Race Across the Sky Read Free Page B

which produced an unintended air of superiority. A college girlfriend had suggested that this was simply the muscle makeup of his face, but from birth, an almost ethereal self-confidence had bloomed inside of Shane. He had never known a time when it had not been there, prodding him forth.
    So it was really no surprise that life had led Shane right up to sales and introduced them with a knowing wink. After only a few years at Orco Pharmaceuticals, he had been handed the prized Bay Area territory as incentive to stay with them. He had spent the last decade driving through Marin County farmland like an Old West medicine man, stopping to display his potions. For years, he had felt content and unrepining.
    But recently, his sense that all was right in the world had begun slipping. Frenzied mandates were coming from headquarters to grow scripts by 12 percent, an astonishing number. The sales reps he saw now seemed more desperate than the patients they passed in the waiting rooms. They had shifted to seamier tactics: spreading online falsities about competing medicines, hiring ghost writers to write glowing articles about ineffective drugs, and paying editors at esteemed medical journals to run them. This new breed handled their expense accounts like investment bankers, taking doctors on lavish trips. Orco raised prices accordingly, and the insurance companies did the same. This new cycle made Shane uneasy.
    He found Doctor Felger at a spartan metal desk, his narrow back hunched, writing with a sharply turned left hand, the posture, Shane thought, of a schoolboy. Felger was a fifty-five-year-old Caucasian, right in the top spot in Shane’s target, but he had never been easy to sell. When he looked up, his eyes were tired. Dots of black and gray stubble sprinkled his jaw in irregular patterns.
    â€œWhat have you got?” he asked wearily.
    â€œSolistan,” Shane offered. “And Epherex.”
    â€œLeave the Epherex. Can’t use the Solistan.”
    â€œI saw a patient out there who was holding her ears.”
    â€œDoesn’t work.”
    â€œThe Swedish Institute of Otolyrangological Studies said that—”
    â€œThe Swedish what?” the doctor looked up in angry disbelief.
    Shane continued gently. “Doctor Felger, you write fewer scripts for Orco brands than any doctor at this practice. May I ask if there’s a reason why?”
    Felger’s eyes filled with an expression of amazement. “How do you know that?”
    Shane had purchased this data from a national chain drugstore data retailer. He smiled peaceably.
    â€œThat’s very powerful information and I want to know where . . .”
    â€œWhat could we do to up your participation level?”
    Clenching his jaw, Felger muttered nearly silently, “We need a laptop.”
    Shane nodded. “Mac or PC?”
    He placed his boxes of Solistan samples on the edge of the doctor’s desk and walked out feeling unwell. Ahead he saw his dusty, ten-year-old Civic. It had become a joke among his friends; clearly he could have bought a new car anytime he wanted to. But there was something in Shane that clung stubbornly to the things he loved.
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    That afternoon, he went for a five-mile run through the Marina.
    On his way home he had stopped at the corner grocery and carried back a collection of pink plastic bags filled with produce. Sautéing Chinese eggplant and garlic for Janelle, he still felt the sensation of soft earth against his falling feet.
    â€œHow’s the camel’s back?” she asked him as he brought their plates to the dining room table.
    â€œHanging by a ligament.”
    â€œThe Russian Hill Starbucks,” she told him, “is looking for baristas.”
    Over dinner they discussed his options. Pfizer and Bayer would be no different, he knew. He could take time off, she