A Better Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

make money at this shit,” Nick said to Larry one night over cheap draft and soda crackers. When he looked up there was an evil glint in his future partner’s eye. Today they are the busiest independent commercial outfit in town, with a stable of producers and directors working with international clients, churning out dozens of slick TV spots a year. As company founder, Nick is now able to cherry-pick which jobs he wants, passing the rest to his preferred directors while retaining a handsome producer fee.
    “Mor-ning!” Nick’s assistant says brightly.
    Ben is trim and scrubbed in a made-to-measure suit. (God knows how he affords his clothes on the pittance he’s paid. Nick assumes, as he does with most of his employees, that the kid has family money.) His greeting contains just the right touch of irreverent subservience to make Nick feel simultaneously at ease and important. Ben is immaculate without being anal, animated without being theatrical. It is precisely this level of metrosexualitythat Nick specifically looks for when hiring an assistant—a person he secretly thinks of as an extension of his own brand.
    “Morning, young Benjamin. How was your weekend?”
    “Oh, quiet. Just did a bit of work in the garden, planted some daffodil bulbs for spring.” Ben offers a pursed-lip smile that suggests he’s actually spent the past forty-eight hours shagging the city while flying on class A drugs. “And you?”
    “Oh, you know, the usual. Drunk midget wrestling, appeasing the missus. So what’s on again today?”
    Ben nods like a naval cadet and lists off a schedule of pitch meetings and casting sessions, followed by the appointment Nick has been waiting for: evening drinks with his old friend Adam Gray.
    Nick glides through the rest of the day in a state of pleasant dissociation, skimming along the surface of work in a way that effects maximum output with minimal energy. By the time 6:00 p.m. winds around, he’s pulling on his overcoat and feeling predictably numb, considering the meeting that awaits him.
    He gets to the Plymouth early to secure a good table. The small hotel bar is widely noted for its stupendously large cocktails and possible connections to the Russian mob. While the weather has cleared up—a bit of late-afternoon sunshine streaks through—Nick chooses a spot in the back, where he and his old friend can conspire like three-hundred-year-old vampires in the murky half light.
    Adam Gray is the top-billing family lawyer at the city’s biggest firm. Notorious for protecting rich clients by screwing their poorer (and usually markedly better-looking) spouses out of their rightful settlement, he is a chronic workaholic who madepartner at thirty-three and now charges more per hour than the average taxpayer earns in a week. He is also one of those friends Nick sees as much to measure his own success against as for the pleasure of his company. They meet up a couple of times a year for a drink or six—usually at a dark, leather-scented hotel bar—and reminisce about the old days, back when they were idealistic undergrads chasing hippy girls in ponchos.
    Gray is exactly three minutes late, as he is to every meeting—social, professional or otherwise. He is, Nick thinks, the sort of person who commits all errors with purpose. Nick watches his old friend shouldering through the door and blinking around in the dim light, a tall man with the hunched back of a grizzly bear—a shape created from tens of thousands of hours of adversarial paperwork and a diet of ordered-in prime rib and mash.
    The two men give each other a rough, back-slapping embrace and a couple of throaty “How’re ya’s?” then slouch down into the tufted leather booth. It is only after they’ve sent the waitress for a pair of double Manhattans and a bowl of spiced jumbo cashews that actual eye contact takes place.
    “Wakefield, good to see you, man.” Gray crunches the words in his throat like a garbage compactor, his voice