"That the executive experience is non-negotiable." Rosa said it in a perfect imitation of someone's crisp voice β Diane Foster's, Yvette guessed. "Meanwhile Harlan's been asking for new vacuum filters for six months and getting told to 'make do.' The executives get orchids. We get 'make do.'"
Yvette filed that away with everything else. She was learning that a company's values weren't in its mission statement. They were in its supply closet.
They were finishing the second restroom when the door opened and Peter Vaughn walked in.
Yvette's hands went still on the mop handle. He didn't look at her β not really. His eyes passed over the two women in grey polos the way eyes pass over furniture, the way his eyes had passed over her in the lobby on Monday, except that on Monday he had at least pointed. Today she was fully invisible, and the invisibility was so complete it felt like a kind of power. He went to the far urinal, and while he stood there, his phone rang, and he answered it, because men like Peter Vaughn answered their phones in restrooms.
"Yeah, I'm here," he said. "Listen, the integration deck goes to the board Friday after the town hall, and I need the headcount slide locked by tomorrow. The ERG line items β" he paused, listening, "β no, cut them. All of them. The women's network, the Black professionals group, all of it. It's overhead, it's divisive, and frankly it's the first thing Langston will want gone anyway. New owners always clean house on that stuff. Put the savings under 'synergy realization.'"
Yvette kept mopping. Her face showed nothing. Inside, something cold and precise was taking notes.
"And the calibration memos," Vaughn went on. "Make sure Foster's team has the new bands ready. I want the bottom ten percent identified before the town hall so we can move fast next week. The usual distribution β you know the drill." He laughed at something the other person said. "Yeah, well. Some people are just a better fit for where we're going."
He finished, washed his hands with the four-dollar towels β two of them β and walked out without a glance at either woman. The door swung shut. Rosa let out a long breath.
"ERG line items," Rosa said quietly. "That's the employee groups. The mentoring circles. My daughter's in the first-gen college group β they paid for her textbooks last semester." She looked at Yvette. "You heard all that, right?"
"I heard it."
"Good. Somebody should." Rosa went back to her polishing, but her hands were moving faster now, angry. "You know what 'the usual distribution' means? It means the same people always end up in the bottom ten percent. Always. It's like the building decides before the reviews even start."
Yvette wanted to ask a hundred questions. Instead she asked the one that mattered most. "Rosa β the calibration. How does it work? Who decides?"
"Foster's team runs it. Managers submit ratings, then there's a closed-door session where they 'normalize.' That's the word they use. Normalize." Rosa's mouth twisted. "My friend in payroll told me last year they moved eleven people down a band in that room. Eleven. And you know what those eleven had in common? I shouldn't say. But you can guess."
Yvette could guess. She had seen the data in a dozen companies, the same pattern wearing different clothes. But guessing wasn't evidence, and Yvette Langston had built her career on the difference between the two.
They finished the restrooms in silence, and it was past ten before they took the cart down to the fifth floor, where the engineering teams lived. The fifth floor was a different country: whiteboards covered in diagrams, standing desks, the smell of overheated electronics and cold brew. Rosa pointed Yvette at a break room with a sink full of dishes and a trash can overflowing with takeout containers, and Yvette got to work while Rosa restocked the supply nook down the hall.
She was elbow-deep in someone's abandoned protein shaker when a young man came in, saw her, and stopped.
"Oh β sorry," he said. "I can come back."
"It's fine," Yvette said. "I'm just the trash."
He winced. "Don't say that. You're β" He gestured vaguely. "You're keeping the place running."
He was twenty-seven or so, Black, with tired eyes and a laptop covered in stickers, one of which read I SHIP BUGS FIX THEM LATER in peeling letters. He set his laptop on the counter and started making tea, and Yvette noticed the way he kept glancing at the door, the way people glance when they're somewhere they're not sure they belong.
"Long night?" she asked.
"Long year." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I'm Malik, by the way. Malik Thompson."
"Yvette. Temp."
"Welcome to Crestview, Yvette-who-is-temp." He poured hot water over his tea bag. "You planning to stay?"
"Just the week."
"Smart." He leaned against the counter. "Get in, get out, don't let the place get its hooks in you."