I don’t know what he did in that time, but I imagine he did everything he could think of to persuade the Skycoach high command to reconsider, to tempt back the lost contract, as he’d done so many times before. Well, this time he didn’t do it. His magic failed him and he came back to Resolute with a calm, sculpted, gradual manner that said he would now take whatever he was required to take.
Which he did. The fallout from the collapsed deal was dreadful – the company lost its millions, defaulted on several major loans and had to sack another 500 people on top of the 300 new hires who were at once redirected to the job centre – but he took it, every day, for what must have been the worst year of his life. Predictably there were calls for his resignation. But Ess wouldn’t resign. If he resigned he wouldn’t be able to make everything all right again. Even then there was a touch of that mania.
And yes, the deal was madness, and yes, it was Ess’s fault. But the board played its part too. It shouldn’t have given him what he wanted. But the board had always given him what he wanted. Because until the Skycoach deal Ess had always been right.
And anyway, like I said, Resolute was already in trouble.
What I remember most strongly from that time was the look on Ess’s face in the hotel restaurant in Toulouse, when he gotthe call saying that the deal was off. I remember how his eyes steadied and seemed to stare right into it: Resolute’s lost millions, the scrapheap of new machinery, the vanished jobs, scuttled lives. Abruptly he did his nose-twitch thing – a scurrying bob of the tip. Then he did it again. Then again, then again. After he hung up he couldn’t speak to me for several seconds while the mask of his face kept sucking down into his mouth, scraping and dragging helplessly over his upper teeth. Then it decelerated and stopped and I didn’t see it again, the twitch, not like that, for another two years.
And I think: was it Skycoach that broke him, or was it the way he’d always been right – the way, until he took that call in Toulouse, he had never failed?
I walk down three flights of stairs – still unable to face the lift attendant, grinning on his stool – return to my room and for an hour or so try to make sense of the document Ess and I were working on yesterday morning, the Product Development Plan, or PDP. But it’s hopeless. Whatever I may have said, the PDP isn’t good – isn’t good at all. It doesn’t help that Ess won’t give me any proper numbers; but really numbers are the least of our problems. Our greatest problem is that the whole thing’s gibberish. Page after page of flinty babble, like a survivalist manifesto. Not that it matters. Ess thinks that on our triumphal return to Resolute we will be expected to present the PDP to the board. Well, we won’t. The board won’t be expecting to see a document of any kind.
I leave the hotel, moving quickly, determined not to encounter the cleaner who gave me that weird look outside Ess’s room. On the stairs I pass a pair of hotel employees, young men in overalls, carrying armloads of sheets, leaning against the wall,talking. As I take the turn onto the next set of stairs they break out simultaneously in soft laughter.
Thinking I may as well have another go at finding a present for Alice, I head to the street bazaar Ess and I explored yesterday ( the causeway , is it called?) and stumble along between the veiled stalls, pausing now and then to let the slow, dense drifts of tourists in front of me break up and twirl apart like ice floes. I realise the only way to look at the stuff for sale is to scan the contents of each stall while more or less continuing to move past it; pause for even a second and the handsome trader jolts to his feet, spreads his arms, and then there’s an awkward interval while he beckons to you and you nod and smile and wave a hand no, no, and edge your way horribly out of his orbit.
I can’t see
Which he did. The fallout from the collapsed deal was dreadful – the company lost its millions, defaulted on several major loans and had to sack another 500 people on top of the 300 new hires who were at once redirected to the job centre – but he took it, every day, for what must have been the worst year of his life. Predictably there were calls for his resignation. But Ess wouldn’t resign. If he resigned he wouldn’t be able to make everything all right again. Even then there was a touch of that mania.
And yes, the deal was madness, and yes, it was Ess’s fault. But the board played its part too. It shouldn’t have given him what he wanted. But the board had always given him what he wanted. Because until the Skycoach deal Ess had always been right.
And anyway, like I said, Resolute was already in trouble.
What I remember most strongly from that time was the look on Ess’s face in the hotel restaurant in Toulouse, when he gotthe call saying that the deal was off. I remember how his eyes steadied and seemed to stare right into it: Resolute’s lost millions, the scrapheap of new machinery, the vanished jobs, scuttled lives. Abruptly he did his nose-twitch thing – a scurrying bob of the tip. Then he did it again. Then again, then again. After he hung up he couldn’t speak to me for several seconds while the mask of his face kept sucking down into his mouth, scraping and dragging helplessly over his upper teeth. Then it decelerated and stopped and I didn’t see it again, the twitch, not like that, for another two years.
And I think: was it Skycoach that broke him, or was it the way he’d always been right – the way, until he took that call in Toulouse, he had never failed?
I walk down three flights of stairs – still unable to face the lift attendant, grinning on his stool – return to my room and for an hour or so try to make sense of the document Ess and I were working on yesterday morning, the Product Development Plan, or PDP. But it’s hopeless. Whatever I may have said, the PDP isn’t good – isn’t good at all. It doesn’t help that Ess won’t give me any proper numbers; but really numbers are the least of our problems. Our greatest problem is that the whole thing’s gibberish. Page after page of flinty babble, like a survivalist manifesto. Not that it matters. Ess thinks that on our triumphal return to Resolute we will be expected to present the PDP to the board. Well, we won’t. The board won’t be expecting to see a document of any kind.
I leave the hotel, moving quickly, determined not to encounter the cleaner who gave me that weird look outside Ess’s room. On the stairs I pass a pair of hotel employees, young men in overalls, carrying armloads of sheets, leaning against the wall,talking. As I take the turn onto the next set of stairs they break out simultaneously in soft laughter.
Thinking I may as well have another go at finding a present for Alice, I head to the street bazaar Ess and I explored yesterday ( the causeway , is it called?) and stumble along between the veiled stalls, pausing now and then to let the slow, dense drifts of tourists in front of me break up and twirl apart like ice floes. I realise the only way to look at the stuff for sale is to scan the contents of each stall while more or less continuing to move past it; pause for even a second and the handsome trader jolts to his feet, spreads his arms, and then there’s an awkward interval while he beckons to you and you nod and smile and wave a hand no, no, and edge your way horribly out of his orbit.
I can’t see
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