Free The Fix by Nick Earls Page B

have consequences?’
    â€˜Consequences? It gets the job done. That’s a consequence.’ He seemed to be losing patience with me. ‘It cuts through the crap.’
    â€˜What about negative consequences? Was it a factor with Rob Mueller?’
    He pushed back in his seat, and bumped his knives with his forearm. ‘I don’t know what you’ve seen. But I’d be pretty sure it’s nothing. Just the kind of thing that goes on in any workplace with more than one person. You probably need to get over it. It really won’t help us with Monday, with next week.’
    He put his hand out to straighten the knives, lining them up in parallel again. A champagne cork fizzed discreetly from a bottle at a nearby table and he looked over that way, distracted by the noise.
    â€˜You should take a look at the menu,’ he said. ‘This place is good for steak. Some would say the best. I don’t know if you’ve worked those things out since you got back. It hasn’t been that long, has it? They showed me your CV. They said our new PR company had this great guy who’d be just the thing. You’d got all kinds of fucked-up people ready for the media. They handed it to me and I just kept seeing Joshua Lang, Joshua Lang, Joshua Lang. And thinking, he’s never going to take it. But you did.’ He laughed, as if the world – or perhaps the stupid people who lived on it – could still surprise him. ‘When did you know it was me? The job?’
    â€˜After I’d said yes to it. After my oven failed and needed replacing. After I’d told Brett I’d do it. Monday. About twenty minutes before I got to your office.’ So, we knew where we stood. Or I thought we did. I believed him. I believed his response to being handed my CV, and he had given it to me without needing to. I would need that directness from him, and the best way to get it was to give an honest answer in return. ‘Most of these jobs aren’t like this. Most of the time, someone’s hiding something. Even when the job isn’t bad news. Even if it’s just to make the story neater. But usually someone got screwed somewhere along the line, or there’s a slightly dirty secret or two, ticking away. And I’ve got to find them and see if I can cut the wire. I don’t do a lot of heroes.’
    â€˜And do they feed you?’ he said. ‘Those people whose wires you’re cutting? I’d recommend the steak. Any time someone else is buying this steak, you should say yes.’ He handed me his open menu. ‘Of course, don’t feel you need to take my advice.’
    The more wires I had to cut and the dirtier the secrets, the better they fed me. That was how I remembered it. I looked at the two pages open in front of me. Each dish was named in bold and then described by a further paragraph of text. Most of the dishes had detailed paddock-to-plate stories about their meat. Ben watched me read it, and then looked away, towards the door.
    â€˜What is it with menus since I went away?’ I hadn’t meant it to, but it came out sounding like a comedian’s set-up, like a line from someone who had watched too much Seinfeld. ‘I’ve known less about women at the end of a second date than they tell you about the beef now.’
    â€˜I know. That’s what the women you date say too.’ He laughed, a little too loudly. The line was fair enough, though, there for the taking. ‘No, it’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s great beef here, but for some reason restaurants all got in the habit of giving you the bio. Or maybe the obit’d be more correct. I assume that, in the days when they told us nothing and sold it to us for a lot less, the cattle used to live on the same romantic undulating grasslands they’ve been inhabiting more recently.’ He picked up another menu and opened it. ‘You could write this copy. You were always good at