Heads popped out of offices. A hoot of laughter went up around the building. Susannah wanted to kill Mitch, to kiss him. He had known how hard it would be for her to come back, and this was his strange-and typically SysVal way-of making it easier. After the strain of their encounter that morning, this gesture of friendship meant everything to her.
Mitch's announcement pushed away the awkwardness and gave people something to say to her. For the next few hours, everyone teased her unmercifully. But there was still an edge of caution to their laughing remarks. Normally when she was away from the office for even a day, Sam's name would have come up a dozen times within an hour of her return. Now no one mentioned him.
More than anything, she wanted to put off seeing him. But she knew she couldn't hide away forever, and the longer she postponed meeting with him, the more difficult it would become. When Helen, her secretary, brought in the most urgent of her mail, Susannah forced herself to look up from her notepad and ask as coolly as she could manage, "Is Sam in today?"
"Gee, I-Yes, I think so."
"Good," she said briskly. "Call his office. I'd like to see him as soon as he can get free."
She forced herself to concentrate on her work. So much urgent business had piled up while she was gone that it was difficult even to prioritize it. And there were small irritations. When she turned in her chair to flick on the Blaze III she kept on her credenza, she was annoyed to discover that it had been replaced with a newer III. The machines were identical, but she had a sentimental attachment to her old Blaze. It was one of the thirteen original test models that Sam had insisted be put into use for a few months before the Blaze III was released to the general public, so that all the bugs could be worked out ahead of time.
When she asked Helen what had happened to her old computer, she was told that a technician had come for it. "He transferred all of your files to the new machine, so it shouldn't be a problem."
"Get hold of him and tell him I want my old Blaze back," she said. She didn't care if she was being illogical. She'd had enough changes forced upon her in the past month, and this was one she could control.
Helen nodded and then told her she had a call from Mitch. Susannah picked up her phone. "A nude review? Couldn't you have done better than that?"
"I'm an engineer, not a poet. I thought I told you not to come in to work until tomorrow."
"Too much to catch up on."
He hesitated. "Susannah, I'm afraid I've got more bad news. I don't like hitting you with everything on your first day back, but I just got a call from Sacramento."
She rested her forehead on the tips of her fingers, bracing herself for the next disaster.
He said, "The people we're dealing with in the state government got wind of the rumors that SysVal is up for sale, and that tipped the scales in favor of FBT and the Falcon 101."
She rubbed her temple with her thumb. A multimillion-dollar contract was lost; Sam wanted to sell the company. A month ago they had been sitting on top of the world. Now everything was coming apart.
She spent the next two hours on the phone to Sacramento, talking to everyone she could reach and trying to convince them that the rumors were untrue. The officials were polite but unbending. They had made the decision to go with FBT's Falcon 101 instead of the Blaze III, and that decision was irreversible. She turned to her computer and began crunching numbers, trying to determine how this financial setback would affect the new Blaze Wildfire project.
Sam came to her office around five. She sensed his presence in the doorway before she looked up.
"Hi, Suzie."
For so many years every part of her had jumped alive whenever she caught sight of him, but now she felt numb. She swiveled slowly in her chair and for a few brief moments saw him as others did, those who hadn't fallen under his spell. He looked tired and nervous. He needed a haircut, and his slacks and shirt were wrinkled, as if he'd fallen asleep in them.
"Did you go over to the house?" he asked as he walked into her office.
"I stopped in to pick up my things."
"You can't run away if we're going to get this worked out."
Now that she had left him, he finally wanted to work out their problems. She could almost have predicted this would happen, so why was it so hurtful? "We're not going to get our problems worked out. It's over, Sam. I've had enough."
He drove his hand through his hair, plunged his fist into the pocket of his slacks. "Look, Susannah. I'm sorry. I fucked up real bad. I know that. But it doesn't have to be the end of everything. If I'd known it was going to be such a big deal to you-"
"I don't want to talk about it!" She fought for composure. Years of bitter experience had taught her how easy it was to get caught up in Sam's twisted logic, and her emotional control was too fragile for her to argue with him now. "These are business hours, Sam, and we're going to talk business."
Rising from behind her desk, she forced herself to come around to the front. "Mitch just told me that we lost the contract with the state of California because they heard a rumor that we're going to sell SysVal. Tell me why you sandbagged us like this."
He flopped down in a chair, stretching his legs out and hunching his shoulders like a sullen schoolboy. "It's obvious, isn't it? It's time for us to sell. The economy is heading for a recession, and companies are going belly-up all over the Valley. We've been lucky, but I don't think we should push it. That contract with the state was fool's gold, anyway."
"And so, without consulting any of your partners, you took it upon yourself to approach the rest of the board about selling SysVal."
"What was I supposed to do?" he replied belligerently. "You'd run away, remember? How was I going to consult you?"
She wouldn't let him draw her into a fight. "What about Mitch and Yank? They didn't run away."
"Mitch and Yank don't understand things, not like you do. Listen, Susannah, this may seem like it's come out of nowhere, but everything's going to be okay. We can take all that we've learned and start a new company-something a lot better than SysVal. We've gotten too big too fast. This time, we'll keep ourselves even leaner and trimmer. Think how much we know about manufacturing. We can automate everything. Robotics is exploding. We'll save millions in labor costs. With our track record, we'll have every investor in the country standing in line to back us."
He was saying the right words, but the energy wasn't there. His eyes weren't shining with any mystic vision of the future. She sensed that he was throwing up some sort of elaborate smoke screen. Stalling for time, she walked over to the window and gazed out on a small, grassy courtyard. It was pretty, but uninspired compared to the elaborately landscaped grounds at FBT's Castle.
"What's this really about, Sam?" she asked quietly. "Are you trying to get back at me? Is that what you're doing?"
"No! God, don't you know me any better than that? What kind of a shit do you think I am?"
She didn't say anything.
He got up from the chair, looked down at the carpet and jabbed the leg of her desk with the toe of one of his custom-made Italian loafers. "Suzie, don't do this. Don't throw everything away because of what happened. I got rid of Mindy. I didn't think you'd want her around, so I fired her. And I went back to the shop and got that painting you wanted."
He was laying small gifts in front of her like a child who had misbehaved and wanted to make up with his mother. The betrayed wife in her felt a vindictive satisfaction that Mindy had been fired. The female corporate president noted the injustice and knew she would have to correct it right away.
She wasn't going to discuss their marriage, and she certainly wasn't going to discuss Mindy. "Why do you want to sell SysVal?"