received electronically.
Daniel groaned. 'OK. But I'm not going to read them. I find my rejection letter is so much more polite if I don't.'
'You have to read them. It's your turn this week. Gil insists.'
'All right.' Daniel grabbed the pile of letters and business plans, and began to go through it. 'They're all losers anyway.'
'You don't know that,' said John.
'Oh, come on. This is all crap.' Daniel tapped a business plan in front of him. 'Look, this is from a guy who wants to sell UFO scanners over the Internet.'
'I got that wind-power generation deal from the cold pile,' John said.
Daniel rolled his eyes. 'Precisely.' He had a point. Although John had been very excited about the wind-power deal, Gil had dismissed it out of hand.
'At least I've got an open mind,' John said.
'Wide open,' muttered Daniel.
I tried to concentrate on work, but it was impossible. I was being attacked from all sides. Firstly by Frank and the other partners, then by Craig. Craig I could forgive. Frank I couldn't.
Frank and I had immediately liked each other when he had interviewed me for a job at Revere. Once I had joined the firm, we had worked well together, and he had watched my developing relationship with his daughter with approval. It was only in the last six months, since the wedding, that his attitude to me had cooled.
He was besotted with Lisa, and had missed her badly when she had moved to California with her mother when she was fourteen. When she returned to Boston to work for a small biotechnology company they saw a lot of each other. At first I fitted into this arrangement very well, but somehow, once Lisa and I were married, things changed. Invitations to spend the weekend with him at his house by the shore had previously been haphazard and informal, but now they became more insistent. When I came too, I no longer felt welcome, and I was sure that Frank engineered times for him and Lisa to meet up when he knew I couldn't be there.
In a way, I understood his feelings. Belatedly, he had realized that once Lisa married me, he would cease to be the most important man in her life. This bothered him. And he bothered me. Lisa and I both worked hard, and I wanted to spend what little free time we had alone with her.
Frank's suspicions of Diane hadn't helped. To his fear of losing his daughter, and his jealousy of the time I spent with her, was now added concern that she might be mistreated by a philandering husband.
I might understand all this. But I didn't like it. Especially when it messed up my work. I needed to talk to him.
He was in his office. All the partners had their own, expensively kitted out with the mixture of high-technology and old furniture that Gil believed gave the impression of a leading venture-capital firm with money: sleek computers, old prints, discreet VCRs, leather chairs, conference phones, dark wood tables.
He was on the phone, and he waved me to a chair in front of his desk.
I waited. He continued talking, avoiding my eye. He moved his arms for emphasis as he spoke. The shrugs, the hand movements, the expressions were the only signs of his Jewish ancestry, and the only resemblance to Lisa I recognized in him. He looked the archetypal White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, while she took after her mother, with her dark hair and eyes and her sharp features. His father, a prosperous Boston doctor, had been born Koch and changed his name to Cook in a mostly successful effort to blend into the community around him.
At work, we had always treated each other as colleagues, or at any rate partner and associate.
Until now.
He eventually finished his phone call, and turned to me.
'I'd like to talk about this morning,' I began.
'There's nothing to say. We said it all at the meeting.'
'I don't think so. There's more to it than that.'
'You were wrong. You made a mistake. You'll learn.'
'I know you saw me having dinner with Diane.'
He leaned forward. 'Simon, understand this. Your marriage to my daughter has no bearing on how I treat you at work, and I resent the implication that it does.'
'What else am I supposed to think? We did that deal together. Nothing's changed, Craig's doing brilliantly, all the milestones we set have been met.'
'I disagree, Simon. As I said this morning, I think plenty has changed. And I'm beginning to have my doubts about Craig. All I was doing was preventing the firm from making a bad investment. It was a judgement call. I made the right one, you made the wrong one. Now, I don't want to have any more of this conversation.'
'Oh, come on,' I said. 'You might have disagreed with me, but there was no need to humiliate me-'
'I said, I don't want to have this conversation.' He looked down to the papers on his desk.
I knew there was more I should say, more that had to be said. But Frank didn't want to hear it.
'You may not want to talk about it now, but this is something we'll have to sort out some time,' I said as I left the room.
I swore under my breath as I made my way back to my desk. Diane passed me in the corridor.
'Cheer up,' she said.
'Why? I've just screwed everything up here.'
'No, you haven't. Here, come into my office.'
I followed her through a door a couple of paces further down the corridor. She closed it behind me. Her office was smaller than Frank's, and tidier. Cool, crisp and modern.
I slumped heavily into an armchair and put my face in my hands. She sat on the sofa opposite me, relaxed, an encouraging half-smile on her lips. Through my fingers I could glimpse her long legs, resting against the side of the sofa. Lisa was right. She was undeniably attractive.
'Everyone has a really bad day sometime in every firm,' she said. 'You have to live with it. It's like a rite of passage. You've had your good deal with PC Homelease. Now you've got your bad one. They'll all be watching how you handle it, you know. If you bounce back, they'll think the better of you.'
'We'll see,' I said. 'Thank you for your support in there, by the way.'
'I thought you made the right call. So I had to say so.' She smiled quickly. 'Now,' she got up and took a sheaf of papers from her desk. 'Take a look at this for me. It's a company called Tetracom. They have a new idea for microwave filters for cellular telephone networks. The technology looks very interesting to me. I've scheduled a trip to see them in Cincinnati next Thursday and Friday. Can you make it?'
I was just about to say 'yes, of course', when I hesitated. An overnight trip with Diane, however innocuous, would be bad timing.
'Um, I don't think I'll be able to,' I said. 'This Net Cop business is going to take some sorting out.'
'Oh, come on. It's only a day and a half. And I'd like you to work on it. I think we make a good team.'
When a partner specifically wanted you to work on something it was just stupid to refuse.
'Do you have a problem with travelling with me?' Diane looked at me sharply.
She was standing there, soberly dressed, next to her large desk, a partner of the firm I worked for. Telecoms was her area of expertise, and it was a field I was trying to specialize in myself. How could I have a problem travelling with her?
'No, of course not. I'll do my best.'
'Good. I'll have a word with Gil if Net Cop is a problem. This is an important deal you know'
I smiled and left.
'I saw you slinking into Diane's office,' Daniel said as I returned to my desk. 'You two sure are spending some quality time together.'
'She's just trying to find out how well hung you are, Daniel,' I said. 'But don't worry, I won't tell her. I promise.'
'Tell her that's something she's welcome to figure out for herself,' said Daniel, smiling at the rows of numbers on his computer screen. 'Any time.'
