Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [20]
“What’s he doing here?” Sanders said.
“Garvin brought him in, to consult on the merger. Aren’t you going to say hello?” Hunter said.
“Oh, Christ,” Sanders said. “You know Max. He can drive you crazy.” Dorfman liked to challenge conventional wisdom, but his method was indirect. He had an ironic way of speaking that was provocative and mocking at the same moment. He was fond of contradictions, and he did not hesitate to lie. If you caught him in a lie, he would immediately say, “Yes, that’s true. I don’t know what I was thinking of,” and then resume talking in the same maddening, elliptical way. He never really said what he meant; he left it for you to put it together. His rambling sessions left executives confused and exhausted.
“But you were such friends,” Hunter said, looking at him. “I’m sure he’d like you to say hello.”
“He’s busy now. Maybe later.” Sanders looked at his watch. “Anyway, we’re going to be late for lunch.”
He started back down the hallway. Hunter fell into step with him, frowning. “He always got under your skin, didn’t he?”
“He got under everybody’s skin. It was what he did best.”
She looked at him in a puzzled way, and seemed about to say more, then shrugged. “It’s okay with me.”
“I’m just not in the mood for one of those conversations,” Sanders said. “Maybe later. But not right now.” They headed down the stairs to the ground floor.
In keeping with the stripped-down functionality of modern high-tech firms, DigiCom maintained no corporate dining room. Instead, lunches and dinners were held at local restaurants, most often at the nearby Il Terrazzo. But the need for secrecy about the merger obliged DigiCom to cater a lunch in the large, wood-paneled conference room on the ground floor. At twelve-thirty, with the principal managers of the DigiCom technical divisions, the Conley-White executives, and the Goldman, Sachs bankers all present, the room was crowded. The egalitarian ethos of the company meant that there was no assigned seating, but the principal C-W executives ended up at one side of the table near the front of the room, clustered around Garvin. The power end of the table.
Sanders took a seat farther down on the opposite side, and was surprised when Stephanie Kaplan slid into the chair to his right. Kaplan usually sat much closer to Garvin; Sanders was distinctly further down the pecking order. To Sanders’s left was Bill Everts, the head of Human Resources—a nice, slightly dull guy. As white-coated waiters served the meal, Sanders talked about fishing on Orcas Island, which was Everts’s passion. As usual, Kaplan was quiet during most of the lunch, seeming to withdraw into herself.
Sanders began to feel he was neglecting her. Toward the end of the meal, he turned to her and said, “I notice you’ve been up here in Seattle more often the last few months, Stephanie. Is that because of the merger?”
“No.” She smiled. “My son’s a freshman at the university, so I like to come up because I get to see him.”
“What’s he studying?”
“Chemistry. He wants to go into materials chemistry. Apparently it’s going to be a big field.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Half the time I don’t know what he’s talking about. It’s funny, when your child knows more than you do.”
He nodded, trying to think of something else to ask her. It wasn’t easy: although he had sat in meetings with Kaplan for years, he knew little about her personally. She was married to a professor at San Jose State, a jovial chubby man with a mustache, who taught economics. When they were together, he did all the talking while Stephanie stood silently by. She was a tall, bony, awkward woman who seemed resigned to her lack of social graces. She was said to be a very good golfer—at least,