"March 1998," Amos repeated. "The digital library, which this company describes in its own paperwork as complete, holds not one custom formula from the first twenty-six years of this company's existence. Not Marlene Blue as made — the Studio sells a Marlene Blue, Elena, a good approximation a laboratory derived from a painted sample, like a man humming a song he heard through a wall. Not the river. Not the shell pink. Not Gus's green." He rested both hands on the edge of the slab. "The archive is not the copy, Julie. The archive is the original; the library is the copy, with the first half of the book torn out. And on Friday, Facilities was going to shred the original to save the rent on eleven boxes of shelf space. Somebody wrote the words digitization review so nobody would have to write the word shredding, and a great many somebodies signed where they were told to sign. Now we do the rest of the paper."
Robert Kessler arrived at ten with a banker's box of his own, carried down the stairs like evidence into a courtroom. Kessler was fifty-seven, regional manager, thirty-one years with the company; it was his voice in the Studio yesterday — "Mr. Hartley. He owns this company." — that had ended Dylan Marsh's laughter and begun everything since. He set the box on the slab, took off the lid, and said nothing. His job this morning was the box.
"Before we open Robert's box," Amos said, "the Charter, so that everything we look at is looked at against something." He took the folded photocopy from his breast pocket. "Founders' Charter of the Hartley Paint Company. Nineteen seventy-two, the year we opened Store Number One, when the whole company was me and Marlene and a mixer we bought on time. Renewed and re-executed eight years ago, when I retired from the presidency, at the board's request and with my signature. Page two, Elena. Read it."
Elena read: "'This Charter may be amended in any particular only with the written consent of Amos Hartley, during his lifetime.'"
"And the promises," Amos said. "Three of them. Read the three."
"'One. The Second Coat Promise. If a Hartley color is not right in the customer's room — not right by the customer's own judgment — the second gallon is free, without argument and without charge. Two. The Hartley Apprenticeship. Two paid places each year, for young people who show the eye, chosen from the neighborhoods the company serves. Three. The Color Archive. Every custom formula card made by this company shall be kept, intact, in perpetuity, because the archive is the company's memory and a company that loses its memory will eventually lose everything else.'"
"Without argument and without charge," Amos said. "Chosen from the neighborhoods the company serves. In perpetuity. She said a promise with a soft middle is a sponge — Marlene did. Now, Robert. Show us what the company has been keeping instead."
The memo was on top, because Kessler had arranged the box in the order of a man who had lain awake arranging it. RETAIL POLICY MEMORANDUM 22-114, eighteen months old, from the office of the Vice President of Retail. Amos read the signature first — he believed in reading signatures first, the way you look at the name on a card before the formula: Heather Collins. Then he read the operative paragraph aloud, slowly.
"'Effective immediately, fulfillment under the Second Coat Promise requires (a) approval of the store or department manager; (b) documentation that the original application met Hartley surface-preparation standards; and (c) a determination that the color variance is not attributable to application error by the customer.'"
He set it down.
"Application error," he said. "For fifty years we operated on the understanding that if a woman stands in her kitchen at seven in the morning and the green she chose under our lights turns swamp-colored under hers, the green is wrong. Not her eyes. Not her walls. Not her preparation. The green. The genius of the promise — Marlene's genius, not mine — was that we took the argument out of it. The customer was the instrument. Now read me the file, Robert. The denials."
Kessler had tabbed the file. He had the look of a man who had spent eighteen months knowing a thing was wrong, and had filed it anyway. Amos did not spare him, but he did not strike him either. Today was for paper.
"The denials are logged at region level," Kessler said. "Thirty-one in the last eighteen months, across nine stores. My file has fourteen that I upheld under the memo, Amos. My initials are on them."
"Then read the first one with your initials on it," Amos said. "Read it like it's a formula card, Robert. Names and all."
Kessler read: "'Request SP-2214. Customer: Margaret Hale, age seventy-one, Widow. Store: Fulton Street flagship. Customer purchased two gallons Hartley interior eggshell, color 'Study Green' — a custom match to her existing walls — to repaint the study of her late husband, deceased in March. Customer states the dried color differs visibly from the wet sample and reads black in north light. Requested: one gallon, second coat, under the Promise. Determination: denied. Grounds: customer applied over existing finish without Hartley primer; application error. Manager approval withheld.'"