Makers Part 23

"Wait a second, you're Suzanne *Church*? New Work Church? San Jose Mercury News Church?"

She blushed. "You can't *possibly* have heard of me," she said.

He rolled his eyes. "Sure. I shoulder-surfed your name off the check-in form and did a background check on you last night just so I could chat you up over breakfast."

It was a joke, but it gave her a funny, creeped-out feeling. "You're kidding?"

"I'm kidding. I've been reading you for freaking *years*. I followed Lester's story in detail. Professional interest. You're the voice of our generation, woman. I'd be a philistine if I didn't read your column."

"You're not making me any less embarra.s.sed, you know." It took an effort of will to keep from squirming.

He laughed hard enough to attract stares. "All right, I *did* spend the night googling you. Better?"

"If that's the alternative, I'll take famous, I suppose," she said.

"You're here writing about the weight loss clinics, then?"

"Yes," she said. It wasn't a secret, but she hadn't actually gone out of her way to mention it. After all, there might not be any kind of story after all. And somewhere in the back of her mind was the idea that she didn't want to tip off some well-funded newsroom to send out its own investigative team and get her scoop.

"That is fantastic," he said. "That's just, wow, that's the best news I've had all year. You taking an interest in our stuff, it's going to really push it over the edge. You'd think that selling weight-loss to Americans would be easy, but not if it involves any kind of travel: 80 percent of those lazy insular f.u.c.ks don't even have pa.s.sports. Ha. Don't quote that. Ha."

"Ha," she said. "Don't worry, I won't. Look, how about this, we'll meet in the lobby around nine, after dinner, for a cup of coffee and an interview?" She had gone from intrigued to flattered to creeped-out with this guy, and besides, she had her first clinic visit scheduled for ten and it was coming up on nine and who knew what a Russian rush-hour looked like?

"Oh. OK. But you've got to let me schedule you for a visit to some of our clinics and plants -- just to see what a professional shop we run here. No gold-teeth-s.h.i.+ny-suit places like you'd get if you just picked the top Google AdWord. Really American-standard places, better even, Scandinavian-standard, a lot of our doctors come over from Sweden and Denmark to get out from under the socialist medicine systems there. They run a tight s.h.i.+p, ya sh.o.r.e, you betcha," he delivered this last in a broad Swedish bork-bork-bork.

"Um," she said. "It all depends on scheduling. Let's sort it out tonight, OK?"

"OK," he said. "Can't *wait*." He stood up with her and gave her a long, two-handed handshake. "It's a real honor to meet you, Suzanne. You're one of my real heros, you know that?"

"Um," she said again. "Thanks, Geoff."

He seemed to sense that he'd come on too strong. He looked like he was about to apologize.

"That's really kind of you to say," she said. "It'll be good to catch up tonight."

He brightened. It was easy enough to be kind, after all.

She had the front desk call her a taxi -- she'd been repeatedly warned off of gypsy cabs and any vehicle that one procured by means of a wandering tout. She got into the back, had the doorman repeat the directions to Lester's clinic twice to the cabbie, watched him switch on the meter and checked the tariff, then settled in to watch St Petersburg go flying by.

She switched on her phone and watched it struggle to a.s.sociate with a Russian network. They were on the road for all of five minutes -- long enough to note the looming bulk of the Hermitage and the ripples left by official cars slicing through the traffic with their blue blinking lights -- when her phone went nutso. She looked at it -- she had ten texts, half a dozen voicemails, a dozen new clipped articles, and it was ringing with a number in New York.

She b.u.mped the New York call to voicemail. She didn't recognize the number. Besides, if the world had come to an end while she was asleep, she wanted to know some details before she talked to anyone about it. She paged back through the texts in reverse chronological -- the last five were increasingly panicked messages from Lester and Perry. Then one from Tjan. Then one from Kettlebelly. They all wanted to discuss "the news" whatever that was. One from her old editor at the Merc asking if she was available for comment about "the news."

Tjan, too. The first one was from Rat-Toothed Freddy, that snake.

"Kodacell's creditors calling in debts. Share price below one cent. Imminent NASDAQ de-listing. Comments?"

Her stomach went cold, her breakfast congealed into a hard lump. The clipped articles had quotes from Kettlewell ("We will see to it that all our employees are paid, our creditors are reimbursed, and our shareholders are well-done-by through an orderly wind-down"), Perry ("f.u.c.k it -- I was doing this s.h.i.+t before Kodacell, don't expect to stop now") and Lester ("It was too beautiful and cool to be real, I guess.") Where she was mentioned, it was usually in a snide context that made her out to be a disgraced pitchwoman for a failed movement.

Which she was. Basically.

Her phone rang. Kettlewell.

"Hi, Kettlewell," she said.

"Where have you been?" he said. He sounded really edgy. It was the middle of the night in California.

"I'm in St Petersburg," she said. "In Russia. I only found out about ten seconds ago. What happened?"

"Oh Christ. Who knows? Cascading failure. Fell short of last quarter's estimates, which started a slide. Then a couple lawsuits filed. Then some unfavorable press. The share price kept falling, and things got worse. Your basic cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k."

"But you guys had great numbers overall --"

"Sure, if you looked at them our way, they were great. If you looked at them the way the Street looks at them, we were in deep s.h.i.+t. a.n.a.lysts couldn't figure out how to value us. Add a little market chaos and some old score-settling a.s.sholes, like that f.u.c.ker Freddy, and it's a wonder we lasted as long as we did. They're already calling us the twenty first century Enron."

"Kettlewell," she said, "I lived through a couple of these, and something's not right. When the dotcoms were going under, their CEOs kept telling everyone everything was all right, right up to the last minute. They didn't throw in the towel. They stood like captains on the bridge of sinking s.h.i.+ps."

"So?"

"So what's going on here. It sounds like you're whipped. Why aren't you fighting? There were lots of dotcoms that tanked, but a few of those deep-in-denial CEOs pulled it off, restructured and came out of it alive. Why are you giving up?"

"Suzanne, oh, Suzanne." He laughed, but it wasn't a happy laugh. "You think that this happened overnight? You think that this problem just cropped up yesterday and I tossed in the towel?"

Oh. "Oh."

"Yeah. We've been tanking for months. I've been standing on the bridge of this sinking s.h.i.+p with my biggest smile pasted on for two consecutive quarters now. I've thrown out the most impressive reality distortion field the business world has ever seen. Just because I'm giving up doesn't mean I gave up without a fight."

Suzanne had never been good at condolences. She hated funerals. "Landon, I'm sorry. It must have been very hard --"

"Yeah," he said. "Well, sure. I wanted you to have the scoop on this, but I had to talk to the press once the story broke, you understand."

"I understand," she said. "Scoops aren't that important anyway. I'll tell you what. I'll post a short piece on this right away, just saying, 'Yes, it's true, and I'm getting details.' Then I'll do interviews with you and Lester and Perry and put up something longer in a couple of hours. Does that work?"

He laughed again, no humor in it. "Yeah, that'll be *fine*."

"Sorry, Kettlewell."

"No, no," he said. "No, it's OK."

"Look, I just want to write about this in a way that honors what you've done over the past two years. I've never been present at the birth of anything remotely this important. It deserves to be described well."

It sounded like he might be crying. There was a snuffling sound. "You've been amazing, Suzanne. We couldn't have done it without you. No one could have described it better. Great deeds are irrelevant if no one knows about them or remembers them."

Her phone was beeping. She snuck a peek. It was her old editor. "Listen," she said. "I have to go. There's a call coming in I *have* to take. I can call you right back."

"Don't," he said. "It's OK. I'm busy here anyway. This is a big day."

His laugh was like a dog's bark.

"Take care of yourself, Kettlewell," she said. "Don't let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds grind you down."