The Job (21 page)

“Sounds like an uphill task.”

“Let me put it this way: If I can get you to land, then I have scored one of the biggest against-the-odds wins of my career.”

The next morning-just as I was knotting my tie (no easy thing with three fractured fingers) and preparing myself for day two of The Program-the phone rang. It was Nancy Auerbach.

“Do I have news for you. Ever heard of a guy called Phil Goodwin?”

“Sure. He’s the oublisher of Comvuter America. I met him a couple of times at trade shows. Pretty nice guy, considering that he was our main competitor in the marketplace.”

“Well, he certainly remembers you. More important, he rates if you.

This was news.

“Really?” I said.

“That’s what he said when he called me this morning, wondering if you were still in the market for a job.”

I felt a sudden surge of adrenaline.

“Are you serious?”

“Completely. His exact words were “Ned Allen is one of the ball-siest sales guys in the industry. If he’s free, I want him.”

” I felt a very pleasant second surge of adrenaline. Followed by a wave of worry.

“But he doesn’t know about the Kreplin business, does he?”

“Ned-everyone in your industry now knows about that incident. You’ve become the stuff of legend. But when I raised the matter with Goodwin, he actually seemed more amused about it than anything else. Said something like, I respect a sales guy who can throw a right.” Anyway, there’s an opening at his magazine for a group sales director, overseeing all regional sales departments, coast to coast. Eighty thousand basic pay. Profit participation. Usual medical benefits. Interested?”

Group sales director of Computer America? It wasn’t just a fantastic upward career move; it was also a kick in the ass to Chuck Zanussi. It would restore my professional credibility overnight.

“When can I see Goodwin?” I asked.

“He was wondering if you were free today at lunchtime.”

We met at the Union Square Cafe, right around the corner from the Computer America offices on Park Avenue South. Phil Goodwin wasn’t your typical corporate man. On the contrary, he had something of a swashbuckling reputation. Fifty-five, a shoot-from-the-hip mouth, a fondness for booze, a walrus mustache, bold chalk-stripe suits, and about the surest touch of any publisher in the computer marketplace.

As I approached his table, he mockingly put his hands up in front of his face, as if shielding himself from a blow. Then he pointed to the half-empty martini glass in front of him and asked, “You drink these?”

“Definitely.”

“Then we might be able to work together. I hate designer-water wimps.”

I sat down. He motioned to the waiter for two more martinis.

“So let me ask you something: Did Kreplin even see it coming?”

“No. It was pretty instantaneous. Even surprised me.”

“I met the guy once or twice. Oily little Hun. Think you won yourself some friends when you punched out his lights-that is, as long as you don’t make a habit of slugging any of your other bosses in the future.”

The martinis arrived.

“Here’s to fisticuffs,” Goodwin said. He took a long, deep sip, flipped open the menu, and told the waiter, “We’ll order right now.” Then, turning to me, he said, “As soon as this guy disappears with our order, you start talking-and tell me exactly why I should give you this job. But as soon as he’s back here with the appetizer, your sales pitch is over. Understand?”

After the waiter disappeared, I sprang into action, giving Goodwin my own spin on the state of the computer magazine market, now that CompuWorld was dead. Then I explained how, through subtle repositioning, Computer America could not only claim the high-end advertisers and readership (once held by CompuWorld), but could also start to elbow in on PC Globe’s virtual domination of the middle market. It was a variation on the same spiel I had given to Kreplin when he offered me the publisher’s job-only carefully tailored to Computer America’s requirements, and free of any self-glorifying bullshit. Because I knew full well that Phil Goodwin hated pretension of any variety. Just as I was wrapping things up, our waiter positioned himself in such a way to indicate to me that he was about to arrive with our appetizers. So, knowing how Goodwin also liked to think of business as a contact sport, I decided to end with a flourish:

“I don’t want to maintain the status quo-because now we’re in a head-to-head situation with PC Globe. It’s war. And believe me-given what’s gone down over the last couple of days-I want to win that war. It’s personal.”

The appetizers arrived. Goodwin tossed back the dregs of his martini and called for the wine list.

“Okay,” he finally said to me.

“You’re hired.”

“I was dumbfounded.

“Just like that?” I asked.

“It’s my company, my magazine, I can do whatever the hell I like. So if I say you’re onboard, then you’re onboard. You start Monday. Now what are we going to drink with the food?”

I left the Union Square Cafe at 3:00 P.M.” elated. I was also feeling a little otherworldly. This wasn’t due to the amount of booze I’d had, but the way the alcohol and my painkillers had begun to interact. Just around the time I said good-bye to Phil Goodwin and began walking west, a fog descended on my brain, making the world seem dark, murky, full of strange shadows. Though my apartment was just five blocks away, I jumped in a cab. I made it home just as my stomach began to palpitate and swell, the damp claw of nausea grabbed me by the throat, and a projectile torrent of vomit baptized our very white sofa.

Staggering into the bedroom, I pitched forward, collapsing in a heap on the bed. The plug was pulled-and the next thing I knew. Lizzie was yelling in my ear, shaking me hard.

“Ned, Ned, Ned…”

I groaned and rolled over. The sheets were drenched with sweat, and my mouth tasted like a toxic waste dump. I managed a couple of words.

“Sick. I got sick….”

“I’m calling a doctor,” she said, reaching for the phone.

“Don’t bother. The worst’s over.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I think the painkillers didn’t mix with booze.”

“You were sitting here, drinking on your own?” she said, aghast.

“I had a lunch. Phil Goodwin, publisher of Computer America. He likes to drink. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You idiot. You could have died.”

“I’m sorry, I’m real…”

“I’m calling Dr. Morgan….”

“Don’t, please,” I said, knowing that I didn’t want a barbiturates-and-booze incident on my medical records.

“I just need a shower.”

I wobbled my way into the bathroom, threw off my soiled clothes, and stood under a very cold downpour of water until some reeling of coherence returned. Then I brushed my teeth, following that with an extended, two-minute gargle with Listerine which finally expunged that delightful aftertaste of vomit from my mouth. Picking up my clothes, I dumped them in the laundry bin, put on a white terry cloth robe, and prepared to face the music.

The sodden sheets were already stripped from the bed. Lizzie was in the living room, her hands covered with kitchen gloves, trying to clean the vomit-covered sofa with paper towels.

“I’ll do that,” I said.

“Don’t bother,” she said, not looking up at me.

“It’s ruined.”

“I’ll have it recovered.”

“How?”

“I’ve got a new job. Group sales director at Computer America. That’s what the lunch was all about.”

“Congratulations,” she said flatly.

“You don’t sound pleased.”

She pointed to the stained sofa.

“You have one hell of a way of celebrating your success.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“You’ve not been doing a lot of thinking the past few days.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And you’ve been using that word far too much recently.”

“I’m sorI stopped myself and smiled at her.

“Point taken.”

“You worry me sometimes.”

“It’s just been a bad couple of days.”

“I hope so.”

“And things are on the up-and-up. I’ve landed.”

She glanced back at the sofa.

“In more ways than one.”

The next morning, after Lizzie went to work, I called Nancy Auerbach and told her the great news.

“What can I say?” she said.

“Except, you do surprise me, Ned.”

“There’s one less downsizing victim for your books. Thanks for playing the go-between.”

“You pulled it off, Ned. Not me.”

I worked the phones and found an upholsterer who could have our sofa recovered in the same white canvas fabric within a few weeks. Miracle of miracles, he also had a spare van on hand that afternoon and could pick the couch up at 2:00 P.M The price of the total job: a thousand bucks. It made me wince. That had been a very expensive blown lunch.

I ran down to my local grocery store, picked up the recent editions of PC Globe and Computer America, then spent the morning comparing and contrasting their editorial and advertising content, while also checking my CompuWorld database for solid accounts I could probably seduce over to my new title. I worked steadily all afternoon, breaking only once to help the workmen remove the sofa. By five I had written the first draft of a marketing strategy for Computer America-a plan which I hoped to messenger over to Phil Goodwin first thing the next morning, just to let him know that I was hitting the ground running.

Then the phone rang.

“Ned Allen?” asked the woman on the line.

“Please hold for a call from Mr. Goodwin.”

“Phil,” I said when he came on, “I was just sitting here, working on a battle plan for the …”

“Ned,” he said, “sorry to piss on your parade, but we’ve got a problem here.”

My fractured fingers suddenly began to throb.

“Problem? What problem?”

“You know a shithead named Ted Peterson?”

Oh, no… “I know him.”

“He called me today on some other related matter, and during the course of the conversation, I mentioned that you were going to be taking over here as group sales director. Within five seqqnds, the guy went ballistic. Telling me how you were a deceitful sdnofabitch whom he refused to work with …”

“Me, deceitful?” I said.

“The only reason that guy has it in for me is because I forced him to honor a deal he made with one of our sales people; a deal on which he tried to renege-” “Whatever,” Phil Goodwin said, cutting me off.

“The bottom line, Ned, is this: Peterson made it very clear that if you came aboard here, he’d switch the focus of the GBS account to PC Globe and other print media.”

“He’s talking garbage. GBS just can’t walk away from a major outlet like Computer America.”

“That may be. but what’s troubling me is that he also said that he’d been talking to his fellow media sales guys at NMI, AdTel, Icon, et cetera,
et cetera
.. . and none of them will now have anything to do with you.”

This was the abyss.

“Phil, please, listen. Peterson wasn’t dealing kosher, so I played a moral card and forced him…”

“I don’t care if he dresses up as his mother for kicks. The fact remains: GBS is our biggest advertiser. Believe me, I think Peterson is a punk. But my magazine’s commercial health depends on his ad input. So-while I don’t like giving in to threats-I still have to take onboard his concerns….”

“I’m sure that in a very short time I could easily establish some sort of detente with him….”

“How short a time? Two, three, four months? Sorry, Ned-it’s a tough marketplace, I’m still an independent, and I can’t afford to lose that amount of revenue.”

“We can cover that….”

“Not if the guys at NMI, AdTel,
et cetera
don’t want to do business with you….”

“I know these guys. They’ll come around.”

“Ned, I just can’t take the risk.”

“At least give me the chance to…”

“This gives me no pleasure-because I really think you’re a winner. But-I’m promoting a guy from within the organization as group sales director. He’s not in your league-but at least he doesn’t have your enemies. Sorry, Ned. And good luck to you. I’m sure you’ll land.”

The line went dead.

I furiously dialed Nancy Auerbach’s direct line. She was still at the office.

“Now, first things first,” she said after I gave her a distraught account of my conversation with Phil Goodwin.

“Try to calm down.”

“That fuck Peterson is ruining me, and you’re telling me to be calm!” I was screaming.

There was a very long silence on the phone; a silence which I finally broke.

“I anoloeize…”

“No need. I get screamed at by clients all the time. Part of the territory. You calmer now?”

“A little, yeah.”

“Then I think you better face up to something right away. Between the Kreplin business and this guy Peterson, you have no future in the computer magazine business. That phase of your career is over.”

I swallowed hard. It was like being told you were being deported from the country in which you planned to spend the rest of your life. Nancy Auerbach sensed my despondency.

“I know this is hard, a real blow. And totally unfair. But that’s the way it is. It’s a crisis. But remember: In Chinese, the character for ‘crisis’ means two things-danger and opportunity. Try to think of this as a time of opportunity. And come see me tomorrow.”

Later that night, as I sat across the dinner table from Lizzie, I said, “You know what gets me most about this whole business? The fact that it was a dumb little chain of events that set it off. And I keep thinking, if only the company hadn’t been sold … if only Ivan hadn’t lost the GBS account … if only Kreplin hadn’t offered me the job … if only I’d been totally straight with Chuck…”

“It’s the way things work,” Lizzie said gently, taking my hand.

“Everyone’s a victim of circumstance. And hindsight is just a convenient way of beating yourself up. Your out placement counsellor is right: Consider this a moment of opportunity. And please stop drinking. I really don’t want a repeat of yesterday’s episode.”

I reached for the bottle of red wine in the middle of the table and refilled my glass.

“I’ve stopped taking the painkillers.”