Tricky Business Read Free Page A

what she wanted anymore.
    â€œDo you love me?” she asked.
    â€œYes,” he said. “Of course I love you.” I do love her. That’s the truth. I love her, and I don’t want to lose her.
    â€œThen talk to Tom about the job,” she said.
    â€œOK,” said Wally. “I’ll talk to Tom.”
    Tom was Tom Recker, Amanda’s new boss, who was starting a new company and was hiring. He’d hired Amanda away from her job as a secretary in a law firm to be his administrative assistant. As far as Wally could tell, administrative assistant was the same thing as secretary, but with more syllables.
    Recker was 26 and had an MBA from Wharton, which he would let you know if you gave him an opening. He lifted weights and Rollerbladed and—although he did not tell people this—believed he looked like Keanu Reeves. His company was called Recker International; he was financing the start-up (Amanda confided this to Wally) with $3 million he got from his father.
    Wally’s job interview consisted mostly of a lengthy explanation by Recker of what a great concept Recker International was. It had to do with investments, but Wally really didn’t understand it because every other sentence Recker said had “paradigm” in it. Later on, Wally looked “paradigm” up in the dictionary, but that had not helped.
    The actual interview part of the interview had been brief.
    â€œSo,” Recker said. “Mandy tells me you play the guitar.”
    â€œYeah,” said Wally, thinking, Mandy?
    â€œShe says you’re in a band,” said Recker.
    â€œYeah,” said Wally.
    â€œWhat kind of music do you play?” asked Recker.
    â€œMostly covers,” said Wally, “but we try to . . .”
    Recker interrupted. “I used to fool around with the guitar,” he said.
    â€œHuh,” said Wally. Sometimes it seemed like everybody he met used to fool around with the guitar.
    â€œTell you the truth, I wasn’t bad,” said Recker, making an air-guitar move that told Wally, in an instant, that Recker had been bad. “I wish I’d kept up with it, but I’m trying to run a business here. Not much time for fun, I’m afraid. Somebody’s got to be the grown-up.”
    Right, with Daddy’s money, thought Wally.
    â€œYou have any business experience, Wally?” asked Recker.
    â€œWell,” said Wally, “I handle the bookings for the band.”
    Recker laughed out loud at that—a hearty, Wharton-man laugh.
    â€œThat’s not exactly the kind of experience I’m looking for,” he said, still chuckling at the thought— bookings for the band! —“but I’m going to take a chance on you.” He leaned forward and pressed his fingertips together, a 26-year-old Rollerblader talking to Wally like he was Wally’s dad. “Mandy tells me you’re a fast learner and a self-starter. Is that true, Wally? Would you call yourself a self-starter?”
    â€œYes, Tom, I would,” said Wally, who, as Amanda well knew, rarely started anything, including breakfast, before 1 P.M.
    â€œWelcome to the Recker International team,” said Recker, reaching across his new desk to give Wally a manly handshake.
    â€œThanks,” said Wally.
    â€œHey,” said Recker, still shaking Wally’s hand, gripping it a little too hard, “maybe you can bring your guitar and entertain us at the Christmas party, ha ha.”
    â€œHa ha,” said Wally. Asshole.
    And so Wally quit his band and joined Recker International, where his job title was assistant systems technician. What this meant was that he unpacked desktop computers and then helped the systems technician try, with sporadic success, to hook these up into a network. As far as Wally could tell, it didn’t really matter whether the computers worked or not, because the other members of the Recker International team seemed to have no clear