The Job by Douglas Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

crew or the V-neck cream Shetland?” I knew I had a skill, a talent-something that would eventually allow me to flourish in New York. The problem was, I still hadn’t figured out what that talent might be.
    So I continued to drift, exchanging that mind-numbing job for a series of others, including a lackluster post in the Saks Fifth Avenue publications department. After seven dull months writing lingerie copy, I moved on, becoming a “placement officer” at a midtown employment agency. About three months into this electrifying job, I met Chuck Zanussi. He’d asked the agency to find him a new secretary, I was assigned the task, and we spent about a week talking regularly on the phone as he vetted assorted candidates.
    I must have imnressed him with my so-getting style-because,
    during our last call, he said, “What’s a sharp guy like you doing working in such a no-hope job?”
    “Looking for a way out. Fast.”
    “Do you think you could sell?”
    “Believe me,” I lied, “I can sell.”
    “Then come in and see me.”
    Within a week of joining CompuWorld, however, I came to realize that that absurdly cocky assertion was actually true. From the moment I tied up my first deal (an eighth-of-a-pager from a software privacy prevention company called Lock-It-Up), I knew I had found my “calling.” Every sale, I discovered, was a small victory, an accomplishment (not to mention another couple of dollars in my pocket). The more space I peddled, the more I began to learn the nuances of salesmanship: how to schmooze, sweet-talk, snare.
    “Think of every sale as a seduction,” Chuck Zanussi advised me shortly after I joined CompuWorld.
    “The goal is to get the client into bed-but to do it in such a way that they don’t realize they’re having their clothes torn off. You get too heavy-handed, you start slobbering on their neck, they’re gonna tell you to buzz off. Remember: The operative word in seduction is finesse.”
    I recalled that advice two weeks later when I was wandering around the Javits Convention Center. I was attending my first industry trade show-SOFT US-the national schmoozeathon for the software industry. Cruising through the thousand or so stalls spread around the main convention floor, I noticed a stand for a company called MicroManage-which had been high on a hit list of companies that Chuck Zanussi assigned me shortly after I joined the company.
    “These MicroManage guys have got a great product called the Disc Liberator,” Chuck had said.
    “But they’ve also got a hesitancy problem when it comes to advertising with us. Read up as much as you can on the Disc Liberator and land the fuckers.”
    To date, MicroManage had refused to return my calls. Which is I was so pleased to stumble upon their sales stand-and to notice that their representative was a knockout. Mid-twenties. Long legs. High cheekbones. Jet-black hair cut fashionably short. Decked cut in a smart black suit. Very preoccupied with the phone as I approached her stand.
    “Hi there,” she said, ending the call and proffering her hand.
    “Lizzie Howard. How can I help?”
    The handshake was firm, no-nonsense, the voice suggesting a slight hint of upstate New York behind the sophisticated veneer.
    “Ned Allen, CompuWorld,” I said.
    “You know our magazine?”
    “Maybe,” she said with a teasing glint in her eye.
    “If you’re in software, you’ve got to know us. We’re one of the biggest computer magazines in America.”
    “The third biggest,” she said.
    “So you do know us?”
    Another of her sharp, impish smiles.
    “Maybe.”
    “Well, I certainly know all about you.”
    “Do you really?”
    “Oh yes,” I said, trying to ignore the tinge of sarcasm.
    “MicroManage: makers of the Disc Liberator. The no-sweat way to liberate your hard drive of unnecessary files.”
    “Very impressive,” Lizzie said.
    “In fact,” I continued on, “Disc Liberator is safer than any other Windows cleanup utility. More thorough