Hard Feelings E-Book

Jason Starr

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 336

Beschreibung

Richie Segal's prospects are pretty miserable and, what's more humiliating, his wife's career is on the up. Richie knows he is a good salesman, but he just can't seem to land an account. He's starting to drink again and worry about whether Paula is seeing that old high school flame or maybe someone new. At thirty-four, he's a little young for a mid-life crisis, but that's what it feels like. And then there are those unwelcome memories of the neighbourhood bully, Michael Rudnick, and what he did to Richie when he was eleven. . . Just when Richie is about as low as he can get, he runs into Rudnick on the street and knows exactly what he needs to do. Suddenly things seem to be going much better. That is until they get much, much worse. In the classic tradition of Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith, Hard Feelings is a gripping, original novel of paranoia, obsession, and revenge.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR JASON STARR

‘Well crafted and very scary’ –Times

‘Cool, deadpan, a rollercoaster ride to hell’ –Guardian

‘Tough, composed and about as noir as you can go. Starr is a worthy successor to Charles Willeford’ –Literary Review

‘Bang up-to-date, but reminiscent of David Goodis and Jim Thompson,Fake IDis a powerful novel of the American Dream turning into the American Nightmare that marks Starr out as a writer to follow’ –Time Out

‘a gripping novel of paranoia and obsession that’s damn near impossible to put down’ –Time Out

‘Demonic, demented and truly ferocious and a flat out joy to read. In other words, a total feast. Like it? ... I plain worshipped it’ –Ken Bruen

‘Jason Starr's Savage Lane is a wickedly smart and twisted look at suburbia - a tense thriller and searing satire’ – Don Winslow, author of The Cartel

‘A hypnotic story of lust and obsession’–Daily Telegraph

‘Who but Jason Starr could render suburban vice pitch black, sneakily endearing, and wickedly funny all at once? Like James M. Cain meets Tom Perrotta, Savage Lane shows, in grand style, how twisted the hearts of All-American families can be, and how those picket white fences can be dangerously sharp’ – Megan Abbott

For Ion Mills

Contents

Jason Starr

Also by Jason Starr

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copyright

1

Waiting to cross Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street, I spotted Michael Rudnick, a guy who grew up across the street from me in Brooklyn. He was standing at the front of the crowd on the opposite corner in a black business suit and dark sunglasses, looking in my direction, but apparently not noticing me. He had changed so much since the last time I’d seen him – about twenty-two years ago, when I was twelve and he was seventeen – I guess it was incredible that I recognized him at all. He used to be overweight with horrible acne and frizzy brown hair. Now he was tall, tan, and muscular and his thick dark hair was slicked back with gel.

The DON’T WALK sign changed to WALK and the crowds from the two corners converged. When Michael and I were a few feet apart, I was still looking right at him, waiting to see if he would notice me. He was walking straight ahead, his eyes focused on something in the distance. Then, just as we were about to pass, my shoulder accidentally knocked against his and we stopped in the middle of the crowd. I saw my reflection in his sunglasses – two pale faces staring back at me. I was about to say hello when he grunted in an angry, annoyed way and continued across the street.

“Asshole,” I muttered.

At the corner, I turned around to see if he was looking back, but he was gone. He must have already disappeared in the crowd heading toward the West Side.

After I said hi to Raymond, the evening doorman, I retrieved my mail – all bills – and rode the elevator to the fifth floor. When I entered my apartment, Otis started to bark.

“Shut up!” I yelled, but the hyper cocker spaniel continued to yap away, clawing against my legs.

I took Otis for his usual walk along East Sixty-Fourth Street, then I returned to the apartment, where I sat slumped on the couch in my underwear, staring at the TV, obsessing about my day at work.

This afternoon I’d had a meeting with Tom Carlson. Carlson was a CFO and decision maker for a hundred-user computer network at an insurance company in midtown. He was running an old-version Novell network and was looking to upgrade to Windows NT and purchase new PCs and servers. It was the third meeting I’d had with him and I should have left his office with nothing less than a signed contract, but when the moment came to close the sale I hesitated and the son of a bitch slipped through my fingers again. Now I would have to call him tomorrow – always a low-percentage way to close business – and try to get him to fax me a signed contract. Carlson was by far my best prospect and if he got away I had no idea what I’d do.

At around eight-thirty, I was still on the couch, ruminating in front of the TV, when Paula entered the apartment in pumps and one of her designer suits. She bent over the couch and kissed me hello, then asked how my day was. Before I could say “horrible,” she said, “I have some great news – I’ll tell you in a sec,” and she went toward the bedroom with Otis trailing her, wagging his tail and barking.

I knew what the “great news” was. Paula’s sister in San Francisco was due to give birth next week and she must have delivered early.

A few minutes later, Paula returned to the living room, wearing shorts and a long T-shirt. Like me, she had been neglecting the gym for the past few years. She used to be thin with toned muscles, but since she had stopped working out she had put on about thirty pounds. She was constantly talking about how she was fat and needed to lose weight, but I thought she looked better heavier – more feminine, anyway. Recently, she had cut her long, straight blond hair to a short bob. Whenever she asked, I told her that the cut flattered her face, making her cheekbones more prominent, but the truth was I missed her long hair.

“So,” she said, “you want to hear my news?”

“Kathy had a boy.”

“Guess again.”

“A girl.”

“She’s not due for another week.”

“I give up.”

“Come on, Rich, this is important.”

I shut off the TV with the remote.

“I got a promotion,” she said, smiling.

“Really?”

“Isn’t it unbelievable? I thought for sure Brian would get it – I mean the way Brian and Chris are so buddy-buddy. But Chris called me into his office this afternoon and gave me the great news – you’re looking at the new VP of equity research.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

“I can’t tell you what a relief this is,” Paula said. “For the past few weeks, my job’s been so crazy – I mean working on three reports at once and then having this promotion hanging over me. I just wanted it to be resolved one way or another, but to have it turn out this way is just incredible. You know this means I’ll get a salary increase, too.”

“Great.”

“My base’ll be seventy a year now.”

Ten more than my base, I thought.

“That really is terrific news,” I said.

“I think it’ll really take some pressure off us now. Maybe we could put a little away in savings, pay off the credit cards…”

“We’ll have to go out this weekend and celebrate.”

“You want to go out to dinner right now? Come on, I’ll change into some clothes – I could be ready in ten minutes.”

“I really don’t feel like it tonight.”

“Come on, when was the last time we went out to dinner? Let’s go to that new Vietnamese place on Third. It’s beautiful out. We could sit at a table outside, order a bottle of wine –”

“I said I’m not in the mood.”

I was looking away but I could sense Paula staring at me.

Finally, she said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t seem very happy to see me tonight.”

“I’m just tired.”

“You don’t seem very happy about my promotion, either.”

“What?” I said, as if that were totally ridiculous. “What are you talking about? I’m thrilled you were promoted, but I don’t feel like going out to dinner. Is there something wrong with that?”

I turned on the TV again and started flipping stations. Paula sat next to me on the couch, Indian-style, staring blankly at the screen. I could tell she was still angry at me, but I didn’t feel like fighting anymore.

Finally, I said, “So how is Kathy, anyway?”

“We have to talk, Richard.”

“Not now.”

“You’ve been acting strange lately – the past few weeks anyway. You’ve been very distant, keeping everything to yourself. I think it’s starting to affect the marriage.”

I hated when Paula referred to us as “the marriage,” and how she was always trying to analyze me. She had been seeing a shrink once a week for the past five years and she was always telling me that I wasn’t expressing myself or that I was being “passive-aggressive” or “projecting” or “displacing my emotions” or whatever psychobabble she could come up with.

“I’m really not in the mood for this right now,” I said on my way into the kitchen.

Following me she said, “See? This is exactly what I’m talking about.”

I took a menu for Chinese food out from one of the counter drawers. Last year we’d had the kitchen redone – installing the snack bar, putting down new tiles, refacing the cabinets. Home improvements and Paula’s work wardrobe were the major reasons we had over twenty thousand dollars in credit-card debt.

“You can’t just walk away,” Paula said. “When something’s bothering you, you have to talk about it.”

“How about shrimp with lobster sauce?”

“You’re upset I got promoted,” she said. “It threatens your male ego – makes the hunter feel like he’s not providing.”

“Stop trying to analyze me, all right?” I said. “I’m ordering. You want something or not?”

“Why don’t you just admit that you resent my promotion?”

“I’m getting you moo shu chicken.”

I ordered the food in the living room. Paula entered and stood facing me with her hands on her hips.

“Admit it,” she said.

“Admit what?”

“That you want me to make less money than you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “The more money you make the better. Make two hundred a year, make three hundred! The way things are going for me, we may need all the money we can get.”

Otis started barking again. I yelled “Shut up!” then I sat down on the couch. Paula sat next to me, waited a few seconds, then said, “How did your big sales meeting go today?”

“How the hell do you think it went?”

She rested her hand on my lap.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe you should think about quitting.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I was uncomfortable with her hand on me so I stood up. “You think I can just go in there tomorrow and quit? That’ll look great on my résumé – seven months at the job without making a sale. That’ll sound really great when I start interviewing.”

“It’s not your fault –”

“Then whose fault is it?”

“There’re lots of explanations you can give,” Paula said. “The company was restructuring, you had personal differences with your supervisors…”

“They can smell that bullshit a mile away.”

“But you don’t have to put all this pressure on yourself,”

Paula said, “that’s only going to make things worse. Now that I’ve gotten my raise –”

“So you’re getting, what, another fifteen K a year? After taxes, what’s that, eight or nine grand? Whoop-de-fucking-doo. Have you seen our credit-card bills lately? Face it, we’re living paycheck to fucking paycheck. What happens the next time we want to renovate? Or what about moving out of the city someday? Maybe you’d like to just sell this place, take the hundred-grand loss.”

“Oh, stop with this bullshit,” Paula said, standing up. “Just because you had a bad day doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me. I got some great news today and you obviously don’t give a shit.”

Paula marched into the bedroom and slammed the door. Otis was barking again. I threw a couch cushion – it hit Otis’s ass and ricocheted onto the floor. He barked once, defiantly, then scurried meekly into the kitchen.

I sat on the couch with my head in my hands until the Chinese food arrived. Then I knocked on the bedroom door and apologized for losing my temper. About a minute later, Paula joined me at the dining room table.

We ate, barely talking. She left over most of her dish and announced she had a headache.

“Maybe there’s MSG in the food,” I said. “I forgot to order it without.”

“No, it’s just my usual migraine. I have to go lie down.”

Paula went back to the bedroom. I cleaned up from dinner then I took Otis for his walk, down the block and back. When I returned to the apartment Paula was asleep in bed.

“Sorry about before,” I whispered, leaning over her.

“It’s okay,” she said, half-asleep.

“Feeling better?”

“Little bit,” she said.

“I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t’ve taken my work out on you. I’m very happy you got your promotion. I really think it’s great news and I want to take you out tomorrow night to celebrate.”

“Okay,” she said.

“How’s around seven?”

“That’s fine.”

“Goodnight, honey.” I kissed her lips.

“Goodnight,” she mumbled, turning onto her side.

After I washed up I got into bed next to Paula and read a few chapters of How to Be a Bulldog, the latest book on sales strategy that I’d placed on my night table. Suddenly exhausted, I rested the book on my chest and closed my eyes. I remembered passing Michael Rudnick on Fifth Avenue earlier, then I saw myself as a ten- or eleven-year-old in front of my old house on Stratford Road in Brooklyn. I was alone, bouncing a basketball on the sidewalk, when a teenaged Michael Rudnick appeared. He was overweight, with his usual faceful of acne. He had very thick eyebrows that grew together above his nose and some older kids on the block had nicknamed him “The Caterpillar.” Michael asked me if I wanted to play Ping-Pong with him in his basement. He was one of the “big kids” on my block, in high school, and whenever he invited me to play Ping-Pong it made me feel special. “Sure,” I said excitedly. “Let’s go!” Michael’s parents weren’t home, and his house was dark and empty. We went down to the cold, musty basement and I watched as Michael adjusted the net on the Ping-Pong table. Then he explained the rules of the game – if I won I’d get five dollars, if he won he’d get to give me a wedgie. I didn’t really understand the trade-off, but I went along with it anyway. Of course, the odds were stacked in his favor because he was a much better Ping-Pong player than I was. He was destroying me – winning almost every point. He needed one point to win and when my shot missed the end of the table he put down his paddle and yelled, “You’re gonna feel it!” Laughing hysterically, thinking it was part of the “game,” I ran away until he caught me from behind and immediately reached around my waist and started yanking up the elastic band of my underwear. The wedgie was painful, but I was still laughing. I didn’t like what he was doing to me, but I was afraid if I complained he’d stop inviting me to his basement to play Ping-Pong. He was much taller and stronger than me, and he was pulling so hard he was lifting me off the ground. “Stop, stop!” I yelled, but still laughing, still thinking we were playing a game. Then he moved me toward the sofa. I was still squirming, trying to get away, my face pressed against the sticky black vinyl. I didn’t know why he was doing this – why he thought it was so much fun. I was facedown on the couch and he was on top of me, grunting and sweating.

I opened my eyes suddenly, my pulse throbbing as if I had just run a full sprint. Paula was fast asleep next to me, snoring softly. I got out of bed. Otis tried to follow me, but I closed the bedroom door ahead of him and went into the kitchen.

Standing in front of the open refrigerator, I gulped down orange juice straight from the container. I needed fresh air. I went through the living room, out to the terrace.

It was a warm, muggy night and there wasn’t much air to breathe. As I leaned against the railing, looking down at the busy Third Avenue traffic, I heard Michael Rudnick’s high-pitched voice shouting, “You’re gonna feel it! You’re gonna feel it!” as clearly as if he were on the terrace next to me. I could still feel the weight of his body on top of mine, feeling trapped and claustrophobic underneath him, and I remembered the nauseating smell of – probably his father’s – cheap cologne.

I went back into the apartment and locked the terrace door. In the bathroom, I splashed my face with cold water. I remembered reading an article in the Times about how some people blocked out traumatic memories from their childhoods and then suddenly remembered them years later. But it was hard to believe that something like this might have happened to me.

When I lay down in bed, Paula stirred.

“Where were you?”

“The terrace.”

“Why?”

“To get some fresh air.”

“You okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.”

“Sorry about before.”

“Me, too.”

But, the truth was, I’d forgotten what we had been fighting about.

2

Paula slid open the shower door. I hadn’t heard her come into the bathroom and the noise jarred me from my thoughts.

“I’m leaving for work,” she said.

“Wait.”

I rinsed the soap off my face then kissed her. I knew I had acted like a jerk last night and I wanted to make up for it.

“Remember,” I said, “I want to take you out to dinner tonight to celebrate your promotion.”

“Okay,” she said. “That sounds like fun.”

“How about I make a reservation for seven?”

“Better make it seven-thirty. I’ll call if I’m going to be late.”

She said goodbye again, then I slid the shower door closed. Usually, Paula left for work around seven, but it was only about six-twenty now. I figured she was getting an early start to make a good impression.

Paula had worked very hard to get ahead – going to school at night for three years to finish her MBA, then kissing ass and working long hours to climb the corporate ladder. I knew how much the promotion to VP meant to Paula and tonight I was planning to give her the celebration she deserved.

I left the apartment at about seven-fifteen. I usually walked to work along the same route – down Third Avenue to Forty-eighth Street, then across town to Sixth Avenue. Once in a while – usually during bad weather or on cold winter days – I took cabs, but I never took public transportation.

After using my swipe card to unlock the front door, I entered my office at a little before eight o’clock. I picked up my interoffice cellphone at the desk, then went down the long corridor, by the secretaries’ cubicles, to my office in the sales department.

At my old job at Network Strategies, where my title had been merely salesman, I’d had a big corner office with a spectacular view of the East River. Now, as a senior salesman at Midtown Consulting, I was crammed into a narrow, stuffy office with a single window facing the back of a building. I missed the prestige of a corner office. When you have one of the biggest, most luxurious offices at a company, you get special treatment. In the hallways or at the water cooler, people smile at you and ask you how your weekend was or whether you’ve seen any good movies lately. Or they might offer to help you at the copy machine, or ask you if they can pick up anything when they’re on their way to the deli. But now people barely paid attention to me. Sometimes when I was walking in the hallway I would smile at someone and they would look back at me with a blank face, as if I were invisible.

Lately, I’d been regretting the decision I’d made seven months ago to leave my old job. When the offer came from the headhunter I had been at Network Strategies for nearly six years and I’d had no intention of quitting. Then I was offered this incredible package at Midtown, with a sixty-a-year base salary and better benefits. Usually, I hung up on headhunters, but that day I listened.

At the time, there was no way of knowing that coming to Midtown Consulting would probably be the worst decision of my career.

I followed my typical morning routine – turning on my PC, checking my email and voicemail – then I went to the coffee machine to get a cup of black coffee with three sugars. Back at my desk, I logged on to a Lotus Notes scheduling program. I had no out-of-office appointments today, but there were a number of important callbacks I needed to make this morning, including to Tom Carlson, the CFO I had met with yesterday afternoon.

I dialed Carlson’s number, expecting to reach his secretary, but on the second ring he answered.

“Good morning, Tom,” I said, trying to sound as upbeat as possible.

“Who’s this?”

“Richard Segal – Midtown Consulting. How are you today?”

After a long pause he said, “Ah ha.”

“Great, thanks for asking,” I said. “The reason I’m calling, Tom, is yesterday I didn’t get a chance to tell you – we can knock an additional two percent off that quote, which should save your company an additional twenty or thirty thousand dollars over the course of the contract and –”

“Yeah, I didn’t really get a chance to look that over yet,” he interrupted. “I’ll call you when I’m ready, okay?”

“If there’s anything you don’t understand, Tom, or need clarification on I’d be delighted –”

“Didn’t I tell you yesterday that I’d call you when I was ready to make a decision?”

“Yes, but I thought you’d want to know –”

“You know, I feel like you’re trying to talk me into doing something I don’t want to do,” he said, “and I don’t like having that feeling.”

“I’m sorry if I gave you that impression, Tom,” I said. “But the real reason –”

“Look, why don’t we just forget the whole thing?”

“I… Excuse me?”

“I’ve decided I want to take my business elsewhere.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, unable to hide my frustration anymore. “I mean yesterday… at the meeting –”

“We’re going to accept an offer from another firm, all right?”

“But did you have a chance to look over our quote yet?”

“I’m not interested in your quote.”

Now I couldn’t control myself.

“Then why the hell did you agree to meet with me yesterday?”

“The truth? I forgot about the damn meeting until you showed up. Look, the answer is no, thank you very much. Goodbye.”

Carlson hung up. Stunned, I held the receiver against my ear until the line started beeping, then I replaced it. I was still in shock. I couldn’t believe that all the months I’d spent working on the Carlson account had come to absolutely nothing.

I closed my eyes and let out a long, deep breath. Then I took a swig of coffee and kept going.

I reached several voicemails then, finally, I got a hold of Rajid Hamir, an MIS manager at Prudential I had been trying to reach for the past few weeks.

“Hello, Rajid, this is Richard Segal at Midtown Consulting.”

“Who?”

“Richard Segal,” I said slowly. “Remember – we met last month and I gave you a quote a few weeks ago for those two NT consultants you were looking for?”

“Sorry, we have no budget for that now,” he said. “Try again next quarter.”

When I tried to schedule an advance appointment for next quarter, Rajid hung up on me.

I made about a dozen more calls, finally reaching another prospect. But the guy said he was using another consulting firm right now, to call back next year. I dialed number after number with no success.

Staring at the computer screen, I was suddenly exhausted and I was starting to get a headache. I went down the hallway into the kitchen area and poured myself another cup of coffee. A voice behind me said, “Hey, Richie, how’s it goin’?”

I looked over my shoulder and saw the smiling face of Steve Ferguson. Steve was also a senior salesman at Midtown, but I’d always thought he belonged selling shoes instead of computer networks. Last month, for the second month in a row, he was Midtown’s salesman of the month, closing nearly half a million dollars of new business.

“I’m all right,” I said, adding a third sugar to my coffee. “How about you?”

“Got laid last night so I can’t complain,” Steve said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth. Then he slapped me on the back and said, “So how’re the sales coming along?”

“All right,” I said, hating his guts.

“Yeah? Did you close that MHI account yet?”

“No, not yet,” I said, putting a lid over the coffee.

“You’ve been working on that one for a while, haven’t you? What’s holding it up?”

“Just waiting for the signed contract.”

I stepped around him, trying to end the conversation, but he walked next to me, following me out of the kitchen.

“So I closed that Chase deal I was working on,” he said as if I’d asked him how his sales were coming.

“That’s great,” I said.

“Yeah, four consultants, nine-month project – you know, a tiny one. Should get me some nice commish, though. There’s also some other projects in the works – hopefully it’ll lead to something ongoing. Did you hear about the Everson deal?”

“No,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s this new-media ad agency on Forty-second. Got the signed contract in the mail yesterday – three-fifty K. Hey, if you need any help closing that MHI account, I’m here to help you, man. Seriously, if you want me to throw a call for you, come to a meeting – anything I can do. I know how important it is to get that first sale under your belt.”

“Thanks, I’ll think about it,” I said, fake smiling.

In front of his office – a corner office – Steve stopped walking and said, “So I guess I’ll see you at the ten o’clock.”

I stopped.

“What ten o’clock?”

“Didn’t you get the memo from Bob about the sales meeting today?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, guess I’ll catch you later.”

When I got back to my office I checked my email log, but there was no message from Bob about any ten o’clock meeting. I called one of the guys at the help desk, figuring there must be a problem with my email, but they said the system was fine.

I went down the hallway to the cubicles where Midtown’s three junior salesmen worked. Peter Rabinowitz and Rob Cohen were busy on the phone, but John Hennessy was working at his PC. John was clean cut, in his mid-twenties, working at his first or second job out of college.

“Hi, John,” I said.

“Richard,” he said, “how’s it going?”

“Not bad, not bad,” I said. “Did you get a memo about a ten o’clock sales meeting?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, “Will I see you there?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I might be busy with a client.”

As a final possibility, I wondered if Heidi, Bob’s secretary, had forgotten to send me the memo. I called her and asked her to hold my calls for the next couple of hours because I was going to be working in my office, figuring if I was supposed to attend a meeting she would tell me. But she agreed to take my calls without another word.

I had seen this happen before at previous jobs and I knew exactly what it meant. When an employee, especially a senior employee, was suddenly shut out of meetings he’d better get his résumé ready because he was as good as gone.

I called more leads from my database, determined to make something happen. But after two hours of nearly nonstop dialing I had zero success. I was starting to feel dizzy and light-headed when I saw myself in Michael Rudnick’s basement and heard his teenaged voice shouting, “You’re gonna feel it! You’re gonna feel it!” Like last night, my heart was racing. Fuck, this was all I needed in my life right now.

I tried to get back to work, but I couldn’t get Michael Rudnick out of my head. I wondered if it was really him I had passed on the street yesterday. The guy I’d seen seemed too thin and fit to be Rudnick, and his skin looked too perfect. His “caterpillar” eyebrow would have been a dead giveaway, but yesterday his eyebrows had been hidden by dark sunglasses.

I logged on to the internet and did a “people search” for “Michael Rudnick” in Manhattan. The search returned two hits, a “Michael L. Rudnick” with an address on Washington Street and a “Michael J. Rudnick, Esquire” with an address on Madison Avenue. Michael J. Rudnick, the lawyer, seemed like the best possibility because the address – probably of an office – was around where I had seen him waiting to cross the street yesterday evening. Besides, the idea of Michael Rudnick as a lawyer made a lot of sense. As a teenager, he was controlling, arrogant, self-centered – all prerequisites for a career in law. “Lawyer” also fit the impression I had gotten of him on the street corner – wealthy, successful, very self-confident about his appearance and his status. I also remembered the way he had grunted at me after we knocked shoulders, as if I were beneath him and inconsequential. But I definitely couldn’t see him as a trial lawyer. No, a guy like him would do something more impersonal. He was probably a tax attorney.

It was nearing noon and no one had come to my office to tell me that I was missing a sales meeting. Realizing that I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I decided to grab a bite then come back to the office and hit the phones again.

I went to the pizza place I sometimes went to for lunch on Seventh Avenue. It wasn’t particularly good pizza, but what did I care? Usually, I wolfed down my lunches so fast that I could be eating cardboard with tomato sauce and rubber cheese and I wouldn’t know the difference.

I sat with my two slices at a table in the back, swallowing my bites half-chewed, obsessing about my shitty morning and my even shittier life. I’d always thought that, by the time I was in my mid-thirties, I’d be happily married, living in a big house in the suburbs, with two kids and plenty of money in the bank. Maybe Paula and I had spent too much in our twenties, taking those extravagant vacations to the Bahamas and Hawaii. Unlike everyone else in the world who seemed to be striking it rich in the stock market, we were broke. Our apartment was worth half of what we’d paid for it, thanks to a major building assessment, and except for our retirement funds we had almost no money saved, which was ridiculous for a couple our age. And then there were the credit-card bills and the utility bills and the new expenses that always seemed to be popping up. Of course, we could sell the apartment for a loss now, maybe rent a smaller place for a few years until our bills were paid. But we needed the tax break that we got from ownership and the rental would probably wind up costing the same as or more than we were paying now.

I couldn’t finish my second slice. I left the pizza place and reemerged on Seventh Avenue. The air was thick and smoggy. It had been drizzling earlier – now the sky was clearing. I walked mindlessly for a while, then I stopped, realizing that I was on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street, the same corner where I had seen Michael Rudnick yesterday. The corner was several blocks from the pizza place and I had no idea why I had walked there.

From my office, I called Maison, a French restaurant on Second Avenue, and made a dinner reservation for seven-thirty. I had never eaten there before, but Paula loved French food and I wanted to take her someplace special to celebrate her promotion.

I started making sales calls again, still getting nowhere. At around two-thirty, I got a call from Heidi, saying that Bob wanted to see me right away. I asked her what it was about and she said she had no idea.

When I entered Bob’s office and saw him, sitting at his desk, staring at his computer monitor with a very serious expression, I figured he must have made the decision to fire me. I envisioned breaking the news to Paula tonight, then having to check the help wanteds on Sunday.

“Take a seat,” Bob said without looking at me.

Naturally, as president of the company, Bob had a huge corner office. I could see a sliver of Central Park through the north-facing window behind his desk, and the towering GE Building at Rockefeller Center to the east.

Bob was short – about five-six – and he covered the large bald spot on the center of his head with a black yarmulke. He always wore what looked like the same white button-down shirt tucked into black slacks. He was in his late thirties or early forties. Sometimes when he saw me in the hallway he stopped to tell me some new joke he’d heard. I always knew that the main reason he seemed to like me, and why he had probably been reluctant to fire me, was because my last name was Segal. At my job interview, I could tell Bob had assumed that I was Jewish and I hadn’t corrected him.

I sat in the cushioned seat across from his desk. For a while, he continued to stare at the computer monitor and I thought he might have forgotten I was in the room. Finally, he swiveled back toward the desk and said, “Sorry to keep you waiting. How are you?”

“Pretty good,” I said.

“Getting warmer out there,” he said.

“Warmer?” I said.

“The weather,” he said.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Yeah, it has been nice lately.”

“My wife and I are opening our country house in Tuxedo soon,” Bob said.

“Great,” I said.

We stared at each other.

“Anyway,” he said, “I just called you in here to get the status on some of your accounts – see where you are and where you’re going.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved to hear that I wasn’t going to be canned. Not yet, anyway.

“First of all, Steve told me you’re pretty close to closing the Media Horizons account?”

“Steve said that?”

“So you’re not close?”

“They’re just waiting for the budget to come through,” I said, giving the most obvious excuse for a delay.

“Did they give you a timetable when you can expect to hear about it?”

“A few days – maybe a week or two.”

“Well, hopefully that one will come through. Are you working on anything else hot?”

“A few things,” I lied.

“Good. Which ones?”

“I have a bid out for a couple of consultants, another for an outsourcing project.”

My answers were smooth and confident and I knew he couldn’t tell I was full of shit.

“Good – I’m glad to see you have a few irons in the fire. Hopefully, you’ll close all three sales and you’ll be off and running.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” I said.

“But, I have to be honest with you, Richard – I don’t like to hit my employees with any surprises. When I hired you to come work for me, you led me to believe you would bring some business with you. You remember that, right? And I’m sure you’re aware you’ve been working here seven months now and you haven’t made a single sale for us yet. Now, I know a lot of that is out of your control and I’m not blaming you for anything. But, at the same time, if your production doesn’t increase I’m going to have to reevaluate your position here at Midtown. I know you were a big producer at your old job and I know you can do it again. I also think you’re a nice guy and I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that you stay with our company for many years. But I’m also running a business here and I can’t keep a salesman on, on any level, just because he’s a mensch. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t get to that point. I’m sure you’ll close the three sales you just mentioned and, before you know it, I’ll be giving you the award for salesman of the month. If there’s anything I can do to help you succeed at this company, please tell me what it is, and I’d be delighted to do it.”

“I appreciate that, but there’s nothing you can do,” I said. “I just need to get some signed contracts, that’s all.”

“Maybe you should let Steve Ferguson come with you to your next sales meeting, or go with him to one of his. I know you probably have your own techniques, but sometimes watching someone who’s been successful can be very helpful.”

“I don’t think that’ll help me,” I said.

“Maybe you should try it anyway,” Bob said. “You never know what might rub off on you. Hey, did you hear about the Polack who locked his keys in his car? He needed a hanger to get his family out.”

I laughed politely at the dumb joke.

“By the way,” Bob said as I stood up, “I don’t know if you heard, but we’re going to be doing a little remodeling in the office next week.”

“No, I didn’t hear about that,” I said.

“We need to expand our recruiting and marketing departments because a few new people are starting. The bottom line is that someone is going to lose his or her office. We haven’t made a decision about who that person will be yet, but I just wanted you to be prepared. Like I said – no surprises.”

I went back to my office calmly and then I slammed the door behind me, rattling the flimsy wall.

I considered calling my old boss at Network Strategies and begging for my old job back, but I knew this would be a waste of time. I hadn’t left on the best of terms to begin with, and I’d really soured things by trying – unsuccessfully – to take some of my old clients with me to Midtown.

I would work on my résumé over the weekend, get back in touch with some headhunters. I didn’t care if I had to take a pay cut, there was no way in hell I was moving to a cubicle.

3

At seven-fifteen Paula wasn’t home from work yet. I called her office and there was no answer. She usually took cabs to and from work, so I assumed she was caught in rush-hour traffic on the FDR Drive or near the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.