The white cardboard box was barely half full as I put the last of my few personal possessions into it.  I stared at the corners of the lid and thought about how moments ago, I had carefully folded the sides of the box together.   Open side A, pull side B and side C. 

R. Gabriel was a lanky kid of not more than twenty.  He opened his browned chiseled arms as I carefully sealed the box.  “Do you need me to carry that, sir?”

I didn’t need any help, but I did need to feel in charge for a single moment.  So I nodded yes.  R. picked up the box with a single oversized hand, effortlessly, and patiently waited for me to walk ahead of him.  I glanced around the office to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind.

I followed R. Gabriel to a seldom traveled corner of the building and down the single flight of stairs that led to the back exit.  He dutifully placed the box on the freshly cleaned carpet in the back of my SUV.  I waited for him to shake my hand and wish me luck.  He did not. His job was to make sure I left and that no one at the prestigious firm of Sullivan & Baker ever saw me again.

It was the first time I had been fired.

My eleven months with Sullivan & Baker had been a slow death by drudgery in a cubicle, though an inevitable next step from my first dead-end job with Cannon Wise.   I had thought my pedigreed business schooling would be enough to land me a decent job after graduation, but after being rejected for each of the fifty different positions that the career center had matched with my profile, I started to have my doubts.   Some of my classmates, mostly the marketing types, spoke of “selling” themselves, a mandate I found completely repulsive.  And with nothing to sell, my scheduled one-hour interview typically concluded in thirty-five minutes or less.  One of those meetings had lasted close to the full sixty minutes, but only because the interviewer, a kindly young man named Marvin Craymeyer Soul (and no, I didn’t make up the name) had taken pity on me.  Frustrated with my short half-answers, Marvin had closed his notebook and leaned forward, the sharply pressed cuffs of his charcoal gray Hugo Boss suit jacket in perfect alignment with his knees.

“Philip, are you even remotely interested in a position with us?” he asked.

“Why, of course,” I said.  “Why else would I be here?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering,” Marvin said, almost sarcastically.  He twirled his pen like a baton, which annoyed the fuck out of me.  “I’m not detecting any enthusiasm in this conversation.  Like you’d really want to work for Graham Clark.”

“I’m sorry,” I half-apologized.  “Am I doing something wrong?”

Marvin made it clear that I’d flunked the interview, but as a gesture of goodwill spent the next twenty minutes coaching me on posturing, handshake, how to answer questions, how to close.  No one else had ever bothered, and by the end of the hour, I began to feel genuinely grateful for his attention.  Until twenty minutes later, that is, when I decided that he was completely wrong and that there was no good reason for me to sell myself.

Linda had wanted to get married a lot more than I did, so it wasn’t fair that she blamed me for our splitting up.  We’d been dating only since the beginning of my last semester at school, and had never lived together, so marriage seemed like a big step for us.  The first couple of months had been pleasant enough, but then her new job started, and she seemed to abandon me.  I tried not to resent coming home every night at six and finding she was always still at work.  The unspoken reality was that she was a lot busier than I was, a lot more needed.   So we avoided discussing our work, chalking up my choice of positions as simply a mistake we were enduring for the sake of paying high rent for a cozy new townhouse.    Truthfully, there had been no “choice,” and I was the only one living with it.  But we pretended I was making a career sacrifice for us.  That, at least, entitled me to an occasional diversion.

Linda rarely did anything domestic, so it was almost an accident that she had taken my jackets to the cleaners.  Her glum look was unusual, almost a rare treat, as bored with her frozen smiles as I’d become.

“This yours?” she asked me, holding up the crinkled foil wrapper.

“No.”

“Funny, I found it in your pocket.”

“What were you doing looking in my pockets?”

“A habit I developed after ruining one of my suits with a pack of Dentine,” she said wryly.  “I always check for stray objects.”  She flicked the condom at me in disgust, like I was one of her stray objects.

“Huh.  I must have found it on the floor of a restroom and picked it up.”

“And you must think I’m a fucking idiot,” she replied quickly.  I simply said nothing.

“Want to try that again?” she asked.  “Are you seeing another woman?”

It was not a fair question, so I didn’t answer it at first.  I needed to break the silence and squelch Linda’s icy stare, but I couldn’t get any words out.

“Another man?”

“Not … exactly,” I finally said.

Those two words ended my first marriage.

I had read everything I could about Sellers & Cross during the week before my interview.  The recruiter who had cold-called me didn’t have a lot of depth on what the firm did, so she accepted the vague generalities I offered her about my last two jobs without many questions.  People can be so gullible.  So far no one had asked if I’d ever met a client.  If my luck held out, no one ever would. And after all, did real experience really matter?  People with far fewer smarts than I had were successful in this business because they got people to do the work for them, and managed to bullshit their way out of what they couldn’t deliver. 

My stepdad Art was a prime example.  All I ever heard him talk about was “the deal.”  Occasionally I’d hear him on the phone, berating some junior person for dropping the ball, or pleading with a customer to give him a chance “to get this resolved internally.”  Never did he fix a problem himself.

Once I had borrowed the desktop computer in the room he liked to call his “home office” to print a term paper I’d paid Alex Krebs fifty dollars to write for me and accidentally left my work on his desk.  Mom ordered me not to disturb him, saying he was deep in thought, preparing an important presentation.  But it was past nine o’clock, and I had to hand in the paper the next day.    Carefully I knocked on the door and hearing no response, slowly walked inside the room.

Art swiveled around in his leather chair, a pad of paper in his hand, his eyeglasses tilted over the tip of his nose. Quickly he turned the notepad to a clean sheet of paper.

“Sorry, sir.  I left my paper in here.”

“Let me show you something, Philip,” he began.  I watched him draw an x- and y-axis, then plot a rising curve over a straight line.  “This is the key challenge of sales,” he explained.  “The customer will always tell you his needs are stable,’ he said, drawing over the flat line, “and will tell his investors that his business is growing.”  He plotted some points along the curve.  “Here, in between, is the opportunity,” he said.  “Our opportunity.”   He shaded in the area between the line and the curve. 

I nodded, pretending to be impressed.  I remember that conversation so well because it was the first time I realized that substance was never going to be a requirement for getting ahead.  Simply choose your words carefully enough and make sure you stay in control of the impressions other people form.

“I need a break,” he said, as he got up from his chair.  He gestured toward the corner of his desk. “Your paper’s over there.”

As he left, I picked up his notepad and flipped to the page before, looking at a string of arithmetic.  At the bottom of the page was a column of numbers titled “Monthly Expenses,” the total of which was divided into $15,000.  One of the numbers in the column caught my eye.  $1,175. 

That was our monthly rent.  Art was trying to figure out how many more months our savings would last.  I suppose even Art realized that his ability to steer people’s impressions might run out someday.

I sat in an antiseptic white-walled conference room off the main lobby of Sellers & Cross for twenty minutes, fingering the surface of my charcoal grey suit.  An energetic blond woman abruptly entered the room.  She hurriedly flipped through my resume.

“Monica Tomes,” she told me, not even looking up until she had seated herself across the table.  Then she raised her black-framed glasses over her eyebrows and gave me a short smile.  “Quite a morning,” she said.

I nodded.  A moment had passed before I realized that I had failed to stand and shake Monica’s hand, immediately violating the first rule of interviewing.  Goddammit, could I have blown this deal so early?  But curiously, Monica didn’t seem to notice.

“So you were with S&B,” she began.  “Terrific firm.  They certainly give us a run for our money.  So Dan’s told me about the Crosby Project.  How did that go?”

I was still trying to recover from the aborted introduction.  I answered only with a quiet smile.

“I know, I know, trade secrets,” she laughed deeply.  “I know you can’t tell me any details.  But listen, global supply chain is an area this company’s been trying to break into for years, decades, even.   I know S&B has, too.  So how’d you bastards land a big consulting gig like Crosby?”

I had never heard of the “Crosby Project,” though even someone as dispensable as I knew that Crosby Enterprises was one of Sullivan & Baker’s largest accounts.  I searched my brain for an appropriate answer to her question.  “It was a team effort,” I told her.

“Sure, sure,” she coaxed.  “But you had to have a decent role in it if Dan’s heard of you.”

I was growing more and more confused but dared not give myself away.  “Well, to tell the truth,” I began.  Suddenly I realized my one shot to make the first impression was about to slip away. 

“Let’s just say we all did our part,” I said, coyly.

“I know someone at your level won’t always get the glory,” she sympathized.  “But you’ve had to have gotten some decent visibility out of it.  Carl Crosby is an absolute legend in the business.  Have you been in meetings with him?”

“Well, perhaps one,” I said.  The first lie had slipped out.  “Or two.”  There went the second.

“I like your modesty, Philip,” Monica said, holding a black pen over the side of my resume.  “Good education.  Worked for a decent firm.  Why would you want to come here?”

I had my speech rehearsed, but the conversation had taken an unexpected turn.  “I’ll be honest with you, Monica.  One great project doesn’t make a career.  I didn’t think S&B really had the commitment to build the level of practice it needs to land the next Crosby account.  It’s a fairly conservative firm, as a rule.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Monica answered.  “So tell me more.”

What followed was a masterful bouquet of embellishments that made up for every bit of underselling I’d ever done.  I took full advantage of my hook, the unforeseen association with this Crosby Project, and now I had something I’d never felt before in an interview.  Credibility.  I raced through my bio, carefully emphasizing the things in my coursework that sounded better with the word “global” in front of them.  I told the Cannon Wise story and expressed my dismay that such a reputable firm could have wasted my abilities with such low-level work, dealing with relatively unimportant (though “global”) clients.  I nonetheless exhibited my loyalty, sticking with the firm for almost a year, seeking counsel, doing whatever was required, until I realized that the company didn’t have the client base to support the growth of the many talented people it was recruiting.  “We work in an interesting business, as you well know,” I told Monica.  “We’re supposed to be at the cutting edge of strategy, and yet there are a lot of people who are perfectly happy to see us operate the same way we always have.”

She nodded in full agreement.  I knew I had Monica sold, especially when I caught the carefully hidden thumbs-up she gave to my next interviewer, Lance Crowley.  I repeated the story to him, emphasizing my interest and experience in supply chain, but making sure he understood that I was open to other good opportunities.  Lance ate it up as well, thankfully not mentioning the Crosby deal, so by the time Stacy from H.R. arrived, I had done everything Marvin Craymeyer Soul had expected of me, and then some.  I had only to convince Stacy of my commitment, sense of teamwork, cultural fit and genuine interest in the success of Sellers & Cross.  Globally.

Stacy told me that “preliminary feedback” was good.  “Dan may want to meet with you for a final round,” she cautioned.

“Dan?”

“Dan Wiley.  I understand he had a particular interest in … some particular area of expertise you worked in,” she explained, “with your last company.”

Good Lord.  The Crosby Project.

“But I know he’s out of town,” she continued.  “So he may rely on Monica’s assessment.  But assuming he’s good with it, well . . .” 

I felt completely elated on my way back home like I’d just proven the world had simply been wrong about me.  I played some mindless games on my mobile phone for the rest of the afternoon, taking generous breaks to reflect the joyously high points of my interview.  It was before three o’clock when I received a cryptic e-mail from Stacy.  “Dan is okay with proceeding.  Expect a letter from us tomorrow.”

On my first day at Sellers & Cross, I figured out who Dan Wiley was within the first few minutes of the Monday morning staff meeting, and went up to shake his hand as soon as we finished.  “Sorry we couldn’t meet in person during the interview process,” I said.

“Sure, sure.  Listen, I just wanted to say how glad we are you’re here.  I know how involved you were in the Crosby Project while you were with S&B, and  –“

“Yes, well, as I told Monica,” I interrupted. “I was, I mean, it was a pretty large team.”

“Of course, but Philip, the word’s out that Crosby has some other big projects on the table, and we want to be a player.  Your familiarity with Crosby, and in particular, your past exposure to Nelson Breiling could be very valuable.”

 “Who?”

Dan looked at me, puzzled.  “Nelson Breiling.  The GM at Crosby who runs supply chain?”

“Oh, sure, Dan.  But please understand, my work was kind of behind the scenes.”

“We’re not going to waste any time, Philip.  Crosby’s about to sole source a major engagement to your former firm, so we have to move fast.  I have a meeting with Nelson and his team at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, and it’s imperative that you attend.”

I started to form the words in my head.  “I’m afraid I don’t know Nelson.”  But I knew a truthful answer would disappoint him. 

Dan looked a bit dumbfounded. “Is something wrong, Philip?”

“No,” I said confidently.  “However I can help, I’m glad to do so, Dan.”

That night, I canceled the obligatory “first day on the job” dinner with my girlfriend.  Of course, she understood perfectly, knowing the demanding hours I’d be expected to keep.  It wasn’t a surprise to her at all that I’d landed a major assignment on my first day.  I stayed up until one o’clock in the morning, trying to decipher the mountain of briefing documents Monica left for me in advance of the morning meeting with Crosby Enterprises.  I churned over the detailed operational overview, read and reread the complicated request for proposal, very little of it making sense to me.  Desperately, I pulled some old business school textbooks off the shelf, searching in vain for some fundamental definition of all the acronyms and terms of art dispersed throughout the thick binder. 

What disturbed me more than my lack of understanding of the project itself was that somehow my bio and credentials had made it into the accompanying proposal.  “Philip R. Trousdale.  Staff Consultant.  Formerly with Sullivan & Baker.  Specialization includes global supply chain management.”  It was now clear to me why Sellers & Cross had moved on the offer so quickly.  They needed me to land the Crosby account.  They needed the credibilitymy name brought to the table.

I began to panic.  How the hell had an innocent stretch of the truth, a white half-lie I’d used simply to make a favorable impression, led me so quickly into a disastrous situation?    At half past eleven, I toyed with the idea of calling Dan Wiley and admitting the truth.  But what good would that do at this point?   Save him the embarrassment of having me in the room?

What would Marvin Craymeyer Soul do in such a situation? 

What would Art do?

Overtaken by drowsiness early in the morning, I felt something more powerful than fear.  Hope.  There could be a graceful way through this perilous situation.  Maybe Nelson Breiling was such a self-important prick that he wouldn’t even remember a lowly staff consultant who had supposedly worked for him, even on such an important project.   Maybe Nelson wouldn’t even show up for the meeting, sending his underlings instead, who would take my being on the team at face value.  Or perhaps sitting around the table chatting, everyone would suddenly realize that someone (not me) had gotten the story wrong, and they would all have a good laugh over the mix-up. 

I could faintly hear those strains of laughter over the sharp buzz of the alarm clock going off at six.

There had to be eighteen or twenty people crowded into the executive briefing room, and I couldn’t tell who was from Sellers and who was from Crosby.  Dan was chatting up an older, balding guy wearing a tweed jacket and beige khakis that I guessed must be Nelson Breiling.  Immediately I turned away, avoiding any eye contact with Dan.   I said good morning to Monica, who eyed me strangely. 

“We haven’t had a chance to brief you on this proposal,” she whispered.  “So let Dan and I do the talking unless we call on you, okay?”

I nodded, relieved. Maybe the meeting really would pass quickly.  I could be a wallflower for the hour or two the meeting would take and not have to own up to my deceit.   A nagging hollowness still gripped my stomach.  Suddenly I felt sick.  I tried to breathe normally.

Dan stood at the head of the table and suggested that we get started.  Dressed in an impressively tasteful black suit, he appeared to be quite the salesman, polished and smooth in his delivery, very articulate.  His presentation continued for over forty-five minutes, during which I started to feel more relaxed.  Perhaps I had worried for nothing.  All I had to do was get through this one meeting unscathed, and then I could figure out how to make this situation work out.  I just needed a bit more time.

Then Dan began to wrap up.  “Nelson, we’re certainly aware that you have an existing relationship with S&B.  It is a fine firm.  But I think you’d find our methodologies to be refreshingly creative and insightful.  We’ve succeeded in every area of operational consulting in which we’ve built a practice.  And we’ve invested in putting together a top-notch team to serve you.”

Dan paused, and suddenly gestured toward me.  “Including our most recent hire, Philip Trousdale, with whom we believe you had the pleasure of working while he was with S&B.”

I froze, biting my lip, trying to focus on the moment.  Nelson Breiling had been jotting something down while Dan was finishing, and at first, I thought he hadn’t even noticed.  Then he put down his pen and looked straight at me, scowling.

“Who in hell are you?” he asked.

After I’d abruptly left the meeting, I retreated to my office and pretended to be busy with something on my computer.   On the way out at lunchtime, I ran into Monica in the hallway.

She closed the door to the conference room.  “So did we have a misunderstanding?” she demanded.  “Did you or did you not tell me you’d been involved with the Crosby Project at S&B?”

“Well, I remember your mentioning it, sure,” I said.  I spoke slowly, but my mind was racing fast to devise a convincing explanation for what I knew Monica was about to grill me.

“You brought it up during your interview,” she began.

“Well, actually, you did, Monica,” I said firmly.  “You said Dan had told you he’d heard about it.  Though I’m not sure where.”

“Right, yes, but then you told me you were a part of the team.”

“I told you there had been a large team involved –“

“Of which, I understood, you were one.”

            “I suppose I did some work, yes.”

“But you didn’t know who Nelson Breiling was when Dan asked you?”

 “I never said I met him.”

“And never heard of him, obviously.”

“Not directly.”

“Not directly?” Monica asked impatiently.  “Philip, either you knew the man, or you didn’t.  Which is it?”

“As I said, I worked behind the scenes.  Not just on that project.  Many different projects.  But no, I didn’t meet Nelson Breiling until today,” I admitted. “However, I believe there was a Nelson Cheever involved.  Perhaps I’d been confused about the name.”

“Nelson Cheever?” Monica looked frustrated.  “Philip, I can’t tell you how completely pissed Dan Wiley is right now.  I suggest you leave for the day.  And get your story straight by the time you show up for work in the morning, okay?”

Monica gave me an affirming half nod. I swore she learned that deadly frozen smile from my ex-wife.

I arrived at the office the next morning a bit after nine.  “Something’s going on, Philip,” Lance said bluntly.

“I know.”

“Did you know a guy named Mark Traymor at S&B?” he asked.

“Yeah.”  Truthfully.   An asshole.

“So from what I heard, Traymor interviewed here for the job you got.  He worked on the Crosby Project.  Dan got wind of it and told Monica.  But Monica mixed you up with Traymor.”

I nodded slowly.  “So that explains why all these questions about the Crosby Project came up.  None of this was my fault.  It was Monica’s mistake.”

Lance seemed a bit puzzled.  “What’s not understandable is why you didn’t set her straight,” Lance said.  Why you didn’t just tell her she must have you confused with someone else. And you never denied it.  It looks like you used her mistake to your advantage, just to land the job.”

“But … I was confused, Lance.  I mean, you have to understand the way work gets done at S&B.  I think I actually did do some work on Crosby, you know?  And it’s kind of understandable, isn’t it?  I’m trying to put my best foot forward, and she latches on to something that makes her view me as valuable.  I mean, I had no idea why she thought whatever work I did on that project was so important, but she did.”

“Dan’s not going to buy it, Philip,” Lance warned.  “You let this pretense go until you were in front of a client, and embarrassed the hell out of Dan and this firm.”

I hesitated.  ”I’ve been giving this a great deal of thought,” I said.  I pulled out a horrifically complicated diagram I had fashioned the night before. “See, I even put it in pictures, just to show him.  He’ll get it, Lance.  He’ll totally get it.”

“Dan’s no fool,” Lance said.  “And Dan knows his way around this business.”

“But he’s never worked for S&B, has he?  He doesn’t know how things work.”

“No, but he knows people there. Philip,” Lance said. “At least one person well enough to find out that S&B fired you for gross incompetence.”

I started to fold up the diagram when I glanced down at the columns of numbers I’d jotted down on the back of the paper the night before.  The first one was $1,975.   My monthly rent.

I drove down the block and pulled over to the front parking lot of a vacant office building.  I needed to be near some emptiness for a while.  I turned on the news, just to hear conversation, as I drummed my fingers over the cover of the cardboard box.  Open side A, push together side B and side C. 

When I was seventeen, I had sat in another car next to another cardboard box.  I had tried not to cry when Art pulled up to the front of the school the day I had been expelled.  I hadn’t been a particularly good student but had managed to get by for the two years I’d attended Harmon Day Academy.    Harmon offered more education than my parents could afford, and certainly more education than I was capable of absorbing.  The work became more rigorous and demanding during my junior year.  The second term, I struggled to complete the junior essay requirement along with a twenty-five-page history term paper for Dr. Gunn’s class.  One of those requirements was destined to fail.

I thought I did understand the origins of the first World War quite well, and I thought the paper was one of the best I’d written.  I just didn’t have the time I needed to get through all the research that Gunn expected.  I had composed as fast as I could, simply piecing together miscellaneous recollections of textbook summaries and points made in class. Then I spent two days in the library verifying and trying to footnote all that I had scraped together.  Time was running out.  President Wilson’s foreign policy was enormously flawed, and he was truly ill-advised.   There was no doubt that I was right.  All I needed was someone, someone with authority, to say it was true.

So that was when I cleverly invented a historian named Nelson Cheever, and a fictitious essay, “The Social and Political Causes of the First World War.”  I footnoted it four times in my term paper.

It was the first time I had been caught cheating.

I ran my hand over the smooth top of the cardboard box once again.  Barely a day’s worth of a career filled its contents, like I had time only to pack up half a life.  It felt good to travel light, I thought.  But then, as my arm brushed against the lightness of the box, I too felt empty.  It was hard for me not to see how dismally I’d failed this time. 

My cell phone vibrated suddenly, and I saw it was Bart calling.

“How goes the new job, buddy?” he asked.

“I’m afraid it’s not going to work out,” I told him.

“Not going to —  Buddy, it’s been like 48 hours!  How can you tell so soon?”

“It’s not what I expected,” I told him. 

“Really?”

“They have shitty clients,” I said.  “One, in particular, was a prize asshole.  Chewed me out in my first meeting, and the head guy didn’t even back me up.”

“Wow … I’m sorry,” Bart said.  “Listen, remember Dave Castor?”

“Of course.  Dave referred me over to Sullivan, remember?  My last dead-end job.”

“Yeah, well he just jumped ship and moved to Becker.  Maybe you should give him another call.”

“No, thanks,” I said.  “I think I’ve had enough of consulting.  I just don’t think I have the right temperament for it.”

“No, this is a totally different gig,” Bart insisted.  “Becker’s hiring a boatload of analysts.  Really ramping up their research division.”

Research, I thought.  Now there was something I had always done very well.  Ever since my school days at Harmon.

“Give me his number,” I said.  “I’ll call him today.”