VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [104]
“Hold on,” Amy said. She put her hand over the receiver and called out, “Linda! Linda, find Elaine right away and get her to come in here!”
Then, back to Sarah, she said, “Elaine Eisenway has Human Resources under her – I think you know that, but anyway, I want Elaine to hear this. While we’re waiting, what happened? Was he drunk or what?”
Sarah sighed and hesitated, then said:
“He had one drink at my place –”
“Your place?”
“He came to me last night. We were married once, you know. And we’ve been, um, friends … off and on, ever since.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that part,” said Amy. She turned from her door and urgently muttered into the telephone, “And, Sarah, try not to tell that to Elaine!”
“Anyway, he may have had a few before I saw him – but that wasn’t the issue. The charges don’t even include DUI. When he was with me, he was … I guess the word is ‘distraught.’ We’ve lost Manchester as a client. He learned that yesterday. But it also looks for sure as though DuPont is going to dump us, and General Electric and a few others as well are at least thinking about it. Everything that Viktor has worked for, it’s all blowing up.”
Amy covered her eyes with her free hand as she held the phone to her ear.
“Even worse,” Sarah continued, “the story about Viktor made the TV news this morning in Washington, so a lot of our clients probably know by now. I’m sure the rest will know soon.”
Toward the end of the afternoon, Amy called and spoke to Sarah again.
“Elaine and I have agreed that we’re giving Viktor a leave of absence until he straightens out his legal issues. But, Sarah, he’s gone. I want Viktor gone. Never mind the police chase. Never mind all the bad publicity. It’s the lack of performance and the loss of key accounts – that’s enough. He’s done.”
Sarah was quiet for a second, then said, “I think that would be for the best. The best for F&D anyway.”
“And so, I’d like you, Sarah, to step in and take Viktor’s place on an interim basis,” Amy told her.
There was silence on the other end as Sarah took in what she was being offered.
“So we’d both be ‘interims’?” Sarah asked.
“Yes.”
What went unspoken between them, and what they both knew full well, was that Sarah Schwick was no Viktor Kyzanski. She was brilliant technically and professionally – perhaps the equal of Viktor. And she was a competent, disciplined manager – definitely superior to him regarding day-to-day, grind-it-out managerial tasks. What she lacked was his leadership. His panache. His charm. His ability to talk to a roomful of people and after ten minutes have those people believing what he told them and wanting to do whatever he said.
Sarah did not have those abilities. If Sarah spoke continuously for more than five minutes, those listening to her would begin to think about baseball, or just about anything except the subject she was addressing. When Sarah walked into a roomful of people, it could be half an hour before anyone knew she had arrived. If Viktor was panache, she was the antipanache. Both Amy and she knew this, and neither said what they knew.
Instead, Amy said, “Sarah, don’t be Viktor. Be yourself. Be your best. Find out what the clients really value, give it to them … and please, try not to lose another account. Can you do that?”
And Sarah, quiet as a mouse, said, “I’ll try.”
“See you tomorrow,” said Amy.
13
The gloomy and dire circumstances of the hastily called meeting at Amy’s own house were nearly matched by the look of the weather outside. The sky was dense gray and even darker to the west, and the winds were gusty and brisk. But Amy of course had many other concerns.
From the office, Amy had brought home a whiteboard and collapsible easel. She erected this nearby, and then set at each place around the table a pad of sticky notes, a pen, and a tablet of paper. Her final touch was to make place cards for each person, indicating where each should sit, and she made sure that Wayne and Murphy would sit next to each other.
By nine o’clock, everyone had arrived, and