of financial services commercials there two years ago so they owe me “big time.” I’m not saying they told her she had to go home with me—I think she did that for her own reasons and because she drank too much, thanks mostly to my largesse. Now, sleeping there, she looks a bit more fleshy than I remember, curled up on the floor, pale, motionless. But, I must say, she’s quite good looking: I make a mental note that she probably ranks in the upper third quadrant of girls I have ever had quasi-sexual relations with in terms of physical attractiveness; when you look at her in a certain light or from a certain angle, she’s feral, and her eyes cradle a syrupyness you can almost taste. What would Howard Roark say about her? He was no writer but would always do something, something bold and innovative, writing being the opposite of that. I tap a note into my phone: “idea for short film, what if Howard Roark gave a TED talk?” I think about wanking but I don’t.
Then I decide not to go back into my bedroom, because I can’t sleep and because I want to make sure she doesn’t wake up and steal something from me. So I sit down at my desk in the living area and take a look at the latest draft of the screenplay I am writing, which is called either GAME THEORY or KILL SCREEN or MAD DECENT—I haven’t decided yet. I’ve been writing it for three years and I am still trying to figure out the inciting incident, which is the most important thing, at least according to some book I bought in LA when I lived there. Every guy in advertising is working on a screenplay they will never complete but I have more drive and discipline than most so maybe I will, although I am still on page two.
For the name of my main character I chose my own name, which is Eric Nye, and my own age, which is thirty-three, and my own hometown, which is Canfield, Ohio. I think that is a good touch. I think they call it self-referential.
I rewrite the opening sentence a few times and mostly I stare at the screen, adjusting my hard-on, which is perpetual for medicinal reasons, at least that is my theory, then I realize that the sun is coming up over the Williamsburg Bridge, which you can see outside my triple-pane window. Suddenly I can smell something funny and I go into the living area and sure enough she has upchucked—on my throw rug, believe it or not, which she managed to pull toward her and scrunch up to use as a pillow because she rolled off the nineteen-hundred-dollar St. Geneve one that I had provided for her.
I wake her up and she’s a bit more cogent than before and so I walk her into the bathroom and turn the shower on and stick her head under it. Poor sad little girl, whatever will become of you? Then I dry her off and hand her the T-shirt and give her a bottle of Voss to wash her mouth out with. Her beauty has been fairly well line-itemed at this point, and I am not happy to report that she is even more sexy when 50 percent clothed. When she finally gets dressed and exits with a halfhearted wave of shame I jerk off, take my pills, and call a car service.
1.3
I fire people. It’s my job.
But not only do I can them, in the process I help them, or should I say I wake them up, or I should say I take the time to write for them an honorable if not epic death, a death more dramatic and meaningful than the one they would otherwise be entitled to.
See, I was hired to “clean house” here at Tate, the ad agency in New York City where I am the Chief Idea Officer. I was brought in to create a culture of innovation and creativity, meaning get rid of the dead wood, shitcan the old and the slow and the weak, and that’s what I’m doing, because it’s my job.
At first it was something I dreaded. I knew I was being paid handsomely to be the one to blame, the one who does the Dirty Deed, but still, it was distinctly not cool. Then I grew up. I read on page 334 of The Fountainhead where Howard Roark, say, cuts his own testicles off with a fork in front of his cousin or something, I don’t remember, not that exactly, but he does some extremely fucked-up shit that is totally ridiculous but in the end is worth it. That hit me when I read it. So after firing a handful of pathetic art directors and copywriters in their forties and fifties my attitude changed. I realized that my problem with this aspect of my job was purely in my head and that if I were to be totally honest with myself I would admit that there was something heroic about it. The thrill of the hunt, I guess. I had my prey cornered, I had the HR Lady watching me (I call her Lady but she wasn’t much older than me; tall, half-Korean—she lives on Diet Coke, coffee, and wine), and I had my sentence to speak, which thankfully she had written and rehearsed with me: “I’m very sorry to say this but we’re going to have to let you go.” That sentence was like a quiet little knife in my hands, a hand-painted bespoke artisanal elephant gun loaded and cocked and all I had to do was open my mouth and speak it, destiny would take its course, there was nothing anyone could do. The aftermoment would hang there in the air like steam, and the HR Lady would look at my now-finished and cold-sweating prey with fake sympathy but really I knew what she was thinking, she was thinking she was in the presence of a hard-boiled killer and it turned her on.
Once I gave in to understanding the simple truth about human existence I began enjoying the primal beauty and manifest joy of the kill. I began to turn it into an elaborate ritual. The act wasn’t exactly the same thing as a hunt because the prey had no chance to escape, to run away and survive, as they do in the wild. A different metaphor comes to mind. Last year I was dating a woman, a model who lived in LA, and we went to Barcelona for a long weekend. On Sunday afternoon we went to the bullfight. She objected to this because sport bulls were on the PETA list and she spewed some line of rote nonsense about the cruelty of it and for the most part I bought into that. Of course I was also hoping to get blown one more time before we flew home.
“Think of it as anthropology,” I said. “Think of it as a window into another world.” And I suppose it was another world, in the way that, well, consider the care and patience that a serial killer will take with the body of his victims, or a medical examiner with a corpse, there is something horrific about it and honorable at the same time, like a sky burial. And the bullfight is not at all a sport, it is a dance, a performance art piece that originated on Spanish ranches and farms, or so I read online although I might be making that up. The bull is going to die regardless because it is going to be slaughtered for food, and so the matador honors his meal by risking his life in the ring, finally terminating it while leaping in midair, his groin exposed to the bull’s horns. The whole thing was pretty gay but at the same time also undeniably deep I thought.
So that’s how I began to think of my job. Sure, I could just follow my marching orders to the letter, call them into my office, shake my head, look at the floor, say my sentence, squeeze their hands, offer my help in finding them a new position somewhere, which we both knew was bullshit, let’s get a drink sometime, dude, we’ll miss you around here, the fucking bean counters up my ass we had no choice you’re not alone, and so on. I could kill them the way we kill chickens in slaughterhouses, in some kind of dehumanized way, and they have no idea what’s happening until the moment of their death, if at all, if a chicken even knows what death is, does she? Or I could send them out with the art and grace and dignity of a really good commedia, a good long bloody scene, replete with angels, demons, and clowns. They could be unwitting losers or they could be stars, and it was up to us, together, we were doing this as a team. But I was the one at the helm, with my year-long schedule of layoffs, my Outlook calendar entries, invites, and alerts. Outlook was my faena, my sword.
One of the hallmarks of Western industrial society is death segregation, the separating of the dying and the dead away from the masses and into so-called professional circles: medical practitioners, police, undertakers, military contractors. Some philosophers think this has resulted in neurosis if not psychosis; the exploits of Nazi Germany come to mind if not all of the pornography industry. Where am I going with this? I am bringing death back from the over-anesthetized margins, that’s my mission, my purpose, and it is bigger than right-sizing the creative department on behalf of the shareholders of the holding company that owns the holding company that owns the company that employs me. I am exaggerating and ritualizing the methods of corporate termination for all humankind, for posterity; I have created a new art form.
But mostly I’m just trying to get my bonus.
That morning, after I called my building’s concierge service and had them clean up Intern’s puke and