Free The Deal by Adam Gittlin Page A

know, Shelly, I’ve got a little secret for you.”
    I moved my eyes to Elizabeth thinking that with one simple phrase I could ruin both their nights. Perhaps I could tell him about the time I met her parents. Or maybe he’d find it interesting, if he didn’t already know, that she feels sexiest in nothing but black lace lingerie. Either way, it didn’t matter. A little sharpening of the tongue was all it would take to satisfy me and make the two of them feel like shit.
    “Oh yeah, asshole? And what’s that?”
    Elizabeth, behind him, was quietly pleading with bulging eyes. I couldn’t help thinking how pretty she was when she smiled or that I had already hurt her in the past.
    “The next round’s on me. Have a good night.”
    I left the restaurant, jumped into the Town Car waiting for me, and headed home.
    I always loved nights like this with my friends. Nights to let loose and rage a little bit in order to purge the excess energy I wasn’t able to get rid of destroying opponents in the conference room—my version of the battlefield. My boys have always been very important to me. I had no idea this was to be my last night spent with any of them.

    As I stumbled into my apartment I was greeted by my favorite little soul in the world, Neo. My six-pound, white, long-haired Chihuahua named after Keanu Reeves’s all too cool character from The Matrix trilogy. Neo lives for going crazy as I come through the door. I threw my Purple Label suit jacket on the old-fashioned, free-standing coatrack in the front foyer, and immediately sprawled myself out on the hardwood floor so Neo could stand on my chest and lick my face. Something we both always looked forward to.
    After more than a few swipes of Neo’s sandpapery tongue across my skin, I stood up and carried my little partner into the kitchen. I placed him on the black marble countertop next to the sink as he began to shudder with excitement, tapping his two little front paws against the cold rock excitedly. Although late, as often was the case, it was Neo’s dinner time.
    I put Neo on the floor with his bowl of food, a combination of wet, canned dog food and some grilled chicken my maid prepared for him. I grabbed a Corona from the refrigerator and headed back out of the kitchen past the dining and living rooms, down the corridor past my guest bedroom, second bathroom, and study. When I got to my bedroom I stripped off my shirt and socks and went straight for the glass doors in the corner of the room, doors that led to my eight hundred square foot terrace overlooking Midtown’s east side. On the deck table there was a glass ashtray from Tiffany, a gift from my grandmother that I imagined she would be ecstatic to know I used strictly for marijuana since I don’t, and never have, smoked cigarettes. There was a half-smoked joint in the little glass bowl’s mouth, and since I wasn’t fucked-up enough already I reached for it and lit it with a book of matches from Ben Benson’s.
    I struck a match, and as I got past the inevitable nanosecond of having to smell sulfur, I took a long pull of the dense weed cigarette as I leaned back in one of the deck lounge chairs. I then exhaled as slowly as I had inhaled, immediately taking another serious puff before placing the joint back on the ashtray’s edge and again grabbing my beer. I leaned back into position as Neo came charging outside and jumped right up on my lap. He was trying to climb up me in order to give me another kiss, so I leaned forward and met him halfway as he licked my nose. Then, since a slight midnight breeze had taken hold of the city that night, Neo curled himself up into a ball in my lap as he drifted into sleep, his tired eyes falling against his will within seconds. I didn’t want to wake him, so I remained still for the next half hour as I enjoyed the rest of my beer and surveyed the glowing topography of the city, a vast mountain range of concrete, glass, and steel that had afforded me every aspect of