short story: The Blue Note by Chris Marstall (2002)
It’s really not such a bad job. I believe, basically, in what I’m pitching, what I’m exposing people to. The deception angle is there, it’s true, and that’s something I’ve been having a hard time dealing with, something I’ve thought about a good amount. It’s even been the cause of some serious stress in my life at a few specific times. But that’s offset by the fact that, at heart, what I’m doing is no different from what everyone else is doing in this capitalist society – selling, yes. But that’s just one word, a negative word, for what is simple exchange – the giving of something unwanted for something wanted. That’s freedom. And I’m not even selling. Yes, at base I’m setting up the sale, but what I do, essentially, is marketing. That’s entirely what it is. It’s just that sometimes in my mind I group it all under the label “sales.” But, although it’s so cutting-edge that some people might not immediately recognize it as such, most, on reflection, would class it as tried-and-true marketing.
And I really feel that that’s a noble profession, or can be. That it’s something that at its best is about sharing information, making people smarter, allowing them to make more informed decisions and broadening their horizons. My father would disagree completely. So would my stepmother. They’re both completely committed to the Berkeley commune lifestyle. They can’t understand that things are changing, have changed, completely in some respects. They were smart, too, in their time. That’s why they can still be living this idealistic lifestyle in the year 2001. My dad and his brother and his best friend and his sister bought an enormous house in the Berkeley hills in 1971 for something like $20,000 and they completely remade it according to their ideals and the way they and their friends were thinking at that time. There’s an American Indian sweat lodge in the back, for example. They converted the basement into a meeting space and protest staging ground; there’s even still a big trunk full of gas masks somewhere down there. They also put in a big kitchen, the kind with long stainless steel counters and all kinds of different whisks. They used it to feed the homeless, which I have always respected a ton. Also, there’s a funny little room way at the top of the house that you get to through a secret staircase. It has round windows that look over the whole Bay. Supposedly the lady who built the house would use it for seances, and my Dad and them converted it into a meditation room. I had my first truly intimate experience with a woman there, the summer I was 17. Actually, a girl, really, though she was 21 and seemed like a woman to me at the time.
I got so tired of Berkeley a couple years after that and high-tailed it back east, partially to get away from my family, partially because I had this certain mysticism about the east coast, especially Manhattan. When I first got there I would spend hours walking around Wall Street, the center of it all. I don’t know why I was drawn there – it was so different from the way I was brought up. But after my very first day in the financial district, as a tourist I guess, though I didn’t feel exactly like one, I seemed to myself completely changed as a person. My early life in Berkeley became trapped in a darkened part of my mind behind a barrier that cast a shadow on everything before it. On this side of the barrier was now, the present moment, then my hopes for the future, which at that time were very innocent and limitless.
I didn’t really realize right away how changed I had become in that one day of walking around, and also of having a couple different experiences, which I will tell you about shortly. So when I called my Dad, excited to tell him about my discoveries, I was really shocked by a couple things, that came to my awareness the second I heard his voice. First, I had the impression he had aged 20 years in the day or two since I’d seen him last. He sounded like an old man – tired, and incapable of changing or understanding new ways or new trends in society. So that led to the second shock, which was that I couldn’t find the words to express what I had seen and felt in a way that would have any hope of penetrating his thick, ossified skull. We ended up just talking about the difference in the weather, and I could tell he hung up feeling kind of frozen out of my life.
Basically, because of his background and early experience as a radical and campus protestor in the 1960’s, he’s always had a kind of prejudice about the world of business, the world of sales. That goes back to his having set himself and his friends up so nicely in the commune I grew up in, so they never had to go to the school of hard knocks and find out about how important the economy is. Up until that moment, it had never formed a block between us. But it was as if I was a kid leaving the womb for the first time, which in a sense is exactly what I was. The eerie part is that my father was like a kid in a womb, too, only he had never left. So I ended up feeling older and more experienced than him right away, which is something that makes me pretty uncomfortable when I think about it.
That was about a year ago, and during that time it’s been quite a grind, trying to make it in the real world of sales and the economy, which I never was much prepared for as a child. But I’ve been very lucky, as I said, to finally land a job in marketing, which was my career goal. Marketing’s a great field to be in, especially in New York City. The number of big corporations that are headquartered here is just mind-boggling. Every one of them with massive marketing departments. In fact, my original goal was to wind up working for one of those, a Fortune 500, or perhaps a Fortune Global 1000 firm.
At places like that you don’t have to undergo the kind of humilation and ethical murk that goes along with positions like the one I’m currently holding. On the other hand, I’m really breaking new ground in my field, and that counts for something. We’re doing something totally unique, going into bars, restaurants, clubs, what have you, to directly grab mindshare in a grass roots fashion.
Even so, before work I often feel a certain revulsion, like I smoked too many cigarettes. Especially when I’m alone, on the subway, dressed up.
We usually don’t start until around 10 or 11pm. I’ll meet up with my team at a cafe and we’ll talk about the game plan for the night. Like last night, we met at Starbucks on 14th street and Jenna brought the call sheet for the night. First stop was a restaurant named Pamela’s. After the diners finish their meals a lot of them head over to the bar area, because it’s kind of a neighborhood hotspot in its own right.
There are studies showing most Americans feel very uncomfortable ordering drinks after eating an expensive meal. They feel they should order a digestif, but they don’t know much about this class of drinks, so they end up fumbling around in front of their date and may order something inappopriate, like a Kir Royale, which is most commonly an apertif. Our feeling is that it’s a decision-making moment where most people are open to suggestion, impressionable even. They’re looking for cues as to what they should order. That’s where my team can step in. We’ll be at the bar, looking confident and detached, wearing Prada or Diesel. We’ll be working with the bartender, who’ll wait to take our order until a new customer comes within earshot. Depending on the looks of them, we’ll choose among the drinks we’re being paid to promote that night. If it’s a young couple dressed in leather, or someone adopting a colorful European look, I might call out to the bartender for a shot of Andraza, which is top-shelf Ouzo.
“Is it chilled?” I’ll ask.
“No, but I can chill it for you,” he’ll reply.
After the first sip, I’ll stretch a little and tell Jenna in voice that’s quite audible, but not at all piercing or annoying, a voice that carries well, “That reminds me of one night in an olive grove in Thessalonika. Jeffrey and I were completely sunburned. Aside from our speedos, we hadn’t had a stich on for days. All we had to our name was 500cc’s of this stuff and a shank of spanikopita we had stolen from the market. We filled our bellies and then drank the bottle down. It was terribly romantic. In the morning we awoke to the sound of gunfire, and we knew then that we must leave Greece forever. But I’ll never forget that night, that flavor. God I love Andraza.”
As the couple is waiting for the bartender, they’ll overhear me talking about these kinds of romantic, scandalous things and it’ll really get their mind racing about images that a bottle of good Ouzo might evoke. The secret is in strong visuals – again, we have market research showing that people’s drink-buying decisions are influenced by what they can see, taste or smell.
You’d be amazed how effective this kind of campaign can be. At places like Pamela’s, with the kind of conditions I described, we’ve seen conversion rates in excess of 30%. In other words, 30% more people are likely to buy the drinks we tell them to buy. And of course, we’re only marketing the best, so they’re bound to turn around to their friends, and, hopefully, become a kind of authority on whichever drink we sold them on.
When it comes to rare, exotic drinks, whether it be ouzo, pastis or buffalo grass vodka, people are yearning for a “natural” introduction. They don’t want to hear about them through traditional advertisements. That’s because when you go to a bar and order something unusual, their friends are impressed and they’re bound to ask, “When did you start drinking that particular drink?” The ideal response is something like, “Well, when I was in Turkey the old man living next to me used to invite me over every night for a shot.” But “I met this interesting couple at Pamela’s, and they told me about it,” is not bad either. So, yes, we do often introduce ourselves around the bar, under false pretences, as it were. Actually, if we’re effective, quite often people will strike up a conversation with us of their own accord. “You’re from Kentucky?” They might say, overhearing a story. “I have an uncle from Kentucky.” Or New Orleans, or Kamchatka. Someplace unusual sounding.
Or someone famous. Name-dropping works like gangbusters. One night we made several dozen people overhear us say we saw Lou Reed drinking Red Bull. It’s plausible, when you think about it. It has to be or it won’t work.
So you can see that it’s a job that can be quite involving. A job that has a ton of angles to chew on and work over, and room for creativity. Granted, most of our stories and conversations are pre-scripted. But the best among us just take them as starting points. We’ll change a word here, a phrase there. If we’re inspired, we’ll extemporize freely. Supposedly they send ringers out to spy on us, make sure we’re sticking to the dialogue, but I doubt it. I do understand their concern – they want to see what’s working and what’s not working and if we ad lib half the night there’s no mechanism there to capture that, refine it for later. But still, you’re out there in the public, interacting with people on a moment-by-moment basis, and no script can govern that.
The job can also be a great way to pick up women. Unfortunately, you have to kind of maintain the deception for a little while, or even a long while. Women seem to object to this line of work, which I understand. Often they haven’t had the “trial by fire” of having to choose a career which may be a sacrifice to their ideals, and stick with it. In the back of their mind is the reality that they’ll probably end up being wives and mothers and devoting their lives to a family, so they have the ability to stay pure and not subjugate themselves to the almighty dollar.
Not that all girls are like that, I know. It’s just a stereotype. In this town, in fact, it seems like there are hardly any at all like that sometimes. And though I’m single and really enjoying it, in the end I see myself with a wife and child living upstate, or maybe even back in Berkeley. You never know.
But it’s hard to meet nice girls. For example, the other night, I was hanging out at the bar at the W hotel on East 56th St., waiting for James and Tina, two of my co-workers, to show up so we could start our shift. I was freelancing a little, drinking a glass of Ketel One, which is a top-shelf vodka that’s popular in places like that. I half had my eye open for a mark, just out of habit. It gave me something to do, made me feel a little less insignificant in this crowd of muscular, affluent-looking guys and their dates.
After a while I found myself staring more and more at one particular girl. She looked like she was from North Africa or maybe Egypt. She seemed to be with a particular group of young people, who were drinking a lot of rainbow-colored cocktails and mixing back and forth. For a while she was talking intently to one guy – a geeky looking Indian, probably some kind of software programmer, and I figured at first he was her boyfriend. But then I looked away for the briefest second and when I looked back he was nowhere to be seen, and another guy, one I had been sure wasn’t part of the group at all, was involved in a passionate-looking conversation with her. He was wearing an Armani suit and tiny little glasses and smoking a fat cigar. I could overhear snippets of their conversation and it sounded like they were talking about temp agencies.
I’m not sure what it was exactly that attracted me to her. She seemed exotic, like maybe she was a diplomat, and also highly energetic and vibrant. She seemed to love life and also laugh at it. I just felt excited when I was looking at her, and after a while I could hardly take my eyes off her.
Soon James and Tina showed up and they tsked me for already having had a drink. But at this point I’ve built up quite a tolerance and can have 15 or twenty shots in a night without really feeling it. The hangover the next day is another story, since we tend to have to mix our alcohols, but that’s just part of the job. Like if I were an athlete and I were to feel sore the day after a match.
We conferred about our game plan and decided we would just kind of mingle for the moment to get the mood of the crowd. We’ve worked together a lot and we have a feel for each other’s moves. We rose from our stools and set up in the middle of the bar floor, each surveying the small, constantly reassembling groups around us. I was pretty much in a zone and forgot about the Egyptian girl, until I noticed James checking in with her and a girl she was drinking with by now.
James was working up to one of our more common pitches. He had positioned himself in front of the girl, facing her but also facing Tina, and I could see the eye contact flashing between him and the girl every couple moments. He’s a magnetic individual and attracts attention from the opposite sex. It’s something of a job requirement in this line of work.
“Tina,
what’s that your drinking? It looks delicious.” He asked.
“Oh it’s a chick drink. You
wouldn’t like it.” She turned to the girl and said in a sassy voice, “I’d be a
little worried if he did. You feel me, sister?”
The girl looked a little jarred for a moment. She hadn’t expected to be included in our conversation. That’s a situation we’re trained to deal with, but she quickly bounced back with a genuine-sounding laugh. “Oh yeah. I dated this one guy who drank Cosmopolitans, and I was like … ” She made a funny face and splayed her arms out. We all laughed.
Her eyes fell into mine for a moment, a moment which seemed a touch longer than I would have expected. I started talking to her and as I did my body would become electrified at different moments, and sweat would jump out of my skin all over, all at once. I found out her name was Heather. Talking to her in person I started to get a different impression than I had staring at her from across the room, when she seemed cold and decisive. I was surprised to see that she was eager for connection, and stared up at me from time to time as if she was nervous to hear my replies.
We talked about very boring things, but didn’t want to stop and didn’t feel awkward. At the same time I was keeping up my job persona. She commented on my pin, and I didn’t hesitate in laying out the line. “It was a gift from my grandfather. He found it in a bunker in Saipan.”
She leaned close towards it. It was a flowery military badge mounted on a nickel star radiating spikes. She looked me in the eyes and spoke slowly. “It’s very beautiful.”
Another slow jolt of electricity went from her gaze through me. “He gave it to me on his death-bed. I fell a little strange wearing it, but he said if I wore it every day and drank the old MacAllan every night, I’d never want for anything.”
“Old MacAllan?” she asked.
“Finest whiskey in Scotland or elsewhere. Twelve years old or older. You can get it at better liquor stores.” The pitch lines flowed out almost involuntarily, and as I said them I had a funny feeling which I hardly recognized at the time. Like I was telling a lie. Which was the first time I’d felt that way, and I didn’t know exactly how to react. So I clammed up awkwardly, and couldn’t manage a reply when she smiled and said something like “Oh, yeah … “
James
looked over at me, having heard me fading away, and said, worriedly, “MacAllan!
Now that calls for a round. Tim, the lady’s glass is getting empty! Why don’t
you give her a taste of the old MacAllan 20.” He was adlibbing to save the sale,
and now he slipped into a mock Scottish accent. “It’s good for what ails
ye!”
I couldn’t come up with anything to say and swallowed my tonsils a couple times, so James ended up buying her drink and talking to her for a while. I went out to the street to have a cigarette and get out of all the smoke inside the bar.
When I went back in, Heather and James were necking in the corner, which I sort of expected. The odd thing is that before she left Heather came up to me at the bar and tried to be friendly to me. I took up the MacAllan pitch a little, kind of to bug her, which was the last work I did that night before going home. Her face fell a little when I started into it. She listened for a minute, then without giving any warning gave me a big wet kiss on the lips and said good night, running out into the street to catch a cab. That must have been when she slipped the napkin into my pocket, which I found later. It was a little note with her phone number.
The next morning, while I was making my coffee, the phone rang, but it wasn’t Heather, of course. Instead it was my Dad.
“How’s my short-order man?” he asked.
For a split second I was thrown by this question, especially so early in the morning, but then I remembered.
“Hm? Oh, yeah, still slingin’ that hash!” I answered.
I’ve previously mentioned that on that first day in downtown Manhattan, wandering through Wall Street, I had had an experience that I would go into more detail on a little later. I guess I’ve been putting it off because it’s kind of embarrassing, but it goes straight to the heart of the way my Dad and I relate, so I’ll explain it now.
I had turned off Wall onto a little side street because I’d spied an old church surrounded by a graveyard down it and I couldn’t understand how a run-down thing like that could be allowed to stay there when real estate in the neighborhood was through the roof and there was nothing but high-rises around. I stood at the iron gate for a little while, looking in. You could see that the worn, bumpy green turf around the headstones was the original land, the real island of Manhattan that hadn’t been dug up and removed to another place. There were acorns and birds and squirrels trying to intimidate each other, and the smell of wet, rotting leaves and soil. My heart really went out to the owner of that plot, who was probably prevented from developing it properly by some state or federal environmental commission who didn’t see its true value.
Across the street from the church was “THE HOLE IN THE WALL.” It was a sandwich place, but it didn’t have a door or even a glass window. It was just a counter that opened onto the street. You walked up and placed your order standing on the sidewalk and they would make it and hand it out to you. I was hungry and didn’t have much dough, so I went over to check out the menu. I noticed there was a Help Wanted sign, and in a flash I made a big decision. You see, I realized that this was obviously a place where power-brokers and bond traders and other such influential people came to grab a quick bite which they could eat back at the desk. A job here, from which I could literally look out on to Wall Street, could be my way into their lives. I asked for an application, filled it out expeditiously, and was hired on the spot. I could tell the owner, a grizzly Pakistani guy with stains on his apron, took a liking to me and didn’t think much about quizzing me as to my qualifications, some of which were fabrications. I started the next day.
When I talked to my Dad that night, I told him all about the job. Of course, he wouldn’t have understood about all the things that made it interesting for me, the financial opportunities, so I kind of focused on my boss, making him out to be like some of the homeless guys my Dad used to feed at his soup kitchen. That and the old church across the street, explaining it like he would see it – as a last bastion against capitalism, or whatever. He was all over it, even more than I expected. It turns out he’d been a short-order cook when he was at Cal, which I never knew, and he said I was taking after the old man. He saw it as a noble, working-class kind of job, like something Bob Dylan would sing about. So even though I was just going to be making cold sandwiches -- not grits or what have you -- I kind of let on that there was a grill and I would be trained for short orders. I just wanted to have something to communicate with him about, and like I mentioned, he doesn’t understand about a lot of the mainstream aspects of life, making it difficult quite often..
In the end, I got fired from the job halfway through my first shift because of a personality conflict between myself and the proprietor, but I never got around to informing my Dad of that and kind of let him continue to think I was still working there. Over the months he would ask me about things like the Fryolator and reminisce about his Hobart dishwasher or what have you, and in response I would extrapolate from the few hours I worked there just to get him to keep talking. I got a kick out of imagining my Dad having to work for a living doing something like flipping eggs and emptying the grease trap, as opposed to sitting at his beat-up mahogany desk writing letters to left-wing newspapers no-one ever reads.
He was probably sitting there right now, gazing out at palm trees as I leafed through the morning’s Wall Street Journal. He reminded me that he was planning to come visit that weekend. I was supposed to let him show me around the big city, “his New York.” It was going to be a lot of played-out old Jazz clubs in Greenwich Village and art house movie theatres that didn’t exist anymore.
“So, Tim, any women in your life?” he asked.
I didn’t want to let him down, so I told him about meeting Heather last night, only I left out the part about her kissing James and focused in on her ethnic background. I also played up her slipping her number into my jacket. My Dad loved that.
“That’s my boy! So, did you call her yet? She likes you, that much is obvious. What are you waiting for? Don’t play hard to get, man, that’s her job.”
We both guffawed at that one.
“Say,” my Dad continued, “why don’t you invite her out this weekend and we can have a double date on Saturday. I’m supposed to see Alice, anyway. We’ll all head down to the Blue Note.”
I wasn’t going to go into how boring and old-school just about everything in Greenwich Village was. Nor how much I hated jazz after having him attempt to shove it down my throat throughout my entire youth.
“I don’t even know if she’s free…” I said, but I knew there was no way to avoid the way Saturday night was shaping up. My Dad wouldn’t let the issue go, and made it out to be like it was his duty as my father to build up my courage to call Heather. And in his mind double-dating with my father and his rainy-day lady at a club filled with geezers was clearly the best way to break the ice with her. Finally, to appease him, I gave in on both fronts. In the end he really put the pins in.
“Promise me you’ll call her,” he said, talking low. “For your old man. Don’t make my mistakes, Tim. Please.”
I had no idea what he was talking about; it’s not like he’s ever shared his early romantic disappointments with me. But I didn’t feel like getting into them, then or ever. I got embarrassed just thinking about that kind of subject as far as it relates to my father. So I promised him, which finally got him off the phone so I could finish my coffee.
I’d had myself half-convinced that I could call Heather, but now in my mind’s eye I could see her making out with James in the corner of the dark hotel lobby and I knew it was going to be impossible.
I read the Journal cover to cover and drank a couple pots of coffee. In the end I found myself reading the derivatives listings on the very last page of the last section and feeling very depressed.
I stared out the window and saw a lot of melancholy things, like a couple walking into a café with their arms around each other. What made that melancholy is that, it’s unlike me, but I got jealous, thinking that in general the two of them looked like they were in love and were probably pretty straight with each other most of the time. That’s the type of thing I respect and didn’t feel like I had much of at the moment.
I kind of fell into a funk, feeling sorry for myself. I could hardly move out of the kitchen chair. I watched the second hand move around my clock for five minutes, even though every time it ticked a little pulse of nausea went through me.
The phone rang.
You can probably guess who it was, although it was a shock to me. As soon as I heard her voice I forgot about the dark thoughts I was having, and even about her making out with James. All the coffee took effect in a second and my palms and underarms were soaked.
The next Saturday, no lie, it was me, Heather, my father and his old flame Alice sitting at a little round table at the Blue Note waiting for the band to start. I was in a great mood. Heather and I had met for a cup of tea before earlier and walked around the Village, which didn’t seem so bad with a girl like her, who got excited about every little shop and café we passed. We sat on a bench and talked for a long time. I told her about my plans in a general way, not referring to my current job in any specifics.
“I’m in marketing,” I told her.
She looked at me bemusedly, like she was in on some joke that I was in on too -- only I didn’t know what the joke was. “Marketing,” she echoed.
“Yeah, front-line kind of stuff. But I see myself in midtown by next year at the latest.”
“Midtown.” The same look, a charitable kind of skepticism at the particular words I was choosing.
“Yeah, midtown, Madison Avenue. The big boys.” I tried to return her mood with a little sarcastic laugh.
She paused, looking at me deeply, then smiled again. “That’s okay. I forgive you.”
At first I couldn’t figure out what that particular comment meant, then I figured that it was probably a pretty understanding thing to say. Not that I’m ashamed at what I do. But as I said, I have my doubts from time to time. Self-reflection, I guess. Or self-questioning. I was getting to be in a mood to kind of bring something along those lines up, maybe ask her what she thought about certain general things. But I didn’t get a chance right then.
“God, you are so cute,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. And before I knew it her big red lips were on mine and her tongue was snaking around the back of my teeth. I was so nervous kissing her that at first I could hardly find the composure to even put my hand on her shoulder. But then we both got hot and really into it. After a while we pulled apart and gave each other a little grin with our foreheads touching. I offered her a Craven “A” and lit it for her.
She opened up to me about a lot of things and told me about how she was going to go travelling in Portugal soon. She held my hand and said I’d like it there, I should come.
Her and my Dad hit it off great, too, and now he was monopolizing the conversation around he table by flirting with her, telling her about how he helped knock down the Berlin Wall, leaving me and Alice to sit and smile at each other. I was smiling at her because I felt bad my Dad was ignoring her after not seeing her for years. I guess she was smiling at me because she feels sentimental toward me, having known me when I was a child.
She was around a lot after my Mom left, and now that I think about it she was probably giving it out to most of the dudes in the house. But at that time I saw her like an aunt and we did a lot of things together. There was an Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore poster in our living room, and someone once told me the Alice in that movie was the same as our Alice, the Alice who was now sitting across from me. I believed it for years. I also equated her with hippie ladies like Janis Joplin and Holly Near.
At some point she faded out of the communal household, first to a bungalow down in the flats, and then, when my Dad started dating my stepmother, to New York. My Dad didn’t see her for years and years at a time.
She kept kind of gazing at me across the table, like she was amazed at how big and grown-up I had gotten. I liked the way it made me feel, and I forgave her for her garb – she was wearing about 5 different scarves and a thick dress that went down to her ankles, all of it in different ethnic patterns that clashed with each other.
My Dad would occasionally interrupt his chatting-up of Heather to shoot an affectionate glance over at the two of us, like he was really happy we were getting to know each other again. Honestly, though, after answering a few questions she asked me we didn’t have much to say to each other. I’d told her about my job as a short-order cook, but she didn’t react like my Dad did. It was like she didn’t exactly believe I was working in a place like that. Even when I reassured her that I did, she didn’t seem to get it 100%, like there was something I hadn’t explained or told her. The music started up and we both turned toward the stage and started nodding our heads to the beat.
Heather looked over and gave me a really nice look. I returned it, feeling my heart thumping again. She leaned toward me and smiled. “I wonder where James is?” she asked.
I looked at her with surprise. “James?” This was the first time I’d heard her mention his name.
She smiled happily. “Yeah! I invited him, I hope you don’t mind. He called me earlier this week and I told him to come tonight. He should be here by now. Grrr.”
My heart-beat turned poisonous and I couldn’t breathe; their make-out session came back to me, in Technicolor. Before I could say anything, there he was, sidling up to the table, taking his coat off and rubbing his hands together to warm up from the cold out on the street. “Hey, Tim, what’s up my good man?”
My Dad and Alice looked up at him dubiously, but Heather jumped up gave him a wet kiss. “James!”
He sat down with us and ordered a drink. After the waiter left he watched him walk away philosophically. He turned to me with a confidential grin and said,
“Tim, isn’t it strange ordering drinks off-duty?”
I choked on my cigarette. After hacking a few times, I managed a hollow “James, man, let’s not talk about … your job. Let’s just get into the music.”
I gave him a significant look, hoping he’d get that I didn’t want anyone at the table to know what I did for a living. But I could see in a flash that James already understood what was going on very well. He glanced at Heather and cast me a small mischevious look.
“Our job, old sport!”