Chapter 7
The firm closed a new contract in November. Larger than the Denver proposal. The kind of contract that produces the specific quiet satisfaction of a number being real after being hypothetical for a long time. I sent the team home early that Friday. I sat in the office with the city visible through the window and a beer from the mini-fridge that I had bought for the occasion and had been keeping cold for two weeks, and I thought about the specific sequence of small decisions that lead people to where they end up.
Mia had made hers. I had made mine. The difference, as far as I could determine, was that mine were still visible in the light.
My phone buzzed on the desk.
Not Jenna this time. Not Patricia. A text from a number I did not recognize, short and direct, asking whether I was the Jimmy Carver who ran the design firm currently listed as the primary vendor for the Denver account.
I looked at the number for a moment.
Then I looked up the area code.
San Francisco.
I typed: Yes. That's me. Who's asking.
The response came back in under a minute.
Someone who's been watching your work for six months and wants to have a conversation about something larger.
I sat back in my chair.
May you like
Outside the window the city was doing its city things, indifferent and continuous, and the beer was cold and the contract was signed and the apartment I had moved to after selling the one Mia and I had shared was quiet in the right way, the way a space goes quiet when it belongs entirely to the person inside it and there is no secret weight set down beside the furniture.
I typed back: I'm listening.
