Underground Airlines(83)

While I crawled through his tidy junior executive’s lair with my eyes, Martha was giving it to Matty with both barrels: “You got yourself four thousand, two hundred and thirty-two folks out there”—pausing, just barely, a quick sly acknowledgment that she had the figure, she’d done her homework—“and it’s their time that you all are selling. Every hour of good work they give to the company, every darn minute of it, that is the product.

“Now, let’s say we take one Person Bound to Labor,” she said, “and pop him anywhere on the flowchart. Okay? He’s splitting open bales. He’s a loom operator. Doesn’t matter. He’s top-level, he’s a trusty, he’s punching code on a pattern maker. Okay?”

“Okay…”

“Let’s say he works one hour. How many minutes are in that hour?”

Newell hesitated—he knew there was some smart answer here, but he couldn’t figure it. “Sixty?”

“No, sir,” said Martha, said Jane Reynolds, saleswoman of the year. “Maybe it’s fifty. Maybe thirty. Maybe a hundred! It all depends on what’s going on in that man’s head, what’s going on with that man’s body. What we sell at Peach Tree, what we do is, we sell minutes. With our system of incentives and corrections, we add minutes to the hours that your PBLs are putting in, and you know what that does?”

“Uh…” He was afraid to answer. Afraid to be wrong. “It makes better clothes?”

“It makes money, Mr. Newell!” She spread her hands. “It makes more money.”

Newell chortled. “Well, we sure hope so!”

For a surreal half a moment I became excited at the prospect of making a sale. Ms. Reynolds and I would return to the office in Birmingham and report on our success, log it in the system, get high fives from the other sales teams, arrange a meeting with the tech guys for follow-up. Jane Reynolds would be employee of the month. I’d get—what? What reward would a freedman associate receive? Alternate universes, other worlds.

“I tell you what,” said Martha. “I’ll show you. Can I show you?”

“Sure,” said Mr. Newell. He stood up, as though maybe she was going to lead him somewhere. “Show me.”

“Albert?”

I popped out of the back corner like a jack-in-the-box. “Yes, ma’am!”

“Can we get set up, please?”

She said it with mild irritation, like she couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it already. I saw the small look she gave to Newell, the small look he gave back: these people. I opened the bag, opened up the laptop, and pressed a few buttons. Newell scurried out of my way, stood awkwardly in his own office, hands behind his back, ponytail jutting out over his pink neck.

“Okay,” said Martha. “Away we go. Albert, would you mind hitting the lights for us?”

“They’re just there,” said Newell and pointed, and I hopped over to the light switch.

“What I’m going to show you,” said Martha, calling up the first slide—the logo for Peach Tree, clipped off their website—and beaming it onto the window shade of Newell’s office, “if you’ll bear with me, is just a taste of the proprietary technology that Peach Tree is offering. Just a sense of it. So…”

The slide blinked off, and no second one came.

“What…” said Martha in the darkness. “Albert?”

“What is it?” said Newell.

“Oh, dear,” I said. “Oh, boy.”

“Albert!” Her voice transformed. Sharp as broken glass. “Albert, would you be so kind as to turn on the lights, please?”

I did, and fast. Martha was standing, flustered, with her hands on her hips. Newell was bemused, uncertain. “Ms. Reynolds—Jane, is everything okay?”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Newell.”

“Matty. Please.”

“Matty, it’s just, you know, they send me out here to do this, and they don’t send me with equipment that actually functions. Or a…a…” It was the sole flaw in her performance; the only half a moment’s hesitation. Jane Reynolds would have said “nigger,” of course. “A helper who can do his darn job.”

Newell didn’t notice her skipped beat. He wasn’t noticing anything but a chance to be some kind of man. He was rushing around from behind his little desk. He was handing her tissues.

“I do understand, believe me. Here, Ms. Reynolds—”

“Jane,” she said.

“Jane.”

Matty Newell was smiling weakly with a dim, hopeful light in his eyes. Martha took the proffered tissues and blotted tears from the corners of her eyes. Real tears. I almost laughed. I was still standing back by the light switch, just inside the door, invisible and quiet. But Jesus Christ, she was good at this.

“I have a very good presentation.” She pointed to the laptop. “I mean it. That is an excellent presentation.”

What she was doing was, she was letting it be his idea. She was walking him along, holding his hand tightly enough to lead him, loosely enough for him to be unaware of it. She was an absolute natural. Or maybe all women could do that to all men, if they wanted to.

“I would actually love to just do it alone, just the two of us,” and she gave that quick, simple, businesslike sentence—“I would actually love to just do it alone, just the two of us”—just enough backspin. Just enough.