S2E4. A Call from Lou Reed’s Nephew

“Do you know how a turbocharged engine works?”

Collage illustration by @loureedsnephew.

I was drifting off into my daily nap when the phone buzzed on the pillow by my head. Since leaving the workforce—and exhausting my access to EasyOut outplacement—I had made an important discovery. I was crepuscular, like a possum or an ocelot. Active at dawn and dusk. As the time-discipline metronome in my brain wound down after more than three decades of relentless ticking, I embraced my primitive nature. I woke up early without an alarm and surrendered to drowsiness after lunch. I slept until dinner, then puttered around until Renata got home from work.

According to Wikipedia, “the various [crepuscular] patterns of activity are thought to be mainly anti­predator adaptations, though some could equally well be predatory adaptations,” which makes sense. Best to hide during business hours.

Random phone calls held new interest in what Renata had dubbed my “pretirement,” in which I did not have a job but had not yet dropped out entirely.

The Caller ID said “Sotto Voce,” which was novel. More promising than frequent caller “Spam Risk,” whom I sometimes answered just to see.

“Hello,” I said.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

I immediately recognized that it was Lou Reed’s Nephew, though not as I’d ever heard him. He sounded hurried. Needy. This was not like him. Normally he was like Descartes’ God or a turbocharged engine. Self-sustaining. Living on his own waste.

“Nothing,” I said confidently.

“Can you give a presentation tomorrow at two?”

“Where?” I said, nervous that this might conflict with my antipredator measures.

“In the city,” he said, before naming a fee that made it obviously worth the risk.

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll do it.”

“Terrific,” he said, clearly relieved. “I’ll send over the slides. It will be a friendly room.”

“Fine. Who made the slides? AI?” I gathered AI did everything now and wanted to sound up to date.

“Maybe,” he said. “They were provided by the people who will be in the room. Except for one. That’s why the room will be so friendly.”

“What is Sotto Voce?” it occurred to me to ask. “A new venture of yours?”

“Yes,” he said. “One of them.”

“And what is it exactly? A consultancy of some kind?”

“Something like that,” he said. “People come to Sotto Voce when their boss is about to give work to an outside consultant, but they don’t want to deal with an outside consultant, so I take their plans and present them to their boss as an outside consultant so the work can stay in-house.”

“I understand,” I said, although I was only just beginning to. “So you take the internal team’s proposal, change it—”

“Oh no, I don’t have to change it,” he said. “I mean it helps to change the logo, obviously, but otherwise, no need.”

“So you take the internal team’s proposal, unchanged, which the boss has likely already seen—and rejected—and present it back to him as an outside consultant?”

“That’s right.”

“And then the boss accepts it?”

“Almost always. Familiarity breeds contempt. The grass is always greener. Do you know how a turbocharged engine works?”

“I have some idea,” I said.

“It takes hot exhaust, uses it to pull in and cool new air, and pushes it back into the engine. This is like that. I almost called the company Turbo Dynamics.”

“But then who does the work?”

“The internal team.”

“And the money?”

“The internal team gets half and Sotto Voce takes half. I could probably get more. Most of the value is in not having to deal with an outside consultant. We just have to show up to present the work.”

“To the people who did it?”

“Yes.”

“HR would have a heart attack,” I said, naively.

“Oh, they’re usually in on it,” he said. “It works out for everyone.”

“So tomorrow, you need me to go into the city to present these people’s own proposal to them, so they can accept it?”

“Yes.”

“In front of their boss, who does not know that this is the same proposal he has already rejected?”

“Yes.”

“And how will I know who the boss is?”

“He’ll be the one who isn’t paying attention,” Lou Reed’s Nephew said.