Tuesday. 8:48 PM. Twelve minutes until the Zoom with Atlanta.
I am in my home office. The candle is on. The mug is warm. The mug is tea, because I have learned not to drink coffee at this hour, because the consultant in Atlanta said something once eighteen months ago about not being able to sleep after 9 PM coffee, and I noticed, and now I drink tea.
I noticed.
Noticed.
I am not unpacking that.
I have been on calls with Shaun Williams for two years and four months. I have never seen his apartment. The background of his Zoom is always the same — a neutral wall, a soft sconce, a corner of what might be a bookshelf if I squint, and that I have stopped squinting at because there is nothing for me there. He keeps it tight. He keeps it client-facing. He is a contractor and that is the kind of contractor he is. Professional. I noticed.
I have noticed a lot of things.
I have noticed that he prepares for calls. Most consultants on our roster do not prepare for calls. They wing it. He doesn't. He reads everything Harrison sends and the things Harrison doesn't send, because he has asked me twice for the source materials behind the briefs, and twice I have sent them, and twice he has read them by the next call.
I have noticed that he asks one question per call that the partners have not thought to ask. The question is precise. The question does work that should have been done in the brief and was not done in the brief. Harrison gives him a half-second of irritation and then accepts the question because the question is correct.
I have noticed that he laughs once per call, no more, no less. The laugh is quiet. It happens when someone says something that is genuinely funny, which on these calls is rare, which is why I have noticed.
I have noticed his hands sometimes when he leans into his desk. He doesn't gesture much. He leans. He puts his weight on his forearms and he leans toward the camera when he is making a point, and the lean is the only physical movement I have, since the background is the same and the face is the same and the rest is voice.
I will not say any of this out loud.
I have not said it to Jenna. I have not said it to anyone. I have not even said it in my head until tonight, sitting at this desk at 8:48 PM with the tea I am drinking because of what he said about coffee.
I think it is okay to notice. I think it is okay to notice that the consultant from Atlanta is the most engaged person on these calls, and that the engagement does work on me. I am being engaged. I am bringing better questions because his questions are better. I am writing tighter memos because his eye on them makes me write tighter memos. The work is better. That is the part I am allowed.
The rest of it — the part where I sometimes find myself at 8:48 with the mug in my hand thinking about a Black man in an Atlanta apartment I have never seen — the rest of it is the part I file under not now and walk past.
Not now. That's a phrase that turns into years if you don't watch it.
I'm watching it.
8:59. I open the link. The waiting room. The familiar little circling icon.
I have rehearsed nothing. I have not put on lipstick. I have not changed out of the cardigan I have been wearing since six. He has seen this cardigan eleven times. I noticed that, too. I noticed it on call number four and I have noticed it every time since. I am the woman who is on these calls in a cardigan. He is the man who is on them in some version of a quarter-zip and the same neutral wall.
I press join.
Harrison comes on first. Big and unmuted and saying evening, team. Then the junior. Then Shaun.
His face fills the bottom-right.
He says evening, Sybrina, and the name in his voice doing exactly what it always does — precise, no flourish, the syllables earning their place — and I say evening, Shaun, and Harrison clears his throat and starts the agenda.
I drink the tea. I am ready.
I am ready for the call. I am ready for the questions he is going to ask. I am ready for the meeting tomorrow morning. I am ready for the deck on Thursday. I am ready for the next two years of these calls.
I am not ready for the day he walks into a room.
That — the body part, the in-person part, the part that has not happened — is a not now I have filed in a drawer that I am pretending I cannot find.
I notice that, too.