Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch Read Online Free PDF

top secret.”
    Henry sits back and steals a glance over at Connie’s table. She’s getting up to leave, laughing at something Larry Ghosh is saying.
    “We’re a team, aren’t we, Russell?” Henry says, still gazing in Connie’s direction.
    “You bet,” I say.
    He turns back to me with fear glistening in his eyes and says, “And this is going to be fun, right?”
    There’s a limousine waiting outside the restaurant to take Henry directly to his next appointment, so I walk a few blocks back to the office alone.
    My lunch with Henry has confirmed what I already knew. Things will be ugly for the next few months. Even with Larry Ghosh’s backing, the Chronicle is in decline. Like each of our daily competitors, we are struggling to formulate a new “transformational” strategy that will position us for continued growth at a time when our traditional newspaper business is slowing much faster than our online business is growing. Nobody, least of all the Burke-Hart management team, knows what to do. The standard short-term approach to any crisis—cutting costs, letting people go—is all Connie is left with. But longer term, Connie won’t be able to cut her way to growth.
    Meanwhile, Henry seems more out of touch than ever. He seems oblivious to the fact that mass media are being replaced by media created by the masses. In this fast-changing world, Henry’s a holdout: an old-school print guy, blinded by internal politics, with one foot stuck firmly in the past. He’s the kind of executive who will be tolerated only as long as the numbers in his Rolodex connect to living, spending customers. Worse, he’s starting to carry about him the stink of desperation. If that takes hold, nothing good will happen. Desperate people don’t make good decisions. Desperate people take others down when they fall.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    I ride up in the elevator with a couple of loud women from accounts payable who get off on twenty-two. I’m alone when the doors open again. I start to step out, then realize this is not my floor. The artwork on the wall is wrong. I’m on twenty-four, not twenty-five.
    I hear a voice outside and step back quickly. A hand reaches around to hold the door an extra second. It’s a small and elegant hand, one that fills me with an impossible desire. The hand belongs to Erika Fallon. She wraps up the conversation she’s having, then steps inside the elevator. She sees me pressed against the back wall and smiles.
    “Hey, Russell Wiley.”
    “Hey, Erika Fallon.”
    Erika Fallon has picked up on the fact that I always address her by her first and last name. Now she does the same to me, as if it’s some kind of cute game.
    We rise to the next floor in silence. As the doors open, I’m concentrating so hard on not looking at Erika Fallon that I can’t help staring at the number twenty-five emblazoned on the inside of the elevator shaft. It’s as if the building wants to mockingly remind me of the number of days I’ve gone without sex. Erika Fallon exits the elevator and turns left to head to her side of the floor.
    “Later, Russell Wiley.”
    “Take care, Erika Fallon.”
    I hurry back to my office and sit down to collect myself. To me, using Erika Fallon’s first and last name all the time isn’t cute. It isn’t a game. It’s a form of self-defense. Using her full name reinforces the fact that she is not someone I can get close to. I must treat her as a fictional character from a play or a movie, not a real person. Erika Fallon petrifies me. I fear she may destroy me. Even brief, casual encounters like this one make it difficult to stop thinking about her face, her voice, her perfume, the back of her head, that sliver of ear poking through her hair, her blue suit, her gray suit, the chocolate brown turtleneck she wore three times last fall, her fingernails, the wireless headset she wears when she’s on the phone, the aura I sometimes see around her late in the afternoon, the shape of her calves and