Having just
turned twenty-nine, Sam was going to be the youngest person ever on the board
of Salience.
At age twenty-three,
straight out of his undergrad, he’d started working in the call centre. ”Right
down there with the rest of them,” his dad used to say. He’d never gotten any
special treatment.
After less
than a year, he was promoted to junior underwriter, and a year and a half
following that, senior. Soon after he became department manager. He had employees
reporting to him that had been at the company for years. Most were older than
him. Some by decades. They never showed any outward resentment – he always
feared the day that would start, that he might overhear a snide comment behind
a cubicle. He thought he did once, and he froze in terror, unable to think, He
didn’t know how to handle disrespect from his employees, his team. How would he
be able to confront them? But it turned out they were talking about one of the
other managers, thank god. He remembered laughing out loud about it. But the
truth was, he deserved to be in the position he was. He earned his way here. He
never got any special treatment, never any handouts. This was all his. They
knew this.
Then he applied to be executive assistant to his father. They’d made him send a resume, just like everyone else. He was very nervous at the interview, and at one point jumbled his words and laughed way too hard. He thought he lost it for sure then. But he must have made up for it in some other way, because on his twenty-seventh birthday, he got a call (very formal) telling him he got the position. He told everyone it was the best birthday present ever.
Now, today,
was a big day. Really big; maybe the biggest. After all these years of hard
work, he’d finally made it to the C-level. Today, he was going to be inducted,
so to speak – he was going to speak at his first meeting.
It was
9:43. He’d just got in, hung up his jacket and scarf on the back of the door.
Marcia, his new assistant, had asked if he wanted coffee, and he told her yes –
two creams, three sugars. He sat at his desk and clicked a pen cap – click,
click, click – and waited for his dad.
Tom came in
without knocking. Sam looked up, pen still in hand.
“Hey dad,
morning.”
Tom stood
in the doorway, hands on his hips, and gestured him up. He never needed to
speak to get people to do exactly what he wanted. Sam replaced the pen in his holder.
Sam had never
really liked walking through the office with his dad. Everyone was always
stopping him and wanting to talk, to grovel. But now that they were on the same
level (well, almost), they paid attention to him as
well. They smiled and shook his hand. They told him he mattered, without ever
actually having to tell him. But he knew.
To be
frank, today was probably going to be the most important day of his life so far. It was the
start of something much bigger. Today was the day he would show himself to all the
people who mattered at Salience.
Once they
got off the elevator to the thirteenth floor, their heels clicked on the tile
across the hall. His dad allowed Sam to use his own security pass to open the
door to the board room. It was 9:58, and all the men were in place around the
board table. The morning sun beamed from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the
far wall. Tom’s place at the head of the table was empty, and beside it, Sam’s.
They positioned themselves. Tom spoke first.
“Alright." He clapped his hands together. "Thanks
for coming, everyone, and thank you especially for having your reports in for
end of quarter. Even Jim-" muffled laughter. "Well, today is a special day. Today, we welcome a new member
to the board – Sam Denham. As most of you know, Sam is my son, but he’s a great
worker and he deserves to be here. Sam–“ he turned to Sam with an arm extended
in presentation, “please.” He sat, and just like that, the floor belonged to
Sam.
Sam stood
there for a moment and took it in. He looked out at the eleven men around the
table and felt unity with them, finally being someone who mattered. This was
what he’d been waiting for his entire life. He opened his mouth to begin, but
never did.
He wasn’t
sure because it all seemed to happen instantaneously, but the eleven men seemed
to duck before the window even shattered. Glass sprayed droplets through the
air, like a dog shaking off after a bath. He was frozen; it fell all about him,
brushing his skin, tousling his hair. He felt the wind through the expanding
chasm that had been the window, and saw the black wrecking ball of a figure
slide through. He couldn’t blink.
Sam wouldn’t
be able to tell at the time (although he would go on to tell him grandchildren he
knew all along), but that wrecking ball was a man, mouth covered with a scarf,
hood tightly drawn over his head. He’d been holding a rope, and entered the
boardroom feet-first. Sam hadn’t moved, and his arc of entry had collided with
his face, boots first, knocking him back, head first into the table, where he’d
lost consciousness immediately. Hours later, when he woke up at the hospital,
he had a mark the shape of a half-moon across his left cheek where the steel
toe had connected. It was the most important day of his life after all.
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