“What kind of talk?”
“About how Entronics is planning to get rid of its entire Visual Systems sales force. Now that they have Royal Meister’s, they don’t need us.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I’ve heard it,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not true?” He looked right at me now.
I shook my head. Lying like a kid caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar. “Totally not true,” I said.
“Really?” He sounded genuinely perplexed.
“You don’t want to move to New Jersey,” I said.
“I was born and raised in Rutherford.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” I said quickly. “Now, obviously we’ll match any offer Sony makes you. We don’t want to lose you, you know that.”
“I do.”
“Come on, Doug,” I said. “We need you here. Entronics is your home,” I said.
He didn’t reply.
“So forget those rumors,” I said. “You can’t listen to nutty rumors like that.”
He blinked, nodded slowly.
“So I’ll see you at the game tonight,” I said. “Right?”
I was finally on my way out of the office around six when my phone rang. The calls that come after five are often from people trying to avoid talking to a human being. They want to get voice mail. We call this playing dodgeball. Actually, it’s harder and harder to play dodgeball these days, what with cell phones and e-mail, so when someone tries it, it’s pretty obvious.
Franny was still in, and I heard her say, “One moment, Mr. Naseem. You’re in luck. You just caught him on his way out.”
I said, “I’ll take it,” and I went back to my desk. This could be it, I thought. We’d gone back and forth on numbers, and the last time we talked, Freddy Naseem told me he was close to having sign-off from Mr. Belkin himself. This would be the biggest deal I’d closed in six months.
“Hey, Freddy,” I said. “How’re we doing?”
“Jason,” he said, and I could tell from his voice that it wasn’t good news. “There’s been a little complication.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can work with you.”
He paused. “No, you see…I just got some bad news.”
“Okay.” This was not what I wanted to hear.
“I’ve just been informed that we’re buying the plasmas from Panasonic.”
“What?” I blurted out. Then, calmer: “You weren’t even talking to Panasonic.”
“I’m afraid we didn’t have a choice. Mr. Belkin liked your idea so much he’s decided not to wait, but to start installing the flat-screens in three of our dealerships in two weeks.”
“Two weeks? But three months is what we agreed on-”
“And Panasonic has the inventory to deliver next week. So I really had no choice.”
We couldn’t possibly turn around hundreds of plasma monitors in a month, let alone a week. Panasonic must have had a lot of overstock in their Northeast warehouse.
“But-but it was my idea!” I sputtered. I immediately wished I hadn’t said that. It made me sound like a pouting ten-year-old. “Will you at least give me the chance to see if I can scrape some inventory together?”
“I think things have progressed beyond that point.” He sounded stiff and formal.
“Freddy,” I said, “you have to give me the chance to see what I can do. Given that I suggested the idea to you in the first place.”
“My hands are tied. Sometimes Mr. Belkin makes decisions without consulting me. He’s the boss. And you know what they say. ‘The boss may not always be right, but he’s always the boss.’” He laughed hollowly.
“Freddy-”
“I’m sorry, Jason. I’m terribly sorry.”
I went to see Gordy to see if he could pull any strings, make some swaps, maybe free up a few hundred flat-screen monitors.
Melanie had gone home, but Gordy was still in his office, on the phone. He was standing, staring at his PictureScreen windows. The ocean waves were crashing against the crystalline white sand. It was strange: In the window by Melanie’s cubicle I could see the fading summer daylight, and just a few feet away was the dazzling artificial midday sunshine of Gordy’s PictureScreen windows. His imaginary world.
I waited for a few minutes. He happened to turn around, saw me. Didn’t acknowledge me. He guffawed, made large wheeling gestures with his hands. Finally, he hung up, and I went in.
He had a triumphant look on his face. “Booya, Steadman. Booya! That was Hardy. Sent me a Hardygram and called. And invited me to go for a sail on his new yacht.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“He flipped when I told him about my Harry Belkin idea, Steadman. Putting plasmas in forty-six auto dealerships-I love it.”
I nodded. I didn’t say thank you, because he wasn’t complimenting me. He was congratulating himself, since this had somehow become his idea.
He pointed a stubby finger at me. “See, this is what Hardy calls bowling alley positioning, okay? Aim the bowling ball right, and the first pin knocks down all the rest of them.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s a wedge. Once Harry Belkin signs on, then we’ve got every other auto dealership in the country saying, ‘How come I didn’t think of this? Give me some too.’ God, it’s brilliant.”
“Brilliant,” I said. I wanted to get out of his office and go home.
“What’s the latest on that?”
“I’ll-I still have to follow up on that,” I said.
“For Christ’s sake, close it, man. Close it. I don’t want to lose it. You lock that one down, and get a couple more big contracts, and we’re safe. How’s the Chicago Presbyterian deal coming?”
“I think I’m close to nailing it.”
“How about Atlanta airport? You get that, it’s huge. Huge!”
“Working on that one too.” The Atlanta airport wanted to replace all the monitors used in their flight information display system, which meant hundreds and hundreds of screens.
“And?”
“I don’t know yet. Too early.”
“I want you to do anything to land Atlanta, understand?”
“I get it,” I said. “I’m all over it. Listen, I want-”
“You talk to Doug Forsythe?” He tugged on his lapels and straightened his tie.
“I think that’s a lost cause, Gordy. He’s already made a verbal commitment-”
“A what? A lost cause? Can you translate that for me, please? I don’t speak that language. That’s not in my vocabulary. Now, if you’re on the G Team, you don’t accept defeat. You make sure Forsythe doesn’t walk. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Gordy.”
“Are you on the G Team or not?”
“Yes, Gordy,” I said. “I’m on the G Team.”
25
I drove home too fast, angry and confused. Freddy Naseem had screwed me over, and so had Gordy, and now the deal he’d stolen credit for had fallen through. Maybe there was an irony here, but I didn’t appreciate it. I was too pissed off.
On the CD player, General Patton was talking about “the predator mind-set.” He growled, “It’s just like the animal kingdom. Ninety percent of us are prey. The other ten percent are predators. Which are you?”
When I got home I noticed an almost-new-looking black Mustang parked in our narrow brick-topped driveway. Kurt’s. He’d bought it from his friend who owned the auto body shop.
I hurried into the house, wondering why he was here.
Kurt was sitting in our living room, the formal room we never used, talking to Kate. The two of them were laughing about something. Kate had set out Grammy Spencer’s tea tray with butter cookies.
“Well, hello,” I said. “Sorry I’m late,” I said to Kate. “Lot happening at the office.”
“Jason,” Kate said, “you never told me Kurt’s a handyman too.”
“Amateur,” Kurt said.