Hard Feelings: A Novel

by Jason Starr

  “Will you shut the hell up?”

  “Why don’t you go downstairs and find him—I’m sure Kirsten won’t mind. They’re probably swingers—maybe the two of you could fuck him at the same time.”

  Paula had been looking away. Now she turned back toward me and screamed, “Get out of here, you bastard! Get the hell out!”

  I stormed out of the room, slamming the door, and took the stairs down to the lobby. I walked toward the tennis courts then, realizing I was cold, I turned around and headed back toward the inn.

  Still too upset to go back to the room, I sat on the porch, in one of the rocking chairs facing Main Street. There were two young women on the porch a few yards away from me. They looked like they were in their mid-twenties. One of the girls had long, curly brown hair; the other one had short red hair. They looked bored and very single. They had probably come up here for the weekend from Boston or New York, hoping to meet guys. The dark-haired girl looked over at me. I imagined starting a conversation with her, secretly sliding my wedding ring off and putting it in my pocket, then going back to her room.

  Making sure my hand with my wedding band was concealed, I smiled at the dark-haired girl. She seemed surprised, maybe slightly disgusted, and turned back to her friend. A few seconds later, they got up and left.

  In the morning Paula and I pretended our fight last night had never happened. We had a nice breakfast at the inn and then we spent the day together, driving around the nearby towns, without arguing at all.

  In the afternoon, we headed back to the city, along the winding upstate New York roads. Paula fell asleep, leaning against the door, and I was relaxing, listening to The Prairie Home Companion on National Public Radio, when I saw myself standing outside my old house in Brooklyn, bouncing a basketball. Michael Rudnick came over from across the street and said, “Hey, Richie, wanna play some Ping-Pong?”

  “Sure!” I said.

  I put my basketball down on the lawn and followed Rudnick to his house.

  “So you think you can beat me this time?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  We went up the driveway and entered the house through the back door. It was dark and very quiet. Rudnick told me to go down to the basement ahead of him and I heard the door close behind us.

  We were playing Ping-Pong. The score was 20–14, Rudnick leading. Rudnick served and my return hit the net. Rudnick put down his paddle and started chasing me from behind.

  “You’re gonna feel it! You’re gonna feel it!”

  I was running away, laughing. Rudnick grabbed me from behind and started yanking on my underwear.

  “You’re gonna feel it! You’re gonna feel it!”

  I was lying facedown on the couch and Rudnick was on top of me, grunting and sweating. I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was trying to get away, but he was too strong for me.

  “Please stop,” I begged him. “Please stop.”

  I tried to break away, using my arm for leverage, when I realized I wasn’t in the basement anymore, I was in the car, yanking on the steering wheel. The car had swerved off the shoulder, onto a grassy area, and there was a tree straight ahead. I braked and turned the steering wheel far to the left. Paula woke up screaming. The car missed the tree by a few yards as we skidded back onto the highway. Luckily, there wasn’t another car coming or we would have been in a serious accident.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said, feeling light-headed and slightly in shock. “Don’t worry—it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I think a raccoon ran onto the road.”

  “A raccoon?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

  We drove on. Paula stayed wide awake and neither of us said a word.

  5

  MONDAY MORNING PAULA and I shared a cab downtown. I got out at Forty-eighth Street, kissing her goodbye quickly, and then she continued to Wall Street.

  As always after spending an entire weekend together, it felt strange to be alone. I also felt guilty about the way I’d been treating Paula lately. Not only was she my wife, she was my best friend, maybe my only friend, and I realized how empty my life would be without her.

  I used to have a lot of friends, but over the years most of them had gotten married or moved away and I hardly saw them anymore. At my jobs, I’d always had acquaintances, but no one I wanted to get together with outside the office. My two roommates from college still lived in the city—Joe on the West Side and Stu in the Village. But Joe was married now and he and his wife were high school teachers and I didn’t have a lot in common with them. Stu was a web designer and we always had a lot to talk about, but he was single and didn’t have a steady girlfriend to double-date with, so we rarely got together.

  I didn’t have much family, either. My mother lived in Austin, Texas, with her second husband. She had become more and more religious over the years and we weren’t very close. My father lived in Southern California with his wife, but he was a selfish prick and I spoke to him as little as possible. I had a couple of aunts and uncles and cousins, but they lived outside New York and we didn’t keep in touch.

  At my office, I decided to call my mother, just to say hi. I hadn’t spoken to her in a while, at least a month, and I thought it would be nice to talk to someone from my family.

  “Richie, what a pleasant surprise,” my mother said, although I could tell she didn’t sound exactly excited to hear from me. Every time I spoke with my mother lately I became very agitated and annoyed, and I was already regretting that I’d called her.

  “So how’s everything in New York?” my mother asked. “How’s Paula?”

  “New York’s fine, Paula’s great.”

  “Well, I’m very glad to hear that. So why are you calling?”

  “I’m just calling to say hi,” I said.

  “Oh. Well, that’s nice. It’s always nice to hear from you, Richie. How’s the weather in New York?”

  “The weather here’s great,” I said, upset that my relationship with my mother had become so shallow. “How’s the weather in Texas?”

  “Hot as usual. We’ve also had a lot of rain lately. Yesterday, Charlie and I had to walk to church in the pouring rain. Have you and Paula been going to church lately?”

  “No, we haven’t,” I said, bracing for an attack.

  “Richie, what’s wrong with you? You have to go to church. Don’t you want to have a relationship with God?”

  “We just haven’t had a lot of time lately—”

  “You don’t have time for God? Don’t tell me you haven’t been going to confession, either?”

  “Can’t we please talk about something else?”

  “You have to go to confession, Richie. Doesn’t Paula go to confession?”

  “Ma, please,” I said, raising my voice.

  “Richie, I’m very disappointed in you.”

  “So is anything new with you?” I asked.

  “I know what your problem is,” my mother said, “it’s Paula. She’s a bad influence on you. I’ll never understand why you married a Protestant. Couldn’t you find a nice Catholic girl to marry?”

  “Whoops, I have a call coming in on the other line,” I said, making an excuse to get off the phone. “Yep, just heard the beep again. It was really nice talking to you, Ma. I’ll call again soon.”

  “Go to church,” my mother said. “God is waiting for you.”

  I hung up and called Paula at work.

  “Hi, honey,” I said. “I just wanted to tell you how much I love you and I miss you very much.”

  There was a long pause—I could tell she was surprised and confused—then she said, “I love you, too.”

  “That’s all I wanted to say,” I said. “’Bye, sweetie.”

  Over the weekend, I’d somehow managed to forget all about work. It was depressing to suddenly remember that I was in the midst of a miserable sales slump and that my job w
as on the line. I had logged on to the Internet, doing some price researching for my eleven o’clock sales meeting, when Steve Ferguson poked his head into my office.

  “Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he said with his usual slick smile. He looked tanner than he did on Friday. He always had a tan, even in the middle of winter—he either went to salons or had tanning cream professionally applied— but today he looked especially bronze.

  “No, just getting ready for a meeting,” I said.

  “Actually, that’s what I’m here about,” Steve said, entering my office. “Bob suggested that I sit in on the meeting with you—see if I can give you some pointers.”

  “That’s all right,” I said.

  “Actually,” Steve said, “Bob didn’t suggest it—he told me to come with you. If you have a problem with it, you can talk to him, but I’d be happy to help out.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “Great. Just come by my office to pick me up when you’re ready to rock and roll.”

  This was all I needed—if I didn’t have enough hints that my head was on the chopping block, now Bob was sending Steve to baby-sit me in a sales meeting.

  The appointment was with Jim Turner, the MIS manager at Loomis & Caldwell, a midsized ad agency on Sixth Avenue. They were converting their system from Windows NT to Linux with a nice chunk of hardware and consulting involved, and the company had potential to turn into a six-figure client. My phone conversation with Jim had gone great and he was very eager to meet with me.

  The Loomis & Caldwell office was only a few blocks away so Steve and I walked there. Steve was going on and on about cars and vacation spots and I tried to pay as little attention as possible.

  The secretary said that Jim Turner would see us right away—a good sign, because it was about fifteen minutes before the scheduled time for the meeting. It was the first time I’d met Jim in person and I got good vibes from our handshake. I introduced Steve as “a colleague of mine,” then I went right into my pitch. It couldn’t have gone better. Jim said he was extremely unhappy with his current consulting company and that he was eager to start a new relationship. He was impressed with our client list and credentials and he wanted to start talking specifics. Then Steve cut in. With his usual used-car-salesman persona, talking fast out of the side of his mouth, he bragged about how our company was the “best” consulting firm in the city and how our clients were always “one-hundred-and-ten-percent” satisfied. I could tell that Jim was put off by Steve’s grating personality, that he was the type of client who didn’t need to be sold, who was going to make up his own mind. But Steve had no clue what was going on. A few times, I wanted to yell “Shut up!” or, better yet, tackle him to the floor and beat him senseless. But I just sat there, watching Jim check his watch and grind his teeth, obviously trying to restrain his own frustration.

  Finally, Steve shut up. I took over, trying to go over some specifics, but Jim suggested that I just take the request-for-proposal back to the office and send him a bid. Obviously, Steve’s monologue had killed the deal. Jim had said that one of his major gripes about his current consulting firm was that they were “too pushy,” and Steve’s personality had definitely raised a red flag.

  Jim walked us out to the lobby. His goodbye handshake was much weaker than his hello handshake, and although he insisted that he was “eager” to see our quote, I knew this was just polite bullshit; there was no way in hell he was going to use our services.

  Waiting for the elevator with Steve, I was fuming. The receptionist was within earshot so I figured I’d wait until we were alone to say something. But as soon as the elevator doors closed, Steve beat me to it, saying, “Can I give you some constructive criticism?”

  “You want to give me criticism?”

  “Yeah, I noticed you didn’t discuss pricing right away. Next time you might want to—”

  “Will you just shut the fuck up?”

  Steve stared at me. Then he said, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “You totally fucked up the sale, you stupid asshole, that’s what’s the matter with me. He was interested, he wanted to talk specifics, but you had to open your big fat mouth.”

  “Hey, I think you should watch the way—”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I was just doing what Bob told me to do. I was supposed to demonstrate how I close business—”

  “No, you were supposed to sit in on the meeting—not take over the meeting. I know how to close sales. I’m a thousand-times-better closer than you’ll ever be and I don’t need an idiot like you fucking my shit up.”

  The elevator opened at the lobby and I stormed away. Not until I was out on Sixth Avenue did I realize exactly what I had just done, but I wasn’t going to go back to apologize. The guy was a big-time jerk and I didn’t regret anything I’d said to him. But I knew that the situation had the potential to lead to major trouble. Steve was the teacher’s-pet type who was probably on his way to tattle on me to Bob Goldstein right now. Steve’s secret agenda all along had probably been to get me canned. Right now, as part of a company policy to avoid having multiple salesmen call the same prospects, my leads were off-limits to him. But if I left the company, my leads would be fair game and he’d be able to take advantage of all the legwork I’d already done and make a few easy sales.

  I looked at my watch and saw it was twenty to twelve. I went to the deli on Forty-eighth Street where I sometimes had lunch, but when I got there I decided I wasn’t very hungry. Instead, I walked farther east, toward Madison Avenue.

  I remembered the address for Michael J. Rudnick, Esquire, that I had gotten off the Internet last week and I decided to go to the office building to see if this was the Michael Rudnick I knew. I had no idea what this would accomplish, but I wanted to see him again anyway.

  It was still before twelve, so my idea was to hang out in front of his building on Fifty-fourth and Madison until one. I hoped he would leave the building for lunch before then. If not, I’d just come back some other time.

  Probably because of the sunny, pleasant weather, there was a steady stream of people entering and leaving the building. I bought a knish from a cart on the corner, looking over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t miss Rudnick. I returned to the building and ate the knish standing up, leaning against a ledge. There was a courtyard across from me with tables and chairs set up and people were seated, talking and eating. Along the adjacent building there was an artificial waterfall and a fountain at the bottom. After I finished the knish, I took off my suit jacket and mopped the sweat off my forehead with a napkin, still staring at the building.

  I decided that I might be wasting my time. Even if Michael J. Rudnick, Esquire, was the right Michael Rudnick, how did I know he went out for lunch instead of eating in, or that he’d leave the building through the Fifty-fourth Street exit? Maybe there was another exit on Madison Avenue or on Fifty-fifth Street.

  It was almost one o’clock and there was still no sign of him. I decided to wait ten more minutes. When the ten minutes passed, I decided to wait another five. Finally, I gave up. Walking back toward Madison, I called my office on my cell phone to see if I had any messages—I didn’t. I put the phone away in my briefcase when Rudnick appeared, walking toward me. He was with another man, and they were both smiling and laughing. Unlike the other day, Michael wasn’t wearing sunglasses, and now I was absolutely positive that it was him. His eyebrows were the clincher. He had plucked the hairs above his nose to eliminate the caterpillar effect, but each eyebrow was just as thick and noticeable as when he was a teenager.

  He was about ten yards away when I first spotted him, but it seemed to take forever until we passed. I was aware of how terrified I felt, like a kid in a classroom when he’s called on unexpectedly by a teacher. My back was sweating and I was even starting to shake. When Michael was a few feet in front of me, his gaze shifted and he was staring right at me. Suddenly, he stopped smiling. He was probably only looking at me for an instant, but
it seemed much longer, and his narrow, dark eyes were like lasers. Even though I was taller than he was and I probably weighed at least twenty pounds more than he did, I felt like he was ten feet tall, with Mike Tyson’s body, and I was an anorexic midget. I didn’t feel like an adult anymore either. I was just a weak, naive, defenseless ten-year-old.

  As Rudnick passed by I heard him say, in a surprisingly deep voice, “Could be.” After a few seconds, I turned around to see if he was looking back at me. He wasn’t. Either he hadn’t recognized me or he had ignored me on purpose. I watched him approach the office building on Madison and Fifty-fourth Street and enter through the revolving doors.

  Back at my office, I was still feeling shaken up and a little dazed when Heidi rang and said that Bob wanted to see me right away. When I asked what about, she said, “He just wants to see you.”

  I knew it—Steve, that son of a bitch, must have ratted on me already. Definitely not in the mood to deal with this crap now, I went to the men’s room and splashed my face with cold water. I wiped my face with a paper towel, adjusted my tie while looking in the mirror above the sink, then went to meet with Bob.

  Bob was standing, staring at a sheet of paper, when I arrived at his office. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled up to his elbows, and his black yarmulke was on slightly crooked.

  “Richard,” he said without emotion. “Take a seat.”

  I sat down and then he sat down across from me, at his desk.

  “I know what this is all about,” I said. “Steve probably talked to you, but I can explain—”

  “I don’t want any explanations,” Bob said. There was a serious tone in his voice that I had never heard before. “First of all, where have you been for the past forty-five minutes?”

  “Lunch,” I said.

  “Steve said your meeting this morning let out at eleven-thirty.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after one-thirty now.”

  “The meeting let out later than eleven-thirty,” I said.