Free We All Fall Down by Peter Barry

Sydney’s central business district that Hugh found very different to the suppressed passion of the City of London. It was how he imagined America must be, possibly like downtown LA. Sparse islands of Colonial, Victorian and Federation buildings huddled almost unseen, certainly overlooked, beneath their arrogant, successful neighbours, the serried ranks of opulent, thrusting skyscrapers. He saw the uncompromising towers of steel, glass and concrete as towers of silver and gold bullion, luminescent, at times almost sparkling, in the bright sunlight. But in the canyoned depths, down at street level where he walked in early morning or evening, they changed into dull vaults of lead and iron. In summer, apart from early or late in the day, there was little shade. It was a business furnace, and the bumper-to-bumper cars and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds that crawled sweatily through the sweltering grid of streets were all there for one purpose: to worship at the altar of Mammon, to make or spend money. And he, Hugh Drysdale, was one of those on the inside, one of the privileged who knew what was going on in these modern places of worship, these shrines. He was an acolyte who assisted in the turning of the wheels of industry and commerce, who fed on the excitement of being at the coalface where decisions were made and actions taken. This was big business and, for Hugh, like so many other young men and women, big business was fascinating. It was exhilarating, involving and important. All right, so Sydney wasn’t exactly the centre of the world, but since the Olympic Games almost six years ago, the city had come to play an increasingly important part on the world stage, if only because businessmen in New York and London could now locate it on the world map.
    When he stepped through one of the two revolving doors of the skyscraper near the northern end of George Street, down near the Quay, and strode confidently across the giant foyer, heels ringing urgently on the granite floor, Hugh Drysdale felt important. He felt he counted for something; that he was involved. He was an entrepreneur; not a staid, conservative businessman, but creative, quick on his feet, and enterprising. This was the ad business; exciting, fast and very much at the centre of things. When he joined countless others at the bank of eight lifts that serviced the twenty-eight floors, to be whisked towards the heavens, his spirits rose at the same speed. There was a feeling that all was right with the world, that he, Hugh Drysdale, was going places, and not just up to the nineteenth floor.
    He greeted Suzie, the receptionist, as he entered The Alpha Agency, and they chatted for a moment about their respective weekends. Then he headed down the corridor off to the right of the reception area (Creative and Production off to the left), to his office. He dropped his briefcase onto his desk, and had just begun to take folders out from its interior, placing them in a neat pile on the spotless surface, when his phone rang. This is a bit early in the morning, he thought as he picked it up.
    â€˜Hugh, we need to talk.’ It was Russell Grant.
    The fact the managing director wanted to see him this early, if only because of the firings on Friday, would have unsettled the most diligent of employees. And it brought Hugh up short. He hadn’t even taken his jacket off. As likely as not the call simply meant Russell had been thinking about things over the weekend – if thinking was the right word to use of a managing director who tended to act impulsively. He frequently claimed he was a ‘shoot from the hip kind of guy’, a piece of slang he must have garnered from one of the many American books on management he read, but seemingly didn’t comprehend. Hugh was more inclined to put his boss’s behaviour down to the fact that he had the attention span of a two year old, with the result no one ever quite knew where they stood with him. They were dealing