“Going on with what?” Diane said coldly. She was still standing near the door, looking like she was staring down a man who’d raped and killed her family.
“The silent treatment,” Max said. “You’d think I was Charles Manson or something.”
“The police came back here Friday afternoon, after they took you away.”
“So?” Max said.
“They were talking to everyone, asking a lot of questions.”
“That’s what police do,” Max said, trying to seem patient. “When somebody gets shot they go to their office and ask a lot of questions.”
“You don’t care, do you?”
The question confused Max. He wasn’t sure whether Diane was trying to change the subject or not. “Care about what?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Diane said. “You’re pathetic.”
“That’s out of line,” Max said. “If you don’t-”
“Everybody thinks you did it.”
Max stared at Diane. He couldn’t believe she had the balls to talk to her boss this way. What the hell was happening to the world?
“Did what?” he said.
“Hired that guy to kill your wife,” Diane said, “hired somebody else to shoot Angela.”
“I didn’t hire anybody to shoot Angela.”
“But you hired somebody to kill your wife?”
“I didn’t hire anybody to do anything.”
“I don’t believe you. Nobody believes you. We knew you were an asshole, I just can’t believe I’ve been working all this time for a murderer. And no, don’t bother firing me – I quit.”
“Will you just calm down?” Max said. “Jesus, I hate it when you get hysterical.” He wondered if she had any valium. Women always had that stuff and God knew he could use some too. He’d been having chest pains again lately and needed something to ward off a heart attack. How much could one decent man take?
Diane stormed out of the office, letting the door slam behind her. To hell with her, Max thought. If an employee wasn’t loyal to her boss, what use was she? Besides, accounting people were a dime a dozen and it was a known fact that the Chinese were better than Italians anyway. He’d make a call to a headhunter and tomorrow morning there’d be ten Chinese guys lined up for Diane’s job. His heart pounding, he looked at his Rolex, went to the drawer, poured a large glass of vodka, and gulped it down, spilling some on his tie, thinking, Aw, c’mon, gimme a break.
There was a knock on Max’s door. Diane begging for her job back? That was fast. But instead it was Thomas Henderson, NetWorld’s CFO. He told Max that he was resigning, that he just couldn’t work here anymore. Max said this was fine with him. A CFO would be harder to replace than an ordinary accountant, but fuck it, Max didn’t want anyone working for him who didn’t have loyalty to the company.
Eleven more people resigned during the next half hour, including four of his Senior Network Technicians, a few cable installers, and two of his best PC technicians. Goddamn it, his whole company was hemorrhaging. Now Max was starting to get frightened and more than a little drunk. As they filed in and out of his office, he said to one guy, “When the going gets tough, the tough get fucked.” He knew that wasn’t right, was it? What-the-fuck ever. He said to some woman, “Easy go, easy come for me, baby.” Like he didn’t give a goddamn, but he did, oh yeah. After another glass of Stoli he screamed at another woman, “Get out of my fucking face!” Max realized he was losing it. It was one thing to lose a couple of people, but all of a sudden his entire company was falling apart in front of him.
Max ordered the temp who was answering phones today to call all the headhunters NetWorld dealt with and to transfer them to his line as soon as she got through. Later, when the headhunters returned his calls, Max told them to set up appointments to interview people for the vacant positions. This made Max feel a little more at ease, until clients started calling. He realized he was slurring and the damn vodka was empty, How the hell’d that happen?
At first, there were just a few smaller clients, calling to cancel their service and consulting agreements. They were five- to ten-thousand-dollar-a-year clients that Max wouldn’t miss, but then a few bigger clients, where Max had placed full-time consultants and did steady business, called to say they were planning to look for a new company for network support. All of the clients had the same story – they didn’t like the bad publicity that Max and NetWorld were getting so they had decided it was best to take their business elsewhere. Max tried desperately to save the clients, but nothing he could say worked. It was like he was shouting and the world was, what, deaf? He hated how he sounded, like he was fucking pleading. Then, craving another drink, he went to the stash of Chivas Regal he kept for special clients. He poured a glass, some going on his tie, thought, Fuck it, and started guzzling. Vaguely, he remembered the hangover from hell the last time he mixed vodka and whiskey, but he didn’t let that slow him down. He hit the intercom button and ordered his temp to go out to get some pistachios, figuring they’d soak up the booze.
Ten minutes later, clutching the bottle of Chivas, Max wobbled out to the temp’s desk and said, “Where the fuck are my nuts?” Then he said, “Wait I know where they are, they’re right here,” and grabbed his balls.
The girl mumbled something with the word “disgusting” in it and Max interrupted, “Hey, you talking back to me? Don’t you know, I own your arse!” He smiled, realizing he’d channeled Thomas Dillon, old Popeye himself.
Now the girl was saying something about quitting and Max said, “You know, you’re getting just a tad on my nerves.” Then he thought, Tad? How fucking British was he gonna get? And where the hell was that Zen book? Hadn’t the police returned it? How was he gonna mellow out if he couldn’t find the goddamn thing?
The girl got up to leave. No big loss – she was thin, had no shape.
“And Zen there were none!” Max yelled at her as she ran out of the office.
He opened the Chivas for another dose and then shouted, “Fuck!” as the cap cut into his index finger, blood leaking out. In the bathroom, full-blown panic set in as he rinsed his finger, watching what he was convinced were pints of blood go down the drain. He was gonna bleed to death from a Chivas bottle cap – how pathetic was that?
The bleeding finally stopped but, but he was convinced he’d lost vital amounts of blood and back at his desk, he drank from the bottle, trying to replace the fluid, thinking, Yeah, like that was gonna work. Then, thinking out loud, he said, “Did I just think out loud?” Fook on a bike, as that Irish cow always said. Why wouldn’t the bitch do the decent thing and fuckin’ die? Was it so much to ask?
Max stood straight up, muttered about getting focused, even though he was seeing double. He was determined to save his business. Then, the whiskey pumping him up, he thought, The office? Why stop there? He could save the world, maybe give Angela’s buddy Bono a run for his money.
Then Jack Haywood from Segal, Russell amp; Ross called to tell Max that his company wanted to sever ties with NetWorld. Max nearly cried, No, not fucking Jack.
“Come on, Jackie baby,” Max pleaded, “after all we’ve been through, all the lap dances and hookers? Come on, buddy, you know what kind of guy I am? You know I’d never get involved with any of those sleazeballs you’re hearing about in the news, I thought we were tight, man?”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Max thought Jack might have hung up, then he was saying, “I want to believe you, Max, but I saw you with that stripper the other night and I’ve seen you with strippers before and I know how you were always putting down your wife, talking about how you sleep around-”
“Jack,” Max shouted, “that was just bullshit I say when I’m selling. You don’t really think I… whatever you do, Jack, please, don’t tell the police that!”
“It’s not my decision anyway,” Jack said. “If it was up to me, I’d keep you on, but the partners don’t like it. But hey, listen, I’ll keep your number in my rolodex. If I ever move to another company, I’ll give you a call. Maybe we can do something.” There was a long pause then Jack asked, “Are you drinking?” Then, “I mean, it’s none of my business, pal, but you need to stay sober if you want to regain any credibility.”