Middle Men

by Jim Gavin

  “Are you okay?” Jill asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re just staring out the window.”

  “I can see the ocean.”

  “If you’re bored,” she said, offering her iPod, “I have some NPR podcasts.”

  “I’m not a Bolshevik.”

  Jill laughed mechanically, and reinserted her earbuds. She had no time for the curdled sarcasm of her elders; whenever she laughed, it seemed like a calculated decision. A year removed from Stanford undergrad, Jill embodied the kind of blond forthright striving that Nora associated with Viking oarsmen. Her mind was keen and adaptive, streamlining every new project with speed and precision, but Nora had never quite trusted her assistant. She sensed that the girl had no experience with failure, at least not professionally. Nora amused herself with visions of what would happen after the next restructuring. Jill weeping at her desk; Jill throwing herself off the roof; Jill running amok with a shotgun. But these were only fantasies; in the end Jill would use her severance to travel through Asia or South America and then she would write about her experience in her business school application.

  The plane landed safely and Nora and Jill got in a cab together. As they swerved onto the 101, Jill called her mom. She talked loudly and without embarrassment. Nora could never get over this—it was as if Jill and her mom were friends. Nora felt obliged, finally, to turn on her BlackBerry. It was only ten o’clock and she already had six emails from Dave Grant. There was a meeting at three o’clock in the “Golden Gate Room,” which was actually just Conference Room B. Two years ago, when Dave became Executive Vice President and General Manager of Global Accounts, he renamed all the conference rooms after local landmarks. So far this was his greatest legacy.

  She scrolled down farther and saw another message from Bobby. She hadn’t responded to anything he had written in the past week, even though she had been relieved to hear from him. He had a “business” idea, apparently, but she couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not, which gave her a sinking feeling that she didn’t want to deal with in the middle of the conference. Now, opening his latest message, the sinking feeling came back. The first paragraph didn’t seem to end. She kept scrolling, and the paragraph went on for another three or four pages. Entire sections were set off in parentheses and she saw a distressing number of exclamation points. She went back to the top of the email and saw that he had sent it at four o’clock in the morning.

  Bobby wasn’t sleeping again.

  They drove past Candlestick Park and through the gloomy hills of South San Francisco. The peninsula was shrouded in fog, but across the bay Nora could see the bright green hills of Berkeley and Oakland. He was somewhere over there, marauding in sunlight. She wrote back quickly, telling him she could meet for a drink. She would have to collect him. Get him drunk in a friendly atmosphere and then bring him back to her place and slip him a valium. It had worked before. Then she would call his mom, who was now remarried to a blackjack dealer and living in a trailer outside of Las Vegas. She would be very worried but in the end offer no real help. Nora’s parents had always been there to bail out Bobby’s parents—Bobby’s father, an independent contractor, was a better plumber than businessman—and this arrangement had been passed down to the next generation. Six years ago, when Nora announced that she got her dream job in San Francisco, everyone on both sides of the family, instead of congratulating her, said with great relief, “You’ll be near Bobby!” So now she would collect him, again, and then he would end up sleeping on her Pottery Barn couch for a month or two, eating all her food and generously offering to move in full-time, to help her out. The worst part was this: they would have a great time together, staying up late, watching crap on TV, and she would miss him when he was gone.

  • • •

  With a few hours to kill, Bobby decided to have a swim at the Claremont, a luxury hotel and country club in the Oakland hills. He rode his bike through campus and down Telegraph Avenue. He saw people on the sidewalk selling tie-dyed shirts, and he smelled vomit wafting down from People’s Park. As a rule, he believed in the extermination of hippies, but here he was, ten years later, still hanging around Berkeley. After he flunked out of school, Bobby thought he would return to SoCal, but his mom wasn’t there anymore, and neither were any of his high school friends. He kept trying to leave Berkeley, but then he would find a job or a new girlfriend. He paid cheap rent in the flats and he stayed in good shape riding his bike everywhere. Nora, on one of her rare visits to the East Bay, told him that he might as well learn how to play the sitar.

  By the time he got across town and up the hill, he was soaked in sweat. He locked up his bike and took a path that led to the back of the hotel. Three years ago he got a job at the Claremont’s poolside café. During his orientation, as he sat between two Senagalese nationals, the hotel’s operations manager said that if anyone took more than fifteen minutes for their break, they were stealing from the hotel. Bobby actually liked the job. He walked around the pool all day, delivering gourmet sandwiches to hotel guests and club members. The sprawling patio offered panoramic views of the East Bay and on clear days you could see the Golden Gate Bridge. For a while he dated another server, who had just graduated from high school. One afternoon she stole a passkey from a maid and they fucked for fifteen minutes in the tower suite. In the fall, she left for college, and shortly after, Bobby got fired for stealing avocados from the kitchen.

  Café employees used to take their smoke breaks on a balcony overlooking the tennis courts, but members complained and so management set aside a designated smoking area behind the hotel, next to the dumpsters. This was where Bobby found a high school kid in a café uniform. He asked him to get Salif, who, after three years, was still working as a cashier. “Tell him Bobby’s here,” he said. “We’re old friends.”

  A few minutes later Salif arrived. He was fifty years old, tall and spindly, with yellow teeth and gray hair. Bobby once asked him what he did in Senegal before coming to the United States, and Salif told him that he had worked in a hotel.

  “This is the last time,” said Salif.

  Bobby laughed. “You always say that.”

  At the pool gate, Salif told the guard that Bobby was a hotel guest who had lost his key card. They walked in together and Bobby threw himself on a lounge chair.

  “I want an eggplant sandwich,” he said, “and a glass of Chardonnay.”

  “Fuck you,” said Salif in his sharp French accent.

  It was warm and sunny, but across the bay Bobby could see fog rolling over the city. The guy in the next lounge chair was snoring. All around him women shuffled around in white robes, on their way to spa treatments. Bobby once bought Nora a treatment for her birthday—he got an employee discount—but when she came she ended up getting drunk in the hotel bar and never made it to her massage.

  Bobby jumped into the water and for a long time he did an easy breast stroke, so he wouldn’t splash anybody. He lost track of his laps. At some point, a bunch of kids dragged him into an epic game of Marco Polo. Volunteering to be all time “it,” Bobby torpedoed through the crystal blue depths, hearing muffled screams on the surface. Every time he popped out of the water, he shouted, “Marco,” as loud as he could. He could hear his voice echoing across the patio. The kids loved it and answered in kind. All his victims sat along the side of the pool, cheering on the last two kids in the water. Bobby trapped one of them in a corner, and then heard footsteps on the pavement. “Fish out of water!” he yelled, right before he heard a thud and a collective gasp. Opening his eyes, he saw a boy crying and holding his head. A few moms in white robes ran to him, and started calling for hotel staff. Bobby ducked underwater and swam to the other side of the pool. He grabbed his bag and left without drying off.

  Coasting down Ashby Avenue, he kept seeing colorful flags out of the corner of his eye. It was like riding past a row of embassies, but when he turned to look, the flags were gone. At the BART station, Bobby walked to the end of the platform and stood
by the tunnel, bracing himself for the rush of wind. Inside the train he concentrated on the BART map, its routes marked by elementary bars of red, yellow, and blue. It kept his mind off the black watery abyss waiting above him.

  He got off at Powell, emerging into cold gray twilight. In his T-shirt and damp board shorts, he thought he might freeze to death waiting for the 38 bus, so he did jumping jacks until it arrived. He sat next to the window, looking down on Geary Boulevard. At one stop, in the heart of the Tenderloin, an old drunk staggered up the steps and offered the driver a bouquet of dead transfers. The driver motioned for him to take a seat, but instead the guy walked down the aisle to the exit doors, threw his transfers in the air, and then hopped off. Bobby laughed but no one else on the bus seemed to notice the man’s performance.

  The pub was in the Richmond. It was nice and warm inside and the walls were decorated with portraits of poets and rebels. He had been here a few times before with Nora, who described it as “a proper pub.” Now that she had money, Nora spent all of her vacations in Ireland, paying top dollar to recapture the glory of her family’s destitution. It was her bizarro way of establishing legitimacy, like some derelict countess tracing her bloodline to an ancient king. Bobby didn’t understand why someone who was born and raised in Southern California cared so much about a wet, miserable country she had no real connection to; but she always came back from her trips seeming refreshed, like she had gone home.

  The girl tending bar looked underage. He asked if he could make a local call.

  “I’ll let you dial the number,” he offered.

  Her face was pale and freckled, like Nora’s, and once again Bobby wished he had shaved. She handed him the portable phone and walked down to the other end of the bar. When Nora didn’t answer her work phone, he quickly hung up and tried her cell. She didn’t answer, so he left a message:

  “Hey, it’s Bobby. I hope you’re having a proactive day, adding value and so forth. I’m at the bar. I got here early. I’m going to run a tab and let you pay for it when you get here. I’ll probably need to stay at your place tonight. Also, my cell phone got turned off. And I need a new kidney. And the mob wants to kill me. And I’ve got the stigmata, again. Hurry up and get here.”

  He gave back the phone and asked for a menu.

  “They’re doing a pork chop tonight,” the bartender said. She had an Irish accent.

  “That sounds great. I’ll start a tab.”

  “I can’t run a tab without a credit card.”

  “Where in Ireland are you from?”

  “A small place. You’ve never heard of it.”

  “I bet my cousin’s been there. You two should talk. She’ll be here soon. Do you know her? Nora Sullivan. She’s in here a lot.”

  “I do know her,” she said. “She always puts ‘Fairytale of New York’ on the jukebox.”

  “She said to go ahead and start a tab for her. She’s on her way.”

  “I need a card.”

  Bobby handed her a credit card. “This one’s expired, but just barely.”

  Her face was blank, but somehow a friendly blank. She took the card and he ordered a Guinness and pork chop.

  A few men in the bar were wearing suits. One gentleman, grinning warmly at the bartender as he ordered a drink, had on a paisley tie and sharp-looking vest. In this den of brass and mahogany Bobby felt a sudden kinship, and once again he wished for a hat, something he could remove in their presence as a sign of respect. He pictured himself sitting in a top-floor office, with papers spread neatly before him awaiting his signature, and he saw on the far side of the polished table, cast in silhouette against the window, a row of faceless investors, nodding silently to each other, communicating annualized return rates through some sinister form of clairvoyance. Bobby was excited to shake hands with these fragrant and shadowy men. Once they felt the rugged texture of his hand, they would instantly understand the physical and psychological advantages provided by the Man Handle, and they would have no choice but to furnish Bobby with grotesque sums of money.

  His pork chop was dry, but he enjoyed it, gristle and all, and then ordered another Guinness and a basket of fries. He finished those, ordered another Guinness, and at some point John, Paul, George, and Ringo walked through the front door. Four guys wearing Beatles wigs and dark, high-button suits. They were lugging instruments. Bobby called over to the bartender and she said it was Beatles night. A bunch of cover bands were going to play.

  “Why are you making concessions to the British?” he asked.

  “It’s just some locals playing music.”

  “Why not a U2 night?”

  “Because I’d fucking gag,” she said, taking his empty glass.

  In walked four Sgt. Peppers, arrayed in full Edwardian pomp.

  “Who the fuck are these guys?” said Bobby, but the bartender was helping other customers. The pub was getting crowded. One of the mop-top Beatles, a short husky guy in his forties with a red, pockmarked nose, came up to the bar to order drinks. He had meaty hands and he was holding a scuffed pair of drumsticks.

  “Ringo!” said Bobby, slapping him on the back.

  Ringo looked startled, but then smiled.

  “You guys are really going for it.”

  “That’s what we do,” said Ringo. “We always go for it on the second Thursday of every month.” He tapped the brass bar rail with his sticks. “How’s your night going?”

  “Me?” Bobby was taken off guard. He couldn’t remember the last time somebody had asked him a question about himself. “I’m meeting my cousin,” he said. “She’s late. It’s already nine o’clock. I’m worried she’s not coming. She’s in here all the time. Do you know her?”

  Bobby described Nora and as it turned out, Ringo did know her. He pointed across the bar to the band’s John Lennon and said the poor guy had tried asking her out, without success.

  “What’s Lennon’s day job?” Bobby asked.

  “He doesn’t have one at the moment.”

  “Then he doesn’t have a chance,” Bobby laughed. “Nora tries to slum, but she doesn’t have the heart for it. She’s going to marry somebody rich and boring.”

  “I thought she was very nice when I talked to her.”

  “I don’t think she’s coming.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “No, no! That’s the thing. I should be in a bad mood, but I’m excited to hear you guys play.”

  “Are you a big Beatles fan?”

  “Can you guys play ‘Paperback Writer’?”

  “We can definitely do that.”

  The bartender brought over four bottles of beer and Bobby, with a gallant flourish of his hand, indicated that this round was on him.

  • • •

  “I hope you guys had fun at the conference. I want to hear all about it, but first a few things. Now, keep in mind, this isn’t me talking, this is everybody, and the reality is we need a backup strategy for wealth creation. From a solution standpoint, we need to execute right now, and the biggest problem I see is that we lack coordination in our pricing strategies.”

  Dave Grant picked up his juggle balls. Once they were in flight, he paced back and forth in front of a window that looked down on the bright streets of SoMa. The Geneva offices were next-door to the birthplace of Jack London. A plaque commemorated the site, and whenever Nora walked past it at lunch, she liked to imagine the old waterfront, a proper sink of iniquity, crawling with proper scoundrels and proper whores. She now sat on one side of the conference table, next to Jill and the rest of the marketing team. Mike LaBrocca, head of sales, sat on the other side of the table with his team, a pack of hyenas from third-tier MBA programs who spent their days quoting Old School and refreshing ESPN.com. A star-shaped conferencing unit at the center of the table transmitted the meeting to satellite offices in Chicago and New York. These people could hear Dave, but they couldn’t watch him juggle. In spite of herself, Nora liked watching Dave juggle. It was soothing and hypnotic. He was only thirty-thre
e years old, a wunderkind who decorated his office with memorabilia from his lacrosse days at Princeton and his stint in Guatemala with the Peace Corps. He spoke Spanish to the cleaning staff, expressing gratitude for their hard work. This made Nora want to vomit, and even more nauseating was the fact that most of the janitors seemed to genuinely like Dave, often seeking him out to say hello. They never said hello to her. Dave worked insane hours, sleeping a couple nights a week on the couch in his office, and yet somehow he made time to participate in a lot of expensive outdoor hobbies—kayaking, rock climbing, action kites. He had a nice tan and a nice family too; his wife and three boys were installed in a Noe Valley town house. One of his boys had survived leukemia, so on top of everything else, the fucker had overcome adversity and heartbreak. Another star on his résumé.

  “The question is, first and foremost, can you deliver? Or to put it another way, can we deliver? Either way, delivery is key. I want to emphasize that we’re not being reactive here, just opportunistic.”

  “I want to hear about the conference,” said Mike.

  “You bet. Nora can give us a rundown in a minute. But first I’d like to say a few things to get us started.”

  “Did you talk to anyone from Pinnacle Asset Management?” said Mike quickly, ignoring Dave. “I’ve been priming them for months.”

  “No,” said Nora.

  “So you guys basically went down to L.A., passed out some hats and water bottles, and then went to the beach.”

  “Pretty much. I spent the whole week snorting coke off George Clooney’s ass.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Dave with a nervous laugh. “Let’s try not to have a tone here.”

  “Did you talk to anybody?” Mike continued, rising up in his chair. “I haven’t heard a word from you guys all week.”