He leans over, placing a hand on my shoulder. “About your statement at the meeting just now. Very nice,” says the section chief warmly. “Very simply put, very pivotal. I was impressed. Points well taken. The whole room buzzed at that statement of yours. The timing was perfect, too. Yessir, you keep ’em coming like that.”

And he glides off. Probably to lunch. I thank him straight out, but the honest truth is I’m taken aback. I mean, I don’t remember a thing of what I said at the meeting. Why does the section chief have to come all the way over to my desk to praise me for that? There have to be more brilliant examples of Homo loquens around here. Strange. I go on eating my lunch, uncomprehending. Then I think about the wife. Wonder what she’s up to right now. Out to lunch? Maybe I ought to give her a call, exchange a few words, anything. I dial the first three digits, have second thoughts, hang up. I have no reason to be calling her. My world may be crumbling, out of balance, but is that a reason to ring up her office? What can I say about all this, anyway? Besides, I hate calling her at work. I set down the receiver, let out a sigh, and finish off my coffee. Then I toss the Styrofoam cup into the wastebasket.

AT ONE OF THE AFTERNOON MEETINGS, I see TV People again. This time, their number has increased by two. Just as on the previous day, they come traipsing across the conference room, carrying a Sony color TV. A model one size bigger. Uh-oh. Sony’s the rival camp. If, for whatever reason, any competitor’s product gets brought into our offices, there’s hell to pay, barring when other manufacturers’ products are brought in for test comparisons, of course. But then we take pains to remove the company logo—just to make sure no outside eyes happen upon it. Little do the TV People care: The Sony mark is emblazoned for all to see. They open the door and march right into the conference room, flashing it in our direction. Then they parade the thing around the room, scanning the place for somewhere to set it down, until at last, not finding any location, they carry it backward out the door. The others in the room show no reaction to the TV People. And they can’t have missed them. No, they’ve definitely seen them. And the proof is they even got out of the way, clearing a path for the TV People to carry their television through. Still, that’s as far as it went: a reaction no more alarmed than when the nearby coffee shop delivered. They’d made it a ground rule not to acknowledge the presence of the TV People. The others all knew they were there; they just acted as if they weren’t.