Kennedy’s desk was neatly arranged, as he had left it yesterday afternoon. The memo from Mr. Dinoli lay pigeon-holed in the catchall to his right; he unspindled it and read through it again.
Floor Nine 2:12 P.M.
Dear Theodore: Would you be good enough to come downstairs to my office tomorrow morning, at 9 o’clock or thereabouts? A matter of some urgency is on the docket, and I think you’re one of the men who can help.
Thanks—and best to your wife. We ought to get together more often socially.
Lou
LD:lk
Kennedy smiled and dropped the note into his ready file. He was hardly fooled by the cheery tone or by the affable “Lou”; Dinoli amused himself by keeping up a first-name relationship with the second- and third-level men, but Kennedy knew he had as much chance of ever seeing the agency head socially as he did of becoming a star center-fielder for a big-league baseball team. There was a certain gulf, and that gulf was never bridged.
The casual “or thereabouts” in the note was to be ignored, Kennedy knew: he arrived at Floor Nine at 9 A.M. sharp, or else he bounced back to fifth-level in a hurry. You learned punctuality around Dinoli.
The morning passed slowly; Kennedy was expecting a telestat report on the situation in Nebraska from one of the agency’s field operatives, but this wasn’t due to arrive until one. To kill time, he doodled up a few possible opening gambits for the campaign there, centering them around a standard point of reference: What’s Good For Big Corporations (in this case, Federated Bauxite) Is Very Good For You.
His mind wasn’t fully on his work, though. By 8:15 he realized be wasn’t going to get anything done on the current project until he’d had that meeting with Dinoli, and he shut up his folders and filed them away. There was no sense working on a project with his mind clogged by anxiety. Public relations was a difficult job and Kennedy took it seriously, as he took most other things.