“Name recognition?” Nathan was incredulous. “That, my friend, is part of the problem. What have you done since we sold SpeakEasy? Seriously, Leo. What have you done?”
What had he done? First, he and Victoria had lived in Paris for six months and then Florence, all without improving his French or Italian one iota. Those days and weeks were long blurs of visiting friends and meals and trips to “the country” that somehow he ended up paying for. Then Victoria declared New York “boring,” so they went west and leased an apartment in Santa Monica for a few years. He was supposed to be working on a screenplay, but he really went to the beach every day and tried to surf and then got stoned while Victoria spent a lot of time meditating and doing some kind of aromatherapy shit. They talked incessantly about opening up a small art gallery but never did. When her dermatologist found a precancerous mole on her otherwise unblemished décolletage, it was back to New York where she convinced him to fund a small theater group downtown so they could “nurture emerging talent,” which pretty much meant Victoria “producing”—and starring in—bad plays written by people she’d grown up with in the West Village. He’d gone for long walks and taught himself all about single-barrel whiskey. He read, quietly resenting anything he deemed good. He spent months designing a custom bike that he never rode.
“I wish I’d done a lot of things differently,” Leo said. “But I can’t go back in time.”
“I agree,” Nathan said. “You and me?” He wagged a finger between the two of them. “That’s trying to move back in time. We had a good run.” He slapped Leo on the arm, hard. Leo winced. “A bloody good run.” Leo knew the meeting was over when Nathan amped up the Briticisms. He watched Nathan gather his folders and slide his laptop into a briefcase. “I’ll have my assistant call you. We’ll have dinner. You, me, my wife, Stephanie. It will be fun. You can come uptown to take a look at the massive money pit and laugh at my folly.”
Leo hadn’t had a chance to say anything he’d planned. “Let’s reschedule. I realize now I should have sent you my ideas ahead of this meeting—”
“This isn’t a meeting.” Nathan tossed a credit card on the bar, started pulling on his coat.
Now Leo was annoyed. He deserved better. “Come on, Nathan. Don’t be like this.”
“Like what? In a hurry?”
Leo tried to think of what he could say to persuade Nathan to stay. The credit card on the bar was a black Amex. Leo couldn’t believe Nathan was doing that well.
“Do you need money?” Nathan asked, noticing Leo staring at the card.
“What? No.”
“Because if this is about money, I can float you a loan. I can do that.”
“It’s not about money. Christ. Why would you think I need money?” Leo was furious remembering that he had thought about borrowing money from Nathan. Hell would have to freeze over.
“I talk to Victoria now and then.”
“Fantastic. Fucking fantastic. Victoria, the most unreliable narrator of all time.”
“To her credit, I had to drag the information out of her.”
“It’s not to her credit; she signed an agreement. In fact, I find it very interesting that she’s trying to turn people against me—”
“Cut the bull, Leo. I asked about you as a friend. I was worried. Nobody’s against you.”
Leo took a deep breath. “So put me on your calendar. Let me give you my presentation. Just hear me out.”
“You say you’ve done your homework?” Nathan said.
“I have.”
“So you know who our CFO is?”
“I didn’t memorize the organization chart, no.”
“Peter Rothstein.” Nathan signed the bar copy and started ripping his receipt into tiny pieces, which he carefully placed back on the edge of the plastic bill tray. Leo frantically tried to remember why the name might be significant. Nothing.
“His brother was Ari Rothstein,” Nathan said.
Leo felt a vague familiar nagging, but still—nothing. “Do I know him?”
“That’s one way to put it. The one who gets it done. Sound familiar?”
Leo’s heart sank. Ari Rothstein had been one of the last SpeakEasy stories of his tenure. A community college kid—kind of portly, dull looking—who sent in a video résumé for a tech-support job. Leo had come to the office one morning to find everyone standing around a monitor, hooting and laughing. The tape started with Ari Rothstein in an ill-fitting suit reeling off his technical experience and then absurdly and awkwardly interrupting himself by removing his jacket, putting on a baseball cap, and singing a nonsensical rap parody about tech support. The chorus was the inelegant and forgettable “I’m the one to get it done.” (I’m the ONE. I’m the ONE. I’m the ONE to get it DONE!) It was awful, and hilarious.