Asshole

by Martin Kihn

  “I’m sorry,” said Sherry, “yes, you were. And I thought it was aggressive.”

  “But—”

  “That shouldn’t have happened,” said Gretchen, “and we’re sorry Just some confusion on our part. Next time we’ll be more buttoned up. I am sorry”

  “No big deal. Really. Gotta run—”

  She hung up, and it hit me what had happened. There was no way around it. This was the kind of fiendish, dare I say Machiavellian, maneuver I thought only happened in fiction or down on Wall Street. The Nemesis had set me up, lied to me, got me to call the client, and crippled my career.

  I had been out-Assholed by the Ass-Master himself.

  Surprisingly, it was the EVP who gave me the benefit of the doubt, not my boss. She’d seen me deteriorating for weeks now. Gretchen still thought of me, I suppose, as nice Marty.

  “What happened?” she asked me.

  “[The Nemesis] told me she was okay with calling, so I called her, once or—”

  “Don’t put this on him,” said my boss.

  “But he—”

  “Just. Don’t. You heard her say he didn’t call her—“

  “So he lied to me.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” said my boss.

  “But it’s true—!”

  “Guys, guys,” interjected the EVP, “it’s over. Win some, lose some, right? Let’s move on. And you”—she looked directly at me, in my stare-off zone in a triangle on my forehead—“need to learn from this. That’s all. Now, I’ve got a nine-thirty—”

  I took advantage of the fact that everybody hated me now to have a nice quiet lunch by myself on Eighth Avenue. It gave me some time to think. When I couldn’t come up with any happy thoughts at all, I called my friend Brad and left a another message. He owed me like five calls. Then I tried my friend Ben and also got voicemail.

  I could not remember a time in the twelve years I’d known him that Ben had failed to pick up his phone. The guy barely had a job, for God’s sake. He did absolutely nothing all day but answer his phone and talk to his friends.

  Just then, a group of my co-workers walked down Eighth Avenue directly in front of the window of the diner—some of the same co-workers who’d told me not fifteen minutes earlier they were “not going out for lunch today.”

  Hmmm.

  I would have called my wife—who knows, she might even have picked up—but I didn’t want to lose all my faith in people.

  So I finished up my cold, stale Belgian waffle and overpaid for it. I tried to say something nice to the cashier, but she glared at me in two languages.

  Tomorrows another day, I was thinking hopefully as I neared the big revolving doors letting into the agency’s lobby and saw about the last person I ever expected to see being escorted out of the building by a security person.

  Yes—it was the Nemesis. Out on the street.

  Holding a box and looking triumphant.

  He didn’t notice me and quickly found a cab and got into it with his box. I watched the yellow cab pull into traffic and I made my way upstairs in the elevator and out onto my floor.

  All the kids were atwitter, congregating around the Nemesis’s office, which was empty. Most of the stuff had been swept off the top of his desk, but the poster of the ATM remained. Evidently he’d taken the blown-up credit card portrait with him.

  “What happened?” I asked Emily.

  “Well, all I saw was he came in, the door was closed—”

  “What door?”

  “The door to his office. He closed it and there was, like, screaming—”

  “Wait, who? Who screamed?”

  “Would you let me—so, he was in there on the phone, like, screaming at somebody. Or talking loud let’s say. And then the security guys come—”

  “How long after?”

  “I don’t know. Two minutes. He had the door open and he knew they were coming. He said, ‘Wait a second, guys,’ and they—they waited outside the door while he packed up the box. Took like a minute. And then he’s all walking down with one of them.”

  “You said there were two—”

  “One went to the bathroom, duh,” she said. “One of them, like, took him down.”

  Eleanor had wandered up behind me; I turned because I could smell something sweet. She was shaking her head.

  “So,” she said, “you got your wish, huh?”

  “What?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Starting up his own agency—already had a big client, so he said.”

  Emily piped up: “He tried to get us to go with him.”

  “He did?!”

  “Hit on a bunch of us. Quietly. Last week.”

  “Yeah,” said Eleanor, “that’s why he was being all nice and stuff recently. Weirdness.”

  “Why didn’t you go with him?” I asked.

  She seemed surprised by the question. “Think we’re stupid?”

  “Yeah,” said Emily, “that guy’s a jerk.”

  A couple other people I asked didn’t have any more details, and the more senior people weren’t in their offices, so I was left to wander up to Gretchen’s office and ask Ambrose if he’d heard the news.

  “Oh, yes,” he sniffed, going through e-mail. I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or his headset.

  “What happened?”

  “Dunno.”

  “How’d you hear?”

  “Only—he called Gretchen and—oh, sorry, Marty, I’ve gotta take this—”

  I waited but he suddenly had a million things going on, and the EVP wasn’t at her desk, so I had nothing to do but, reluctantly, go back to work.

  On a hunch I called some people at the client’s building to find out where they’d gone with Lucifer, but nobody knew yet, and I left a couple messages following up on leads for other work. My inbox was empty, my to-do checklist fully checked. I made an appointment for a hydrotherapy session at Aveda, then cancelled it because it seemed too indulgent. I spent a few hours doing nothing in particular on the Internet, with the sound turned off. I had nothing to work on.

  Maybe, I mused, I could locate a person to berate, belittle, and betray, but I had so little energy because of that stupid diet. It was exhausting being a full-time Asshole. And it hurt me to sit: I had actually developed a case of hemorrhoids, the most shameful of—

  “D’you have a second?”

  My boss, in the doorway, arched her wrist to indicate I should follow her into her office, and a moment later we were settled and the door was closed.

  She wasted no time, saying:

  “You heard about [the Nemesis], right? He quit today.”

  “What happened?”

  If I had to describe my boss’ demeanor in this scene it would be startled. The angles of her face were flatter as though she’d been slapped, and she looked redder. She breathed audibly through her nose, and a half-empty Mountain Dew Slurpee from 7-11 squatted on the desk. Considering she was a woman so respectful of her temple she refused to consume any food that hadn’t been taken from the ground by registered Democrats, I’d have to say that Slurpee was a cry for help.

  Outside it was getting darker.

  “Security took him out,” said my boss, “around lunch.”

  “I know, I saw it.”

  “It’s pretty bad.” She waited a moment. “He—he’s going out on his own.”

  “I heard,” I said. “Like consulting? For who?”

  “No—he’s starting a full-service agency.”

  “In direct marketing?”

  She nodded.

  “But why the security? Did he do something?”

  “No—it’s policy, firm policy when somebody quits for a direct competitor they have to leave right away. Or in this case they go to start a competitor.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I guess it’s so they don’t steal their contacts or any I.P.”—Intellectual Property, presentations and spreadsheets.

  �
��Who was he fighting with on the phone? How’d he quit?” I asked, remembering what Emily had told me she’d overheard.

  “That was Gretchen. Probably when he told her. It’s just—it’s like the worst-case scenario, what he did.”

  “But why?” I asked, puzzled by her distress. “People quit all the time.”

  “It’s the way he did it.”

  “’Cause he went over your head to Gretchen? She’s the Exec—”

  “No,” she said, getting sadder and sadder by the moment. As I said, her mood made no sense to me. I was getting quite a lift from this, personally. “You don’t understand.”

  “What’d he do?”

  My boss looked right at me and said:

  “Remember we were talking to Sherry about Lucifer and she said she was going with a smaller agency?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well—that smaller agency is—it’s him basically. He took Lucifer and left.”

  “She’s hiring him to consult?” I asked. I think the aftereffects of the Asshole Diet™ were slowing down my synapses.

  “No,” said my boss, “she’s giving him the whole project.”

  “Wow.”

  It was amazing. That a relatively junior, unpopular VP at a middle-of-the-road agency won a multi-million dollar account contested by the best and brightest in the space—amazing. Again, the Ass-Master had earned his ranking.

  This information explained why the Nemesis dropped out of our own pitch. It explained why he sabotaged me—extra insurance for his own triumph. It even explained why he was so nice to people near the end: He was looking for start-up employees.

  It took my breath away.

  What a first-class Asshole.

  “It’s gonna mean some retrenchment around here,” said my boss. “He was one of our more productive VPs. We’ll probably take a revenue hit. Jaime and Roger went with him. So there’s implications on staffing and so on. Oh, and there’s one other thing.”

  I was thinking she was going to lecture me again on how I’d have to step up to the plate and sell sell sell! But I was wrong, as usual.

  “Congratulations,” she said to me.

  “What?”

  “You’re promoted.”

  She wasn’t really smiling, but I said, “Is that sarcastic?”

  “No, Marty. You got the promotion. Go get ’em.”

  “So you’re serious?”

  “Completely.”

  “Okay—”

  “I’ll let you know the comp in a couple days. But were gonna hold the bonus back.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Basically we’re gonna hold it back contingent on the feedback.”

  “What?”

  She swallowed. “Let’s talk Friday.”

  “Let’s talk now,” I insisted.

  She looked at the door to double-check it was closed, then she lowered her voice for extra insurance.

  She said: “In your assessment there’s some issues in which we need to see improvement.”

  “What issues?”

  “Some of the junior people—it seems weird to be saying this, Marty—but some of the juniors don’t like working for you. They say you’re unfair.”

  “How? Who was it? Was it Emily?”

  “Can’t tell you that. You’ll get all the—details—in the readout. The main point is we need to see improvement in your interpersonals before we can approve the bonus. Okay?”

  “Interpersonals? Like what?”

  “We need you to be nicer. Okay?”

  I did not see that coming. Of all the things to say to me—Be nicer?! What was she trying to do, make me insane?

  “You have got to be kidding with me,” I said, evenly.

  Her cell phone rang. She seemed very relieved.

  “No. I’m not. Now let me take this call—”

  That Friday night I still didn’t know what to do. My wife was working at the school, my friend Ben had e-mailed he was in Maine visiting his sick aunt, and Brad continued not to call me back.

  If you follow my program, you’ll find that one advantage of not having any friends left and being in a kind of Mexican standoff with your job is that you have a whole lot of free time. I could have spent this time watching TV, of course, except that would mean I’d actually have to turn on the TV set. Every time I did that, I felt like assassinating the entire U.S. Senate.

  So TV was out. I did something I used to do a lot—wandered around Times Square imagining I was a tourist. It always cheered me up. Visitors from out of town are a lot like my dog: They’re so happy to be where they are. Life is good! Boy am I hungry! Can I have that pretzel?!

  And there’s so much electricity in Times Square. I don’t mean metaphorical, social electricity, I mean actual electricity. I’ve heard the intersection of 44th Street and Broadway is visible from outer space, like a welcome mat for aliens. That would explain what some of these people were wearing.

  It occurred to me there may be a new Bruce Springsteen album out. Given that the last one I bought was about fifteen years ago, this was a safe bet. So I went into the Virgin Megastore, strolled over to the rack of “S” CDs—and ran right into my friend Ben.

  Awkward.

  He looked totally shocked to see me—and his face flushed.

  “How was Maine?” I asked him. “Is your aunt better already?”

  “What? Oh, right. Maine.”

  We stood there a moment, both of us wondering who was going to die first.

  More or less simultaneously, I said “You didn’t go, did you?” and he said, “I didn’t go.”

  Spontaneously saying the same thing at the same time as somebody else is always pretty funny, and it broke the ice.

  “Good to see you, brother,” he said. Then I went to hug him, and he hugged me back. Only we did this the way straight men do it, which is without actually hugging one another. It’s more like a slight lean in the right general direction.

  We stepped back, and I immediately started combing my hair.

  “So what’re you doing here?” I ask him.

  “Nothing. You?”

  “Same thing.”

  “Cool.”

  Pause. Comb. He watched a talented young lady walk by.

  “Fuck it,” said Ben, “let’s see a movie.”

  So we did. And it was incredible, a truly moving combination of surgical instruments, heavy-duty power tools, limbs ripped off bodies, a guy in a leather mask, and hot chicks from Estonia. We gave it four thumbs up and two sequels.

  Afterward we stopped by Carmine’s to gain some pasta weight. It was during this meal, after Bens second glass of wine had arrived, that I took the risk of asking him if he was miffed at me.

  “Hmmm,” he said sheepishly. “I guess.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “You missed my reading, man.”

  “What reading? What’re you talking about?”

  “See—that’s what I mean. You totally missed it.”

  Turns out a couple weeks earlier he’d done a staged reading of a play he’d written. If I was more spiritually evolved, I would have admitted—as I suddenly realized—I did get the invitation. I was just too deep into my mission at the time to care.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know about it. I’ve had a lot going on.”

  He nodded while I buttered my third roll.

  “How’s the asshole thing going?” he asked me.

  “Sucky.”

  “Oh, really,” he said, “’cause I kind of think it’s working.”

  All my many therapists have failed to cure me, obviously. But I’d had one who was better than the rest. For one thing, he didn’t happen to think there was anything much wrong with me a little maturity wouldn’t cure. For another, he was practical.

  One of the techniques he taught me was called “self-counseling.” During times of stress or confusion, he suggested, try writing a letter asking yourself for advice, and then try answering that letter. I recommend this to y
ou. It really works. Sometimes.

  Being out of better ideas, I gave his technique a whirl the next day when I got to the office. My letter, and my response, went like this:

  Dear Marty,

  Considering how unhelpful you’ve been to me so far I hesitate to give this a chance. But due to a recent personality change, I don’t seem to have many friends left to turn to. So here’s my question:

  What does it all mean?

  I know that’s a deep one, but I’ve come face to face with it and I feel like I’m not getting it yet.

  A few months ago, after a performance review at work, I had a Eureka moment. I thought I’d figured out the thing that had been holding me back all my life. At that point I really believed that I was too much of a pushover and that if only I could make myself more dick-like all my problems would be solved. I’d make more money, dress better, have more sex—be more like the people I thought I wanted to be like.

  But it didn’t seem to work like I thought it would. Sure, I got promoted, but only because my rival for the position decided to quit. And I was aggressive with a client—totally out of character for me—but instead of respecting me for it, she hated it. And the people who used to like working for me have bailed, so I’m left either forcing people to do stuff or breaking in the new recruits who are lame.

  My biggest problem is, I just don’t know how to act anymore. Who am I? What are my instincts? Are they right or wrong? Do nice guys finish last? And if that’s true, does it necessarily follow that not-nice guys finish first?

  Can you help me?

  Dear Marty,

  Your questions touched me deeply and filled me with a kind of swelling joy. That is because you mentioned “a final chance”—which means if I let you down again, as I fully intend to do, then I won’t have to answer any more of these ridiculous notes.

  But moving on, the issues you raise are important. They touch on the nature of a life well lived, internal ethics, and who we arfe within the fabric of our communities, ourselves and our relation to the soul. So my first point is: Congratulations! You’re not as shallow as you used to be.

  As for an answer, I’m not sure I have one. Perhaps a few observations will suffice.

  For instance: When are you going to shut the fuck up!?

  You are a miserable pain in my ass. Do you really think you’re the first person who wondered who they were, or what they should do with their lives? That’s right: Not! You think you’re a pushover and it’s getting in the way of your success. Then here’s a major brainwave for you, Tesla: Stop being such a fucking pushover! Make sense?