Chapter 72 Conflict of interest
Chapter 72 Conflict of interest
"It was a bad afternoon." I say.
Because I feel like I need to say something. Because sitting in silence across a small table from Daniel Ashford while my eyes are still doing the thing is more than I have the capacity for right now.
"I gathered." he says.
"We had a disagreement. In the square. My group." I look at the table. "Roe said something that was not unkind and was not wrong and hit something that had nothing to do with him or with the competition or with Paris and I walked away before I said something I could not take back and then I almost walked into a van."
"What did he say?" Daniel asks.
I look at him.
"It's not that deep." I say.
Daniel is quiet for a moment.
"And it is." he says. Not a question.
"It always has been." I say. "I am the only person who knows how deep it is and I am tired of being in rooms where people keep telling me to make it smaller."
The espressos arrive.
Small white cups.
The coffee inside them the colour of something that means business.
I wrap both hands around the cup the way my mother wraps both hands around her tea mug in the kitchen in the mornings and the thought of my mother in the kitchen does something to my chest that I breathe through quietly.
Daniel picks up his cup.
He does not drink immediately.
He looks at the cup.
"The things that matter are always deeper than the people around you are comfortable with." he says. He says it to the cup, not to me, in the voice of someone saying something they have thought before rather than something they are producing for the occasion. "The comfortable response is to make them smaller. The correct response is to find the people who are not made uncomfortable by the depth."
I look at him.
He looks at his cup.
He takes a sip.
I take a sip.
The espresso is very good.
Strong and dark and completely certain of what it is, the kind of coffee that does not apologise for being coffee.
We sit.
The café does its warm small thing around us.
Paris does its thing outside the window.
And for approximately four minutes, which is the longest four minutes I have experienced in this city, Daniel Ashford and I sit at a small round table with our espressos and we do not argue and we do not note things and we do not perform anything for anyone and it is, I will not say this out loud, the most comfortable I have felt in a public space in weeks.
I am about to say something.
I do not know what.
Something true, possibly.
Something in the category of things I say to Elise at eleven at night when I have stopped performing and started just talking.
I open my mouth.
The café door opens.
\---
Callum comes in the way Callum enters most spaces, with the advance awareness of a man who has already decided he belongs there, and he scans the room with the efficiency of someone looking for something specific and finds it at the table at the back and his face does three things in approximately two seconds.
Recognition.
Calculation.
Irritation.
He crosses the café, pauses at our table and looks at Daniel.
He looks at me.
He looks at Daniel again.
"This is a conflict of interest." he says.
His voice is aggravating in the way of a man who has constructed a reasonable sounding position and is delivering it with the confidence of someone who believes the construction is sound.
"A judge meeting privately with a competitor outside of formal competition settings is a direct violation of the conduct standards Dr. Fontaine outlined at the Stage 3 briefing. I would be reporting this!."
He looks at Daniel with the expression of a man who believes he has just played a strong card.
Daniel puts his espresso cup down.
He looks at it for a moment.
Then he looks up at Callum.
And I watch, from across the small round table, a man who has been in boardrooms and acquisition meetings and probably rooms that had significantly higher stakes than a small Paris café with warm walls and strong coffee, look at Callum Weston with the calm specific patience of someone who has the time.
"Mr. Weston." he says.
"Yes." Callum says.
"The conduct guidelines Dr. Fontaine outlined prohibit candidates from initiating contact with judges outside formal evaluation settings." Daniel says.
"They do not prohibit judges from being in public spaces in a city in which a competition is being held. They do not prohibit judges from sitting in cafes. And they do not prohibit judges from purchasing coffee for a person who was, sixty seconds before entering this establishment, standing on the edge of a road with tears on her face and almost no awareness of the traffic moving through it." He picks up his cup.
"I bought her an espresso. If you would like to note that formally, Dr. Fontaine's office is on the ground floor of Hotel Beaumont. She is there between nine and six on weekdays. I would suggest going before five because she has a meeting at five fifteen in the evenings that runs long."
He takes a sip of his espresso.
He puts the cup down.
He looks at it.
He does not look back at Callum.
The café continues around us.
Someone at another table asks for the bill.
The coffee machine behind the counter makes the sound coffee machines make.
Callum stands at the side of our table.
He looks at Daniel.
Daniel looks at his cup.
He looks at me.
I look at my cup.
He looks at Daniel again.
Daniel does not look at him.
Callum straightens his jacket.
He turns.
He walks out of the café.
The door closes.
Daniel picks up his cup.
He finishes his espresso.
He puts the cup down.
He looks at me.
"You were about to say something." he says.
I look at him.
At the grey eyes and the dark coat and the white shirt and the complete absence of any indication that what just happened cost him anything at all, that Callum Weston walked into a café and accused him of a conflict of interest and he addressed it with the specific energy of someone swatting a fly and went back to his coffee.
I was about to say something.
I was about to say something true.
Something in the category of things I say to Elise.
I find you terrifying, I was going to say. In a way I cannot categorise and have stopped trying to. In a way that has nothing to do with you being a judge or having a Rolls Royce or being on the same plane to Paris or standing at ice machines at midnight. Just in a way. That is all I have.
I look at my cup.
"Nothing." I say. "It was nothing."
He looks at me for one moment.
One.
"Alright." he says.
He does not push.
He signals for the bill.
The waiter brings it.
Daniel takes it before I see the number.
"You don't have to—" I start.
"I know." he says.
He pays.
He stands.
He puts his coat straight.
He looks at me.
"Go back to your group." he says. "You have seventy one hours."
"I know." I say.
"And Sera." he says.
I look up.
It is the first time he has used my name.
Not Ms. Calloway.
Not the formal address.
Just my name.
Two syllables.
The way it sounds when it is just a name and nothing performative is around it.
"The depth is not the problem." he says. "The problem is the rooms. Find better rooms."
He turns.
He walks out of the café.
The door closes.
I sit at the small round table with my empty espresso cup and the warm walls and the sound of the coffee machine and the Paris afternoon doing its grey beautiful thing outside the window.
Find better rooms.
Two syllables.
My name.