Up in the Air

To calm Art, I confess to being a bystander who’s never actually run a business himself. It’s too late, though, Art’s off, and even the arrival of a plate-filling T-bone smothered in onion nuggets and floating in au jus can’t stem his bitterness. If this mood hangs on, I don’t dare leave—he’ll be on the line to MythTech first thing tomorrow, slandering me to the skies. My only hope is that he’ll collapse in the next half hour or so. The water trick, due to Art’s keen gaze, is out, though, and I’ve already used the napkin trick. I’ll pay the bartender to pour a bomb and make mine a tonic water.

“Full bladder,” I say.

“Me too.”

I’m startled—joint toilet trips just don’t happen with men. Art is even lonelier than I thought.

The side-by-side urinals are filled with ice cubes, a touch I’ve never had properly explained to me. Holding himself with one hand, Art tips his head back and shakes out his Samson locks. I clench. Can’t pee.

“Let’s hit the Mustang. It’s a rip-off joint, but they fly in their girls from the leading beach resorts. My steak’s a joke. It’s like chewing a catcher’s glove.”

“Mine’s fine. Let’s stay for another drink or two.”

“Can’t now. I’ve got a picture in my head.”

Art covers the meal with two fifties from his money clip. There are money-clip men and there are wallet men. Money-clip men overtip for even poor service, carry only the freshest currency, and they don’t end an evening until they’ve spent their roll. I’m stuck in Reno. The only way to make Ontario would be to fly to LAX and drive, but I don’t feel up to freeway traffic.

The lights of the Strip rake our faces with bars of color. A cowboy in the doorway of a pawnshop flicks a lit cigar butt at our feet that skips into the street beneath a limo with vanity license plates: LTHL DOS. I step on a wet wad of chewing gum, remove it, then promptly step on another one that’s stickier. A casino barker costumed as a leprechaun but far too stout for the outfit’s emerald tights hands us coupons good for two free spins on something called the Wheel O’ Dreams. We pass.

“An hour. That’s all I have left in me this evening.”

“That’s fine,” Art says. “I’ll probably end up in the VIP room, tied to a water pipe with a sequined thong.”

I venture a focus word I’ve had on file. Use them or lose them. “You old sybarite.”

The club is set up as a lounge, no stage, no spotlights, just a maze of tables and leather sofas packed in so tight that the dancers and cocktail girls have to step sideways, brushing hips and nipples, when they pass each other on their rounds. Art tunnels ahead of me through the blue smoke to a spot in the back screened off by potted trees with leaves the shape and size of human hands. We sit, and I feel like a hunter in a blind, hidden but with a full view of the field. The women are a cut above, Art’s right; they look cool-to-the-touch, both healthy and intelligent. I can see Art growing anxious as one approaches. He thumbs a couple of breath mints off a roll and chews them hard to release the active ingredients.

Me, I’m not tempted. As a younger man I made the mistake of talking to a stripper, in depth and at length, about her finances. Her income shocked me. It was double mine. She claimed to be saving for college, but when I pressed her I learned that she didn’t even have a bank account and supported not one but two delinquent boyfriends. I didn’t feel sorry for her, I felt insulted. There I was, the sort of clean achiever this beautiful girl should consider marrying, but instead she was shaking me down for twenties to lavish on my Darwinian inferiors.

The girl settles onto Art’s lap and starts her act, gripping the back of his chair to brace herself and arching her lovely, articulated spine. On her shoulder a tattooed daisy spreads its petals. I look away, but Art wants to keep on talking.

“I have an idea if I get out of restaurants. It’s like a record or book club, but with power tools. April, you get a cordless drill. May, a reciprocal saw. If you don’t want it, you have to ship it back. You know how that works. People can’t be bothered. The stuff piles up. It’s automatic billing, so they’re screwed.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m leaving ISM, Art. I might not be available to help you.”

“Just give me hope. —Not so hard there, hon. I’ll rupture.”

I’m duty-bound to restore Art’s optimism, to point him toward new horizons. I have a thought. At GoalQuest on Thursday I’m meeting Tony Marlowe, one of the industry’s highest-earning motivators, who I knew through some friends before he got so huge. He’d come up through the speed-reading racket in California, where he played all the planned retirement communities, but left to build team skills in greater Silicon Valley. The man’s pure nitro, a self-made high school dropout whose private sessions turn CEOs to jelly. A few hours with Marlowe, on me—that’s what I’ll offer.

“I’m writing something on a card here, Art. Don’t lose it. This is a onetime-only deal.”