Hard Feelings (3 page)

“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 e-mail 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 e-mail, 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 selfconfident 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.

I had picked up a bouquet of long-stemmed pink roses and a card, congratulating her on her promotion. I was still in a bad mood about work, but I was determined not to take it out on Paula.

To help relax, I went to the liquor cabinet and poured myself half a glass of Scotch, and then I filled the rest of the glass with seltzer. I hadn’t had a drink in a long time—maybe six months—and the first few sips gave me a nice buzz.

I had started drinking in high school. In college, at SUNY Buffalo, I drank more often and then, when I moved back to the city after graduation, I went out to bars with friends at least a few times a week. After a few embarrassing episodes when I blacked out and made a fool of myself at parties, I decided to go cold turkey.