“Important, yes.”
“Not good time for our—business.”
I nodded.
“Very—hard time.”
“I understand.”
“I think you not know how hard time,” Tanaka said quietly.
“Thank you, Yoshi-san,” said Gordy. “Now I’d like to discuss salary specifics with Steadman. Yoshi-san, maybe you could give us a little privacy.”
Tanaka rose, tipped his head in a parting bow, and walked out.
“Could you close the door?” Gordy called out. “Thank you, Yoshi-san.”
I was determined to seize the initiative, not let Gordy see me as a wimp. Kurt would be proud. “I have a pretty good sense of what my salary requirements are—” I began.
“Your requirements,” Gordy spit out. “Give me a break. We’re not negotiating. Your package is take-it-or-leave-it. I just said that to get the Jap out of the room.”
I met his eyes and nodded, waiting. No more Mister Nice Guy, I guess.
He told me what it was, and I tried not to smile. It was more than I’d expected. A lot more.
“You weren’t my top choice, I think you know that,” Gordy said.
Now I understand why Yoshi was there. He was the enforcer, making sure Tokyo’s will was done, or at least making sure Gordy remembered who called the shots. Gordy must have hated that—a guy who ostensibly worked for him, who barely spoke English, telling him what to do.
“I hope to prove you wrong,” I said.
He stared malevolently. “I already told you there’s shit raining down on us from the MegaTower in Tokyo. Well, let me tell you who’s doing the shitting. You know the name Hideo Nakamura, I assume.”
“Sure.” A couple of weeks ago a press release was e-mailed around that the president and CEO of Entronics, a guy named something-Ikehara, had been “promoted” and was being replaced by this guy Nakamura. No one knew anything about Nakamura—that was way up the stratosphere. But the word was that the old guy, Ikehara, had become what the Japanese call a madogiwa-zoku, a “window-watcher.” Basically that means getting put out to pasture. In Japan, no one gets fired; instead, you get humiliated by being put on the payroll with nothing to do except stare out the window. They literally give you a desk by the window, which, in Japan, isn’t a good thing the way it is here. In Japan, a corner office means you’re on corporate death row.
“I flew down to Santa Clara to meet this guy Nakamura, and he’s real polished. Real smooth. Speaks good English. Loves golf and Scotch. But this guy’s an executioner. Might as well been wearing the black hood and carrying a noose. They put him in because the very top guys in the MegaTower are real unhappy. They don’t like our numbers. That’s why they bought Royal Meister’s U.S. business—because they want to extend their reach into the U.S. market.”
“I see.”
“So we gotta show Nakamura what we’re made of. Can you do that?”
“I can.”
“Can you incent the guys to work harder? Crack the whip?”
“I can.”
“Can you pull a rabbit out of your hat?”
I almost said, I’ll do my best. Or, I’ll sure as hell try. But I said, “You know it.”
“I’m going to expect a lot out of you. I’ll be riding you mercilessly. Now, get out of here. We’ve got to prepare for the weekly conference call.”
I stood up.
He stuck out his hand. “I hope I haven’t made a mistake,” he said.
I tried not to smile. “You haven’t,” I said.
Melanie smiled at me as I left. “Say hi to Bob,” I said.
“Thanks. Hi to Kate.”
I made my way to my office. Coming out of the men’s room was Cal Taylor. He gave me a lopsided grin and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I knew he’d just had a little midafternoon cheer—his cubicle was too public. “Hey there,” Cal said, weaving toward me.
“Hey, Cal,” I said cheerfully, and kept walking.
“You look like the cat that got the cream,” he said. Even soused, which he was most of the time, he was scary perceptive.
I chuckled politely and gave him a friendly wave, and smiled all the way to my office. There I shut the door and pumped my fists into the air.
I called Kate’s cell. “Hey, babe,” I said. “You at work?”
“I’m just sitting here at Starbucks, having coffee with Claudia.” Claudia had gone to prep school and college with Kate, had an immense trust fund, and apparently did nothing but go out with her friends. She didn’t understand why Kate insisted on working at the foundation.
“I just saw Gordy.” I kept my voice neutral, a blank.
“And? You don’t sound so good. You didn’t get it?”
“I got it.”
“What?”
“I got the promotion,” I said, my voice louder. “You’re talking to a vice president. I want some deference.”
She let out a loud squeal.
“Oh, my God. Jason! That’s so wonderful!”
“Do you know what this means? It’s a huge boost in salary. Serious bonus.”
“We’ve got to celebrate,” she said. “Let’s go out to dinner. I’ll make reservations at Hamersley’s.”
“I’m kind of wiped out,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”
“All right, baby. We’ll do something at home.”
The word got around pretty quickly. The reactions from the Band of Brothers were interesting and not entirely unexpected. Ricky Festino could not have been happier for me. He acted like I’d just been elected President of the United States instead of picked as some VP of sales. Brett Gleason did something totally out of character for him, which was to acknowledge my existence by saying “Have a good weekend.” Which was frankly kind of big of him, since he’d just been beat out of the job he wanted. Trevor Allard ignored me, which was basically what I thought he’d do, and which gave me endless satisfaction, because he was obviously really pissed off.
Everything felt good now. In the elevator, on the screen, the word of the day happened to be “felicitation,” which sounded like a positive thing. Entronics stock was up. Everyone in the elevator looked and smelled good.
I stopped in at Corporate Security on my way out of the lobby and found Kurt at his cubicle. I told him the good news.
“No way,” he said. “You’re it? You’re the man?”
“Yep.”
He stood up, gave me a manly hug. “You rock. You got your stripes, man. Bravo Zulu.”
“Huh?”
“Army talk. Congrats, bro.”
21
In the car on the way to the Atrium Mall in Chestnut Hill, I listened to some more of Old Blood and Guts. “When you’re downrange and you come under attack,” he barked, “you’re gonna have to act immediately. The enemy can shoot you in the back when you’re running away just as easily as he can shoot you in the front running toward him. In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, one of your team members will die. So you’ve got to give an order, and fast. Don’t hesitate. Just make a goddamned decision!”
I was half-listening, half-daydreaming about my new job. How happy Kate was going to be, now that I was finally making money. We could move. Buy a house she liked for once.
I took the escalator up to Tiffany’s and asked to see the brooches. I’d never been inside Tiffany’s before, believe it or not, and I discovered that their jewelry isn’t organized by category, like necklaces in one case and earrings in the other, but by where you can afford to shop. On one side of the store are the things that regular well-off people can afford, mostly sterling silver and semiprecious stones. On the other side of the store are the gold and diamonds, where you don’t dare to tread unless you run your own hedge fund.
When I described which brooch I was looking for, the saleswoman escorted me over to the wrong side of the store, the high-rent district. I gulped. Then she went behind a glass case and took out the starfish and put it on a black velvet square and cooed ov
er it.
“That’s it,” I said. I turned it over, pretending to look at the back but really trying to get a look at the price tag, and when I saw it, I gulped again. This was more than I’d spent on Kate’s diamond engagement ring. But I reminded myself that I’d just gotten a sizable salary increase, and I’d be getting a handsome bonus, so I put it on my Visa and asked her to gift-wrap it.
By the time I got home I was feeling pretty good about life. I’d just been promoted, and there was a tiny robin’s-egg blue Tiffany’s bag on the passenger seat next to me. Granted, the car was an Acura, and not a new one, but still. I was good, damn it, and I worked for a great company. I was a meat-eater.
Kate ran to meet me at the door. She was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, looked and smelled great. She threw her arms around me, kissed me right on the lips, and I kissed her back, and kept going. I was immediately aroused.
When you’ve been married for a while, that kind of spontaneous combustion doesn’t happen all that often, but I felt this surge of testosterone. I felt like the conquering hero returning home for some nookie. I was Og, Cro-Magnon man, returning to his woman in the cave, having speared a woolly mammoth.
I dropped my briefcase and the blue Tiffany’s bag to the carpet and slipped my hands under the waistband of her jeans. I felt her silky-smooth warm skin and began kneading her butt.
She gave a throaty giggle, pulled back. “What’s the special occasion?” she said.
“Every day I’m married to you is a special occasion,” I said, and I went back to kissing her.
I moved us into the living room, pushed her back onto Grammy Spencer’s rock-hard, chintz-covered couch. The floor would have been more comfortable.
“Jase,” she said. “Wow.”
“We’re allowed to do this without a plastic specimen cup, you know,” I said as I started to peel off her T-shirt.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait.” She wriggled free, went over to close the drapes so the neighbors didn’t get a free show and their little children wouldn’t have therapy bills for decades.
When she came back, I finished taking off her T-shirt. I hadn’t looked closely at her breasts in such a long time that I got as excited as I’d been the first time we did it. “You’re a beautiful woman, anyone ever tell you that?” I said, and I unzipped her jeans. She was already aroused, I was surprised to see.
“Should—think we should move to the bedroom?” she said.
“Nope,” I said, stroking her down there.
Just then my BlackBerry buzzed—it was clipped to my belt, somewhere in the heap on the floor—but I ignored it. I got on top of her and, without any more foreplay, slid into her slipperiness with delicious ease.
“Jase,” she said. “Wow.”
“Stay there,” she said afterward.
She ran to the bathroom and peed, and then went into the kitchen, where I could hear the refrigerator being opened and glasses clinking, and a couple of minutes later she emerged with a tray. She carried it over to the couch, naked, and set it down on the coffee table. It was a bottle of Krug champagne and two champagne flutes and a mound of black caviar in a silver bowl with a couple of tortoiseshell caviar spoons and little round blini. Also, a flat rectangular package wrapped in fancy paper.
I hate caviar, but it’s not like we had it very often, and she must have forgotten.
I said, with all the excitement I could muster, “Caviar!”
“Could you do the honors?” She handed me the cold champagne bottle. I used to think that when you opened a bottle of champagne you wanted a loud festive pop and a big geyser. Kate taught me that that really wasn’t the way it was done. I stripped off the lead foil and twisted off the wire cage and eased the cork out expertly, turning the bottle as I did it. The cork came out with a quiet burp. No geyser. I poured it into the flutes slowly, let the bubbles settle, and poured in some more. Then I handed her a glass and we clinked.
“Wait,” she said as I put my flute to my lips. “A toast.”
“To the classics,” I said. “Champagne and caviar and sex.”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “To love and desire—the spirit’s wings to great deeds. Goethe.”
“I haven’t done any great deeds.”
“As Balzac said, ‘There’s no such thing as a great talent without great willpower.’”
I clinked her glass again, and said, “Behind every great man is a great woman.”
“Rolling her eyes,” Kate said. “And sticking out her tongue.” She smiled. “Honey, do you realize what you’ve accomplished? How you’ve turned your whole career around?”
I nodded, couldn’t look at her. My dad had a job. I have a career.
And if she only knew what kind of help I was getting.
“Vice president. I’m so proud of you.”
“Aw, shucks,” I said.
“You really kick ass when you put your mind to it.”
“Well, you’re the one who gave me the push. The jump start.”
“Sweetie.” She took the package from the tray and handed it to me. “Un petit cadeau.”
“Moi?” I said. “Hold on.” I got up and picked up the Tiffany’s bag from the floor where it had fallen. I handed it to her. “Swap.”
“Tiffany’s? Jason, you are so bad.”
“Go ahead. You first.”
“No, you. It’s just a little nothing.”
I tore off the wrapping paper as she said, “Something new to listen to on the way to work.”
It was a CD of a book called You’re the Boss Now—So Now What? A Ten Point Plan.
“Oh, nice,” I said. I made it sound convincing. “Thanks.” I wasn’t going to tell her I’d already moved on to harder drugs—the four-star general.
I knew that my world was alien to her, and basically boring, and she didn’t quite get it. But if she was going to be married to a Yanomami warrior, why not a chieftain? So she’d make sure I had my face paint on right, at least. She didn’t really get into what I did all day, but damn it, she was going to make sure my buzzard-feather headdress was on straight.
“Hit the ground running,” she said. “And something to carry it in.” She reached under the sofa and pulled out a much larger box.
“Wait, I know what it is,” I said.
“You do not.”
“I do. It’s one of those Yanomami blowguns. With the poison darts. Right?”
She gave me her great, sexy knowing smile. I loved that smile. It always melted me.
I unwrapped the box. It was a beautiful briefcase in chestnut leather with brass fittings. It had to cost a fortune. “Jesus,” I said. “Amazing.”
“It’s made by Swaine Adeney Briggs and Sons of St. James’s. London. Claudia helped me pick it out. She says it’s the Rolls-Royce of attaché cases.”
“And maybe someday a Rolls-Royce to put it in,” I said. “Babe, this is incredibly sweet of you.
“Your turn.”
Her eyes shone, wide with excitement, as she carefully undid the blue paper and then opened the box. Then I saw the light in her eyes go dim.
“What’s the matter?”
She turned the gold, jewel-encrusted starfish over suspiciously, as if searching for the price tag the way I did at the store. “I don’t believe it,” she said, tonelessly. “My God.”
“Don’t you recognize it?”
“Sure. It’s just that I—”
“Susie won’t mind if you have one, too.”
“No, I don’t imagine she’d—Jason, how much did this cost?”
“We can afford it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “I just got my stripes.”
“Your stripes?”
“Army talk,” I said.
She took a sip of champagne and then turned back to the coffee table. She spread some of the vile, oily black eggs on a cracker and offered it to me with a sweet smile. “Sevruga?”
— PART TWO —
22
We found out Kate was pregnant two weeks later. She’d gone back to the IVF clinic with greater dread than usual to start going through the whole gruesome process all over again, the shots and the thermometers and the cold stirrups and the high hopes that would probably be dashed. They gave her the usual blood work, all this stuff I never quite understood about levels of some hormone that told the docs when her next ovulation would be. But I didn’t have to understand it. I just did what they told me to do, went in when they told me to and did my heroic duty. The next day Dr. DiMarco called Kate to tell her that an interesting complication had arisen, and there might not be a need for an IVF cycle after all. He seemed a little miffed, Kate told me. We’d gotten pregnant the old-fashioned way. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
I had a secret theory, which I’d never tell Kate. I think she got pregnant because things had started to break my way. Call me crazy, but you know how some parents try for years to have a baby, then as soon as they adopt, boom, they get pregnant? Their biological roadblock gets blown away just by the decision to adopt. The relief, maybe. There are studies, too, about how men who feel good about themselves tend to be more fertile. At least I think I read something about this.
Then again, it’s possible that she got pregnant just because we’d finally had real sex, after months of my doing it into a plastic cup in a lab.
Whatever the reason, we were both elated. Kate insisted that we couldn’t tell anyone until we heard the heartbeat, around seven or eight weeks. Only then would she tell her father—her mother had died long before I met Kate—and her sister and all her friends. Both my parents were dead—smokers, the two of them, so they went early—and I didn’t have any brothers or sisters to tell anyway.
I’d always had lots of friends, but you get married, and you start going out only with other married people, and the guys aren’t allowed to go out without their wives unless they’re wearing an electronic ankle bracelet, and then they have kids, and after a while you don’t have so many pals. There were some friends from college I still stayed in touch with. A couple of my frat brothers. But I wasn’t going to tell anyone until we heard the heartbeat.
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