Soft Skull: H2O by Mark Swartz

Chapter 1
As the sun dropped behind a huddle of frightened towers, the hotel's photosensitive curtain-wall system responded with a well-stocked bar of color transformations: from stout to port, from cabernet to scotch whisky, to gold rum to champagne, then the color of just-poured seltzer. The temperature dropped below freezing without dispersing the static electricity that Chicago accumulates in the winter.
At the front desk I tried to charm my way into a room upgrade, but my knack had abandoned me, and the plastic-complexioned woman withdrew behind a cold smile.
"Name"
"Shivers."
Unfortunately, she said, the Executive Suites were all booked, but would I like her to put me down for a table in the Pepper Mill? After this evening, reservations would be hard to come by. She looked like she'd be cool to the touch: even the hair was frosted. When I asked what was good in the restaurant, she laughed courteously and started to turn away, but then, asking my name again, remembered there was a message for me. Would I wait there just a minute?

The Brahms lobby smelled like spent fireworks. Plumes of smoke rose up through the light fixtures toward the distant glassy heights of the atrium, where open louvers failed to stir the air.

The way the smoke softened the light made everybody look slightly debauched. Young executives were swinging hand-tooled leather bags and fetching each other frothy cocktails. I noticed high-end sport coats and Italian shoes, rows of even white teeth set in glowing bronze faces, bodies engineered like aerodynamic instruments. A silk banner billowed from the top of the atrium: Zodia Welcomes the Northeast Tax Action.

I took a seat at the bar, alternately eating cashew nuts and lighting them on fire with complementary matches while listening to two Zodiacs converse, a prelude to something sordid.

"Most magnificent and most unusual. They tell me the architect was a blind man from Brazil."

"Argentina. Desvio-Jardin."

"Legally blind, but his buildings are works of art. This atrium."

"An engineering feat without precedent, anchoring the building into the riverbed. The current supplies half the hotel's electricity and maintains a steady temperature in the rooms summer and winter."

"I could die here in the atrium. Happily."

"You probably know that it's also a destination for a special kind of pilgrimage, each spring. Every year around this time, sick and blind people register at the hotel and order a predawn wakeup call. When the hour comes, they take the elevator down to lobby and, on their own or perhaps with some assistance, drag their seats to the atrium. The first half hour or forty minutes of daylight have a particular quality. I won't say spiritual."

"Yes, I think I'm feeling something. Or maybe it's the vodka lemon!"

"And the thing about it is. The thing is that this architectural effect, if that's what you call it, cannot be reproduced. Other architects have attempted to remake the building in different cities, using the same designs, the same materials."

"Nothing."

"Yes, some things happen only once."

All nuts burn, but some kinds burn better than others. The cashews burnt blue and very slowly, leaving smudges and piles of ash in a foil ashtray. The viability of nuts as an alternative energy source was occupying my mind when the desk attendant beckoned with a small square card.

It was printed with the Drixa trident logo and the words Miyumi Park, Human Resources. Same logo as mine, same raised lettering, same card stock. Something was set in motion. I knew myself to be capable of falling painfully in love with a dimple in the street or a well-turned ankle on a staircase, but this was my first time with a business card.
Partly it was the name, of course, the me-you-me promise of complex mattress gymnastics, but much deadlier was the moist oval, still warm, from the bearer's thumb pad. You could almost make out the whorls, and they didn't belong to the chilly hand on the other side of the desk.
I reclaimed my barstool and asked for a lemonade. Sometimes it doesn't help to have advance notice before making a first impression, and when she approached I was in the process of attempting not to rehearse what to say first. Her hair swayed, her skin glowed. Her waist joined her hips obscenely beneath all that wool. Her eyes never stopped monitoring the lobby. She asked what I was drinking.

"Assuming the glass holds eight ounces," I responded, "that would be seven ounces water, the rest comprising sodium fluoride, sodium hydroxide, potassium permanganate..." After another sip, I added, "phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and petroleum-based lemon flavoring. Plus other trace elements too numerous to mention. Would you like one?"

There were three big public-private ventures in town. Zodia brought newspapers, garbage collection, and law enforcement under one umbrella, and the former think tank that still went by the name Committee of Lifelong Access oversaw universities, real estate, and beverages other than water. Drixa did water, utilities, and the post.
With the scarf at her throat, cameo on her collar, gold bracelet on one perfumed wrist, analog watch on the other, Miyumi had the air of a more graceful time, though her outlook was thoroughly contemporary. She emphasized Drixa's policy of fielding an extremely wide range of candidates for top positions. The appointment of a Chief Engineer would help to chart the company's course for the next several years, and she had the freedom to interview anybody she had even the slightest hunch about, regardless of their background and experience.

"That's why I'm with Drixa," she said, "because they let me experiment. Science made this company great, so why should experimentation stop at the lab?"

"I do like the idea," I said, not certain whether I was being told that I was a candidate for Chief Engineer, "of treating everything like an experiment. Once you set up the conditions, you stick with them and wait to see how things turn out. If you altered them in the middle, you'd never know whether your outcome resulted from the first conditions, the second conditions, or from the switch. Experiments are to learn from." This was a lie. Scientists altered their experiments midstream all the time. Knowing how to fudge data was what separated the good ones from the bad ones. But even I knew better than to tell the truth about the truth during what might be job interview.

"Exactly," Miyumi said, squeezing my kneecap encouragingly. Her long, elegant hand weighed hardly anything, and the warmth through my pants multiplied in my bloodstream. "As you know, we've run a few experiments of our own this past year, and we've always had Lionel's total support, even when things got crazy with the four-day workweek."

"It was my understanding that the staff had expressed a preference. Many of us considered it, if not an outright success, then a valuable experience for the entire company. It's a nice hotel."

"We never said not to go home; we just provided the hotel rooms for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday if you wanted to stay. A lot of people took advantage of our offer, and most of those people thought it worked. I thought it worked. Sure, there were some complications, and we hadn't anticipated the way the Tribune would go after us, but personally? Personally I got to know people in ways that wouldn't have been possible under traditional workplace routines. Those relationships I built during those six weeks are already proving valuable going forward."

"If people get bent out of shape, Hallelujah. Who says things can't snap back into shape after you're done stretching them?"

"Egg-ZACT-ly!" Miyumi said. "Who says? And what good is a company where people aren't willing to be wrong once in while? That's how Lionel puts it. If you bet right every time, you're betting too safe."

As with the leaders of all successful companies, Drixa's was invariably referred to by his first name. I knew him only from video but felt a special kinship with him because he, too, had once designed filters.

As Assistant Designer, Filters and Drains, I had never thought of myself as Chief Engineer material. I had the engineering degree from Cal Tech and the Brooks Brothers suit (second-hand, anyway), but the qualities and imponderables that distinguished a leader were nevertheless missing from my posture, which never seemed to find a comfortable notch between slouching and standing at attention; and my gaze, which consistently landed on the far sides of intensity and slackness. Not to mention by handshake, which always seemed to grip too early or too late.

She said, "Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses. Don't skimp on the weaknesses, either. I've heard them all."

"I worry too much about the wrong things and not enough about the right things. I remember all kinds of things better forgotten and vice versa. And... Then I remembered how to act during a job interview, if that's what this was. "Strength one, creative. Strength two, focused. Three, total dedication to the Drixa mission." My impression of Drixa Director Lionel Dawson's feathery rumble required no explanation.

"Don't forget snappy dresser." She twiddled a cufflink.

"That's a custom-made twill shirt."

"Custom made for somebody, anyhow," she allowed. Plucking a tiny phone from her bag, Miyumi paused to let the winterlight play a melody on her lips. "Okay, here's your big chance," she said. "You're Lionel, and the car you sent for your dinner companions is late. Tell them it's not acceptable."

Like much of the staff, I had an impersonation of Lionel Dawson, but mine was recognized as uncanny. I let some gravel into my larynx: "This is Lionel. The car I sent? Yes, no, it's still not there. This is unacceptable." I asked rhetorically, "How long have they been waiting there? Upwards of twenty minutes?"

"Upwards," she confirmed.

"Upwards," I repeated and hit the off button.

"Onwards," she said, slipping the phone back into my inside jacket pocket. She took my arm and walked me to the car at the moment it rolled into the breezeway. We climbed on all fours into the back, giggling like prom dates...