Feeling grandly lonely, and only a little frightened, he gripped the key with both hands, closed his eyes, relaxed, and let it tug him forward. It was like riding the rope tow at a ski slope. The key parted an invisible seam in the air and drew him swiftly forward and with a delightful sense of acceleration through some highly convenient sub-dimension back to the stone terrace out behind the house at Brakebills. The pain of going back was great, but the necessity was greater. He had one last piece of business to take care of, and then it really would all be over forever.

KINGS AND QUEENS

KINGS AND QUEENS

As the junior member of the PlaxCo account team, associate management consultant Quentin Coldwater had few actual responsibilities beyond attending the occasional meeting and being civil to whatever colleagues he happened to bump into in the elevator. On the rare occasions when actual documents managed to make their way into his in-box or onto his desk, he rubber-stamped them (Looks good to me!!!—QC) without reading them and sent them on their way.

Quentin’s desk was, as it happened, unusually large for a new hire at his level, especially one as youthful as he appeared to be (though his startling white hair lent him a certain gravitas beyond his years), and whose educational background and previous work history were on the sketchy side. He just appeared one day, took possession of a corner office recently vacated by a vice president three times his age, and started drawing a salary and piling up money in his 401(k) and receiving medical and dental benefits and taking six weeks of vacation a year. In return for which he didn’t seem to do much of anything beyond play computer games on the ultra-flat double-wide-screen monitor the outgoing veep had left behind.

But Quentin didn’t inspire any resentment in his new colleagues, or even any particular curiosity. Everybody thought somebody else knew the story on him, and if it turned out that they didn’t, they definitely knew for a fact that somebody over in HR had the scoop. And anyway, supposedly he’d been a superstar at some high-flying European school, fluent in all kinds of languages. Math scores through the roof. The firm was lucky to have him. Lucky.

And he was affable enough, if a little mopey. He seemed smart. Or at least he looked smart. And anyway, he was a member of the PlaxCo account team, and here at the consulting firm of Grunnings Hunsucker Swann everybody was a team player.