by Dave Eggers
Ringo looked startled, but smiled.
“You guys are really going for it,” said Bobby.
“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. 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 back-up strategy for wealth creation.”
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 M.B.A. 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-two, 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 annoyed Nora, and even worse 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, 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.
“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?” 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.”
“As a lover, George is both tender and thorough.”
“That’s great. Thanks, Nora. My guys are in the trenches all day, trying to sell . . . ”
“Trenches? Is that a bar in the Marina?”
“No, I’m talking about actual trenches.”
“Like World War I?”
“No, of course not,” said Mike, rolling his eyes. “I don’t mean actual trenches.”
“Like All Quiet on the Western Front?”
“Look, I would never compare myself to a soldier. I’m just saying that right now all the pressure’s on us. On sales.”
“There’s a passage where one character is trapped down in the trenches, and the only way he can get out is to take a knife and tunnel his way through the corpse of a dead comrade. He literally digs his way through the guy’s intestines.”
Dave put down his juggle balls.
“Actually, Mike, I did talk to Pinnacle. Did you know they changed their name to the Randers Capital Group? Did you even know that? They want to upgrade their multicurrency capabilities.”
“That’s great,” said Dave, “but from a business-justification perspective you guys need to understand the role you play. Right now there’s a disconnect between them and us about what commitment means.”
The room went quiet. Mike, with his eyes closed, said, “Who’s ‘them,’ Dave?”
“‘Them’ is everyone.”
“Let Nora talk. I want to hear about the conference.”
“Who said that?”
“It’s Gabe in Chicago. I want to hear about the conference.”
“Hi, Gabe! While I’m thinking about it, I have a question on the finance side of things. And I’m throwing this out there to everyone, but mainly finance. What is the process in the event that cost-basis information is not available when the action becomes effective? Do we get notified and reprocess internally, or does the corporate-action service prepare cancellation and rebook transactions to the blotter?”
“It goes both ways.”
“Is that still you, Gabe?”
“Yes, it’s me. It goes both ways. The door swings both ways.”
Dave resumed juggling. “What’s so funny?”
“That’s Ghostbusters,” said one of the sales guys. “He’s talking about Gozer the Gozerian.”
“Who?” said Dave.
“John Belushi was supposed to be in that, but he died,” said a mysterious voice in either Chicago or New York. “Bill Murray took his place.”
Another voice said, “Eddie Murphy was supposed to be in it, too. He was going to play the African American guy.”
“Winston Zeddemore.”
Gabe’s voice said, “So Nora was going to tell us about the conference.”
“Let Nora talk,” said several voices all at once.
Nora’s presentation didn’t last long. She handed over a very small list of “promising potential prospects”—that’s how she phrased it—and Mike and his sales team walked out in disgust. Afterward, Jill followed Nora back to her office. The brick corridors were dim and quiet. There wasn’t a single phone ringing anywhere in the world.
“Are you okay?” Jill asked.
“Please stop asking me that.”
“What’s Mike’s problem?”
“He needs prospects. That’s our job.”
“What about Randers?”
“Who?”
“The guys who used to be Pinnacle.”
“I made that up. I wasn’t going to let Mike ambush me like that.” Jill leaned against the door frame. “I’m not sure that was the best idea.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re fucked.”
“What do you mean? Do you know something?”
“Go call your mom,” said Nora. “Tell her to fluff the pillows on
your bed.”
Jill looked at Nora with a sudden and superior calm. “I know you’re upset right now, and I know you don’t like me. But there’s no reason for you to talk to me like that. It’s totally unprofessional.”
“Fuck off.”
Nora’s screen saver was a picture she had taken last winter at the Cliffs of Moher. She went late in the day and had them all to herself, except for a group of young Russians, who hopped over the safety rail and pranced right along the edge, goofing around with one another, daring the wind to blow them into the ocean. A seven-hundred-foot drop, jagged rocks, and crashing waves, but these Russians carried on, brave and merry in the face of death. She checked her e-mail and in the minute that had passed since the meeting ended, Dave had managed to schedule another meeting with her at the end of the day.
There was a brief note from Bobby, saying he was excited to see her tonight. For a while she tried reading his previous e-mail, the six-thousand-page epic. Parts of it made her laugh—what the hell was the Man Handle?—but most of it didn’t make any sense. The worse part was that he seemed to know which parts didn’t make any sense. She knew where this was going. The first time it happened, in college, campus security found him in the life-sciences building, throwing pinecones at the giant skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus rex. A couple of his fraternity brothers brought him to the emergency room. He told the doctors he couldn’t sleep. His grades were terrible, his girlfriend had broken up with him, he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life—the same stuff everybody worries about, but he couldn’t get a handle on it, and everything snowballed. It happened again four years later, after he got fired from his hotel job. Nora saw this one coming. As his situation got worse, he became more and more cheerful, and his phone calls started coming later and later. She brought him to her apartment and got him to sleep, and later demanded that this time he get on some regular medications, or at least get some regular therapy. Bobby told her he was fine, and for a couple years he was, but then he broke up with another girl, lost another job, and it happened all over again. He didn’t have health insurance, and Nora paid his emergency-room bill. Three months ago, when he threw the champagne bottle out the window, she probably should’ve seen it coming, but even if she did, she no longer felt any power to do anything about it.
She closed her office door, thinking she was about to cry. But she didn’t. Something rattled in her chest, but she didn’t cry.
At six o’clock, she walked down to Dave’s office. When he saw her at the door, he stopped juggling and reached for his jacket.
“Do you want to get out of here?”
They went down the street to a sports bar. The Giants were playing, so they had to fight their way through crowds moving toward the waterfront stadium. Dave kept looking back, as if he might lose her, and Nora realized she had never been alone with him. Here, in public, the veneer of dynamism fell away, and he seemed pensive and unsure of himself. When he brought over their pitcher, he spilled some on the table and got flustered as he looked for napkins.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and carefully wiped down the table, sopping up every drop. Then he sat down, took a sip of beer, and Nora knew what he was going to say.
“At this point in time, Nora, we need to start thinking about migrating some of our resources to an outside vendor.”
“Do I still have a job?”
“Yes! God, I’m sorry!” He almost spit out his beer. “I mean, that’s the good news. For you, I mean. I’m not explaining this very well. Listen, we’ve decided to make some major . . . in a couple weeks. Direct mail, prospect management, customer analytics—we can’t justify those costs right now.”
“Are you leaving anything in-house?”
“Like I said, we can’t justify . . . ”
“Who’s left?”
“You, mostly. The plan is to shift you into more of a liaison role with sales.”
Nora leaned forward, slowly, and rested her forehead on the edge of the table.
“I want you to know that I fought for you and your team. But mostly you. That’s why I wanted to maximize our profile at the conference. I was hoping something good might happen.”
“That was a great plan, Dave. Thanks.”
“I know this isn’t ideal for you, but I did—I really fought for you.”
“I heard you,” she said, lifting her head, “and I said, ‘Thanks.’”
“But you were being sarcastic. Which is okay. I understand. That’s how some people cope with challenging situations. It’s something I’ve always liked about you, the way you’re kind of . . . Everyone in the office enjoys your sense of humor. But listen, I fought for you and, going forward, I think you’ll be in a good position. As Geneva evolves, you’ll be right there, with me, delivering the . . . ” Dave stopped for a moment and stared at his beer. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Basically, the kind of mission-critical solutions that address the needs of our clients.”
Outside the window a scalper was yelling and waving tickets. Nora asked in a sour tone if Geneva was going to sacrifice their luxury box at the ball park. Dave looked hurt, as if she had failed to understand something obvious, and said, “I fought for you.”
Nora suddenly understood the evening’s shape and direction. It was like floating on a river and hearing a waterfall in the distance. She signaled the waitress for another pitcher, and for the next hour she watched Dave get drunk. He couldn’t handle his liquor, but that seemed part of whatever clumsy plan he had set in motion. By the time they got to the third pitcher, Dave was trying to pet Nora’s arm. She lightly removed it, and he looked ashamed. She got the feeling that he had never tried anything like this before. It was almost touching. Eventually, his seduction devolved into a series of whimpering confessions about his family life and the pressures he was under at Geneva. He and his wife were constantly at odds, and he got the feeling that if the next restructuring didn’t work out, he might get the ax himself.
“It’s been a difficult time for me,” he said.
Nora, still relatively sober, figured that if she offered him a choice, right now, between fucking her or crying like a little boy on her shoulder, he would choose to cry.
Dave paid the tab, and they started walking towards Market, without any real destination in mind. At a crosswalk, he tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away.
“I saw something the other day,” he said, as they kept walking. “We took the boys to Golden Gate Park for a picnic. We’re sitting there and a kid walks out of the bushes. She’s a punk-looking kid. She could’ve been twelve years old or nineteen. I have no idea. But she’s in ratty clothes, and I swear to God she’s got a homemade bow and arrow slung over one shoulder and a dead cat over the other. She walked right past us, like we weren’t even there.”
“I want another drink,” said Nora.
Dave stepped away and made a phone call. They walked down Kearny and into North Beach. On the way, Nora’s phone rang. It was Bobby. She let it go to voice mail and listened to the message.
“What’s so funny?” Dave asked.
“Nothing,” she said, and when they finished their second round of cocktails at nine o’clock, she turned off her phone and said, “Let’s get dinner.”
“Next time Nora’s in, she’ll take care of it. I swear.”
“It’s fine. Do you want your credit card back?”
“No, keep it. As a token of my affection.”
The bar backs were wiping down counters and turning off the lights. A fat Beatle was onstage, whistling to himself and unplugging his amps. Bobby picked up his bag and followed the bartender out the front door, where a few other Beatles were smoking. Ringo smiled and waved to Bobby.
Geary Boulevard was a cold, misty hollow, tilting toward the ocean. Bobby saw the bartender getting in a cab and ran after her.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“Home.”
“You should stick around.”
“Let go the door, you fuck!”
He heard voices behind him. A pair of John Lennons were moving toward him saying, “Hey, hey, hey . . . ”
“Hold on,” he said, turning back to her. “I want to show you my Man Handle.”
He reached into his bag, and she started to scream. Before he could show it to her, someone grabbed him around the waist. Bobby tumbled to the ground. He watched the cab’s red taillights disappear down the street. Slowly, the Fabs dispersed. Ringo helped him up.
“What the hell?” said Bobby.
“They thought you were about to do something.”
“Do what?”
“Hit her.”
“I’d never hit a pretty girl.”
Bobby grabbed his bag and started walking down the sidewalk. Ringo caught up with him and asked if he was all right.
“Which way is the ocean?” Bobby asked. “I’m freezing out here.”
“Do you want a ride?”
“Can you take me to Nora’s house? It’s around here somewhere.” As they turned and walked past the bar, one of Ringo’s bandmates said, “What are you doing, man?”
“I’m giving him a ride.”
“Tell him to take a cab.”
“He bought us drinks all night.”
Ringo had somehow packed his drum kit into the trunk of his Honda Civic. The trunk didn’t close all the way, but he had everything secured with bungee cord.
“I’m glad Nora flaked,” said Bobby, as they drove off. “I had a blast tonight. You guys are unbelievable. Where’d you get the wig?”
“It’s not a wig.”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s not. I swear.”
“Do you go to work like that?”
“I teach music. No one cares what I look like.”
“That’s lucky.”
The avenues were washed out in an orange, syrupy light. It was like driving around inside a pharmacy bottle. All the houses looked the same. Bobby told Ringo to stop.
“I think this is it.”
He rang the bell several times. Inside a dog started to bark, which was a bad sign, because Nora didn’t have a dog. He heard footsteps in the hall, and the door opened. Behind the metal security screen, an old woman in a bathrobe was looking at him.