Pamela laughed. Andrew laughed. Victoria saved the note, closed her laptop, and said nothing at all.
Chapter 7: The Elevator
The elevator doors on fourteen were already closing when Victoria slipped her hand between them, and they sighed open again with a soft chime. Three men in suits looked up, registered her plain blazer and the portfolio under her arm, and looked away again without interest. One of them held the door for her, the way a man holds a door for someone carrying trays.
"Thanks," she said.
He nodded and went back to his conversation.
Victoria took the back corner, faced the doors, and opened her notes app like someone checking a schedule. Her thumb hovered over a new timestamp: 11:38 AM.
"I'm telling you, Bell sold us at the bottom," said the tallest of the three, a man with a CFO's haircut and a wedding band he kept spinning. "New guy walks in and his first move is always the same. Headcount review by Friday."
"He won't touch sales," said the second, younger, cologne loud enough to carry. "Revenue's the only thing holding the price up. He'll protect the moneymakers and go hunting somewhere else."
The third man, thick neck and thicker watch, laughed. "He'll protect his friends and fire everyone else's. That's the whole game. The only question is who he knows from wherever he came from."
Victoria kept her eyes on the floor numbers, climbing slowly. Fourteen. Fifteen. She could feel the particular ease in their posture, the comfort of people who had decided the room was safe.
"You think he'll keep the perks?" the tall one said. "Executive parking, the club memberships?"
"First thing I'd cut," the thick-necked one said. "No, first thing I'd cut is the third floor."
The younger one laughed too quickly. "Don't let him hear you say that."
"He's not here yet," the tall one said. "That's the whole point of the day."
Victoria watched the floor numbers turn. The tall man checked his watch and kept talking, the way men talk when they are certain nobody who matters is listening. "He will figure out who counts," he said. "They always do."
Victoria shifted the portfolio against her side and watched the floor indicator glow: 16. Then 17.
"I heard he comes from private equity," the younger one said. "Those guys don't care about culture slides. They care about the number at the bottom."
"Private equity," the thick-necked man repeated, and made a sound like a drill. "Say goodbye to the corner offices."
"Say hello to a real leader for once," the tall one said. "Bell was soft. Too soft. He let HR run wild with all that inclusion nonsense. A man from private equity will clean house."
The word man went around the car like a coin passed hand to hand. Victoria's thumb moved across her screen, steady, unhurried. She added a line and another line, the way a stenographer takes dictation at a trial.
"Think he'll keep Miller?" the younger one asked.
"God, I hope so," the thick-necked man said. "Sandra's the only one who knows where everything is buried. He'd be an idiot to lose her in the first month."
The tall one spun his wedding band. "He'll keep the ones who make him look smart. The rest of us, we'll see. That's why the four o'clock is theater. He'll smile and talk about values and then do whatever the numbers say."
"INNOVATION. INCLUSION. EXCELLENCE," the younger one recited in a singsong voice. "Heard the website guys are already drafting his quote."
They laughed, and the elevator carried them up through eighteen, the car humming. Victoria thought about the interview panel downstairs, the way they had said culture fit like a lock clicking shut. She thought about the sink on twenty-one, the smear near the base of the toilet, the voice that had said people like you always miss the corners.
"He'll probably bring his own chief of staff," the tall one said. "New CEOs always do. Some loyal dog who tells him what to think."
The floor indicator turned to nineteen. Victoria looked up from her phone for the first time. Her voice, when it came, was quiet, level, the way it always was.
"What makes you so sure the new CEO is a man?"
The humming of the car was suddenly the only sound in it. The tall man's hand stopped on his wedding band. The younger one's cologne seemed to get louder. The thick-necked man turned halfway toward her, mouth open, and no sound came out.
The doors did not open. The car kept climbing, and nobody reached for a floor.
Victoria held the thick-necked man's gaze for one calm second. Then she looked back at the doors.