The Staircase of Dragon Jerico
Chapter Thirteen
NO MATTER WHAT the day held, she had routines to begin. When she arrived at the office Monday morning, she went about her usual routine and then prepared the presentation area so she could project from her computer.
When Mr. Carver came downstairs, he seemed in a particularly good mood.
“Good morning, Ms. Scott. Ready for your big presentation today?”
“Good morning, Mr. Carver. As ready as I am likely to be. I’m not accustomed to making this kind of presentation, but I will give you my best.”
“No doubt! I put together such a fabulous meal on Saturday that I’m still floating. You remember the salmon filet I got in last week’s groceries? I poached it in parchment paper with vegetables and it was perfect. Just a bit of rice with it. Clean-up was not at all difficult,” Mr. Carver said. Erin was thrown by his unexpected familiarity. “That reminds me, speaking of clean-up.”
“Did I do a poor job, sir?” she asked.
“Oh, no! Not at all. I wanted to tell you that even when you go out to get our lunch for us, you are not on the hook for cleaning the kitchen. Mr. Jerico and I would have taken care of it had you not been so efficient. It is actually a part of my routine. When I’ve eaten, I feel compelled to clean something. I even do it after Sunday dinner with my mother. I fear my grandfather grew impatient with me while you were cleaning the kitchen. You would have done much better than I did at entertaining him until we were ready to start working again.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t do as you wished.”
“You have been with me two weeks and I can scarcely find a thing to criticize about you. Allow me one little item. Human Resources will think I am ill if I don’t have anything to complain about. Still, you make complaining very difficult,” Mr. Carver said. “Please come in and sit with me in the kitchen while I eat breakfast, and tell me how you like your first two weeks of work.”
“I should check upstairs and make sure everything is tidy, sir.” To Erin this was almost as important as cleaning the kitchen seemed to be to Carver. She’d quickly adapted to the routine and missed it if something was out of place.
“I’ll give you time while I wash my dishes. Here, have a cup of coffee.”
“Thank you, Mr. Carver.”
He sat with his breakfast and waited for her to begin.
“Ah. The work,” she said. “I find I’ve been challenged. I expected to be invisible in a corner as I kept notes rather than being brought in on the planning process. I practiced the presentation the way we wrote it all weekend. I can see places where we need to make small adjustments.”
“I’ve never worried too much about that, as Mr. Duval will spontaneously rewrite it when he is in front of the board. His presentations, while effective, have never been pleasing to me. He’s a snake oil salesman and I need to make sure the snake oil is real. It will be a small miracle if the project we have designed is the same as the project he sells. But he will sell it. He reads people extremely well. We must do our best to see that he understands the project.”
“Will you want lunch with Mr. Duval?”
“Heavens, no! He considers lunch a social invitation and I am rarely social with him,” Preston laughed. “Order Thursday lunch for the two of us. I’ll let you know if Mr. Jerico will join us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, how about the routine parts of your job? Bored to death?”
“Oh, no. Relieved to have some less mentally challenging tasks occasionally. Much as you find washing up after your meals to be a means of establishing your space, I find the menial tasks of the office to be just as peaceful.”
“Don’t become so attached to them that you consider them the primary part of your job,” he said. “That’s happened to me on a couple of occasions in which important tasks were overlooked in favor of putting away my socks. I admit to being difficult, but the company is my number one priority.”
“I detected that in preparing this presentation. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to do it yourself? I know you are passionate about the material.”
“First, don’t underestimate your own understanding of the material. Duval will get hold of it and will hear only a portion of what we present. That’s okay, because he’ll sell it anyway. Second, don’t ever suggest to anyone—especially to me—that I do a presentation. I find that I can talk to you in the office and rarely become flustered. Same with my grandfather. But I’m quite sure the board of directors would object to a frozen statue at the head of the table. Or to being regurgitated upon.”
“I won’t mention it again.”
“Good. I’ll wash my dishes and let you get on with your work. Have a good day today, Ms. Scott.”
He sounded almost as if he wasn’t going to be there. It was a little frightening.
One of the things Erin had become aware of in these past two weeks was that Mr. Carver thought along several lines at once. She saw it in the way he used a Rubik’s Cube. He could solve a cube while working out the most complex design problem in his development. It was the same with his washing dishes. His mind was likely designing the power grid for the community. He actually needed secondary and tertiary trains of thought in order to bring ideas together.
He’d once mentioned water treatment in the early part of the previous week as he and his grandfather were talking. Erin had made a note of it to bring up later. But later in the week he’d been discussing the problems of garbage removal with a particularly unique solution, at the end of which he simply looked up and declared, “And that is how we handle water treatment!” The entire treatment facility and system design rose from his voice and fingers as a complete design.
She completed her maintenance tasks, relaxing her concern over the presentation. Mr. Jerico arrived at noon and the men asked her to join them for lunch in the kitchen. She ate sparingly. She had made presentations before and was comfortable making the presentation to Mr. Carver and Mr. Jerico. But she’d had little to do with Mr. Duval beyond forwarding the spec for the cell towers and drafts of the presentation. She thought it was likely that he didn’t read the drafts. She’d arrived independently at the conclusion that Mr. Duval was all packaging and no product.
He arrived promptly at one o’clock.
“Preston, Lawrence. How are you, my friends? Ah, Erin, it’s good to see you again. I trust you are getting on well.”
“Thank you, Mr. Duval. Mr. Carver keeps me very busy. It’s good.”
Erin reminded herself of Mrs. Carver’s warning that those who leaped to using first names with Mr. Carver, or herself, were pretending to a degree of familiarity that had not been offered.
“Well, so this is the model? My God! How are we going to get that thing into the board room? Well, maybe we can just take some pictures of it and put it in the slide deck. Do I have a fresh deck?” Duval rattled on. Preston just stared silently at the man.
“Have a seat over here, Duval,” said Mr. Jerico. “We’re going to give you the works. All you’ll need to do is add your personality to it. This is exactly what the company needs.”
“Whatever you say. You’re the boss,” Duval said.
“Carver is the boss. I’m just consulting on this,” Lawrence said.
“Oh. Yes. Of course. No offense, Preston.”
Carver nodded and pointed to a chair where Duval sat. Erin gave each of the men a copy of the presentation and made sure they had their favorite marking tools. She pulled the curtains across the windows to the rooftop patio, and pulled down the screen. She pressed a button on her remote control and the screen lit up with her title slide.
“Gentlemen, welcome to the future of JeriCorp Architecture and Development. Over the past two hundred years, our company and its predecessors have made their mark on Jerico City and on businesses as far afield as both coasts. We’ve struggled in the past months due to economic realities for some of our clients. I’m here to tell you it is time to take control of our own destiny and leave our mark on the future. I present to you Cloudhaven, a resort and employment community united by digital servers and high-speed communications.”
Erin had taken her mask off to make the presentation, but all three men continued to wear theirs, making reading their expressions difficult. She did see them nodding, though, as they followed in their notes.
“Why do you need me?” Royce asked after the presentation.
“What do you mean? It’s your job,” Lawrence said.
“It looks like I’ve been replaced by a demo dolly. She did fine with the presentation.”
“Y-you know you aren’t here to do a good presentation,” Preston said. “You’re sup-p-posed to sell it. We always write the presentation. You sell.”
“Yeah. It’s not usually this polished. I can add the zing to this, but I might want to rearrange a few slides. Do we really need all that about water purification? They’ll buy glamour and the romance. It’s a resort. No one wants to deal with water purification,” Royce said, marking in his copy of the script. Erin kept notes in her copy.
“Not just a resort, remember,” Lawrence said. “It is an entire planned community. You need to use this presentation as a launching platform to sell the community concept to the public. We’ll need shops, restaurants, and wireless communications, in addition to the resort. All those things require the right infrastructure and your ability to get the marketing people behind it.”
“Okay. I get that. We really want to make this a work from home resort? You know the only people interested in working from home are the lazy ones. They can’t even be bothered to dress in the morning and go to work,” Royce said.
Preston cleared his throat.
“Present company excepted, of course,” Royce continued. “You’re a special situation, Preston. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the office wouldn’t be productive if we let them work from home.”
“P-Pr-Prod… Results during the shutdown s-s-say th-that’s false,” Preston said. “We had productivity as high during sh-sh-sh… quarantine as we had before. Better in several areas. That’s why we need the entire town preset for fast internet service. Rapid communications. Those are some of the people you need to sell.”
“I didn’t like it. I like to see an office full of busy people. Having meetings. Getting things done. Working,” Duval insisted.
“There would still be people who would work in the office. You wouldn’t be abandoned,” Lawrence laughed.
“Yeah, like Carver’s assistant. Bet you aren’t willing to have Erin work remotely.”
“If we worked something out, I’d consider it.”
“Please,” Erin said. “I agree that some jobs require presence, at least part of the time. An earthmover driver can’t work from home. But you might as well call him a remote worker. He doesn’t come into the office. We depend on him to go to his equipment and do his job. There is nothing beyond a computer and a connection that an accountant needs to do his job. He should be able to do it from anywhere he wants.”
The three men turned to look at Erin. She flinched. She was a presenter, here to provide the prototype presentation. She wasn’t part of the planning team. Not really. She’d jumped in as if she was part of the conversation.
“You’re right,” Lawrence said. “If Mr. Carver suggested you work from home, I’d encourage him to rethink it. You add a great deal by being present.”
“Mmm, yeah,” Duval chuckled. No one joined him. “Can you work that illustration of the earthmover operator into the presentation? Deliver the whole thing again. I want to refine my notes. Or do you guys want me to take her downstairs to practice instead?”
“This is where we’ll do all the practice sessions,” Preston said.
Erin was relieved. She started the presentation again, folding in the notes she’d taken during the first run-through and discussion.
There were more practice sessions during the week as they refined the presentation, including having Duval deliver it to the other three. By Friday, they felt they had a good presentation and turned it over to Duval to work on from there on.
Lawrence and Preston left Friday afternoon to have dinner together and Erin sat to type the final draft of the slides and notes. After she’d sent the laundry out and put away the week’s grocery delivery, she gathered her things and headed down the elevator. When the doors opened, she was surprised to find Duval waiting.
“I was just going back up to ask you to join me this weekend,” he said, putting a hand on her upper arm.
“Excuse me, but join you for what?” Erin demanded, shrugging his hand off her. He’d used every opportunity all week to touch her and move into her space.
“I’m thinking we could both benefit from a direct inspection of the jobsite. Looking at the model in Preston’s office is all fine and good, but to understand the scope and reality of the project, I need to see the site. You’ve obviously become indispensable to Preston and Lawrence. This will give you a better understanding of the project and scope as you work with them in the future. And you can rehearse me on the presentation as we go,” Duval smiled.
“Really?” Erin wasn’t sure if this was such a good idea or not, but she was sure that seeing the site would help her help Mr. Carver. “I could drive out and meet you there, I suppose.”
“It’s eighty miles. No sense in taking two cars. Let’s drive out tomorrow morning, say at nine. We can get back in time for dinner at La Boheme.”
“Dinner is unnecessary, but I guess I can be ready to go out to the jobsite at nine. It would be good to see it in life size instead of the model. I understand the surveyors have already been working to stake out some of the infrastructure,” Erin said.
“Splendid. I have your address. I’ll pull up at your apartment at nine. Probably want a pair of boots for walking around in the wilderness. Maybe even a change of clothes.”
Erin slipped away and headed toward her apartment, wondering how he had her address. Was it common for a company president in this area to know where his employees lived?
Erin took great care of her appearance when she went to work with Mr. Carver. She considered herself to be an extension of his presence and wanted to represent him well. She’d even set aside money to buy a new suit this week. But going out to traipse through open land with Mr. Duval didn’t strike her as an activity that required makeup or business clothes. She had her hair pulled up under a baseball cap, wore no makeup, and dressed in her gardening jeans and a heavy shirt.
“You certainly dress down well,” Duval said when she got in the car. He headed out of town to the southeast.
“I dressed to walk the property. That is what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, yes. It’s just such a shock to see you when you aren’t in your professional wear. Quite… quite a difference.” He sounded disappointed.
“I didn’t know you had seen me enough to form an opinion.”
“Well, you did instruct me repeatedly this week on how to deliver the presentation. Very professional.”
“Why don’t we practice on the way to the property,” Erin suggested.
“I thought we could use the time to get to know each other better.”
“I’m good. We can practice.”
That was obviously not the response he wanted from Erin. Seducing her didn’t include reciting lines like a school play. Erin sighed and moved his hand away from her leg. This could be a long day.
“No, we can’t move that slide,” Erin said. “The efficiency cottages are part of phase one and need to be constructed before the hotel is completed.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Who is going to rent a cottage before the hotel and services are available?” Duval complained.
“Who is going to drive seventy miles a day to go to work?” Erin asked. “Consider the efficiency cottages as temporary housing for employees. Once the second phase is underway, the cottages can be rented as resort property—specifically for weekly, monthly, or seasonal rentals.”
“So, I’m supposed to sell a program of employee welfare to the board? Are we going to feed them as well?” Duval was getting surly. They’d only been on the road half an hour and she’d insisted he start practicing the presentation immediately. Erin guarded the presentation as if it were holy scripture.
“It remains to be seen how many other services are provided to employees. However, don’t sell it as employee welfare. All benefits will be included as part of their compensation package.”
“So, if these are seasonal cottages, why the extensive weatherproofing? Heating and cooling shouldn’t be necessary for the grunts who are making beds in the resort.”
“The resort, don’t forget, is also a digital employee community. While digital nomads may only be resident seasonally, that doesn’t mean summer only. With the range of services available, we want to attract people for retreats year-round. The resort will double as a moderately-sized conference center where corporations up to the size of JeriCorp may hold business meetings and retreats. Everything needed will be provided.”
“Okay. Let me go through this in my head again. Just be quiet for a few minutes while I organize it in my mind.”
Erin sighed. She wasn’t sure what additional organizing Duval needed to do. She’d presented the material to him, Jerico, and Carver seven times in the past week. Each time, she’d made the changes and adjustments they’d settled on during the review cycle.
Mr. Duval had an objection for nearly every aspect of the project and presentation. He felt the best design would be a modern all-glass tower overlooking the lake. He disliked the more rustic lodge-style construction Mr. Carver proposed. She’d carefully painted each log in the model of that structure and had grown quite fond of it.
She removed Duval’s hand from her thigh again, where he’d casually placed it as he drove.
“Knock it off,” she spat at him.
She was having second and third thoughts about making this trip with him. She was getting the impression he didn’t want to practice the presentation at all.
“Here’s what you don’t understand about this business,” Duval said at last. “Carver and Jerico don’t understand. They figure the idea—the concept—is what’s important. It flew full-grown from Jerico’s head.”
“Carver’s.”
“Yeah, right. It makes no difference. I’ll start off selling exactly what they put in their little model. It will be better if the model isn’t even in the room with us. It will distract people. They see something like a log structure, and if it doesn’t happen to tickle them, they fixate on it. The whole project is doomed because all they see is logs. And let me say, we’d risk the same thing if we showed a model that was all glass and steel. At this phase we need them to buy into an idea: a resort community at a lake seventy miles from the city. That is where the money is waiting for us. If they start to object to the idea of high-speed internet capacity for the entire community, then I need to de-emphasize that concept as just another detail we can work out. If they don’t like the idea of employee housing, then I switch it out to luxury cabins for busy executives.”
“I thought you could sell anything. Why can’t you sell the high speed internet and rustic lodge design?”
“You don’t… Carver and Jerico don’t understand that I never sell the product. Everybody knows what a steak is. You can’t differentiate yourself by selling a steak. You have to sell the sizzle. What’s their hot button? We’ll add the lodge and the internet as supporting features at the next meeting.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any sense in selling them on something just to sell a change thirty days later.”
“That’s why I’m president and you’re a secretary.”
Of all the insulting things the SOB could say, that was one of the worst. As far as Erin was concerned, three-quarters of her job went far beyond being a secretary. Yes, she took care of correspondence, the phone, and running errands. But she’d come to consider herself a part of the team in the project Mr. Carver had designed.
No matter what Duval said about it not being his idea, Erin knew differently. Mr. Jerico, for all that he was twice as old or more, deferred to Carver on everything. This entire community had come from an idea Mr. Carver had while still in high school, almost twenty years ago. Just because he wasn’t good at presenting or dealing with groups didn’t mean he wasn’t the brains of the company.
Duval pulled to the side of the road and Erin looked over at him in alarm. “This is the entry,” he said. “If you look at your map, phase one is generally all the area on our right, down to the water’s edge.”
The lake sparkled about a mile away. Erin could see that as soon as they descended from the rise they were on, the lake would disappear from view until they reached the top of the next rise, over half a mile ahead. She got out of the car and stood looking at the terrain. She could instantly see why Carver wanted the entry at this point rather than after the property of the holdout. Down there, the lake would be hidden behind the hill.
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