Broadax Inc.

18 Broadax Inc. Bill Roorbach My old champ and pal “Frederick” Duk Nuhkmongamong simply appeared at my office—first sign of trouble, no phone call. Marie allowed him past the reception desk because I guess he was so beautiful in that suit, so clearly belonged in the corporate suites. When I looked up from the telephone there he was, determined, but something else, too: diminished. I stared at him bluntly, kept talking into the phone to one Ann Spray from Hartlee Commercial Properties. I was thinking how tender Ducky looked, how blue, and my stomach rose into my gorge with selfblame , but I was saying, “We can’t pay that kind of footage for satellite warehousing, and I think your man must know this, no? You certainly know this, Ann.” Harsh words gently delivered. And my friend did not crack his usual smile or make the usual word-mouthing fun of my business style. Still talking to Ann, admonishing her, still looking at Duk, I so calmly said, “Get back to me at nine thousand plus zeroes tops and we’ll talk more.” Ann Spray’s sprightly voice piped faceless: “How did it go with your mother?” and I hung up without an answer—let that stand as expression of emotion, and to hell with those who asked after dead parents in order to sugar their fuck-ups. Broadax Inc. did not need what Ann Spray had, always a pleasant position. I thought a minute, jotted a note, only then looked to my friend. I said, “Ducky,” fond as I could make it. And he said, “Broadax.” We were the fellows who were roommates at Stanford, but twenty years older. I said, “One-nine they want, out in Bethel.” He said, “One-nine in Bethel? Har. They heard deep pockets.” “Why so grim?” Again, my stomach, normally steel, clenched. The guilt had gotten to me. To me, Mike Broadax, certified shark. They’d find license plates in my gut when they finally croaked me, whole 19 Bill Roorbach propellers from ships, the skeletons of many a creature great and small, and guilt, whatever that looked like: slag, I pictured, great crusty lumps of formless, poisonous, weighty lead-smelter slag. He looked away from me, first time since he walked in the door, looked back, and out with it: “Jilly and I have split.” “Oh, no, Ducky, no.” “It’s a bad marriage, Ted, nothing to get sad about.” “I’m sorry, Ducky, I’m terribly sorry. And don’t make small of it. This is terrible news! This is rotten news. I could cry! I am crying! It’s... nuts.” And it was nuts indeed, if he was initiating it: Jilly was brilliant and lovely and rich, too, a predator herself, and from what I had seen, kind, devoted to causes, eager, hungry for life, intensely, um, sexual. A perfect wife as seen by the man who had nothing. I dried my eyes—they really had started in tears, though with that remark about crying I’d only been trying for a smile. “Nuhkmongamong, you idiot, I care about you! Have a seat—please, let’s talk.” Duk did not sit, but leaned, leaned over my desk, and I saw he’d been crying, too, that in fact he was all cried out: there was that dewy kind of redness at his eyes, his black, deep eyes. His tie that day was orange with the thinnest red diagonal stripes—no concession to sadness there—narrow knot pulled up so tight that his Hong Kong collar was a suicidal garrote cutting his thin neck. “How to proceed?” he said businesslike. “You’re asking me?” “You’ve been through it!” Divorce, he meant. My own was six years old already, so once again I was the expert by default. “Ducky, brother, this is a different case. Every marriage is different. You want my advice? You go home and you two work it out, is my advice.” “If I could!” Ducky spouted, and lo, he was not cried-out after all: here came the tears, a gushing geyser of the hot and salty. His hands flew to his face. “Talk when you’re...