Better Than This (20 page)

FUCKING

LIFE

At ten o’clock Marcus and I were looking at a cash flow forecast our accountant had produced using our known overheads and revenues from existing clients. When he was done he turned the screen around so we could see the result for ourselves.

“It’s not good guys,” he said regretfully. The bottom line is that by the time you meet your overheads and interest payments you’re slipping further into the red.” He paused, his heavy jowled face making him look sad like a bloodhound. “There’s worse to come as well I’m afraid.”

“Worse? What could be worse?” I said.

“The bank were in touch on Friday. They’re worried that your cash flow isn’t meeting the projections you gave them and they wanted an update on your position.”

“When they see this, what’s going to happen?”

“My honest guess? I think they’ll pull the plug.”

Marcus got up and went to stand at the window with his back to us. Recrimination came off him in waves. Our accountant looked from Marcus to me, and I wondered how much he knew.

“There must be something we can do,” I said.

He frowned glumly. “Well, I guess you could show them you have a plan to severely cut back your overheads, so that your cash flow is positive. Maybe if you convince them your revenues will pick up…” He didn’t sound hopeful, but I seized on the straw he was offering.

“How do we do that?”

“Well, you’d have to get less expensive office space for a start. Trade down your cars. Sell whatever you could from your current premises that you don’t absolutely need. Let go of all your people.”

Marcus turned around from the window. “Fire everybody?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Marcus stared at me accusingly. You see, his expression shouted. You see what you’ve done.

What we were talking about here was starting again, but from scratch, working out of a couple of rooms in a cheap building in the Mission with a view over an alley.

“Even then I think the bank would still want a lump sum of money. You’d have to sell your houses,” our accountant added.

Marcus turned away, his face white, his lips pressed tightly together as if he was afraid of what words would spill out if he let them. “We might as well let them take it all,” I said, voicing what I knew Marcus felt.

It was clear our accountant agreed, but he was determined to offer a hopeful note. “At least this way you’d still have a business which you could build back up over time. And you wouldn’t be declared bankrupt. I’m sorry. I wish there was something else I could tell you.”

But I knew it wouldn’t work. Nobody was going to hire an advertising agency that was tainted with the dismal reek of failure. Our remaining clients would desert us in a week.

“We’ll get back to you,” I said.

We went outside on the street to look for a cab, and eventually we even found one. I caught Marcus’s arm as he went to get in. He turned and met my eye.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He stared at me and I could see the struggle for control that was going on behind his eyes. “Are you?”

“Of course.”

“You mean if you had the chance to do this all again, that you wouldn’t?”

“What kind of a question is that?” I asked.

“Would you?”

“Of course not, knowing what I do.”

“Then what would you do?”

“I don’t know. Go to the bank earlier maybe, get their support. That way we could’ve hired more people, we wouldn’t have lost people like Jerry Parker to Dexter.” Marcus didn’t say anything. “What? What do you want me to say?”

He shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you?” He started to turn away to get in the taxi but I stopped him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s still about you. What you want. It doesn’t matter about anyone else. Me. Sally. Anyone.”

“You want me to say we never should have pitched for Spectrum, is that it? Okay, if it’ll make you happy, fine. We never should have pitched.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, so I don’t believe that. I admit I didn’t do things the way I should have, and I regret that. How many times do I have to say I’m sorry? But the truth is we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we’d won the account. We’d still be popping champagne corks. Admit it, Marcus, you wouldn’t be complaining then, and neither would Sally.”

He shrugged free of my grip. For a moment there was a blaze of something in his eye. “You know something? You want to know something?”

He was trembling with pent up emotion, and suddenly for some reason I didn’t want him to say whatever it was he had in mind. I had this idea that if he did there would be no going back, he would unleash something neither of us would ever be able to forget. Perhaps the same thing went through his mind, at any rate the cab driver broke the moment.

“Hey, you guys wanna go anywhere or what?”

Marcus hesitated then got in, and we rode back to the office in silence.

That evening I shut myself in my office after everyone had left and took the phone off the hook. My eye continually strayed to the two photographs on my bookcase, the one of Sally and me in happier times, and the one of me and my dad. I was acutely aware of the gun that lay locked in the cigar box in a drawer behind me, and I began entertaining fantasies that revolved around shooting Larry Dexter in a particularly bloody and satisfying scene that Scorcese would have been proud of. But an insistent voice kept telling me that Dexter wasn’t really to blame for my problems, he had only taken advantage of a situation I had created. The real culprit had been my own ambition. Like Icarus I had tried to fly too close to the sun and now I was falling to the earth below with all the velocity of a Russian satellite.

A solution appeared in the form of the idea that I could take out my dad’s gun and do what he had when it had all gotten too much. Press the cold steel gently against my temple, screw my eyes shut and squeeze the trigger. What would it feel like, I wondered, as a small lead projectile punched a hole in my skull and tore through my brain scattering tissue and neurons in all directions? Would my thoughts be cast on the wind, so to speak, sucked into the air conditioning system and spewed into the atmosphere to waft gently over the bay? Would I still exist in some more peaceful ethereal form? Or maybe there would be nothing. A flash of light and a loud noise and I would fall off my chair. Sally would have the insurance money, marry Garrison Hunt, have his children and be happy without me. I wondered if my dad had thought like that, imagining that he was doing us all a favour.

When I got home Sally took one look at me and didn’t need to ask how it had gone with the accountant. She held my hand, and squeezed it, and when we went to bed I lay cocooned by the darkness and her comforting warmth.

“We have to tell everybody what’s happening.”

I looked up from my desk at Marcus, who came in and shut the door. Beyond the glass wall everything appeared normal. Sue, one of our graphic artists, was talking with Neil, a copywriter. They were examining an ad mock-up. Sue pointed at something and shook her head, then sipped at the coffee she was holding, her expression concentrated as Neil made some comment.

“They know we didn’t get the account?” I asked.

“I haven’t said anything yet,” Marcus replied.

But of course they knew. By now it would be common knowledge all over town. They would have guessed when I came back to the office from the presentation. One look at my face would have told them everything.

“So, what do we tell them?”

Marcus regarded me steadily. “The truth.”

The truth. That we were closing the doors and they were out of work. I nodded my acceptance of the inevitable. “I’ll call a meeting for this afternoon,” I said. Marcus waited, clearly expecting more, and then I saw what it was. “Don’t worry, I’ll do the talking.”

He nodded. Clearly he thought it was my responsibility.

At lunch time I went out to get some air. Anything to escape the office for a while. I’d let everyone know there would be a meeting at four, and now every time I looked up I saw people gathered in small groups talking furtively. They would glance towards my office and look away when they met my eye. They were way ahead of us. I guessed they already had some idea of what to expect. I knew most of them would have no trouble getting hired by other agencies, but that wasn’t the point and neither was it going to make firing them any easier.

It was a short walk to South Park, which is a block-long narrow oval between 2nd and 3rd streets around which runs a narrow avenue. It’s a peculiar oasis of gum trees and maples ringed by a collection of Victorian converts alongside exposed brick and rendered buildings both new and old, housing trendy boutiques and small cafes which nestle cheek to jowl with furniture restorers and motorcycle workshops. You enter from either second or third, busy thoroughfares both, where the constant noise of building work, tram bells, honking horns and sirens assails you, and suddenly you feel like you’re in some peaceful village in Sonoma county.

I bought a coffee and sat on the sidewalk listening to birds twittering in the trees. A young woman next to me said hi when our eyes collided.

“You from around here?” I asked, making conversation. She had a laptop bag at her feet and was wearing a suit. Her eyes were the palest blue flecked with traces of green, and her skin was luminous. I figured her to be around her early twenties.

“I’m from Minnesota,” she said.

I avoided making any cracks. People from Minnesota tend to be sensitive. Tourist?”

She shook her head. “I’m interviewing with law firms in the Bay Area.”

It turned out she was at law school in North Carolina in her second year, and she was thinking about taking a job in California. She had to be smart, because from the way she was talking she had her pick of the top firms.

“Well, I hope they pay you well,” I remarked. We talked about property prices.

“I guess I’ll start on one twenty-five,” she said.

A hundred and twenty-five thousand in her first year out of school. She asked what I did.

“I’m in advertising,” I answered. We chatted a little while longer until I couldn’t avoid the knowledge that I ought to be getting back, so I stood and shook her hand and wished her good luck. “What’s your name?” I asked as an afterthought. Maybe one day I would need a good smart young lawyer.

“Lorrie.”

“Well, I hope it goes well.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

I didn’t think she needed any luck. She was young and pretty, bursting with brains and full of the confidence of the favoured few. The epitome of the American dream.

I had just sat down back in my office when my phone rang and I picked it up. Stacey said there was somebody to see me.

“Who is it?” I had no appointments and I was in no mood to talk to anyone.

“A Mr. Hoffman?”

The name meant nothing to me. “Do I know him?”

“I don’t think so.”

We had a lot of people calling in trying to sell us something or other, usually advertising space in some obscure magazine or journal. They were adept at disguising their real purpose, knowing if they did they would never make it past reception, but Stacey was equally adept at spotting them and we had devised a simple code. “Should I see him?” I asked. If she thought the visitor was selling something she would answer no, and then I would tell her to ask them to make an appointment by phone.

She answered in a low voice, almost a whisper. “I think you should come out here.”

“Is something wrong?”

“He looks sick.”

I envisaged some crazy person in reception. “You mean as in mentally?”

“No, I mean like he’s ill.”

I gave up and went out to reception, where a frail looking guy sat waiting on one of the leather couches. Stacey looked worried and I saw why. His pallor was grey and he really did look ill.

“Mr. Hoffman?” I said as I went over. He looked up at me from the only eyes that I’ve ever seen in real life that fitted the description sunken. They appeared to be drawn back inside his skull, as did the flesh of his face, like it was collapsing inwards. His short grey hair was insubstantial as if a good gust of wind would blow it right from his head by the roots. With difficulty he rose and extended his hand which, when I shook it, felt as frail as he looked.

“I’m Nick Weston. You asked to see me?”

“Yes. I’m Leonard Hoffman.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Can I get you something? Water maybe?” I looked over at Stacey who took my cue and fetched a cup from the cooler which Hoffman accepted gratefully. I watched him drink, his Adam’s apple like a bony fist in the wasted flesh of his throat.

“Thank you,” he said and handed back the cup.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe we should call a doctor,” I suggested.

Hoffman smiled ironically. “Too late for doctors, Mr. Weston,” he said. “There’s nothing they can do for me now. I’m dying.”

He said it without melodrama, patently not seeking pity, but more as a wry matter of fact. I believed him. In fact I had never seen anybody still walking around who looked closer to death than he did. Despite his matter of fact manner I was uncomfortable, embarrassed even, because what can you say to someone under those circumstances? My instinct was to laugh uncertainly, offer reassurance, deny the obvious. Surely not. You can’t be. You’ll be fine. All of which had nothing to do with offering comfort but was a natural reaction on my part. We all want to shield ourselves from the unpleasant reality of our own mortality. When faced with the terminally ill we see ourselves as we will surely one day be, a bag of bones, shrunken and hollow eyed taking painful wheezing breaths, and it’s not an image we relish. Death makes us uncomfortable and we would rather we weren’t confronted with it, so when we are we tend to deny it.

As a way of getting in to see me, I figured this was extreme, even for an advertising salesman, so after he had assured me that he hadn’t meant his demise was immediately imminent, I took Hoffman back to my office where he sat down and looked around with interest. His gaze lingered on the pictures on my bookcase and I took a moment to observe him. He was shabbily dressed, the flesh on his bones wasted by whatever disease afflicted him. From the way he spoke, and his manner I figured he was educated. His age was hard to determine. I waited for him to explain why he had asked to see me, reluctant to press him.