For the first month he told himself the industry was making an example of him. For the second he blamed Odessa, the auditors, and employees who had decided to speak out against him. He considered writing an angry public statement but was advised by his attorney that further accusations could complicate the resolution of the personnel and financial matters. Eventually the habit of telling himself he had been wronged became exhausting, because the person most willing to listen to the argument was also the person who had to get up every morning and look at his reduced bank balance.
One rainy afternoon he stopped at a hotel on the far side of the city and asked whether it had an opening for any kind of guest-service work. The front desk manager told him the only vacancy was an early-morning porter position. Whitley almost laughed. He had managed more than a hundred employees and negotiated contracts worth millions. The thought of carrying luggage for guests who would never learn his name seemed unbearable, and he left before completing an application.
On the sidewalk, rain struck his jacket and ran cold beneath the collar. The doorman opened an umbrella for a family coming toward the entrance and did not notice Whitley standing beyond the canopy. For the first time, he remembered Odessa not as the woman who ended his career, but as a woman trying to cross a lobby in wet shoes while he refused to let her sit down. He did not become a better man in that instant. He merely felt the beginning of an unpleasant understanding that he had spent nine years teaching employees to ignore.
Two months after the inspection, Marcus was still attending his final classes in the evening. His acting salary had stabilized his finances, and he had managed to preserve most of his education savings, but between the new responsibilities and the capstone assignments he slept less than he should have. Evelyn once found him reading a course chapter in the manager's office during a break and asked whether he was studying for an examination or a guest emergency. When he told her both, she informed him that he would be more useful if he went home and slept.
He laughed and admitted she was right. She offered him an example from her own career, when she had believed being indispensable was the same as being effective. The best hotel she ever managed, she said, was the one that continued running smoothly during her first two-week vacation. She told Marcus that if he could not leave the building for an evening class without fearing a disaster, then he had not yet built a management team worth trusting.