Hard Feelings (2 page)

“Oh, stop with this bullshit,” Paula said, standing up. “Just because you had a bad day doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me. I got some great news today and you obviously don’t give a shit.”

Paula marched into the bedroom and slammed the door. Otis was barking again. I threw a couch cushion—it hit Otis’s ass and ricocheted onto the floor. He barked once, defiantly, then scurried meekly into the kitchen.

I sat on the couch with my head in my hands until the Chinese food arrived. Then I knocked on the bedroom door and apologized for losing my temper. About a minute later, Paula joined me at the dining room table.

We ate, barely talking. She left over most of her dish and announced she had a headache.

“Maybe there’s MSG in the food,” I said. “I forgot to order it without.”

“No, it’s just my usual migraine. I have to go lie down.”

Paula went back to the bedroom. I cleaned up from dinner then I took Otis for his walk, down the block and back. When I returned to the apartment Paula was asleep in bed.

“Sorry about before,” I whispered, leaning over her.

“It’s okay,” she said, half-asleep.

“Feeling better?”

“Little bit,” she said.

“I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t’ve taken my work out on you. I’m very happy you got your promotion. I really think it’s great news and I want to take you out tomorrow night to celebrate.”

“Okay,” she said.

“How’s around seven?”

“That’s fine.”

“Goodnight, honey.” I kissed her lips.

“Goodnight,” she mumbled, turning onto her side.

After I washed up I got into bed next to Paula and read a few chapters of
How to Be a Bulldog,
the latest book on sales strategy that I’d placed on my night table. Suddenly exhausted, I rested the book on my chest and closed my eyes. I remembered passing Michael Rudnick on Fifth Avenue earlier, then I saw myself as a ten- or eleven-year-old in front of my old house on Stratford Road in Brooklyn. I was alone, bouncing a basketball on the sidewalk, when a teenaged Michael Rudnick appeared. He was overweight, with his usual faceful of acne. He had very thick eyebrows that grew together above his nose and some older kids on the block had nicknamed him “The Caterpillar.” Michael asked me if I wanted to play Ping-Pong with him in his basement. He was one of the “big kids” on my block, in high school, and whenever he invited me to play Ping-Pong it made me feel special. “Sure,” I said excitedly. “Let’s go!” Michael’s parents weren’t home, and his house was dark and empty. We went down to the cold, musty basement and I watched as Michael adjusted the net on the Ping-Pong table. Then he explained the rules of the game—if I won I’d get five dollars, if he won he’d get to give me a wedgie. I didn’t really understand the trade-off, but I went along with it anyway. Of course, the odds were stacked in his favor because he was a much better Ping-Pong player than I was. He was destroying me—winning almost every point. He needed one point to win and when my shot missed the end of the table he put down his paddle and yelled, “You’re gonna feel it!” Laughing hysterically, thinking it was part of the “game,” I ran away until he caught me from behind and immediately reached around my waist and started yanking up the elastic band of my underwear. The wedgie was painful, but I was still laughing. I didn’t like what he was doing to me, but I was afraid if I complained he’d stop inviting me to his basement to play Ping-Pong. He was much taller and stronger than me, and he was pulling so hard he was lifting me off the ground. “Stop, stop!” I yelled, but still laughing, still thinking we were playing a game. Then he moved me toward the sofa. I was still squirming, trying to get away, my face pressed against the sticky black vinyl. I didn’t know why he was doing this—why he thought it was so much fun. I was facedown on the couch and he was on top of me, grunting and sweating.

I opened my eyes suddenly, my pulse throbbing as if I had just run a full sprint. Paula was fast asleep next to me, snoring softly. I got out of bed. Otis tried to follow me, but I closed the bedroom door ahead of him and went into the kitchen.

Standing in front of the open refrigerator, I gulped down orange juice straight from the container. I needed fresh air. I went through the living room, out to the terrace.

It was a warm, muggy night and there wasn’t much air to breathe. As I leaned against the railing, looking down at the busy Third Avenue traffic, I heard Michael Rudnick’s high-pitched voice shouting, “You’re gonna feel it! You’re gonna feel it!” as clearly as if he were on the terrace next to me. I could still feel the weight of his body on top of mine, feeling trapped and claustrophobic underneath him, and I remembered the nauseating smell of—probably his father’s—cheap cologne.

I went back into the apartment and locked the terrace door. In the bathroom, I splashed my face with cold water. I remembered reading an article in the
Times
about how some people blocked out traumatic memories from their childhoods and then suddenly remembered them years later. But it was hard to believe that something like this might have happened to me.

When I lay down in bed, Paula stirred.

“Where were you?”

“The terrace.”

“Why?”

“To get some fresh air.”

“You okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.”

“Sorry about before.”

“Me, too.”

But, the truth was, I’d forgotten what we had been fighting about.

2

PAULA SLID OPEN the shower door. I hadn’t heard her come into the bathroom and the noise jarred me from my thoughts.

“I’m leaving for work,” she said.

“Wait.”

I rinsed the soap off my face then kissed her. I knew I had acted like a jerk last night and I wanted to make up for it.

“Remember,” I said, “I want to take you out to dinner tonight to celebrate your promotion.”

“Okay,” she said. “That sounds like fun.”

“How about I make a reservation for seven?”

“Better make it seven-thirty. I’ll call if I’m going to be late.”

She said goodbye again, then I slid the shower door closed. Usually, Paula left for work around seven, but it was only about six-twenty now. I figured she was getting an early start to make a good impression.

Paula had worked very hard to get ahead—going to school at night for three years to finish her MBA, then kissing ass and working long hours to climb the corporate ladder. I knew how much the promotion to VP meant to Paula and tonight I was planning to give her the celebration she deserved.

I left the apartment at about seven-fifteen. I usually walked to work along the same route—down Third Avenue to Forty-eighth Street, then across town to Sixth Avenue. Once in a while—usually during bad weather or on cold winter days—I took cabs, but I never took public transportation.

After using my swipe card to unlock the front door, I entered my office at a little before eight o’clock. I picked up my interoffice cell phone at the desk, then went down the long corridor, by the secretaries’ cubicles, to my office in the sales department.

At my old job at Network Strategies, where my title had been merely salesman, I’d had a big corner office with a spectacular view of the East River. Now, as a senior salesman at Midtown Consulting, I was crammed into a narrow, stuffy office with a single window facing the back of a building. I missed the prestige of a corner office. When you have one of the biggest, most luxurious offices at a company, you get special treatment. In the hallways or at the water cooler, people smile at you and ask you how your weekend was or whether you’ve seen any good movies lately. Or they might offer to help you at the copy machine, or ask you if they can pick up anything when they’re on their way to the deli. But now people barely paid attention to me. Sometimes when I was walking in the hallway I would smile at someone and they would look back at me with a blank face, as if I were invisible.

Lately, I’d been regretting the decision I’d made seven months ago to leave my old job. When the offer came from the headhunter I had been at Network Strategies for nearly six years and I’d had no intention of quitting. Then I was offered this incredible package at Midtown, with a sixty-a-year base salary and better benefits. Usually, I hung up on headhunters, but that day I listened.

At the time, there was no way of knowing that coming to Midtown Consulting would probably be the worst decision of my career.

I followed my typical morning routine—turning on my PC, checking my e-mail and voice mail—then I went to the coffee machine to get a cup of black coffee with three sugars. Back at my desk, I logged on to a Lotus Notes scheduling program. I had no out-of-office appointments today, but there were a number of important callbacks I needed to make this morning, including to Tom Carlson, the CFO I had met with yesterday afternoon.

I dialed Carlson’s number, expecting to reach his secretary, but on the second ring he answered.

“Good morning, Tom,” I said, trying to sound as upbeat as possible.

“Who’s this?”

“Richard Segal—Midtown Consulting. How are you today?”

After a long pause he said, “Ah ha.”

“Great, thanks for asking,” I said. “The reason I’m calling, Tom, is yesterday I didn’t get a chance to tell you—we can knock an additional two percent off that quote, which should save your company an additional twenty or thirty thousand dollars over the course of the contract and—”

“Yeah, I didn’t really get a chance to look that over yet,” he interrupted. “I’ll call you when I’m ready, okay?”

“If there’s anything you don’t understand, Tom, or need clarification on I’d be delighted—”

“Didn’t I tell you yesterday that I’d call you when I was ready to make a decision?”

“Yes, but I thought you’d want to know—”

“You know, I feel like you’re trying to talk me into doing something I don’t want to do,” he said, “and I don’t like having that feeling.”

“I’m sorry if I gave you that impression, Tom,” I said. “But the real reason—”

“Look, why don’t we just forget the whole thing?”

“I . . . Excuse me?”

“I’ve decided I want to take my business elsewhere.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, unable to hide my frustration anymore. “I mean yesterday . . . at the meeting—”

“We’re going to accept an offer from another firm, all right?”

“But did you have a chance to look over our quote yet?”

“I’m not interested in your quote.”

Now I couldn’t control myself.

“Then why the hell did you agree to meet with me yesterday?”

“The truth? I forgot about the damn meeting until you showed up. Look, the answer is no, thank you very much. Goodbye.”

Carlson hung up. Stunned, I held the receiver against my ear until the line started beeping, then I replaced it. I was still in shock. I couldn’t believe that all the months I’d spent working on the Carlson account had come to absolutely nothing.

I closed my eyes and let out a long, deep breath. Then I took a swig of coffee and kept going.

I reached several voice mails then, finally, I got a hold of Rajid Hamir, an MIS manager at Prudential I had been trying to reach for the past few weeks.

“Hello, Rajid, this is Richard Segal at Midtown Consulting.”

“Who?”

“Richard Segal,” I said slowly. “Remember—we met last month and I gave you a quote a few weeks ago for those two NT consultants you were looking for?”

“Sorry, we have no budget for that now,” he said. “Try again next quarter.”

When I tried to schedule an advance appointment for next quarter, Rajid hung up on me.

I made about a dozen more calls, finally reaching another prospect. But the guy said he was using another consulting firm right now, to call back next year. I dialed number after number with no success.

Staring at the computer screen, I was suddenly exhausted and I was starting to get a headache. I went down the hallway into the kitchen area and poured myself another cup of coffee. A voice behind me said, “Hey, Richie, how’s it goin’?”

I looked over my shoulder and saw the smiling face of Steve Ferguson. Steve was also a senior salesman at Midtown, but I’d always thought he belonged selling shoes instead of computer networks. Last month, for the second month in a row, he was Midtown’s salesman of the month, closing nearly half a million dollars of new business.

“I’m all right,” I said, adding a third sugar to my coffee. “How about you?”

“Got laid last night so I can’t complain,” Steve said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth. Then he slapped me on the back and said, “So how’re the sales coming along?”

“All right,” I said, hating his guts.

“Yeah? Did you close that MHI account yet?”

“No, not yet,” I said, putting a lid over the coffee.

“You’ve been working on that one for a while, haven’t you? What’s holding it up?”

“Just waiting for the signed contract.”

I stepped around him, trying to end the conversation, but he walked next to me, following me out of the kitchen.