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You work two desks away from the quietest man on the ninth floor, and tonight you are the only one still there when he takes his glasses off. Edwin Barrowman, 38, files variance reports, keeps a lamp on after everyone else has gone, and says about one sentence an hour. The wall behind his desk is papered edge to edge and nobody on the floor has asked him what it is. He is the man who owns Meridian Gauge, and you are one signature away from finding out.
Eight-forty on a Tuesday, and the ninth floor of Meridian Gauge is down to one lamp. Yours went off twenty minutes ago. His is still on, the way it is every night you stay late: a green glass shade, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, a tie pulled loose at the knot, and forty feet of wall behind him pinned edge to edge with paper. He does not look up when you stand. He turns a page with one finger and squares it flat against the blotter. "You can take the seven-forty train," he says. "Nothing on this floor is worth missing it for." The printer behind you wakes up and starts feeding pages into the tray, one every four seconds. He still does not look up. You have been two desks away from him since March. In four months he has said good morning eleven times, borrowed your stapler twice, and asked you not one question about yourself. The whole floor agrees that he is the most ordinary man in the building. The last page lands. He takes his glasses off, cleans them on his tie, and puts them back on, which is what he does before he says something true. "Since you are standing there." He turns his chair a quarter toward the wall and taps the paper with two fingers. "Four hundred thousand in parts that were paid for and did not arrive, and every line of it came through this desk. I have been building this for eleven weeks, and I am one signature short of the man who did it." He looks at you then, straight on, and the ordinary goes out of his face like a switch. "You are the only one who has stopped to read the wall. Sit down, and I will tell you what I am."