Kelley Eskridge by Solitaire Page A

for getting people to be more
productive together.
    She looked up to find Neill watching her,
a brief evaluative look like being brushed with sandpaper. She was
suddenly nervous again.
    He poured himself a glass of grapefruit
juice and found an empty chair near the top of the oval: now he was one
of the group. He bent forward, and Jackal leaned toward him with the
rest. He spread his hands: his fingers were stained with ink, and he
used them to punctuate his words with color.
    “You're here to learn what makes an
activity successful. So what is it? What are we really talking about
here?” He waved at the words on the walls.
    “Teams?” ventured a woman with a large
mouth and a soft voice.
    “More strategic,” Neill replied.
    “Results,” Jackal said.
    “That's your mother talking,” Neill said.
    “People,” Jordie volunteered.
    “What about them?”
    No one spoke. Neill took a moment and a
swallow of juice. “What do people have to do with projects?”
    Jackal shrugged, confused. “They do the
work.”
    “So what?” he said, pointing a green
fingertip at her. “You think that's all there is to it, a bunch of
people doing a bunch of work?”
    She flushed. “No—” she began, but was
interrupted by Sawyer, the one she'd begun to think of as Junior Man.
“No,” he said, echoing her. “Someone has to tell them what to do.”
    “Why?”
    “Because they might do it wrong.”
    “People are stupid?”
    That upset Sawyer and everyone else: there
was a chorus of no and that's not what he meant while people
waved their arms and frowned. Neill sat back and drank more juice and
said nothing, just watched while the rest of them wrangled their way
through definitions of “stupid” and “work” and then moved on to
“management.” The talk became less and less controlled, until two or
three people were speaking over each other, and two or three others had
simply checked out of the discussion altogether. Jordie shook his head,
then shook it again: he looked like a kettle building up a snoutful of
steam. Jackal ignored the stew of noise for a minute to chart his
emotional journey by the changes in his face and body, to recognize the
moment he decided that he could no longer sit still. He braced both
palms against the edge of the table, squared his shoulders. “Okay—”
    The woman on his right, Senior Woman, held
up her left index finger in front of his face in a stop signal, while she talked right over him: she and a visibly angry woman
in a powered wheelchair were engaged in the business equivalent of a
toe-to-toe argument, and Senior Woman seemed intent on winning by
volume. “Wait a minute,” Jordie said, and Senior Woman turned on him
and snapped, “Do you mind? I'm not finished here.”
    Time to move, Jackal thought.
    “All right,” she said in a moderately loud
voice. No one at the table seemed to notice that she had spoken, except
Neill. He seemed amused. Jackal wasn't: it had been a long time since
she had needed to shout. She waited for Neill to take back the meeting,
but instead he slowly leaned back in his chair and played with his
empty juice glass, looking for all the world like someone settling in
for a good long show.
    She took a deep breath and reached for
what Donatella called the power voice. “All right ,
people.” She knew enough to use her stomach, not her throat, so the
sound was broad rather than high, even though a bit wobbly. Some of the
people who had been talking trailed off; those who had disengaged sat
up in their chairs and looked at her doubtfully. Senior Woman was still
yammering on. Jackal exchanged glances with Jordie; he shook his head
again.
    Jackal stood up and leaned across the
table, bracing herself against her hands. Senior Woman sensed the
motion and turned to find Jackal close enough to spit on.
    “Excuse me,” said Jackal quietly, “could I
just get your attention for a minute?” When Senior Woman started to
sputter, Jackal held up her finger. Senior