Lucas – 2. chapter

From next door came the rapid tapping of keys, the rustle of papers, and now and then a few of her words or short sentences. He’d never noticed her talking to herself like this before, and it brought an involuntary smile to his face. He leaned back in his chair and listened to her whispered comments.

“Well, you can tell that to you know who,”
“Sure. In Africa, maybe,”
and every so often, a quiet, amused laugh.

After a sharp, disbelieving “What?!” he heard a chair scrape back, and a moment later she was standing in his doorway.

“Who put together this assignment?”

He looked up at her and studied her face for a second.

“The client.”

“That’s absolute nonsense,” she said flatly.

She realized he wasn’t going to answer, so she turned back to her monitor.

“That’s like going to Košice by way of Prague,” she finished the conversation with herself. “This just can’t work like this.”

“Your blue tie’s back from the cleaners. It’s on the couch!” she called out.

He scratched out a few more sentences and closed the file. Slowly, methodically, he gathered what he needed from his desk, arranged everything in the right order, and stacked it neatly.

He draped the tie around his neck and walked over to her.

“How much time do I have?” she asked her monitor.

She was clicking through the pages of the document, fixing two or three things on each one. When he didn’t answer quickly enough, she added, “I need five minutes. Just five more minutes and I’m done.”

She yanked out a clean sheet of paper and started writing rapidly by hand.

“You’ve got seven,” he said, trying to sound reassuring.

Still finishing a sentence, she glanced at him as he struggled with the tie.

“Untie that knot and go get your jacket. I’m almost done, and I’ll tie it for you.”

With the printer whirring furiously beside her, she kept typing.

He wondered whether it was even possible to understand her last few sentences, or whether he’d simply pieced together their meaning. He finally beat the tangle he’d made of the silk tie when he reached his jacket. He slid one arm into the sleeve and immediately grabbed his prepared materials with that same hand. He managed the other sleeve on his way back to Lucia.

As he adjusted the collar of his jacket, she tore the pages from the printer, stapled them together, and tossed the stapler onto the desk. In her free hand, she picked up the handwritten sheet and turned to him.

“This is the assignment you gave me. It looks like it’s at the very end of your presentation. Most of it is set up the way you would’ve done it yourself. But. A few points really need to be handled differently than how the client sketched them out. You don’t have time to read all of this. So you’re going in cold.”

She pressed the papers into the hand that was already holding the rest of his materials.

“You’ll be able to answer most potential questions as soon as you think them through for a second. Except for a few. The answers to those are somewhere in here.”

She placed a separate sheet with her handwriting into his free hand.

“This is NOT part of the presentation. It’s just a cheat sheet. In case you can’t handle it on your own.”

She was standing right in front of him now. She lifted the collar of his shirt and took hold of both loose ends of the tie.

“That means, for example, why we believe their production estimates are slightly inflated, why the type they chose is a very poor fit for them, why we’re proposing a different one, and how we managed to cut costs by nearly a quarter… okay?” she pressed, when he didn’t respond.

“Yeah.”

“What do you do if a question catches you off guard?” she checked, already starting to tie the knot. He stayed silent, and seemed to be just coming back to himself.

“The handwritten sheet,” she repeated louder. “That one is not for the public. It’s just your cheat sheet. Got it?”

“Okay,” he finally said. “This is the presentation, these are the answers… Lucia, what do you know about photovoltaic cells?”

She smiled and tightened the knot.

At that moment, a laughing manager opened the door from the hallway.

“Ready, Lucas? Aaaa, Lucka, as always, the final perfect tie adjustment. I don’t understand why your boss won’t lend you to me. I drink coffee too, and I’ve got plenty of papers to sort,” he said, winking at her.

“Move it, Lucas, so we don’t miss it. Business of the year…”

He sang the last word of the sentence on his way into the hallway.

Her boss went after him too. The tone and content of her last sentences were still ringing in his ears. After two steps, he spun around on his heel and came back to her.

He stopped much closer than workplace etiquette would normally allow. He waited until she looked up at him and whispered, “I’ll deal with you later.”

He turned back and walked a few steps in his colleague’s direction. Then he broke into a light jog, buttoning his jacket with his free hand. They disappeared behind the conference room doors, and Lucia breathed, “I’d be shocked if you didn’t.”

She went back to her own desk, dialed a familiar extension while still standing, let it ring, then hung up. She found her cigarettes on the table, slipped the jacket over her shoulders, and headed out into the hallway. By the elevators stood the pretty dark-haired woman from that morning, also holding cigarettes.

“Still raging? By the way, what happened to him? He’s usually so calm. Stress from today’s presentation?”

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped inside.

“Yeah. He’s got a lot on his plate today.”

“Damn. There isn’t a woman in this company who doesn’t envy you for that man. Handsome, decent, calm, and single! Why aren’t you sleeping with him? If I were you…”

Lucia leaned the back of her head against the elevator wall as the doors slid shut.