Read The Woman Who Stopped Traffic for Free Online

since dawn, if not all night. The door sucked open: “How’re the thighs holding up?” he greeted her with a grin.
    “Huh? Oh, the roller blading – fine thanks.”
    The lobby was dark, functional and heavily air-conditioned. Behind Tom was an un-staffed reception desk bearing the company’s logo. No sign of a weekend crisis following the Friday investor debacle. Rather, it looked like there’d been a college party meantime, with paper plates and cans of Bud Lite covering the low tables of the lobby seating area.
    Having adjusting to the light, she looked again at Tom. His hair was gelled slick, making him look closer to 25 than 35. A chain hung round his neck, disappearing into a white T-shirt. Over it he wore another, darker one featuring a gold elephant and something written below in Asian characters.
    “What does your T-shirt say?” she asked.
    “ ‘I don’t remember’.”
    “Very good,” and she laughed.
    “I guess elephants forget sometimes,” he said, thumping his sternum, where the golden animal glistened. He looked like he’d been working out. Surprisingly toned. “People always ask,” he added. “It’s my counter-personality test: anyone who thinks I’d put on a T-shirt without knowing what it says hasn’t got me figured me out so well!”
    “There you go,” and Natalie laughed again.
    “Come on through and meet everyone.”
    He opened a side door into a long conference room.
    The room faced back onto the bright parking lot. But the blinds were drawn, filtering the light into disorientating patterns. It felt like first day of school all over again. People sat spread out along each side of the elongated oval table, down the middle of which stood bottled drinks, coffee cups and plates of cookies. Most people had their laptops already open. Each head turned towards her. She struggled to keep up as Nguyen rattled off the names of a product manager and three technical program managers nearest the door. At the farther end sat the top team, whom Natalie had seen on stage two days prior. They stood up in turn: Mike Marantz, tousle-haired and red-eyed, in a crumpled pair of khaki chinos. Yuri Malovich, sallow and intense, in puma sneakers, drainpipe jeans and an old Atari T-shirt draping his wiry torso. Natalie couldn’t tell whether his top was deliberately vintage or had been lurking in his wardrobe forever. Furthest along, on the near side, was someone Natalie hadn’t encountered before: a petite Asian woman perhaps in her early twenties, extending her hand:
    “Hi, I’m Nancy Wu,” the woman said. “The Chief Connectedness Officer.”
    “Nancy? Natalie. Nice to meet you.”
    Nancy’s mouth smiled but her eyes remained female-evaluative. Probably just like my own, Natalie chastised herself. Nancy was arrestingly pretty, with tumbling dark hair streaked cherry-red, porcelain fine skin and glistening eyes. She was in a dark blue polka dot dress above the knee, over which she wore a damson-colored cardigan. The girlish look was contradicted by her boots, sleek black, accentuating her athletic calves. But it was the heels that made the point. Beside them sat a bug-eyed pug, with matching polka-dot kerchief.
    “That’s Minerva,” Nancy said, smiling. The dog looked terrified.
    Nguyen guided Natalie on to the head of the table, where slouched Dwayne Wisnold, his faded denim shirt leaching the color from his face.
    “Hey,” he said without getting up. His hand was lifeless. His energy had faded from Friday’s. He was almost a different person. He looked unnaturally pale, with purply-dark circles round his eyes radiating nervous irritation. Late nights, Natalie reasoned. And yet he dominated the room. Michael Marantz sat next to him on the far side of the table, asking him whether he’d be back in the Midwest for the upcoming holiday weekend.
    “Why would I do that, when I have this?” he replied, waving disconsolately at his laptop.
    Natalie took her place half way down the table,