Kelley Eskridge by Solitaire Read Free Book Online Page B

late to pretend she wasn't
puzzled, so she turned her bewilderment into a smile that was meant to
be an invitation rather than a criticism. “I'm sorry,” she replied,
with just a twist of question at the end.
    “What kind is it today?”
    “Ah. Well, let's see. He's wearing an
orange hat, that's a clue. Could be orange, tangerine, peach melba. I'm
always hopeful for mango sorbet, myself.”
    “Hmm, that's very good,” he said, and
turned all the way around, twisting the glasses off his face. “The way
you finished with that bit about the sorbet, and the head nod, that's
good. It gives the other person a way to stop the chitchat right there
if they've run out of things to say. I imagine you get more than your
share of people who don't know a graceful way out of a conversation.
Any rate, you'll be fine.”
    “I'm sorry?” she said again, and this time
it was an obvious question.
    “Ah,” he answered, and she heard her own
vocal strategies done better. “Please excuse me. I'm Gavin Neill, I run
some workshops on activity management. You're joining us soon, aren't
you? Won-derful. I'm glad we could meet this way, it's so much nicer to
have an idea of what people are like before we all start working
together.” And he told her a funny story about the most unproductive
team ever recorded by company measurement specialists. “…and instead
they ended up with ten thousand cases of canned organic tomatoes.”
    “Oh, no,” Jackal laughed. “What happened
to them?”
    “I'm sure they're still in the warehouse.
The tomatoes, not the team. No one will touch them, they carry the
curse of the one hundred percent error rate.” Did he mean the team or
the tomatoes that time, she wondered, but he only smiled and said, “So,
here we are. Not mango today, I'm afraid.” He smiled again and paid for
his cone, stepped out of line. “Nice to meet you. See you soon.” She
watched him move away; he walked with his head back as if he were
enjoying the day and the tangerine taste in his mouth.
    The first morning of the workshop, all the
students turned up twenty minutes early. The conference room was
spacious, with a long oval table that faced an enormous white board and
a series of clean flip chart pads hung around the walls. Giant windows
looked out across a section of the corporate complex. Jackal could see
into offices in a handful of other buildings: people working, meeting,
scribbling on their white boards.
    She turned to the food table and poured
herself a cup of coffee. The trays of pastries and fruit didn't tempt
her—she was too nervous to eat—but food was always a good way of
meeting people. There were fifteen trainees in addition to her, all of
whom were introducing themselves around the room in the brisk manner
that she associated with people bursting with business purpose, as if
getting everyone's name was one item on a very long task list. Jackal
promptly forgot who they all were, but she could tell they were all,
without exception, surprised to find her there. Everyone did the Hope
routine with her, deferring to her and speaking in polite, formal
sentences that made her feel like a little girl dressed up in oversized
clothes: “Well, it's very good to have you with us, Ms. Segura, and may
I ask your opinion about quantifying return on investment for corporate
training?” When she realized that everyone was still standing only
because they were waiting for her to choose her seat at the table, she
sighed and plomped her ruck-sack down at the nearest place. “Look,
folks,” she said as lightly as she could, “I'm a little out of my depth
here and most of you have a lot more training than I do, but I really
need this class to help me with my job and it would make it a lot
easier if you could just call me Jackal.” It didn't really say what she
meant, but it seemed to do the trick: the others began to settle down
around her, and the talk became less stiff.
    One of the junior managers confessed that
he wasn't