EPISODE 61

“You okay?” Bosco asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.  I felt much calmer.  I credited the Barrilito for this, but I was also beginning to realize that I had been a bit of an ass in Keith’s office.  I took another sip of rum.

“What’s on your mind, Bosco?”

“Keith figured you might have gone to clear your desk out, so he wanted me to check in on you.”

“Not likely, at least not right now.”

“Good.  I want to talk with you.”

“Go for it.”

“Not over the phone.  I’ll meet you in your office in a few, okay?”

“Cool.”  I hung up the phone and quickly finished my drink.  I went over to the little coffee maker I had at the end of my desk and brewed a half a pot.  While I sipped on the coffee and waited for Bosco, I shot an instant message to Allan:

I think I might be getting canned.  Got in a big fight with Keith and told him to fuck off.

He replied a few seconds later.

No shit!  From what I’ve heard, no one’s been fired from this place in years.  You’ll be famous, man!  Mazel tov! 

I heard Bosco’s knock on the door and I hurriedly sent a response.

Bosco’s here.  I’ll see you later.

Bosco walked in briskly and sat down in the chair in front of my desk.  He looked serious, but just before he started to talk, his lips curled into a smile.

“I told Keith you wouldn’t like it.  I told him that it was never pretty trying to get between you and your money.”

“That, plus the fact that he decided I have to pay for the lack of confidentiality around here.”

“Agreed.  But, the problem is that the word is out and it can’t be taken back.  If people know how you’ve been getting paid and they’re jealous, there’s not much that can be done about it.  You need to make a new deal”

“I’m not sure I buy that.  The only way that Keith can sooth those egos is to leak that I’ve lost my most lucrative clients and my commissions?  That only compounds the breach.”

“That really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

 “Yes, it does.”  I looked out the window for a few seconds.  “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“Don’t worry about it.  Shit, I know you pretty well after the years we’ve spent together and I’m used to you.  The problem is that Keith isn’t and he doesn’t really have any clear idea about what to do with you either.  All he sees is the money you’ve brought in and that’s what fascinates him.  He can’t figure out how you do it.  But he can’t stand that you’re so much of a loner.  He’s used to it from me, but then he and I go back almost 25 years.  He suspects that you’re a bit like me too and I think that scares him!”  He laughed at that before adding,  “This is why I’ve always felt you were the most fire-able person I’d ever met!”

Bosco kept smiling at me, but he lowered his voice a bit for emphasis.  “But what we need to concentrate on is what you’re going to do next,” he concluded. 

“You got any ideas?”

“Yes.  But you’re going to have to control your temper.  I spoke with Keith and he’s beginning to see why this pissed you off so much.”

 “He really figured I’d just go along with that it without an argument?”

“Keith’s feeling is that the new business you can bring in from the territories he wants to give you will be extremely profitable and he’ll be willing to share once that proves to be true.  He reckons that you could well be making much more than you are right now in maybe a year.”

“Yeah, but what do I live on in the meantime?  He took away all my accounts.  I was counting on that cash flow.  The way things are with this deal, I’ll be fucked over for months.”

Bosco’s smile widened and he leaned forward toward me.  “So, Michael – if I told you that the money might not be an issue, would that change your mind?”

“Are you trying to sell me?”

“It was that obvious?  I’m going to go talk to Richard Glick.  Keith wants him to handle this.  Keith realizes that you might not be too willing to negotiate with him and he figures that Richard might be a pretty effective mediator.”

“It can’t hurt,” I said.  Bosco nodded, stood up and left.

I didn’t hear from Richard that day, or the next.  I stayed holed up in my office most of the time, taking calls from clients.  The only person I saw was Allan. I appreciated his concern and it was good to be able to vent to him.  He listened to my complaints, offered advice and managed to keep me relatively sane as I waited for whatever was going to happen next.  What was weird though was that I didn’t care all that much if Keith did finally decide to can my ass anyway.  While I can’t claim that I was considering what my next move would be after I left SlipNot, I did feel as though I wasn’t really a part of it anymore.  It was a bit like being in the international terminal in between flights.  You may have started in New York, but now you were in Frankfurt, waiting to board a plane to Florence and you weren’t allowed to leave the terminal until they called your flight.  I was technically nowhere and I didn’t have a lot of control over the situation until someone told me I could move. 

The call from Richard came at around 3 in the afternoon on Thursday.  He asked me to come up to his office at 5. I shot Allan another instant message, giving him the new “intel” and asked him if he wanted to play some Scrabble on-line.  We played for a little over an hour and he beat me soundly in every game but one.  In my lone victory, I had challenged his playing of the word “taxicajaro” for the win.  It occurred to me that he’d purposely thrown the game, but I was never able to get him to admit to it.

I’m not a big fan of meetings at the end of the day.  I once had to endure a marathon sit down that involved Bosco, Keith (calling in from Hong Kong), Richard, Allan, the entire sales staff, a media buyer, two graphic artists, a Web designer who joined us by telephone from Boston, and a copywriter who also called in, even though his office was less than 4 blocks from SlipNot.  It was a Friday afternoon at 2 when Keith had called me, asking me to be ready to join this group at 4PM.  I couldn’t believe it.  What made it all the more memorable was that the damned thing went on until 9 that night!  To say that people were a bit touchy by the end didn’t even begin to do the situation justice. 

At least this time Richard hadn’t pulled that on me, although I doubt that the day of the week or time of day had factored much into his thinking.  He had to deal with someone he considered to be a pain in the ass, so it was probably all the same to him if we met at midnight in a dark parking garage instead.  Under those circumstances, he might have been able to hire a couple of guys to beat the crap out of me before we got down to talking about my permanent exile from midtown Manhattan.

The next episode of SlipNot will be published on October 27th.

If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.