Chapter Five

      THE MANHATTAN OFFICE for Employment Displacement. It was the tenth floor of a worn midtown building with an elevator that sometimes went wonky. All around the three-room office were signs of encouragement, pictures of eagles soaring in the sky, posters that proclaimed: “Yes, you can.” Yet inside the reception area were also the faces of the employmentally displaced, and it was hard to reconcile them with the pictures of soaring eagles when all they wanted was to find work and pay the rent.

      For all the wisecracks Ian made at the eagles’ expense, he did his part. Jeans and goofy T-shirts were the uniform here. His boss, Sal D’Amato, said it made people feel less out of touch. Privately, Ian thought that a T-shirt that said, “Practice Safe Lunch—Use a Condiment,” didn’t do squat, but he kept an encouraging smile on his face and his prelayoff wardrobe stored in his closet. “Interview clothes,” that’s what Ian called them now.

      Although, tonight “interview clothes” would morph into “date clothes,” because tonight he had a date, and not just any date. This was the date of a lifetime. With a woman whose face had been embossed on his brain, in his dreams. He could remember her smell, the silken touch of her skin, even the feel of her fingers pressing against his neck. He looked at the eagles, wings outspread, images frozen in time, and he gave them an encouraging smile. Tough luck, dude. Tonight, it’s my turn to fly.

      Alas, today he had to actually work like a turkey before he could fly.

      The hiring project of the day was Mitchell Unger, an unemployed ad man, forty-nine, with a family of three to worry about. Adding to his misery, the oldest boy would be starting college soon, and Mitch was starting to sweat not only food and rent, but tuition, as well.

      At precisely 9:13 a.m., Ian started on the phones—because true New Yorkers took precisely thirteen minutes to get down to business. The first three calls went straight to voice mail, the next number had been disconnected, company number five believed that marketing was overrated, company six had just hired someone new, but on lucky call seven, Ian finally hit pay dirt and the negotiations began.

      Without any remorse in her cold, cold heart, Mary offered the lowest of the low. Mail room. Ian jumped all over it, because any opening was progress of the very best kind.

      “What about this? You pay him the mail room salary, but throw him some creative work. Think of the cost savings alone. Imagine the visual. Your managers sitting around a table, and you’re pitching Mitchell’s ideas, and they’re all looking at you as if you’re a goddess. This is your moment, Mary. Humbly you explain about Mitchell, explain how little he’s costing the company and how much he’s bringing to the table. And then the suits crack a smile—nay a broad-bowed grin that is going to crack the Botox right off their faces. Imagine it, Mary—suddenly you’re the hero.”

      His hero wasn’t completely buying it. “No, I don’t write fiction. Come on, Mary. Give him a shot. I’ll do anything.”

      And those were the magic words she’d been waiting to hear. Ian wondered if he ought to feel cheap, pimping out his investment skills in exchange for work, a habit that was marginally illegal since he wasn’t employed by a licensed broker, at least not presently. On the other hand, it was for the greater good, the ultimate sacrifice, and best of all, his skills stayed razor-sharp.

      “Altriva? The dog food company. You heard something?” Ian hunched over the keyboard, fingers flying as if they were born to soar. “Maybe. Give me a second.” He scanned the numbers, catching the six-month-long uptick. “You know this is going to cost you, right?”

      Mary knew.

      “I don’t come cheap. But the Portland Scientific recommendation panned out, right? The numbers are solid. Liabilities are low. Recently a lot of insider trading, all buys, but I don’t see any clues in the news. It’s definitely trending up. The P/E looks sweeter than my mom’s apple pie, and they have new management. Go ahead, buy. You have my blessing.” Sensing victory within his grasp, Ian strolled back over to his desk and kicked up his feet. “I’ll send Mitchell over for an interview today. Clear the schedule, Mary. You’re going to love him.”

      After he rang off with Mary, Ian punched in Mitchell’s number.

      “Mitch, my man, it’s Ian. You need to turn off the daytime talk shows and break out the suit. Interview at Scholstein, Harden, today at four. It’s a junior position. Sorry about that, dude, but I have great faith in your abilities to turn a silk purse into something even silkier. After all, you are in advertising.”

      For the next five minutes, Mitch cooed and oohed, expressing his undying gratitude until, embarrassed by the compliments and accolades, Ian made up an excuse and hung up.

      The gratitude always hit him between the eyes. When Ian was in banking, his clients were smug, taking their ten percent returns with a clipped nod and a bottle of aged scotch at Christmas. At the employment office, this gratitude felt off. Ian didn’t deserve it. Honestly, there were no miracles working here, none at all. Not like in finance, where miracles occurred by the trillion on a daily basis.

      Thinking of his prelayoff life was not a good way to start today. Automatically his hands reached for the polished rock that sat on his desk, tossing it up and down like a baseball. When Ian was seven, he had wanted to be an astronaut. His father had sat by his bedside and solemnly told him the stone was a moon rock. After that, every single night he had slept with the tiny fragment of the galaxy under his pillow. By the age of nine, he wanted to be a basketball player, and his father had said that it was a piece of foundation from Madison Square Garden. However, by the age of nine, Ian was smarter and wiser, and called his dad a big, fricking liar. His father had gazed at him, man to man, and told him the rock’s initial place of residence didn’t matter. The most important thing, according to his father, was to think about the rock’s final destination. A rock could be moved from place to place, but where it ended up was a lot more important than where it started.

      Being a cocky nine-year-old, Ian had rolled his eyes and drawn out Da-ad to a long two syllables. But when his father wasn’t watching, Ian took the stone and casually tossed it in the air before tucking it in his pocket.

      Ian felt his dad’s smile, rather than saw it, and to this day, Ian found myriad uses for his stone. Maybe this wasn’t his final destination, but for now, for today, the victories were starting to smell sweet.

      One file on his desk was not smelling so sweet. There were no victories for Hilda Prigsley. For four months, he’d beaten every bush in town—and a few out of town—but sadly, in New York, very few individuals saw the wisdom of taking on an over-fifty teapot-shaped immigrant from the UK. She typed well over one hundred words per minute, one-twenty-two to be exact, but unfortunately believed that computers were the handiwork of the devil. Ian had tried his damnedest to find her something, but positions for a portly Mary Poppins weren’t as plentiful as some might think.

      Once a week Miss Prigsley stopped in the office, bringing him a tinful of handmade English biscuits. Ian always called them cookies,