The Job (7 page)

Ballantine arrived with two men in black suits. One carried a briefcase and looked as if he was the Great Motivator’s personal assistant. The other was evidently some sort of security goon, his eyes scanning every diner in the room. Ballantine made a brief stop at Edgar Bronfman’s table-the Seagram heir already on his feet by the time they arrived and greeting Ballantine with a two-handed shake.

“See the guy with the briefcase?” Ian said.

“I bet Ballantine’s going to make him go from table to table and hawk his motivational tapes.”

“Ian, your voice,” Geena said, whispering.

“What’s he going to do? Come over here and rearrange my face?”

As if on cue, the black-suited man approached our table. Ian turned a chalky shade of white. But the guy wasn’t interested in him. He was staring at me.

“Ned Allen?” he asked.

I nodded slowly. He was around my age, with a chiseled jaw. I was certain I had seen his face somewhere before. He proffered his hand.

“Jerry Schubert,” he said.

“Brunswick High, class of eighty-three.”

“Jesus,” I said, standing up and clasping his hand.

“Jesus Christ. I don’t believe this.”

“Small world. How long you been in the city?”

“Since leaving college. You?”

“Ditto. I’ve been Mr. Ballantine’s personal assistant for the past three years.”

“You’ve done well.”

Noticing that Lizzie had her hand on the back of my chair, he gave her an approving nod.

“So have you.”

“Sorry. My wife, Lizzie.”

Lizzie smiled thinly.

“And la nand Geena Deane.”

“Hang on, are you the guy who writes that column in the News?”

Ian looked a little edgy.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Mr. Ballantine really appreciated the mention you gave him last week.”

lana voided Jerry’s unamused gaze.

“It was just a gag.”

“You have an interesting sense of humor, Mr. Deane.” His expression lightened.

“But Mr. Ballantine knows how to take a joke.”

He glanced over at his boss. Ballantine was just leaving Bronfman’s table, and the security goon was making discreet little head motions, letting it be known Jerry was wanted, pronto.

“Listen, got to go,” he said, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket and handing me a card.

“It would be great to catch up. Talk some Maine talk.”

“You still playing hockey?” I asked, slipping him one of my business cards.

“Only in my dreams.” He glanced at my card.

“Regional sales director. Impressive. Listen, nice meeting everyone-even you, Mr. Deane. Call me, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“I mean it.”

As soon as he was out of earshot, Geena said, “Well, I’m impressed.”

“What the hell did you say about Ballantine in your column?” I asked Ian.

“I just made a io key little aside about Ballantine’s new book,

saying it was full of great tips about how to go bankrupt but still hold on to your yacht.”

“A laugh a minute, my husband,” Geena said.

“Hell, it was the truth,” Ian said.

“Ballantine’s business collapsed like the Fall of Rome, but he kept on living like Donald Trump. And now he’s risen from the dead again. The man’s so indestructible he makes Rasputin look like a wimp.”

“Did you know that Jerry guy well in high school?” Lizzie asked.

“We were in the same homeroom, we hung out a bit during sophomore year-but then Jerry got to be a big-deal player on the hockey team, so he became part of the jock crowd.” Had Ian not been at the table, I would have also mentioned the fact that, besides being a killer on the ice, Jerry Schubert also had something of an infamous reputation at Brunswick High. Because, during his senior year, he was involved in a small local scandal, when he was accused (along with two other players) of helping throw a crucial statewide championship hockey game. Allegations flew that he had links to some local bookies who’d bet heavily on the game-but a police investigation turned up no hard evidence, and he was eventually exonerated. It was all ancient history now-but there’s no such thing as an old story to a gossipmonger like Ian. He’d have the tale in print the next day (“Word around town has it that Jack Ballantine’s personal assistant may have once been involved in a small town betting scandal….”). And I would rightfully stand accused of dredging up dirt about an old friend. So I said nothing, except, “I read in some local paper that Jerry tried out for the NHL after college. Guess he didn’t make it.”

“So now he carries the Great Motivator’s briefcase,” Ian said.

“You know what I love about you, darling?” Geena said.

“Your warm, all-embracing love of humanity.”

“How can you expect humanity from a journalist?” I said, flashing lana smile.

“Ned’s right,” lananswered.

“It’s like expecting subtlety from a salesman.”

I managed a hollow little laugh. Yet again, the bastard had gotten the last word.

In the taxi back to our apartment, Lizzie said, “I really wish you Would stop trying to outdo lana ll the time.”

48 DODGLiS IEIIEDT “It’s just banter.”

“To him, yeah. But to you, it’s serious.”

“No, it’s not….”

“Ned, as I’ve told you again and again-you don’t have to compete with anyone, or keep proving that you are a success. You are a success.

“T’.

I’m not trying to prove anything.”

“Then why did you pick up the check tonight?”

“Don’t worry about the cost of the dinner….”

“I am worried about the cost of the dinner. We are incredibly overextended.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Sixty grand in the red isn’t overextended?”

“In two weeks, my bonus check rolls in and well be back in the black.”

“Until you start spending again.”

“So 111 stop spending,” I said.

“No, you won’t. Because you need to spend. It makes you feel on top of things.”

I needed to end this conversation fast.

“Spending is fun,” I said.

“Especially with you.”

She took my face in her hands and gave me a wry smile.

“That’s what I call a romantic evasion.”

Our apartment was located on Twentieth Street between Fifth and Sixth, the so-called Flatiron district-better known as “SoHo Nouveau,” if you believe what you read in the magazines. New warehouse apartments. New restaurants and bars. Trendy shopping (Emporio Armani, Paul Smith, even the de rigueur outposts of the Gap, J. Crew, and Banana Republic). And staggeringly high rents. Our one-bedroom loft (bleached parquet floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, state-of-the-art kitchen) ran us $2,200 a month-with the landlord threatening a 15 percent increase when the lease ended in February.

The message light was blinking on our answering machine. I hit the “playback” button and heard the voice of Ivan Dolinsky. He’d applied a coat of upbeat confidence to his voice, but it couldn’t mask the precarious shakiness-the aura of damaged goods-which had. of late, become his defining trait.

“Boss, Ivan here. Listen, sorry, real sorry to call you at home. Was gonna call you on your cellphone, but then thought, hey, the guy’s got a life, right? Don’t need to be hearing live from me in the late P.M. So that’s why I decided to try your land line. Everything’s great, just great, like real great with the GBS spread. Closing tomorrow, high noon-after which, pardner, I’m gonna feel like the biggest gunslinger in the West. But, listen, the point of bothering you at home… word on the street has it that Chuckie Zanussi made an unscheduled stopover in the “Big C’.. ..”

Shit. Shit. Shit. The jungle drums were beating at CompuWorld. And I knew who was hitting the bongos the loudest. Debbie Suarez. Great hustler. Big mouth.

“.. . Anyway, you know me, Mr. Heebie-jeebies. The glass isn’t just half empty, it’s also the last drop of water on earth…. What I’m saying here is: We got a problem? A little Jap problem, perhaps? Don’t get me wrong: Yokimura’s been good to me. But when a Jap wants to fuck you over …”

I hit the “pause” button. Lizzie rolled her eyes.

“Charming,” she said.

“Well, he is a Vietnam vet.”

“I didn’t realize we were fighting the Japanese in Vietnam,” Lizzie said, heading into the bedroom. I clicked the machine back on.

“… So, boss, if you wouldn’t mind, gimme a fast call when you get back tonight, just so I can sleep soundly and not worry about having my butt downsized. Ring me anytime. Doesn’t matter how late it is-just please give me that call and help me put my anxieties on hold.”

Great. Just great. Dealing with Ivan Dolinsky-my onetime numero-uno rainmaker, for Christ’s sake-had become like Psych 101. “Gimme a fast call when you get back tonight, just so I can sleep soundly…” The poor bastard hadn’t slept soundly in over two years-ever since his only child, Nancy, had died of meningitis. She was just three-and the center of Ivan’s life. Especially as she was an in vitro baby-the miracle (as Ivan called her) who arrived after five long years of trying for a child. The fact that he was forty-six when she was born (and that it was his first child after two failed marriages) made Nancy’s arrival all the more emotional… and her death a sorrow beyond comprehension. Within months of losing her, his marriage was history. His concentration went south. He started missing appointments. And he stopped closing.

Chuck had wanted to fire him a year ago, after he lost us a major Tech World multipage insert that was essentially in the bag (until Ivan missed four straight meetings). But I successfully plea-bargained his case with Chuck, then forced Ivan to see a grief counselor and started feeding him some easy accounts to gently ease him back into selling mode. And, within the past couple of months, he had started to deliver the goods again-to the point where I’d trusted him to land a big GBS spread. But the guy still needed nonstop TLC. And he had developed this unfortunate habit of talking your ear off whenever he phoned-a straightforward business call turning into a twenty-minute monologue. Which is why I wasn’t up for phoning him tonight. So, heading over to my desktop computer (which we keep in a little home-office alcove adjacent to our kitchen), I banged out a fast e-mail, short and sedate.

Ivan:

No need to lose sleep over small potatoes. I’m not. Because nothing-repeat, nothing-sinister is in the air. Break a leg with GBS tomorrow. And do yourself a favor: Chill.

Ned I reread the message and thought: God, how I’d love to believe my own bullshit. Then I hit the “Send Now” button and went to bed.

Lizzie was already curled up in her corner of the bed, reading a copy of Vanity Fair. She put the magazine down and looked at me.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Chuck Zanussi’s trip to Chicago?” she asked.

“Never got around to it, that’s all,” I said.

“Something big going on?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then why was Ivan calling here, sounding like he was in need of Prozac?”

“Because he is in need of Prozac, all the time.”

“You would tell me “

“What?”

“If something was up at work.”

No, frankly, I wouldn’t. Because I was educated in the idea that fear or anxiety was something you didn’t share with those nearest and dearest to you. As my dad used to tell me: Never let anyone know if you’re about to shit in your pants. The fact that you’re scared will spook your family and please the hell out of your enemies.

Instead, you were supposed to internalize fear. Keep it out of sight… and, in the process, out of mind. Or, at least, that was my dad’s theory-and one which I’d tried to follow over the years-much to the profound exasperation of my wife, who, during very occasional moments of hostility, has accused me of refusing to admit that I might just have a vulnerable bone or two in my body.

“Of course I’d tell you,” I said.

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit. It’s just…”

“You don’t want to worry me.”

“Exactly.”

“Which means there’s something to worry about.”

“There is nothing to worry about. Chuck got called to a meeting in Chicago, that’s all.”

“An important meeting?”

“I’m not worried.”

“So something is going on.”

“At this point, all I know is it-^vas just a meeting. And over breakfast tomorrow-” “Oh, boy….”

“Lizzie …”

“Chuck’s hauling you in for breakfast?”

“We have breakfast together a lot.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Okay, you’re right. It’s the first time in, I don’t know…”

“Try ever. Chuck hates ‘doing’ breakfast.”

“How’d you know that?”

“You told me.”

“I guess I did. But hey, it’s just a breakfast, right?”

“I really wish you weren’t so damn secretive.”

“I’m not secretive. Just coy.”

“You are impossible, you know that?” I slid into bed next to her.

“But you love me all the same,” I said.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

I pulled her toward me. Immediately, she began to move away.

“Ned… no,” she said. An awkward silence.

“It’s been almost three weeks,” I said quietly.

“I know,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“But the doctor said it could take up to twenty-one days before …”

“Whatever. I’m not trying to push you …”

“I know you’re not. And I do, will want to again soon. But just right now not…

“Fine, fine,” I said, stroking her hair.

“There’s no rush. But you are feeling, uh, okay about… ?”

“Sure,” she said flatly.

Another awkward silence-one which we found difficult to fill. Recently, there had been too many of these silences. And they all related to the same thing: Lizzie’s miscarriage three weeks earlier.

The pregnancy had been a total accident, a “mechanical failure,” perpetrated (we discovered later) by a microscopic tear in Lizzie’s diaphragm. As such, the news that we were parents to be came as a massive two-thousand-watt jolt. After the initial shock, Lizzie was delighted with the news. But when the home pregnancy test turned a bright shade of pink, I went gray.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Lizzie said after registering my high anxiety.

“We always knew we wanted children eventually. So this is just nature’s way of saying that eventually has arrived sooner than expected.”