Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

“Glad you could make it,” Carl said. “Was your business trip cut short or something?” He was a mixed martial arts instructor, ran a small studio in Newton where he taught Krav Maga. He was tall and, of course, fit, and balding, and colored his remaining hair an unfortunate orangish brown. The poor guy was also going through an interminable divorce, the Bataan Death March of matrimonial dissolution.

Tanner shook his head. “Flight got in on time and I figured why not.”

“No wife there to stop you from having fun,” said Carl.

Tanner just heaved a heavy sigh. They all knew Sarah, and they liked her. Even he couldn’t bring himself to hate her.

Still, when she’d moved out, they’d reacted predictably. Carl had congratulated him, pleased to have company in the lonely-guy game. Now they were all single guys, all four of them. Lanny had offered genuine condolences. A metro reporter for The Boston Globe, he was single and embittered, prematurely wizened, and he dated desultorily. Women usually figured out pretty quickly that he was damaged goods. He was professionally single and probably would always be. Brian attempted to cheer him up by telling him about all the awesome new dating apps and the hundreds of women available with a mere swipe of his iPhone.

“I think I’m going to break with tradition and get a glass of pinot noir,” Brian said.

“But it’s beer night,” said Carl.

“Wine’s supposed to make for healthier sperm,” Brian said.

“Heh, if you believe what they tell you,” Lanny said. He was always saying that. Tell him they say we should all eat more kale, and Lanny would say, “If you believe what they tell you.” That was his reflexive rejoinder. It fit perfectly with his jaded, cynical reporter attitude. He was incurably skeptical, trusted no one, took nothing at face value. “You sell some coffee?”

“I think so.”

“I’m telling you, you should have sold your company to Starbucks. You’d be a rich man and you wouldn’t have to fly all over the place, hustling for business.”

Tanner shrugged. “That’s what Sarah kept telling me.”

“I saw Tanner Roast at Whole Foods,” said Brian. “Fresh Pond.”

“Yeah, they’re a customer,” Tanner said.

“In the coffee aisle. But on the bottom shelf. What’s up with that?”

“Hey, they order four cases a week; that’s all I know,” said Tanner.

“Well, yours is the best, dude,” Brian said.

“Thank you.”

“Says the guy who spends half his time in Dunkin’ Donuts,” Carl said.

“I like Dunks,” Brian said. “So what?”

“Why are you even here?” Carl said to Brian. “Shouldn’t you be screwing some chick?”

“A guy’s gotta take a break once in a while,” Brian said. “Recharge the batteries. Replenish the bodily fluids.” Some weeks, according to Brian, he had a date with a different woman each night. Brian, a beefy blond, was not particularly good-looking, but he was a closer. Better with women than with the database software he sold, though.

“You should try Tinder, dude,” Brian told Tanner.

“Yeah,” Tanner said, “not yet. It’s only been a month.”

“What are you waiting for?” Brian said.

Tanner shook his head, sighed. It was odd, he reflected. He’d told his buddies all about Sarah moving out but not about the trouble his business was in, how it was on the bubble. Business problems he preferred to keep to himself. He’d always been the successful one in the gang, the guy who’d founded this coffee company that Starbucks wanted to buy, once, and he didn’t want to correct their image of him.

The subject needed to be changed — too unpleasant — so Tanner told them about what had happened to his laptop.

“You have no idea where yours is?” Carl said. “Nobody called?”

“They can’t open it without a password.”

“And you didn’t leave it on a sticky note like an idiot,” Brian said.

“Shit, what are you going to do?” Carl said.

“It’s no big deal,” Tanner said. “Not urgent. It’s all backed up. And I rarely use my laptop anyway, except when I travel. At work, I mostly use my iPad and my phone and my desk computer.”

“There’s something called Find My iPhone. Ever hear of it?” Lanny said. “I think it works on laptops too. Find My Mac or something.”

Tanner shook his head. “It only works when the computer’s online, and it’s locked with a password. So it’s not going to be online.”

“So you can find out who the guy is by poking around on his computer.”

“Sure,” Tanner said listlessly. “When I’ve got a minute.”

The faint trace of L’Air du Temps in the outer office told Will that the boss had arrived.

She was early.

Normally she didn’t get in until nine or nine thirty, leaving him a full hour at his desk, undisturbed, to prepare for the day. Because every day was a battle in an extended military campaign. He started preparing as soon as he got up, cup of strong black coffee in hand. A general in the war room.

In his little home office he’d glanced over the press clips that came in the e-mail from media services, sifted through e-mails (more than three hundred a day, not including the junk: he’d once counted), looked at the Post and The Hill and Real Clear Politics and Politico and Drudge. Read about the bills that were coming up. Sent out notes asking staff members to stop by his office and see him. Then into the office by eight thirty, girded for battle. The commander must decide how he will fight the battle before it begins. He’d read that somewhere and remembered it verbatim. By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.

There was always a lot going on, which he appreciated; he liked being at work, in the grown-up world, away from squalling little Travis. But today the calendar seemed more crowded than usual. The legislative director wanted to fire one of the legislative assistants, who was always late. But you couldn’t just fire a staffer. Politicians never want to have a disgruntled former staff member out there grousing and bitching and threatening. So he’d have to meet with the LA, give her an off-ramp, help her find a new job. He also had to sign off on some press releases. He had a ten o’clock videoconference with the state director and staff. A lunchtime fund-raiser at Bistro Bis.

And there was the boss’s laptop mix-up. Which could turn out to be no big deal.

Or it could be a nightmare.

In a way it was strange that Will was a chief of staff to a prominent senator. There was one all-important relationship to manage, and then there were the forty-five people who worked under him, if you counted the fifteen in the district office in Chicago. He was a boss. He had to manage a lot of different personalities. Yet he’d always been a guy who never really fit in anywhere.

He’d been a nerdy kid at a jocky college. He’d gone to Miami University of Ohio — not in Miami, Florida, and boy, did he get tired of telling people that — because of its great poli-sci program. On Saturday nights, when everyone was heading over to the Goggin Ice Center to watch the RedHawks play hockey, or drinking Natty Light in cans at a frat party uptown, he’d be studying at King Library. Most lunches or dinners he’d sit by himself at Harris Dining Hall while seemingly everyone around him was sitting at a crowded table talking boisterously, laughing and hooting and having a great time. The truth was, he was sort of a grind.

His father had passed away when he was fourteen, and his mother, a receptionist in a dentist’s office, didn’t make much money. After his dad died, his mother sold real estate on the side. But it didn’t bring in near enough. So in college he did what he could: he had a work-study job at the admissions office, and he wrote term papers for some of his fellow students for cash.