Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [11]
“None at all, Tom,” Blackburn smiled. “I’ll tell you a little secret. Originally, this spin-off was Meredith’s idea.”
Blackburn left Sanders’s office and went down the hall to an empty office and called Garvin. He heard the familiar sharp bark: “Garvin here.”
“I talked to Tom Sanders.”
“And?”
“I’d say he took it well. He was disappointed, of course. I think he’d already heard a rumor. But he took it well.”
Garvin said, “And the new structure? How did he respond?”
“He’s concerned,” Blackburn said. “He expressed reservations.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t feel she has the technical expertise to run the division.”
Garvin snorted. “Technical expertise? That’s the last goddamn thing I care about. Technical expertise is not an issue here.”
“Of course not. But I think there was some uneasiness on the personal level. You know, they once had a relationship.”
“Yes,” Garvin said. “I know that. Have they talked?”
“He says, not for several years.”
“Bad blood?”
“There didn’t seem to be.”
“Then what’s he concerned about?”
“I think he’s just getting used to the idea.”
“He’ll come around.”
“I think so.”
“Tell me if you hear otherwise,” Garvin said, and hung up.
Alone in the office, Blackburn frowned. The conversation with Sanders left him vaguely uneasy. It had seemed to go well enough, and yet . . . Sanders, he felt sure, was not going to take this reorganization lying down. Sanders was popular in the Seattle division, and he could easily cause trouble. Sanders was too independent, he was not a team player, and the company needed team players now. The more Blackburn thought about it, the more certain he was that Sanders was going to be a problem.
Tom Sanders sat at his desk, staring forward, lost in thought. He was trying to put together his memory of a pretty young saleswoman in Silicon Valley with this new image of a corporate officer running company divisions, executing the complex groundwork required to take a division public. But his thoughts kept being interrupted by random images from the past: Meredith smiling, wearing one of his shirts, naked beneath it. An opened suitcase on the bed. White stockings and white garter belt. A bowl of popcorn on the blue couch in the living room. The television with the sound turned off.
And for some reason, the image of a flower, a purple iris, in stained glass. It was one of those hackneyed Northern California hippie images. Sanders knew where it came from: it was on the glass of the front door to the apartment where he had lived, back in Sunnyvale. Back in the days when he had known Meredith. He wasn’t sure why he should keep thinking of it now, and he—
“Tom?”
He glanced up. Cindy was standing in the doorway, looking concerned.
“Tom, do you want coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“Don Cherry called again while you were with Phil. He wants you to come and look at the Corridor.”
“They having problems?”
“I don’t know. He sounded excited. You want to call him back?”
“Not right now. I’ll go down and see him in a minute.”
She lingered at the door. “You want a bagel? Have you had breakfast?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
“I’m fine, Cindy. Really.”
She went away. He turned to look at his monitor, and saw that the icon for his E-mail was blinking. But he was thinking again about Meredith Johnson.
Sanders had more or less lived with her for about six months. It had been quite an intense relationship for a while. And yet, although he kept having isolated, vivid images, he realized that in general his memories from that time were surprisingly vague. Had he really lived with Meredith for six months? When exactly had they first met, and when had they broken up? Sanders was surprised at how difficult it was for him to fix the chronology in his mind. Hoping for clarity, he considered other aspects of his life: what had been his position at DigiCom in those days? Was he still working in Marketing, or had he already moved to the technical division? He wasn’t sure, now. He would have to look it up in the files.
He thought about Blackburn. Blackburn had left his wife