The Not-So-Perfect Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

time, please meet deadlines, please don’t fuck up”), Peter had been forced to act.
    He hit the intercom on his desk phone. His secretary, Jane Bambo, came in, closed the door behind her, sat down in the chair opposite his desk, and asked, “How’d it go?” Her face—open, features small and scattered—reminded him of a finch. She was a flitting thing, harmless, loyal. Finches returned to nest in the same place, every spring. Jane had been his secretary, seated at the same desk, for five years.
    He said, “What’s going on out there?”
    “Everyone is gathering around Bruce’s desk.”
    “Why is it always the popular ones?” Peter would be distrusted by the staff for a while. Meetings would be tense. But, eventually, things would return to normal. Work was work. Deadlines had to be met.
    Jane said, “Bruce was accustomed to getting by on his looks.”
    “I suppose that happens a lot,” he said.
    “Don’t worry, Peter,” said Jane. “It’ll never happen to you.”
    He laughed. Jane smiled at his approval, letting herself giggle a bit, too. The burning sensation in his esophagus dulled. The laughter of a kind woman was potent medicine.
    Jane said, “I have menus.”
    Fanning them like a poker hand, Jane held them out across the desk, silently asking him to pick a menu, any menu. He took them out of her hand, and flipped through the stack, perusing. He said, “Comforting me with food?”
    “I’m hungry!” Jane was always hungry. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds and she ate like a horse. She could eat an entire horse every day and not look like one. He envied her. And feared her. Her appetite was part (an extra-large part) of the reason Peter could not reduce.
    “What do you know about this Atkins diet?” he asked.
    She cocked a thin dark eyebrow. “It works. My friend Linda lost forty pounds in five months.”
    “Eating what?”
    “Bacon, pork chops, steak, eggs, hamburgers, chicken. No pasta, rice, bread, cookies, cake. Some vegetables, but no fruit, juice or alcohol.”
    “I can manage without fruit,” he said. “But no alcohol? No bread? How can people live without bread?”
    “Exactly!” she said. “What do you use to sop up the cream sauce?”
    The day was shot. Peter was too rattled to do any real work. He had a long list of phone calls to return and a pile of articles to vet. After the strain of the firing, he couldn’t focus on anything.
    “Did you use the ‘three strikes’ line?” Jane asked.
    He had. “I delivered the speech exactly as we rehearsed. Bruce cut me off right after the ‘not my call’ part, and started snarling that it was my call, that I’d never liked him, that his firing was personal.”
    “He did not,” said Jane.
    Peter nodded. “He thinks I was threatened by him. For questioning my judgment in front of other people.”
    She said, “You did hate that.”
    “It was the way he did it. Not that he did it.”
    “Tone is important.”
    “Tone is everything,” said Peter. “If you speak with respect, you can say just about anything and it’d be okay. I am the boss. Undermining my authority is not to be tolerated.”
    “Before I forget,” said Jane, “your wife called.”
    Peter said, “Okay.”
    “What else did Bruce say?” she asked.
    “Why did you bring up my wife just then?” Peter asked.
    Jane seemed stymied. “What?”
    “I was talking about the way Bruce tried to undermine my authority, and you said my wife called.”
    “She did.”
    “Jane,” he started, “I want your honest opinion. I want your brutally honest opinion. I’m not asking as your boss. I’m asking as a friend. There will be no repercussions or consequences to providing your opinion, which is something I have grown to respect and value deeply.”
    She said, “Grown to respect? You didn’t always?”
    He pondered that one. “I have to get to know someone before I deem her trustworthy, intelligent, and insightful. It takes years, decades maybe, to