Read Online The Job by Douglas Kennedy - Free Book Online Page A

worried about the cost of the dinner. We are incredibly overextended.”
    “No, we’re not.”
    “Sixty grand in the red isn’t overextended?”
    “In two weeks, my bonus check rolls in and well be back in the black.”
    “Until you start spending again.”
    “So 111 stop spending,” I said.
    “No, you won’t. Because you need to spend. It makes you feel on top of things.”
    I needed to end this conversation fast.
    “Spending is fun,” I said.
    “Especially with you.”
    She took my face in her hands and gave me a wry smile.
    “That’s what I call a romantic evasion.”
    Our apartment was located on Twentieth Street between Fifth and Sixth, the so-called Flatiron district-better known as “SoHo Nouveau,” if you believe what you read in the magazines. New warehouse apartments. New restaurants and bars. Trendy shopping (Emporio Armani, Paul Smith, even the de rigueur outposts of the Gap, J. Crew, and Banana Republic). And staggeringly high rents. Our one-bedroom loft (bleached parquet floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, state-of-the-art kitchen) ran us $2,200 a month-with the landlord threatening a 15 percent increase when the lease ended in February.
    The message light was blinking on our answering machine. I hit the “playback” button and heard the voice of Ivan Dolinsky. He’d applied a coat of upbeat confidence to his voice, but it couldn’t mask the precarious shakiness-the aura of damaged goods-which had. of late, become his defining trait.
    “Boss, Ivan here. Listen, sorry, real sorry to call you at home. Was gonna call you on your cellphone, but then thought, hey, the guy’s got a life, right? Don’t need to be hearing live from me in the late P.M. So that’s why I decided to try your land line. Everything’s great, just great, like real great with the GBS spread. Closing tomorrow, high noon-after which, pardner, I’m gonna feel like the biggest gunslinger in the West. But, listen, the point of bothering you at home… word on the street has it that Chuckie Zanussi made an unscheduled stopover in the “Big C’.. ..”
    Shit. Shit. Shit. The jungle drums were beating at CompuWorld. And I knew who was hitting the bongos the loudest. Debbie Suarez. Great hustler. Big mouth.
    “.. . Anyway, you know me, Mr. Heebie-jeebies. The glass isn’t just half empty, it’s also the last drop of water on earth…. What I’m saying here is: We got a problem? A little Jap problem, perhaps? Don’t get me wrong: Yokimura’s been good to me. But when a Jap wants to fuck you over …”
    I hit the “pause” button. Lizzie rolled her eyes.
    “Charming,” she said.
    “Well, he is a Vietnam vet.”
    “I didn’t realize we were fighting the Japanese in Vietnam,” Lizzie said, heading into the bedroom. I clicked the machine back on.
    “… So, boss, if you wouldn’t mind, gimme a fast call when you get back tonight, just so I can sleep soundly and not worry about having my butt downsized. Ring me anytime. Doesn’t matter how late it is-just please give me that call and help me put my anxieties on hold.”
    Great. Just great. Dealing with Ivan Dolinsky-my onetime numero-uno rainmaker, for Christ’s sake-had become like Psych 101. “Gimme a fast call when you get back tonight, just so I can sleep soundly…” The poor bastard hadn’t slept soundly in over two years-ever since his only child, Nancy, had died of meningitis. She was just three-and the center of Ivan’s life. Especially as she was an in vitro baby-the miracle (as Ivan called her) who arrived after five long years of trying for a child. The fact that he was forty-six when she was born (and that it was his first child after two failed marriages) made Nancy’s arrival all the more emotional… and her death a sorrow beyond comprehension. Within months of losing her, his marriage was history. His concentration went south. He started missing appointments. And he stopped closing.
    Chuck had wanted to fire him a year ago, after he lost us a