The Crosby Project

I sat in an antiseptic, white-walled conference room off the main lobby of Sellers & Cross for twenty minutes, fingering the fabric of my charcoal grey suit. It had been a month and a half since I’d seen a paycheck, and I needed to nail this interview. And not just for the money. For a bit of self-respect.

Having to work for a living blows. I never had to work that hard in college. I was good at making friends who’d write my papers and occasionally pinch-hit on my take-home exams, good at getting professors to like me and forgive late assignments. I was good at filling my schedule with gut courses that boosted my GPA enough to get me into a decent business school. But then reality set in. Two jobs -- and a failed marriage -- in two years. Though I knew Self& Cross was one of the biggest consulting firms in New York, I hadn’t done much homework on their service lines and didn’t know much about the position I was interviewing for.  All I knew was that I was supposed to meet with Dan Wiley, one of the Managing Directors, and a couple of his underlings. The gullible recruiter who cold-called me about the position had accepted the vague generalities I offered her about my last two jobs without any questions. Still, she hadn’t prepped me very well, particularly on how I should explain my thus-far spotty employment history. A year at Cannon Wise. Followed by a year – well, almost – at S&B.

As I indulged in a round of self-pity, a woman in a black pantsuit barged into the conference room, taking long, heavy strides as she walked past me. Broad-shouldered, heavy-chested, and a big-ass mountain of blond hair. She skimmed my resume and chewed on the end of a Bic pen she had apparently brought from her previous meeting.

“Monica Tomes,” she said, 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, shaking her head.

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

“Easton University,” she said. “Impressive.” She turned the page over and put it on the table. “So Philip, you were with Sullivan & Baker, huh? Terrific firm. They certainly give us a run for our money.”

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

“So,” Monica said, leaning back in her chair, cracking a smile. “How did you bastards at S&B land a big consulting gig like the Crosby Project?”

I had never heard of any “Crosby Project.” But even someone as low in the pecking order as I had been knew Crosby Enterprises was one of Sullivan & Baker’s largest accounts. I didn’t want to spoil the positive start to the interview by telling her I had no idea what she was talking about. So I searched my brain for an appropriate, even if evasive, answer to her question.

“I know, I know, trade secrets,” she said, laughing. “Of course, you can’t share any details. But global supply chain is an area this company’s been trying to break into for years, decades, even.  I know S&B has, too.  Dan and I are dying to know how the Crosby Project went.”

 Somehow, Monica and this Dan fellow seem to think that I’d been directly involved in some engagement for Crosby when I was at S&B. Whatever it was, it was important. And at the moment, as unprepared as I was, my only hook.

When I was in high school – the second one -- I remembered listening to my stepfather, Art, on the phone, taking credit for a deal that his underlings had pulled off with little or no help from him. “Biggest commission check I ever earned for no work,” he bragged to one of his sales colleagues. When the regional VP of sales called the next day to congratulate him and started asking too many questions about how he had landed the order, Art stared into the speakerphone in his home office, at a loss for words.  “It was a team effort,” he said. I learned that diffusing credit was an excellent way to avoid explaining how much – or how little – someone did.

“It was a team effort,” I told Monica.

#

My last day at S&B had been a short one. The white cardboard box the HR rep handed me with my copies of the termination paperwork was barely half full as I put the last of my few personal possessions into it. Two textbooks from my MBA classes. The notebook with no notes in it. The atomic clock shaped like a trumpet. The four boxes of felt-tip pens I’d swiped out of the supply cabinet on the 17^th floor. I stared at the corners of the lid and thought about how I had carefully folded the sides of the box together moments ago.  Open side A, pull side B and side C.

A lanky kid whose nameplate read, “R. Gabriel” could not have been older than twenty. He opened his bronze, chiseled arms as I carefully sealed the box. “Do you need me to carry that, sir?”

Sir? Did I look that much older than him?

I didn’t need any help; the box couldn’t have weighed more than a few pounds. But I needed to feel in charge for a moment, so I nodded yes. R. Gabriel effortlessly picked up the box with a single oversized hand and waited for me to walk ahead of him.  I glanced around the office to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind besides my self-esteem.

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. Every high-priced consulting firm like Sullivan & Baker has a back exit, a kind of underground railroad for the discarded. R. placed the box on the freshly cleaned carpet in the back of my heavily debt-laden 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. Technically.

My eleven months with Sullivan & Baker had been a slow death by drudgery in a cubicle, though a bit of a step up from my first job with another management consulting firm, Cannon Wise.  I had thought my pedigreed business schooling at Easton University would be enough to land me a decent job after graduation, but after being rejected for each of the fifty different management consulting 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 interviews 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 kind thirty-ish-year-old manager named Marvin Craymeyer Soul, 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 resting on the table.

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

“Of course,” I said, surprised by his question. I picked at the links in the silver braided band of my Tissot watch with the edge of the fingernail I’d bitten off while in the lobby waiting for my interview to start. “Why else would I be here?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering,” Marvin said sarcastically. He twirled his pen between his fingers. “I’m not detecting any enthusiasm in this conversation. That you really want to work for our firm.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Am I doing something wrong?”

Marvin made it clear that I’d bombed the interview, but as a gesture of goodwill, he spent the next twenty minutes coaching me on posture, handshake, how to answer questions, and how to close the meeting. How to look him in the eye. No one else had ever bothered to explain these things to me.  It was enough to help me nail my next interview with Cannon Wise, a second-rate firm of morons that valued appearances more than content. Technically, they didn’t fire me; I was downsized out. A downsizing of one.

Lesson learned.

#

“Sure, sure,” Monica said. “A team effort. But you must have had a major role in it if Dan’s heard about you.”

I was growing more and more confused but dared not give myself away. Or else, my one shot at making a first impression would crash and burn.

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

“I know someone at your level won’t always get the glory,” she said. “But you’ve had to have gotten some decent visibility out of it. Carl Crosby is an absolute legend in the business. I assume you’ve been in many 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 her saliva-wettened Bic pen over my resume. “Good education. Worked for a reputable firm. Why would you want to come here?”

Though I had my usual job-hopping excuse speech rehearsed, the conversation had taken an unexpected turn. I had to think quickly.

“I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Monica,” I said, learning forward in my chair. “One great project doesn’t make a career. I don’t think S&B really has 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 said, nodding. “Tell me more.”

And tell her more, I did. A masterful bouquet of embellishments followed, making 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. First, playing up my humble roots, a working-class kid from Lancaster who’d made it into Easton University.  Emphasizing the subjects in my business school coursework that sounded better with the word “global” in front of them. Then I told the Cannon Wise tale of woe, expressing my dismay that a reputable firm could have wasted my abilities with such low-level work, dealing with relatively unimportant (though “global”) clients. Nonetheless, I had demonstrated my loyalty by sticking with the firm for almost a year, seeking counsel, and doing whatever was required. Until I realized 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, yet many people are perfectly happy to see us operate the same way we always have.” (I used that same line during my interview with S&B.)

I knew I had Monica sold, especially when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the carefully hidden thumbs up she gave to my next interviewer, Lance Crowley, as she opened the door for him. I repeated the story to Lance, sans the part about the shithole town I’d grown up in, emphasizing my interest and experience in supply chain but making sure he understood that I was open to other suitable 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 Sellers & Cross's success. Globally.

So far, no one except Monica had asked if I’d ever even met a client. If my luck held out, no one else would.  But, after all, did experience really matter? People with far fewer smarts than I had were successful in the management consulting business because they got others to do the work for them and were good at bullshitting their way through whatever they didn’t understand.

Art was a prime example. All I ever heard him talk about was “The Deal.” Sometimes 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, in high school, I borrowed the desktop computer in the spare bedroom that Art liked to call his “home office” to print an essay I’d paid Alex Krebs twenty-five dollars to write for me. I left the paper on Art’s desk. Mom told me not to disturb him, saying he was deep in thought, preparing some important presentation. But it was past ten o’clock, and I had to hand in the paper the next day.  I knocked on the door and, hearing no response, 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.  His usual glass of scotch was in his left hand.

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

“Let me show you something, Philip,” Art said, turning the notepad to a clean sheet of paper. I watched him draw an x-axis and a y-axis, then plot a rising curve over a straight line. “The fundamentals of The Deal. A customer will always tell you his needs are stable,” he said, drawing over the flat line, “but will tell everyone else that his business is growing.” He plotted some points along the curve. “Here, in between, is the opportunity,” he said. He shaded 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 not required to get ahead. Just choose your words carefully enough and make sure you stay in control of other people’s impressions.   And draw a picture.

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

I fingered the ten laser-printed pages, hoping Alex Kreb’s prose would also make a good impression.

#

Stacy told me that “preliminary feedback” was good. “Dan may want to meet with you for a final round,” she said. “I understand he was interested in ... “ She flipped through a couple of pages in her red notebook. “A particular project you worked on at your last company.”

Good Lord, the Crosby Project again.

“But he was unexpectedly called out of town,” she continued. “So he may rely on Monica’s assessment. Assuming he’s good with it, well . . .”

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

#

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 as a customer success manager 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 truth was that she was a lot busier than I was, and a lot more needed.  So we avoided discussing our work, agreeing that my poor job choice was a mistake we had to live with for a while to pay the rent on our cozy new townhouse.  Truthfully, there had been no “choice” other than to take the job with Cannon Wise, and I was the only one living with it. But we pretended I was making a career sacrifice for us. That entitled me to an occasional diversion.

Linda rarely did anything domestic, so it was a surprise that she took my jackets to the cleaners one Saturday morning. When she returned, her glum look was unusual, almost a rare treat, given how bored with her frozen smiles I’d become.

“This yours?” she said, holding up a crinkled foil condom 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. “I always check for stray objects.” She flicked the wrapper at me like I was one of those stray objects.

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

“And you must think I’m a fucking idiot.”

I said nothing.

Stray objects can be so inconvenient. I remembered the day Art had given me the Deal speech. After he left his office, I picked up the notepad with his X-Y diagram and flipped to the page before, where I found 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 months our savings would last. Even Art realized that his luck might run out someday.

Just like mine had.

“Want to try that again?” Linda said. “Are you seeing another woman?”

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

“Another man, maybe?”

“Not ... exactly,” I finally said.

Not exactly. Those two words ended my marriage.

#

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 that 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, particularly 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.  Nelson. 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. It’s imperative that you attend.”

I started to form the words in my head. I’m afraid I don’t know Nelson. But a truthful answer would doom me.

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

“No,” I said, trying my best to sound confident. “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 new girlfriend, Jan. She understood perfectly, knowing the demanding hours I would be expected to keep in my new role.  It wasn’t a surprise to her 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 and read and reread the complicated Request for Proposal, very little of it making sense to me. Desperate, I pulled some old business school textbooks off the shelf, searching in vain for definitions of all the acronyms and terms of art dispersed throughout the thick binder. 4PL. APM.  EDI.  VMI.

I’m doomed.

What disturbed me more than my lack of understanding of the project itself was that my bio and credentials had somehow 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 credibility my name brought to the table.

I began to panic. An innocent stretch of the truth, a white half lie I’d used to make a favorable impression, had forced me into this position. I toyed with the idea of calling Dan Wiley and admitting the truth. Little good that would do at this point, other than saving Dan the embarrassment of having me in the room.

What would Marvin Craymeyer Soul do in such a situation?

What would Art do?

By three in the morning, my brain was overtaken by drowsiness, and I felt something more powerful than fear. I felt hope. Hope that 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 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. I put on my best frozen smile and glanced at my reflection in the glass door. My charcoal gray Hugo Boss suit did a nice job of concealing my tiredness, though that one uneven strand of hair resting on my upper left temple, the one that was never quite right, seemed to kill my otherwise confident look. I straightened my Dior black-and-gray tie and entered the room.

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 me talk unless we call on you, okay?”

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

Dan stood at the head of the table and suggested we get started. Dressed in an expensive black suit, he was 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 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 into my lower lip, trying to focus. Nelson Breiling had been jotting down something in a notebook while Dan was finishing, and at first, I thought he hadn’t even heard his last sentence. But then he put down his pen and looked straight at me. I hadn’t noticed earlier how sunken his eye sockets were, how his nostrils flared widely like the wings of an airplane. I thought he might attack me at any moment.

Then he turned back to Dan.

“Who in hell is he?” he said.

#

After leaving the meeting, I retreated to my cubicle and pretended to be busy with something on my computer.  Then, I ran into Monica in the hallway on the way out to lunch.

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

“Well, I remember you mentioning it, sure,” I said. My mind was racing, trying to devise a convincing explanation for what I knew Monica was about to grill me over.

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

“Well, actually, you did, Monica. You said Dan had told you he’d heard about it. Though I’m still not sure from 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 maybe did some sort of work on it, yes, but --”

“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 exactly.”

“Not exactly?” Monica said 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. However, I believe there was a Nelson Cheever involved. Perhaps I’d been confused about the name.”

“Nelson Cheever?” Monica threw up her hands. “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?”

Then Monica showed me her teeth.  I swore she had learned that deadly frozen smile from my ex-wife.

#

I arrived at the office the following day a bit after nine. “Something’s going on, Philip,” Lance said, not even bothering to wish me a good morning.

“I know.”

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

“Yeah.” Truthfully, I had. 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 fucking Crosby Project came up. None of this was my fault. It was Monica’s mistake.”

Lance seemed puzzled by my response. “I don’t understand why you didn’t set her straight,” Lance said. “Why didn’t you tell her she must have you confused with someone else?  You never denied it. You used her mistake to your advantage 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 said. “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 complicated diagram I had fashioned the night before.  “See, I even put it in pictures, to show him. He’ll get it, Lance. He’ll totally get it.”

I pointed to the x- and y-axes, then the red curve over a straight black line. “The client will always tell you his needs are stable,” I said, “but will tell everyone else that his business is growing. Here, in between, is the opportunity.”

Lance stared at me, his face twisted. “Dan’s no goddamn fool, Philip.”

“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.  He began to pace back and forth, looking down at the maroon carpet. “Or he knows at least one person well enough to find out that S&B fired you for gross incompetence.”

Gross incompetence. Lance’s words stung almost as much as the first time I heard them. I had nothing more to say. 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. Just like the one R. Gabriel had carried out of S&B. Same easy assembly instructions. Open side A, and pull side B and side C. Only this time I had to carry it myself, listening to the hulking security guard behind me, breathing heavily, the ring of keys jingling as they bounced against his left thigh.

When I was sixteen, I sat beside a cardboard box in another car. I had tried not to cry when Art pulled up to the front of the school the day I’d been expelled. I hadn’t been a particularly good student but had managed to get by for the two years I attended Harmon Day Academy. Harmon offered more education than my parents could afford and certainly more education than I could absorb. The work became more rigorous and demanding during my junior year. In 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. I was destined to fail one of those requirements.

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 to get through all the research that Gunn expected. I had composed as fast as I could, 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 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.

That was when I invented a historian named Nelson Cheever and a fictitious essay, titled “The Social and Political Causes of the First World War.” I footnoted it four times in my term paper in near-perfect MLA format.

It was the first time I’d been caught cheating.

I ran my hand over the smooth top of yet another cardboard box. Barely a day's worth of a career filled it as if I had only enough time to pack up half a life. Sometimes, it felt good to travel light. 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. It was Bart, one of my former business school classmates.

"How goes the new job, buddy?" he said.

"I'm afraid it's not going to work out.”

"Not going to, Philip – it's been like 48 hours! How can you tell so soon?"

"It's not what I expected. 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 don’t think I have the right temperament for it.”

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

Research, I thought. That was something I had always done well. Ever since my school days at Harmon Day.

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