This would be the first she’d seen of Curtis since Saturday, though they’d spoken; he’d called her that night, when she’d gone home to Jesse, then again on Sunday, before she’d even had a chance to get into a quandary over what came next, who said what, how much, and when. Now, about to conduct her first board meeting and with so many things to think about, she found herself thinking about him instead, whether she should sit by him, how to act. She was just trying to dismiss this as too silly, mortifying if someone of Curtis’s poise only knew, when she noticed that no one was taking the seat to her left anyway—the only empty seat when Curtis came in—and he sat there, naturally, smiling as if without a second thought. In a muddle of chagrin and satisfaction, she glanced around the room.
It was full to overflowing, with so many extras present that the heat they generated seemed to temper the overconditioned air. One of Curtis’s junior partners, here to represent the firm’s investment-law department, had wriggled in between her and Frank. Peter Beeksma had brought his “team,” and on the other side of Frank another crew assembled, Randy Gold’s, all of them, like a chorus line, leaning at precisely the same angle as their leader as he spoke into her brother’s ear. Henry was here, and Martin, an array of bottled beer on the table before him, which, with the quizzical, slightly anxious look he kept shifting about, gave him the unhappy air of having misunderstood the occasion. Only the two cousins were missing.
As she started to speak, Curtis tapped her leg under the table, a hello, and in her surprise she croaked a single note. Quickly she cleared her throat and, smiling—at everyone, all looking at her now, and only covertly at Curtis—suggested that they begin without Ernest and Francis, who’d surely be there any minute. She introduced Peter Beeksma and his contingent, then Randy Gold and his. Uttering nothing but formalities so far, she was aware of Curtis at her side, of how every insubstantial word she said drifted his way, acquiring a certain weight from his attentive presence. Then she saw Frank focusing on Curtis too, in that keen, assessing way of his that always made her feel found out and now gave her the eerie feeling that he’d sensed Curtis’s fleeting touch under the table. She stole a sidelong look, but Curtis was turned away, unaware, watching Martin pour beer into pilsner glasses at the far end of the table—and when she returned to Frank, his eyes were on her.
Gratefully she accepted the first glass from Martin, then waited for the rest to be distributed before she took a sip. The beer was dry, mildly hoppy, with a pinpoint effervescence, disconcerting at first, that she’d only slowly come to like. “Well?” she said, but it was in the nature of the ritual that no one would say a word until she announced her verdict, predictable as that pronouncement might be, since the meeting wouldn’t have been called unless the principals had approved the new beer. Still, Frank was watching her intently. “I think it’s perfect,” she said, but his attention held, as if there must be more. Instead, having no idea, she turned to Martin and talked with him, for the benefit of all, about the peculiarities of the brew, how long it had aged, and, specifically, his concerns over the barley crop, which wouldn’t be the same after such a dry season and might alter the taste of the beer.
Again she solicited the others’ reactions, and this time they complied with enthusiasm. “I admit it,” she confessed, “I was afraid it would be thin. But for a light beer, it’s—”
“Not light?” Henry volunteered, and she laughed—but he didn’t.
“I wouldn’t go that far. Compared to the classic, it’s a breeze. Nice color, Martin.” She raised her glass to him. “OK, let’s try the others.”
One by one they sampled the other brands. Although at such an early hour they merely took sips, their general satisfaction produced a somewhat inebrious air, and, buoyed on it, Melissa announced that she’d been rethinking the ads, only to feel the company’s spirit flatten in a sudden silence.
Everyone, beginning with Henry and Martin, turned to look at Frank. He steepled his fingertips and over their point considered her, the shadow of a smile darkening his face. “Shall we assume we’ve reached the marketing portion of the program?”
“Yes,” she said, “I guess we have.” Momentarily the room seemed to narrow to the two of them, her and her brother, the rest a dim gallery, until, with a barely perceptible shift, Curtis reappeared on the periphery, a sharp presence. She said, “I’ve had some feedback on the ad and it’s confirmed a few of my own concerns, about preserving our identity, especially competing in such a glutted market with our limited means—I mean, for a company our size, it might make sense to take a different angle. And then there’s the risk of losing old customers, losing our base.”
“The point,” Frank said, speaking with all the patience of a television father, “is to expand our base. It’s not the old customers we’re after. It’s the new ones, the buyers in number who could do something about our ‘limited means.’ I don’t really see what this has to do with our standard.”
“It’s all Gutenbier, Frank.”
She winced at the conciliatory note in her own voice. Curtis stepped in when Frank asked her what kind of feedback, exactly, she was talking about. “I know what Melissa means,” he said, “having heard a bit myself. Women who’d drink a light beer if it didn’t insult their dignity.”
At this Henry snorted. “Dignity,” he muttered incredulously, his outburst so unexpected that it surprised a laugh out of some of the others, and Frank absorbed their amusement into his benevolent expression. “Henry’s right,” he said. “We’re not going to sell much beer by appealing to people’s dignity. As for feedback, I’ve got some for you, in the form of orders.” He opened a folder that had been lying in front of him and extracted a stack of papers, which he proceeded to pass around the table. Everybody took a copy gratefully and fastened on it. Then, one by one, as each glanced up and found Frank regarding Peter Beeksma, they all focused on the banker, who seemed genuinely engrossed in the document, oblivious to the rest of them. “Impressive figures,” he remarked before looking up at Frank, who smiled with the barest hint of a nod. Presumably prompted by this exchange, Curtis nudged her under the table, but she didn’t know what to do, how to regain the meeting’s momentum.
Impatient, with herself as much as anyone, she pulled her knee away from his. “You don’t think this had anything to do with the drought we’re having?” she said, flipping through the sheets Frank had handed out. “Where are the figures on the standard?” She explained to the table at large, “All the orders are way up.”
“So nobody’s too offended?” Frank suggested—and that was when the cousins, so late she’d forgotten them, finally appeared. They rushed through the door, flushed with hurry and the heat, and stopped as if they’d run flat into a cold front. Certain he had everyone’s attention, Francis waggled a newspaper at them. “Have you seen this?” He laid it on the table with a flourish, like last-minute evidence.
“Yes,” Henry said. “That’s a paper.”
“That’s right,” Francis answered sharply, “tonight’s.”
Curtis picked up the paper and held it so he and Melissa could read the folded front page, where the words GUTENBIER WORKER stood out as if spotlit in a headline. There was Sue’s byline—and there had been two calls from her this morning, unreturned because of too much work waiting but resounding now, low and dull, as she read about a break-in at the house of an employee, Alice Reinhart, that girl from the game—an act of vandalism that the article said, in the paper’s characteristic unaccountable way, was “suspected to be” part of a pattern of harassment being conducted at the Gutenbier plant. Disoriented for an instant, Melissa reread the line, then looked to the right, where a big red box framed a list of examples, bulleted, of the insults Alice Reinhart had sustained. Her disbelief gave way to dismay as she reached the parenthetical instructions under one item: “For contents of poster see page 2”—just as the paper erupted, like a clap waking her from a trance, although it was nothing but Curtis turning the page.
“Does anyone know anything about this?” she asked, but of course no one else knew yet what “this” was. Frank reached across the table and relieved Curtis of the paper, open now to a list of reasons why “Beer Is Better Than Women.” It might have been the weather, the glance he gave it was so cursory, and then he flipped back to the front-page story. The others watched him, the cousins especially avid about the effect of their find, as he skimmed the copy, folded the paper again, and handed it to Curtis, saying, “Let’s nip this in the bud.” Like a father reviewing the news at the breakfast table, he summarized its import for his waiting family. “One of our employees has accused two of her co-workers of vandalizing her house, after some other incidents at the plant. You know something about this, Henry?”
Like someone under oath but not quite sure how much it covered, the supervisor scanned the faces suddenly turned to him before venturing, “Not about any vandalizing.”
“We’ll look into it,” Frank said, by way of concluding the business, and, picking up his report again, was just about to resume when Beeksma asked, “Is there a question of liability?”
“We’re amply insured,” Frank told him, then, with a nod at the newspaper Curtis held, which seemed to have mesmerized every eye at the table, “Despite the sound and fury, it seems a bit far-fetched—wouldn’t you say, Curtis?”
“I wouldn’t say a word just yet.”
“Good policy.”
A look passed between them that, no matter how tense it was, denoted agreement and nettled Melissa. When Curtis knocked knees with her again, seeking a subtle acknowledgment of she didn’t know what, she kept perfectly still, observing her brother as she tried to puzzle out the situation with what little information she possessed. The meeting proceeded without her, halting only momentarily, as at a curiosity, when she interrupted Frank’s overview of Beeksma’s offer to ask Henry to have this woman, Alice Reinhart, come to her office after they were through, and then when she broke in again to tell him, on second thought, to send Joe Martin, the one they called Little, first.