“What’d you do?” I asked, forcing down a smirk as I thought of Adgerson, up in Brandon’s face.
“Oh, I fired him,” he said casually, with an obligatory and false trace of regret. “Personnel can deal with his attorney, if he has one. The point is, Nick, he was ready for me. And you tipped him off.”
I stared at my shoes for a while in what I thought would be a fairly reasonable display of humility, then looked up to see Brandon’s facial muscles twitching as he awaited my admission. “Adgerson was a good man,” I said slowly, “and he wrote a lot of business over the years for Nathan’s. When we worked the floor together over on Connecticut Avenue, he had a huge customer following. To let go of a valuable employee just like that, because, I don’t know, he blew smoke in somebody’s face, or whatever-I just thought the guy deserved to know what was coming down.”
“It’s not your job to think of anything when it comes to salesmen and managers. I’ll do the thinking in that department, understand?” I nodded, his features softened, and he continued. “If I didn’t like you, Nick, I’d start looking for a new advertising director. I’ve discussed this with Rosen. He feels that your actions are a serious infraction. I’ve convinced him, however, that you’re salvageable.”
He hadn’t of course, spoken to Jerry Rosen, the company’s general manager. He was merely trying to throw a scare into me while at the same time taking credit for being a regular Joe.
“Nick,” he said, “all I want for you to do is get with the program.” His thumb and forefinger met to form an “O” as he talked, a peculiarly delicate gesture for such a large man. “This is a very tough year for us. Margins have eroded to the point where we’re working on ten dollar bills. Overhead is way up. And the power retailers are coming to town to put independents like us out of business. What I’m saying is, I need your experience on the team. I’m putting the ball in your court, Nick. What do you think?”
“I think you’re overheating the sports metaphors,” I said. Then I shrugged sheepishly and grinned like Stan Laurel.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I really believe in this company. I want us all to move forward, and I want you to be a part of it.”
Coming from a sales background, I had a natural distrust for managers. I didn’t really dislike Brandon; I guess it was something closer to pity. I wanted to tell him to loosen up his windsor knot, sleep with some strange women, and generally act in an irresponsible manner for the next five years. But like many men my age, I was only mourning the passing of my twenties.
“I’ll make the effort,” I said. He showed me some teeth, put his hand in the shape of a phlyshape oistol, pointed it in my direction, and squeezed off an imaginary round. I smiled back weakly and left his office.
I picked up a stack of messages from the front desk, where Marsha had fanned them out in a decorative pattern. On the way back to my own desk I passed a girl from our service department who had an unusually tight and beautifully formed ass. We looked each other over, and I got a smile. As she slid past, I smelled dime-store perfume laced with nicotine.
I looked over the messages at my desk. Two were from radio reps and a third was from a salesman from one of the local papers. My rep at the Post, Patti Dawson, had called. I threw all of these messages away but made a mental note to return Patti’s call. The last message was from a Mr. Pence, a name I didn’t recognize. I slipped that piece of paper beneath my phone.
For the remainder of the afternoon I traded retail cliches (“Katie, Bar the Door,” “Passin’ Them Out Like Popcorn”) with Fisher, the company merch manager, and finished laying out my weekend ad for the Post.
A breathy intern answered the phone when I called the Post looking for Patti Dawson. She said that Patti was on the road and that I should try her car phone.
After four tapping sounds and two rings, Patti answered. There was some sort of light pop in the background, Luther Vandross or one of his imitators. Patti kept her car stereo cemented on WHUR.
“What’s your schedule like today?” she asked, her voice sounding remote on the speakerphone but characteristically musical.
“I’ve just finished my Ninth Symphony,” I said. “Later I’m performing brain surgery on the President.”
“You got any time in your busy day to give me an ad?”
“It’s done. I’m gonna cut out early. I’ll leave the ad on my desk. You can just drop Saturday’s proof here and I’ll correct it tomorrow.”
“I’ll also drop our new rate card by.”
“Courtesy of those philanthropists at the Washington Post?”
“You got it,” she said, her voice beginning to break apart. I said I’d talk to her later, and she said something I couldn’t make out, though somewhere in there she used the word lover.
I switched off the crane-necked lamp over my drawing table, considered calling Mr. Pence, but decided to take his number with me and leave before any more assignments came my way. En route to the stairwell I passed the glass-enclosed office of Nathan Plavin. He was sitting in a high-backed swivel chair with his chin resting on his chest, watching his fingers drum the bare surface of his oak desktop. Over him stood his top man, Jerry Rosen, who was pointing his finger very close to Plavin’s chest. Nathan Plavin, the owner of a thirty-million-a-year retail operation, looked very much at that moment like a little boy being scolded.
I looked away, oddly embarrassed for him, and passed by Marsha’s desk. Reaching the stairwell, I hollered back to her that I was gone for the day. fonfor the Marsha yelled to me that Karen had called, but I continued down the steps.
A nearly lifesize cutout caricature of Nathan Plavin dangled from the ceiling at the bottom of the stairwell. I had designed it two years earlier and since then used it in the head of all our print ads and mailers. The caricature depicted Nathan with an enlarged head topped by a crooked crown, overflowing with stereos, televisions, and VCRs. There were dollar bills in his clenched fists, and a wide smile across his fat face. One of his teeth was golden.
Kim brought my food and set it down. The fish had no taste and the fries tasted faintly of fish. I quickly finished my early dinner and brooded some more over another beer. Kim took my money and nodded as I headed out the door.
My apartment was the bottom floor of a colonial in the Shepherd Park area of Northwest. I walked around to the side entrance, where my black cat hurried out from behind some bushes and tapped me on the back of my calf with her nose. I turned the key and entered.
She followed me in, jumped up on the radiator, and let out an abbreviated meow. I scratched the top of her head and tickled the scar tissue on the socket that had once housed her right eye. She shut her left eye and pushed her head into my hand as I did this.
In my bedroom I undid my tie as I pushed the power button on my receiver. The tuner was set on WHFS, and I moved the antenna around on the back of the set to better the reception. Weasel was ending his show, predictably, with some NRBQ from the Yankee Stadium LP. I switched over to phono and laid Martha and the Muffins’ “This Is the Ice Age” on the platter.
I walked through my tiny living room to the kitchen. Behind me I heard the four paws of my cat hit the hardwood floor simultaneously with a mild thud. She followed me into the kitchen, jumped up on the chair that held her dish, and sat down. I found a foil-covered can of salmon in the refrigerator, mixed a bit of it into some dry food, and put it in her dish. She went at it after the obligatory bored look and a slow blink of her left eye.
The phone rang. I walked back into the living room and picked up the receiver.
“ Hello.”
“Is Nick Stefanos in?”
“Speaking.”
“My name is James Pence,” an old voice said on the other end of the line. I fished his message from my shirt pocket. “I’m sorry to bother you at home.”
“I received your message at work,” I said. “Forgive me for not returning your call-I get a load of people calling me all day, trying to sell me advertising space or services. If I called them all back, I’d never get anything done.”