Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch (7 page)

“This is great,” says Fergus, calling me back.

“You like it?”

“Yes, Russell. You did good poopie.”

I hang up the phone. For my reward, I crank up the volume on my iPod speakers and do a funny little dance to a couple of Rilo Kiley tunes.

I stop when the neighbors below start banging on their ceiling. I take a shower before Sam gets home, then put on real clothes for the first time today. A clean T-shirt and my favorite relaxed-fit khakis. I plan to work on my next priority when Sam gets home.

“What the hell happened here?” she says.

“I was working. I had a creative burst. Wrote a whole new article today.”

“So when where you planning on picking this shit up?”

“No problem. I thought maybe I would ravish your sexy young body first.”

“Don’t start with that the moment I walk through the door. I’m not in the mood.”

“I’m just excited to see you.”

“This isn’t your office, Russell. If you can’t file all this away tonight, it’s going in the basement tomorrow.”

CHAPTER SIX

Before I walk into Henry’s nine a.m. staff meeting, I already know the three main obstacles Judd Walker has to overcome on his first day of his new assignment:

1. He’s a consultant. Years ago I claimed an old book from my dad’s collection called
   Up the Organization
   . It’s packed with handy advice for navigating the corporate world, including a warning about consultants: They will borrow your watch just to tell you the time. Then they are likely to walk off with it too.
   
2. He’s arriving at a bad time. Henry’s already tipped me off that more layoffs and budget cuts are coming soon. When the rest of his team hears what’s going on, any shred of motivation they may have to help Judd will evaporate.
   
3. It’s my twenty-eighth day without sex. And I’m not in the best of moods.
   

At least I thought those were going to be Judd’s main obstacles. But when I walk into the small conference room on the twenty-sixth floor, I immediately see three more:

1. He’s sitting at Henry’s right hand. Henry’s in the dad seat at the head of the conference table. But Judd’s right next to him. In my usual spot.
   
2. He’s wearing suspenders. Not a good fashion choice. Not on the first day. Not when you’re the youngest person in the room. It makes people suspicious, even before you open your mouth.
   
3. He’s planning to present. The projector is set up in the middle of the table. Connected to a laptop PC. Just waiting to be powered up.
   

I nod in Henry’s direction and walk around the table to sit on Henry’s left, opposite Judd. Dave Douglas and Susan Trevor are already entering. Susan sits next to Judd, with Dave on her right. None of us speak. Henry only wants to go through the formalities once. Hank Sullivan arrives, then Ben Shapiro hurries in, apologizing for being late.

“Let’s wait a minute to see if Martin gets here,” says Henry. We sit in silence for thirty-five seconds more.

Susan makes a fuss of dunking her teabag several times in her milky tea before getting up to deposit the bag in the wastebasket.

“I told Jeanie to skip this meeting. She’s got a lot to prepare for the budget review this afternoon,” says Henry. A few moments later he leans close to Judd and whispers something that makes Judd nod in a serious manner. Judd is wearing cufflinks, I notice. I score that as another point against him.

Twelve more seconds tick by.

“OK,” says Henry. “Let’s get started.”

He introduces Judd. Gives a glowing overview of his academic and business credentials. Then he suggests we go around the room and each tell Judd our name and our role at the
Chronicle
. I start the ball rolling. As I speak, Judd draws an oblong shape on his notepad. It represents the table we’re sitting at. He writes my name near a corner of his oblong to indicate where I’m sitting.

The baton passes quickly. By now, we all have our thirty-second intros down pat. We reach Susan, who sighs and says simply, “Susan Trevor. Director of ad services.”

“Great,” says Henry. He explains that he has brought Judd in to assist him in developing a new strategic plan for the
Chronicle
. Judd will likely have questions for each of us, and Henry expects us to give Judd all the help he needs.

As Henry is talking, Judd goes through a discreet warm-up routine, adjusting his cuffs, clearing his throat softly, sipping from his premium-brand bottled water. I glance around the table. Hank and Dave are professionally blank, waiting to see what happens. Ben raises his eyebrows and purses his lips at me. Susan is staring at Judd with open hostility.

Henry tells us that Judd has recently completed an analysis of the newspaper industry. A white paper, if you will. It outlines the challenges facing our whole industry.

Martin enters quietly and takes his seat. Henry continues speaking, choosing to downplay the interruption.

“I thought it would be useful if Judd were to summarize his analysis and add a few initial thoughts on the specific obstacles facing the
Daily Business Chronicle
,” says Henry. “Judd?”

Judd takes another sip of water, says, “Thank you, Henry,” then reaches over to power up the projector while telling us how much he’s looking forward to working with us all. Even though the room is small, he stands to present.

His title slide appears:

M
ACRO
T
RENDS IN THE
N
EWSPAPER
I
NDUSTRY
: T
HE
F
UTURE OF
P
ULP IN A
P
IXEL
-B
ASED
W
ORLD

Susan groans aloud.

I walk down the corridor with Dave, Martin and Susan.

“Asswipe,” says Dave.

“Dickwad,” says Martin.

“Fuckheel,” says Susan.

I sense ears pricking up within a six-cubicle radius.

“Fuckheel?” I say. “He wasn’t that bad.”

We reach the doors to the elevator bank. Dave punches the security panel with the side of his fist, pushes hard on the door so it bounces back off the wall.

“Business school bullshit,” he says.

“Don’t let him get to you,” I say. “He’s just some upstart consultant. He’s here on a project. He’ll be gone as soon as he files his report.”

“Don’t be so sure,” says Susan, who sees the downside to everything. “This is how Henry operates.”

“Do we even know how long he’s officially here?” says Martin. “Or did I miss that part?” Martin prides himself on his constant curiosity. But he’s never quite curious enough to get to Henry’s nine o’clock meetings on time.

“You didn’t miss much,” says Susan. “Henry played up the new boy’s credentials. Told us he first met Judd when he was still in diapers.”

Martin looks at me for clarification.

“He started out in packaged goods,” I tell him. “Not just diapers. Detergents and air fresheners too. Then Harvard for his MBA.”

“Major Bloody Attitude,” says Susan.

“Fucking Harvard fucking MBAs,” says Dave.

“Couldn’t he get a real job?” says Martin.

Dave’s up elevator arrives, but he lets it go, waits for the next one. He’s still mumbling to himself as Martin, Susan and I get on our elevator down to twenty-five.

The phone in my office is ringing.

“What the hell was all that about?” says Ben Shapiro. Ben runs our events department. Hank Sullivan pulled him aside after Henry’s meeting to discuss plans for his next big client boondoggle. “I thought Dave was going to throttle the cute new consultant. And Henry just—”

“Hold on, Ben,” I say. “That’s my other line.”

“Can you believe that?” says Hank Sullivan, our sales director. “How does Henry let a kid walk in off the street and talk to Dave like that? I mean, we all know Dave
is
inflexible and arrogant, but you can’t just come out and say it.”

“Don’t worry,” I tell Hank. “Dave will be all right. Henry will take care of it. He can’t afford to piss Dave and the production people off. He’ll take the kid aside, smooth out his rough edges. We won’t be seeing any performances like that again. But hey, let’s catch up later, can we? I’ve got another call holding.”

I click back to Ben and tell him the same thing—including the part about having another call, even though it’s no longer true. I hang up the phone and stare out my window for a second or two.

“I hear I missed a good meeting,” says Jeanie Tusa, our finance director. I swivel in my chair to see her leaning against my doorframe. Jeanie doesn’t enter my office unless she really has to. I’ve heard through the grapevine that she thinks I should “clean my room.”

“Hi, Jeanie,” I say. “You didn’t miss much. Just the usual horse hockey.”

“That’s not what I heard,” she says. “I heard Dave Douglas is really pissed at Henry’s new consultant.” Jeanie’s dirty blonde hair is curly in the way it gets when she doesn’t have time to blow it dry. She smiles, lips closed, her whole face scrunched up. It’s not her best look.

“Judd?” I say. “I guess he did ruffle a couple of feathers.” I immediately regret saying even that much. It’s a violation of one of my cardinal rules: never tell anyone from finance anything. People from finance have the power to fuck you over. And Jeanie is no exception, even if she devotes large chunks of time to acting like a pal to me, Susan, Ben and Martin. She’ll always be the person who meets with Henry behind closed doors each week, reviewing spreadsheets, catching up on office gossip and deciding when and how to cut our staff or our budgets.

“Who came up with ‘Diaper Boy’? I love it.” She smiles again to indicate how much fun this gossipy stuff can be.

I don’t take the bait this time.

“So how’s the budget reforecast shaping up?”

“Good news!” says Jeanie. “I was just coming to tell you. I found an extra hundred and twenty-nine thousand. I’ve put it into your trade advertising budget.”

“You just found it?”

“Not so loud.” She perches herself on my guest chair, puts an elbow onto the papers on my desk and leans toward me. She’s wearing a long-sleeved top with horizontal blue and white stripes. Most of the mothers in our office wouldn’t even attempt such a look. But Jeanie works out so much she can almost pull it off. “Let’s just keep this between us. There’s no need to tell Henry.”

I’m not sure what surprises me more these days—the amount of trust Henry still places in Jeanie, or the number of little secrets she manages to keep from him.

“OK,” I say. “But what if he notices we’re running a lot more ads?”

“Don’t book the ads yet. We may have some budget cuts coming.”

“So how much of the one-twenty-nine will I be giving back?”

Jeanie sucks air through her teeth. “We’ll probably ask you for three hundred.”

“So instead of being plus one-twenty-nine, I’m actually minus one-seventy-one?”

She looks confused. As if she didn’t know math was something you could do in your head. “Something like that. But it’s better than being minus three hundred, right?”

“I guess so,” I tell her. “Well, listen, thanks for bringing me the good news.”

Instead of leaving, Jeanie leans even further across my desk. “So,” she says, “did you hear about Ben’s bathrobes?”

“Bathrobes?” I’m trying to sound noncommittal. I know exactly what she’s talking about. I have one hanging in my closet at home.

“Did you know those bathrobes he ordered for Georgina’s spa day cost three hundred and forty dollars each?”

“Wow. They must be pretty good quality.”

“You don’t think that’s a little extravagant?”

Ben’s title is special events director. Before he joined us, the position was just called “events director.” But Ben won’t produce any event unless it’s special. Which means we’re hosting more lavish, more talked-about, more well-attended events than ever before. Jeanie spends so much time going after Ben it makes me wonder if she’s under secret instructions from Henry to build a file on him. It has nothing to do with Ben’s homosexuality, of course. Henry is a highly evolved executive and a tolerant individual. He would never be seen to discriminate against anybody based on his own personal phobias.

“Didn’t Georgina have a budget?” I ask. “I thought that her spa day was for twenty-five of our best clients. I heard it was a big success.”

“Well, it’s hard for us to judge how successful it was. We weren’t there.”

I sit back and clasp my chin in my hand, thinking how I might change the subject. Because now’s not the time to tell Jeanie that I was the person Georgina Bird called when a client canceled on her at the last minute. That I took a break from the stress of my day to enjoy a one-hour hot-stone massage, followed by a European facial, capped off with a hydrating body wrap. It was one of those company-paid thank-yous sales managers try to give their friends in marketing whenever they can. Taking home an imported designer robe in my gift bag seemed like the perfect end to my very special day.

“How’s Justin doing?” I ask, feigning concern for Jeanie’s obnoxious second child. “Did he get over that infection OK?”

After Jeanie leaves, I send Ben an instant message telling him to call me. I want to explain to him how important it is to keep Jeanie sweet, how she should always get a leftover robe if he has one, or even be added to the guest list for a special event once in a while.

I bump into Henry on my way to the kitchen area. He looks approvingly at the company-issued mug I’m holding, emblazoned with the purple and yellow Ghosh Media logo.

“What did you think of this morning’s meeting?” he says, following me into the kitchen area. He seems a little jazzed up.

I study the buttons on the machine and make my selections cautiously. Coffee. Caffeinated. Medium strength. Full cup. The machine whirrs into action. The display panel reads: PLEASE WAIT.

“Well, I think it was terrific,” says Henry. “A great exchange of ideas. I was really impressed with the way Judd articulated his thinking.” Henry seems a bit like his old self again. As if he believes having Judd around will actually help him get things back on track.