Some of us slid our lunches off the table, into our laps, or bags.
"Anybody? Nobody? Anybody?"
"We don't need to know?" said the man from the business school team.
"Know what?" said Cooley.
"Who we are?"
"No," said Cooley, "you need to know who you are."
"What we represent?" said the woman with the cat glasses.
"You represent the university," said Cooley. "What about you, Llewellyn? You're one of our franchise players. What the hell am I talking about?"
"I know!" said Horace.
"Go ahead, Lettuce Face."
"We need to know you believe in us."
"That I believe in you?"
"Yes," said Horace.
"But I don't believe in you, young man. That's not my job. I'm not your mommy. I believe in results. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Vargina? Sean?"
Vargina and the man from the business school development team nodded.
"Anyway," said Cooley. "Llewellyn, you were going to enlighten us."
Llewellyn propped himself up on his palms.
"Well, to be perfectly honest, Dean, I am not entirely clear on your line of thought, but I believe it has something to do with conviction."
"Conviction."
"Yes."
"Very interesting."
"Is it?"
"It is. You're very close."
"I am?"
"Yes, you are," said Cooley, raised his hand as though it held a dog treat. "It's right over here, Quantrill. Come for it. Let's hear that rebel yell."
"Conviction about the product," said Llewellyn.
"Okay…"
"Conviction about the product even if it is something of an abstraction. Conviction that we can weave a story, as it were-"
"Story, yes, that's it, keep going…"
"A narrative in which-"
"Narrative? Don't get fruity."
"A story…"
"That's it…"
"A story about all the wonderful things that the give can bring about, a story, in our particular team's case, about the role of culture as both a bulwark of the civilization we cherish and a bridge, an interconnective bridge, to other incredibly and wonderfully global modes of thinking and being, as well as a story about young and diverse and often sexy people expressing themselves through their creativity and in doing so spreading a kind of artistic balm on the wounds of the world, a balm that not only heals but promotes understanding, especially in a world, a globe, as global as ours, where isolation is no option, where the only choices are globality or chaos."
"Globality or chaos?" said Cooley.
"Yes," said Llewellyn.
"You sure?"
Llewellyn squeezed his fists, nodded his head.
"Yes, I'm sure."
"Damn right, you're sure! Because that's what I call a fucking story! You see? You see, Lettuce Face? You hear that, feline and voluptuous secretary from the 1950s? That's the bull's balls, right there!"
"Thanks," said Llewellyn.
"No, thank you, young gentleman. Not only for that cogent and rousing description of what it is we do around here, but for something far more important. See, Lew here is what we call a change agent. He brings in the loose change of the rich folks. It falls out of their pockets and Lew is Johnny-on-the-Spot about bringing it here to us, to our students, to our joint glorious project of bulwarking and bridging. What I'm saying is, the papers on the Teitelbaum ask have finally come through. Guess which students at which university will have a new game design center?"
A shout went up, followed by applause. Llewellyn did his best imitation of bashful.
"So, give that man a potato chip!" said Cooley.
Many of us laughed, applauded anew. I joined them, a shamed heat rising in me. Would Cooley mention that the Teitelbaum ask had once been mine? I'd screwed that one up good at a lunch, made the mistake, in listing the kinds of exhibits that might be mounted in a proposed gallery space, of mentioning the work of a Polish artist who built a model Treblinka with Tinker Toys. The camp guards were freeze-dried ants. Teitelbaum, a Holocaust orphan, was not amused.
"What did he make the Jews out of?" the old man snarled over his salade Nicoise.
"Vintage coins from the Weimar Republic," I mumbled.
"Money? He made them out of money?"
"It was a point about historical perception. The artist is Jewish himself."
But Teitelbaum, who'd made a fortune in optics, was not so intrigued by this notion of perception. He charged off to the toilet. I ate some slivers of his hard-boiled egg.
People still clapped but Cooley had a new stern look.
"No, really," he said. "Give him a potato chip."
Sean slid a rippled mesquite-flavored chip from his bag, passed it down the table to Llewellyn.
"That's your bonus," said Cooley, and the room got quiet.
We did not get bonuses. But something about hearing the word seemed to drive the fact home. I wondered what management technique this was that Cooley had decided to employ, though after some years in this business, I'd come to suspect there were no techniques, or none that really traveled well out of books and conference seminars. The kiddie-diddler was right, it was all just people doing kindnesses, or smearing each other into the earth, usually both at the same time.
"That's your bonus," said Cooley again, and I remembered that I had actually gotten a bonus, from Purdy, half a year's rent in an envelope in my desk. Grounds for dismissal. I'd already been dismissed, of course. But it could also be grounds for a prison sentence, if it constituted defrauding my employer.
"I'll treasure it," said Llewellyn, the chip aloft.
"Frame it!" somebody called.
"Bronze it!"
"Stick it up your butt!"
"That's your bonus," said Cooley, "but that's not your only bonus."
The room hushed down at these last words. This was the original management technique. It was also, if you substituted the word "candy" for bonus, a pleasant way to torment your child on a Sunday afternoon.
"What's the rest?" said Llewellyn. He seemed jumpy, a bit slopped by an overspill of ego fuel.
"The rest of your bonus is your ability to sleep at night, knowing that you have done your part in keeping hope-hope for a great fucking human flowering-alive and well. Darkness is falling, my friends. Our job is to put the Maglites in the hands of the people whose ideas, whether in the realms of business, medicine, law, or science, pure and applied, will lead us through the black hour."
"Let's not forget the arts!" called Vargina, with rare or, rather, meeting-specific cheer.
"Sure, the arts, too," said Cooley. "Hey, we've always made room for you self-involved little people, haven't we? No need to be upset. We get it. Even cavemen needed their cave paintings, right?"
"Hooray," whispered Horace.
War Crimes wheeled.
"What was that, Slick?"
"Nothing."
"I got a question for you. A quiz. Answer this correctly and I'll give you a twenty percent raise right now. In what year did Bertolt Brecht create the vaccine for polio?"
"Sorry?"
"In what year did Bertolt Brecht create the vaccine for polio?"
"No year?" said Horace.
"Say it like you got a pair."
"No year, sir!" said Horace.
"Good work. The raise thing was more of a hypothetical. But keep up the nice effort. Anyway, you all get my point. Though I guess I've made several today. Mainly I just wanted to let Llewellyn here know how much we appreciate his top-notch performance. But he's not the only one. There are others here who deserve singling out. Before we get to that, however, I have some sad news. It concerns a family very close to our hearts. I received word this morning that Shad Rayfield is very ill. Collapsed on his catamaran. We will wish the best for him, reflect on his mighty accomplishments, most notably his design and production of some of the world's best attack helicopters, and in the great works of philanthropy he has undertaken, as well as pray for his speedy recovery. I know Shad considers the Rayfield Observatory the crown jewel of his gives, despite the fact that it's never worked properly, and was unfortunately erected too near a large lime works, so that visibility is a severe problem. Still, the building stands as a symbol of all that is possible, even as we possibly depart the age of the big give. So, let us lower our heads and send good thoughts to Shad Rayfield in whatever mode of spiritual contemplation we happen to choose. Martha, am I to understand you are Wiccan?"