Chapter Seven
Garrett
She chose a Mexican place in Pilsen.
They were given a table near the back, which was warm and smelled of chilli and something sweet underneath it. There were paper decorations on the ceiling that had been there long enough to become part of the room.
He ordered what she ordered, which she noticed.
"You don't know what that is," she said.
"No. But you come here regularly and you ordered it without looking at the menu, which is a reasonable signal."
She looked at him across the table. In the restaurant light, which was warmer than the conference room light, something in her face was different. Not softer, exactly. Less defended. The canvas bag was over the back of her chair but she had not opened it.
"Do you do that with everything," she said.
"Do what."
"Treat information as signal."
"Doesn't everyone?"
"No." She unfolded the paper napkin. "Most people treat information as confirmation. They look for what they already think. You look for what you don't know yet. It's different."
He considered this. The food arrived, which was birria, he noted for future reference, and it was good in the way that things were good when they had been made by someone who had made them many times without cutting anything out.
"You do the same thing," he said.
"I know." She ate. "It's why I was good at this job before I cared about it so much. Now it's harder to separate."
"Caring makes it harder?"
"Caring makes you want a specific outcome. Wanting a specific outcome makes you weight the information to get there." She looked at him. "You don't have that problem."
"I have a different version of it. I want the most accurate model. When the data says something I don't want it to say, I have to decide whether to believe it."
"And the data on Meridian?"
"Says you might be right," he said. "About the partial restructure."
She was quiet for a moment. She put her fork down. "Might," she said.
"There are variables I haven't resolved yet. The pension underfunding is the largest one. Your proposal on that."
"Joint management of the pension fund. The union contributes to the recovery over seven years in exchange for a seat on the oversight board." She picked up the fork again. "It's been done. Bethlehem Steel, 2002. It's in the case law."
"I know the case. The labour relations context was different."
"The principle is the same."
"The principle is the same," he agreed. "The execution depends on the composition of the board."
"We can negotiate the composition."
"Yes," he said. "We can."
She looked at him again, that same look she had used in the four o'clock meeting, the one that was assessing something and doing it openly rather than concealing the assessment. He had found it unsettling the first time. He was finding it less unsettling now, which was its own kind of information.
"You said you'd have the analysis to Hale by Monday," she said.
"Yes."
"What does he do if the analysis supports the partial restructure?"
"He'll push back. He has a preferred timeline and this disrupts it."
"And if you push back on his pushback?"
Garrett was quiet for a moment. Outside on 18th Street a car went by with music coming from it, something with a rhythm that the cold air muffled into something almost gentle. "I've overridden Victor twice in four years. Both times the outcome justified it."
"Both times," she said. "So it's not a pattern yet."
"Not yet."
She picked up her water glass. She looked at him over the rim of it. "Are you telling me this is the third time?"
"I'm telling you the analysis will say what the analysis says."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he said. "It isn't."
They ate. The room filled gradually around them, a Friday evening in a neighbourhood restaurant, families and couples and a group of young men at the large table in the corner.
Garrett noticed that he was not thinking about the pension structure or the grant timeline or the board composition.
He was thinking about what she had said about her father, the three years and the ten years off his health, and the way she had said it, without inflection, the way people spoke about things they had already finished grieving.
"How long have you been doing this?" he said.
"Six years with CWA. Two years before that with a legal aid clinic, labour law specifically."
"You're a lawyer."
"I'm a lawyer who doesn't practice anymore." A small pause. "The clinic was good work but it was reactive. Someone had already lost by the time they came to us. I wanted to be in the room before that happened."
"And are you. Usually."
"Sometimes." She set down the water glass. "Sometimes I arrive in time. Sometimes the decision is made before I know there's a decision to make. That's why I monitor the county filings."
"You have a system."
"I have a spreadsheet." She almost smiled.
It was the first time he had seen it fully, not the controlled edge from the four o'clock meeting but something wider, something that changed the whole arrangement of her face.
"Three hundred rows. Every active acquisition in Cook, DuPage, and Lake counties with a manufacturing workforce over fifty people. "
"Three counties."
"I have a colleague who handles Will and Kane."
He looked at her. She was watching him with the half-smile still in place, and there was something in the evening that had shifted from the conference room version of this conversation, something that had to do with the warm light and the food and the fact that neither of them had opened a folder in forty minutes.
"You should have been on the other side of this," he said. Not a criticism. An observation.
"Private equity?" She shook her head. "I'd be good at it. That's why I'm not doing it."
He understood what she meant. He was not sure many people would. He filed it alongside the cold coffee and the nineteen point three percent and the fact that she had chosen this restaurant, this table, the back corner away from the door.
They stayed for two hours. He did not check his phone once.