Better Than This (11 page)

The bar was busy. I took my bourbon and ice and drifted to one end away from the general hubbub. Somebody came up behind me.

“Nick, I haven’t seen you here for a while.”

I recognized the smoothly oiled voice and turned to find Larry Dexter clutching a mineral water with a slice of lemon floating in it. Larry’s drink of choice.

“Larry,” I said with little enthusiasm. “Always a pleasure. What are you doing here?”

“Actually I’m having lunch with a client.” He shot his cuff to look at his watch making sure that I got an eyeful of the fact it was a gold Rolex. “Should be here anytime.”

He smiled, flashing perfect white teeth that must have cost him a fortune. It was an expression he used to convey anything but humour, and on this occasion it made him appear mocking. It was as if he knew something which privately amused him.

“Don’t let me hold you up.”

“No hurry, Nick. We don’t often get a chance to talk after all, do we?”

He was, as ever, immaculately dressed. Dexter was the only person I knew in our industry who always wore a suit. Nothing overly flashy. They were always dark coloured, plain three-buttoned single breasted and tailored for a perfect fit. He teamed them with grey, mostly Italian, designer shirts and pure silk ties. With his black swept back hair and penetratingly humourless blue eyes he looked like an emissary from the Devil dressed to kill for the new millennium.

“I don’t recall that we’ve ever had much to talk about,” I said. I finished my drink and signalled to the bartender for another. “How about you, Larry. Get you one?”

“Thanks, but I’m fine,” he said without looking at his glass.

Still the same old Dexter, I thought. I raised my glass. “Good health,” and sipped the bourbon through clinking ice. Dexter wore an expression of smug satisfaction as he touched his water to his thin bloodless lips. Somehow he always managed to make me feel as if I was but a step away from the gutter and a brown paper bag holding a bottle of cheap liquor.

We’d met when I had gone to work for KCM as one of a team of account managers, which had included Dexter. He’d been with the company for five or six years at that point, having started in the mail room and worked his way up. From the outset he viewed me as unwelcome competition. In fact he saw everyone the same way, only to varying degrees. He was good at his job but it was clear that Dexter had his sights set on bigger things. Though the clients he dealt with thought highly of him because he was efficient, and the company liked him because he brought in results, the rest of us recognized Dexter for what he was, which was a man with chilling ambition. He didn’t fit in socially, even though on a Friday he’d go along when the rest of us hit a local bar to unwind from the rig ours of the week. He’d hover on the fringes, sipping his mineral water and watching us get drunk with a faintly superior smile. People would turn around and find him at their shoulder while they were grouching about somebody higher up the food chain they thought was a pain in the ass. Dexter stored all this stuff away in case he could use it sometime in the future to enhance his position in the intricate manoeuvres of office politics.

KCM was like any big company in that regard. There were only so many promotions and plenty of people chasing them. Competition was fierce and you had to be able to play the game if you wanted to get ahead. Being good at your job only gave you an entry ticket to the race, the real test then was to align yourself with the right people. The people ahead of you who had already garnered a little power and were on the way up. Your name had to be heard in the right places, and the price for that was to be somebody’s flunky, prepared to root around in the dirt for morsels of information your mentor could use to put some rival down. A word here, an insinuation there about drinking or unsavoury habits, rumours started with a seemingly casual remark, these were the guns and bullets of the corporate game. But you had to be careful, attach yourself to the wrong person and if they crashed and burned you could rapidly find yourself on the way out. I hated it all. There were too many factors beyond my control and there’d always be someone ready to knife me in the back at the first opportunity. I was happy to leave and let Dexter have the field. He was a dedicated player.

“It’s ironic, don’t you think, the way things have turned out,” Dexter commented.

“What’s ironic about it?” I said.

“Both of us pitching for the Spectrum account I mean. It’s like old days. Rivals again.”

“We both worked for the same company, Larry, that didn’t make us rivals.”

“Competitors then. You have to admit that much. It’s only natural after all. We both wanted to get ahead.”

I shook my head. “You always assumed that I wanted what you did. But I was never competing with you.”

“Please. You mean to tell me you wouldn’t have taken a promotion if you were offered one when you were with KCM?”

“Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

“You know I got Anderson’s job just after you left.”

“I heard.” Anderson had been the senior account manager, about whom it was rumoured that he was getting a sideways move in a power shuffle taking place above him. Dexter had been smugly sure that he was in line for the job.

“I always wondered,” Dexter mused. “If that had anything to do with you deciding to leave.”

“I quit to start my own company, Larry.”

“Yes. But the timing struck me as, well, a coincidence.”

I wondered why he was bringing all this up now. When I thought back I seemed to remember that when I’d announced my resignation Dexter had been subtly scathing about my intentions. It was almost as if he resented me leaving, which I hadn’t understood. I’d expected him to be pleased to see the back of someone he regarded as a threat.

“Does it bother you that I left when I did, Larry? Did you want me to be there when you got Anderson’s job, so you could lord it over me?” I laughed. “That’s it isn’t it? I can’t believe you’re still carrying that around.”

“You can laugh, Nick. But I think that’s why you chose to leave when you did. I think you knew I would get that job over you.”

“Larry, it was years ago. And I hate to rain on your parade, but I didn’t even want the job.”

“No of course you didn’t,” he said scathingly. “You wanted to set up your own company and make a fortune. Well, that hasn’t worked out too well, has it?”

“We’re no KCM if that’s what you mean. Of course, if we win the Spectrum account things could change,” I added innocently. It was hard not to feel smug given my conversation with Sam Mendez earlier. I wondered how Dexter would feel if he knew about that.

He laughed. “You don’t seriously think that’s a possibility.”

“Got you worried, Larry?”

He didn’t react, but I wondered if I’d struck a nerve. I imagined he would have been highly pissed when he discovered that an upstart little agency was challenging KCM for a slice of their very lucrative pie. Especially when he found out who that upstart agency was.

“Let’s be honest here, Nick. We handle the rest of Morgan Industries and it makes sense both for them and us to keep it in the family.”

“Obviously Sam Mendez doesn’t see it that way. Maybe he didn’t hit it off with your people.”

I wasn’t sure why Sam had invited other agencies to pitch for his business, but there was a rumour doing the rounds that one of the chief reasons was that he didn’t like either Sarah Miles, the account manager Dexter had assigned to Spectrum, or Dexter himself. He was meant to be a very upright moral type in his private life, and Sarah Miles was known to be a person of ruthless ambition, quite willing to go the distance to get what she wanted. Speculation was she’d made some kind of a pass at Sam.

Dexter’s smile vanished and to cover his irritation he took a sip of his drink. “It’s no secret that Sarah made an error of judgment,” he said tightly. “But that problem has been taken care of.”

“So I heard,” I said. Dexter had fired her, even though he was probably the one who put her up to whatever it was she’d done in the first place. Currently she was telling anyone who would listen that she was happy to be out of it, claiming that part of her job had involved getting down on her knees behind the boss’s desk on a regular basis. The way she told it, Dexter would carry right on with whatever he was doing while she was busy below, and when she was finished he liked her to leave the room without a word as if in pretence that nothing had happened. Takes all kinds, I thought.

Dexter recovered his poise. “Sam will come around in the end. No offence, Nick, but this is kind of a David and Goliath situation here. KCM is a hundred million dollar company. Carpe Diem is what? Two million?” He smiled mockingly.

“You know what they say about size, Larry. Besides, if I remember my bible rightly, didn’t David win when he came up against Goliath?” I finished my bourbon and rattled the ice cubes in the glass. “You know I think you really are worried. What are you now anyway, a vice president of something? I guess you have your eye on the next step. Losing Spectrum would be a black mark wouldn’t it? Sometimes you don’t recover from that kind of thing.”

“Oh, I don’t think I need to worry about that,” Dexter said confidently and again he smiled with that mocking look in his eye that was beginning to irritate me. “Here, let me get you another drink.” He signalled the bartender, pointing to my glass. “Must be stressful for you right now. How long has this been going on for? Four months, five? I’ve had an entire team dedicated to this one pitch full time. Creative people, two account people, my own input of course. That costs a lot of money even for us. Must have been a hell of a strain on your resources.”

“Well, don’t lose any sleep over it, Larry, we’ve managed.”

“Have you?” His expression suggested he knew better.

“Oh I know you’d like to think we haven’t and you’ve just got us beat with all that firepower and money you’ve put into this. But the fact is, Larry, it’s almost over now and we’re still here.” I grinned. “You know what I think? I think you’re worried I’m going to beat you. You take this personally don’t you? Of course if I win I guess it won’t look too good with the board at KCM either. One little independent agency kicking your butt.” I clucked my tongue. “Heads are going to roll, Larry. Heads are going to roll.”

He fixed me with a cold stare, and just then the bartender brought me the drink Larry had ordered.

“Chin chin,” I said.

He grimaced, but though I’d touched a nerve he kept his poise. Then something caught his eye as he glanced towards the door, and he smiled, though the effect was unsettling more than anything.

“Here’s my client.” He put his mineral water down and raised a hand to someone among the crowd, then he did a bad impression of something having just occurred to him. “You know now I think of it you two must know each other. You’ll probably want to say hello.”

There was no mistaking the look of sly triumph that spread like an oil slick across his features. A figure emerged heading towards us and I recognized the fair hair and stooped shoulders of Jerry Parker from We bLink He hesitated when he saw me, then regained his composure and came over. Dexter shook his hand.

“Jerry, glad you could make it. Look who I ran into. I was just saying to Nick that you know each other, don’t you?” He looked at me with amusement.

“How are you, Nick?” Parker said with slight discomfort.

We shook hands civilly even though this was an awkward situation for both of us.

“Jerry and I are having lunch, Nick, so you’ll have to excuse us.” Dexter was obviously enjoying himself. “Good to catch up with you.” He started to turn away then checked himself. “By the way. Good luck with that other matter.”

He was openly mocking, and for the first time I felt a vague unease. I watched them go, unsettled and worried. What the hell was Dexter doing taking on a client like Parker? KCM handled the really big accounts, the ones that spent millions on advertising, not little pissant companies like We bLink who might be important to us but wouldn’t ordinarily have warranted a moment of Dexter’s time.

Suddenly my confidence and good spirits evaporated. I was reminded of that old saying. It isn’t over until the fat lady sings. I looked at the drink Dexter had bought me which stood barely touched on the bar. I wanted to leave it there, but I changed my mind and knocked it back in a single swallow.

Sally was out when I got home. She left a message saying she’d gone to visit a friend. It was eight-thirty and I was beat. I made a sandwich and poured myself a stiff drink which vanished without me noticing, so I poured another and ate my solitary dinner at the kitchen table. Sally had left some magazines out, the sort bought by new mothers that feature all kinds of articles about raising children and babies and so forth. I flicked through one looking at the pictures of round rosy mothers and their newborn children. At nine the phone rang and I thought it might be Sally but when I picked up there was nobody there. I could sense someone on the line though.

“Who is this?” I said. No answer. “I’m going to hang up if you don’t say something.” Still no answer.

“Sally? Is that you?”

Whoever was there finally hung up. I waited for the phone to ring again, but it didn’t even though I must have stood there for ten minutes.

Sally came home about an hour later. I was still thinking about the phone call because though I kept telling myself it was somebody playing a random prank, I didn’t really believe that. I’d had an odd sense about whoever was at the other end of the line. I didn’t mention it to Sally. She came into the kitchen, glanced at my drink and asked about my day.

“It was fine.” I decided not to mention either the meeting or my encounter with Dexter. “So, who’d you see?” I asked.

“Just somebody who used to work at the office.”

Sally worked for a chain of clothing retailers on the buying team. She was good at her job, but had never been ambitious.

Her plan was always to quit working when we started a family.

“Who’s that?” I was pouring another drink, making conversation.

“The one who had the baby.”