Sammy had always been a sharp dresser. He liked shirts that looked like good cotton but had a little stretch built into them so they rested tight at his chest, which was big, and tight at his waist, which was small. He liked jeans in whatever style jeans were being worn in Barcelona that year, which meant black jeans cut very square and wide-legged, ironed stiff without a crease. He had shades that had been designed to make his face look a little vulpine, a trait that he'd always known he had. It put people on edge if you looked a little wolfy. He stopped outside the door of the board-room and squared up his shoulders. He was the youngest person on the board, and he'd always been the biggest, cockiest bastard in the room. He had to remember that if he was going to survive this next hour. He came through the door and stopped and looked at the people around the table and waited for everyone to notice him. They looked so midwestern and goofy, and he gave them his wolfy smile -- hello, little piggies, here to blow your house down. "Hey, kids," he said, and grabbed the coffee carafe and a mug off the sideboard. He filled his cup, then passed the carafe off, as though every meeting began with the passing-around of the low-grade stimulants. He settled into his seat and looked around expectantly. "Glad you could make it, Sammy." That was Wiener, who generally chaired the meetings. Theoretically, it was a rotating chairship, but there's a certain kind of person who naturally ends up running every meeting, and Ron Wiener was that kind of person. He co-ran Tomorrowland with three faceless nonentities who had been promoted above their competence due to his inexplicable loyalty to them, and between the four of them, they'd managed to keep Tomorrowland the most embarrassingly badly themed part of the park. "We were just talking about you." "I love being the subject of conversation," Sammy said. He slurped loudly at his coffee. "What we were talking about was the utilization numbers from Fantasyland." Which sucked, Sammy knew. They'd been in free-fall for months now, and looking around at those cow-like midwestern faces, Sammy understood that it was time for the knives to come out. "They suck," Sammy said brightly. "That's why we're about to change things up." That preempted them. "Can you explain that some?" Wiener said, clicking his pen and squaring up his notepad. These jerks and their paper-fetish. Sammy did his best thinking on his feet and on the move. Confident. Wolfy. You're better than these jerks with their pads and their corn-fed notions. He sucked in a breath and began to pace and use his hands.