier after you leave a room, so I guess that’s working out for you,” Gus said. “And speaking of leaving the room, I’ve got a conference call. If there’s nothing else?”
“You mean in addition to the volumes of help you’ve provided?” Lassiter said. “No, I can’t think of anything else.”
“I have a couple more questions,” O’Hara said. “Please, Gus. It will just take a second.”
“I can let London and Mumbai talk to each other for a bit,” Gus said. “I usually can’t understand a word either of them says, anyway.”
“Ticktock, Detective,” Lassiter said. “Not to mention ka-ching, ka-ching.”
“If you go now, you can get the car out before there’s another twenty minutes on the clock,” O’Hara said. “I’ll meet you down on the street.”
“If there was street parking, we wouldn’t have this problem,” Lassiter said.
“Drive around the block,” O’Hara said. “I’ll pay for the extra gas.”
Lassiter looked like he wanted to argue, but before he could open his mouth, an alarm on his wristwatch chimed. “I’m going around the block twice,” he said as he headed for the door. “Then I’m heading back to Santa Barbara without you.”
He disappeared through the conference room door.
“I don’t think you have to worry too much,” Gus said. “This is San Francisco. With all the dead ends and one-way streets and crazy bicyclists, a single trip around this block is going to take longer than the drive back to Santa Barbara.”
“I don’t need that much time,” O’Hara said. “I just wanted to ask about you and Shawn.”
“No, you didn’t,” Gus said, giving her a look that was meant to be filled with compassion but instead seemed to be the product of eating day-old sushi for breakfast.
“Okay, you caught me,” O’Hara said, blushing just a little. “I can see you’re fine. How’s Shawn doing?”
“How is he always?” Gus said. “He’s great.”
“Really?” O’Hara said.
“Really.”
She thought that over for a bit, then nodded. “Okay, thanks.” She turned toward the door, then back to Gus. “It’s just that he seems like someone who needs… who isn’t himself without…”
“An audience?” Gus said with a smile.
She colored a little more deeply this time. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“I talked to him last night,” Gus said. “He’s doing great. He’s got a whole virtual universe filled with people to virtually talk to.”
O’Hara felt an odd mix of emotions she couldn’t quite identify, so she chose to ignore them all. “That’s good to know,” she said. “Next time you talk to him, say hello for me.”
“I have a better idea,” Gus said. “Since you’re both in Santa Barbara, why don’t you say hello to him yourself? I’m sure he’d be happy for the company.”
“I’m sure I’ll run into him on a case,” she said.
“Then you can say hello for me,” Gus said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I really need to jump on this call.”
Chapter Fifteen
When Gus was little, he had been astonished by the idea of a long-distance phone call. It seemed so miraculous that you could pick up the receiver and talk to someone who was hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
Now Gus found himself astonished by the concept all over again. But it wasn’t because he was able to talk to people in London and Mumbai at the same time. It was because no matter how many times he tried to get off the call, it would never end. Apparently the Indian sales team had some complaint about the British marketing department concerning the rollout of a slightly reformulated version of Nitrozine, Benson’s hugely profitable cold- and-allergy medication, and the Brits were refusing to take them seriously.
That immediately put Gus on their side because he was having trouble taking the whole thing seriously. As far as he could tell the entire squabble would be over if the Brits would change one word in their marketing campaign, or if the Indians would make a slight alteration in their sales plan, but both sides had dug in and neither one was willing to move at all. The angry voices had been blasting out of the speakerphone for more than an hour and Gus still had no idea what anyone wanted him to do.
What he wanted to do was to get off this call. He’d only been in this job for a few weeks and he already had ideas for ways to improve the company. He’d started putting together a presentation for D-Bob on a major alteration to the product mix and even some changes to the firm’s mission statement, which he felt would make them a much more public-oriented business. And the great thing about working here was that he knew his ideas would get a fair hearing and no matter how radical they might seem they’d be taken seriously. Even if D-Bob ended up hating all of them he’d assured Gus that they would still be welcome. Good ideas come out of bad ideas, D-Bob liked to say, and nothing comes out of no ideas. There was no risk to being wrong at Benson and no penalties for thinking outside the box.
The only trouble was finding time to take that step outside the box. From the first moment Gus sat behind his new desk, the phone hadn’t stopped ringing and the memos hadn’t stopped flowing. And that was only the beginning. There were also instant messages, video chats, and tweets, all of which needed to be answered faster than immediately. Gus had found an apartment within easy walking distance of the office, but he frequently found himself wishing he’d moved farther away so that he could catch a quick nap on the BART train, apparently the only place in the city where his cell phone couldn’t find any service bars.
It was so different from all the years he’d spent at Psych. There, his time had been his own-or at least he’d only had to share it with Shawn. Technically it was a job, even a career, but looking back it seemed more like a long vacation. Some mornings when the phone started ringing before his alarm went off, he wondered why he had agreed to leave in the first place.
Until the Benson offer came up, he’d never really thought about it. He assumed that he and Shawn would be together forever. Sometimes, when he was mad at Shawn for some reason, he’d imagine a dramatic breakup for the team-they’d have a huge fight over a case and Gus would leave to set up a competing agency; they’d come to blows over a woman they both loved; Gus would inherit a fortune, but to collect it he’d have to live in an ancient castle in Scotland with distant relatives. But every one of those scenarios eventually led to a reconciliation, just as a TV show’s season-ending cliff-hanger would always be resolved in the first episode of the fall.
But his decision hadn’t been like that at all. He still wasn’t sure exactly when he had decided to leave Psych. It was a thought that had been growing in him for some time, but he couldn’t say when it had changed from a vague idea into a concrete plan. If anything, it was like the point in his life when he’d stopped reading comic books. There had never been a moment when he threw down a particularly badly written issue of Superman and vowed he was done with the form forever. Instead there had been a long period when he kept buying all the new comics, but let them stack up on his shelf without reading most of them. It was only after months of this that he’d realized he was hopelessly out of date on all the story lines in all his favorites-and that he didn’t care enough to catch up.
He supposed this must mean he’d been unhappy at Psych for a while, although he couldn’t put his finger on the moment when it had stopped being fun. Not without devoting more time and effort to the question than he had to spare. Besides, just thinking about the subject made him tired. More than tired; whenever the thought crossed his mind, he could feels his palms begin to sweat and his pulse race. It felt like he was waking up from a nightmare he couldn’t remember. He didn’t understand why this was, and he didn’t have any real desire to. There were far too many other things that were wearing him out now.
There was a faint knocking at the open door. Gus looked up from his desk and saw a head peering in. It had thick gray hair and a broad smile. The slightly stooped body attached to the head was wearing a cheap blue coat and striped tie over a white shirt and gray slacks, but the whole package gave the sense that Gus’ visitor was
