Free Spinning by Michael Baron

and started. “What the hell?”
    “What?”
    “What happened to your face?”

    “Oh. I uh, had a little accident with a cabinet door.”
    “You can come up with a better story than that. Keep practicing.”
    “Thanks. And I didn’t steal the account. We just have to focus on the market. If Waverly continues to deliver the same product he’s always delivered, his clients will continue to receive the same old crap they’re used to. They need to look at the expanding demographics of twelve to seventeen year-old males. If we can train them early, there’s a whole market there that we can invigorate.”
    “We made the sale already, Dylan.” He leaned forward in the chair and pointed to my coffee cup. “Might want to think about switching to decaf.” He looked down and saw the picture on my desk.
    “Who’s this?”
    “Oh, they’re some friends of mine. This is Diane and the one with the silly grin is her daughter.”
    He took the picture from my hands. “Diane is quite attractive and her daughter looks just like her.” He pointed to Mr. Jimmy. “Is this man her… husband?”
    “He’s the hot dog vendor. It’s complicated.”
    Mr. Mason put the photograph down and looked around my desk, no doubt noticing that there were no other pictures on it unless you counted the Crystal Creek ad or the headshot of the spokesmodel for the gym account I’d just taken on.
    “Before my wife died, I loved to take pictures,” Mason said. “I don’t take so many any more just some of the grandkids. Wherever we’d go, I’d have my camera and Tiki her name was Patrice, I always called her Tiki would make fun of me. That was fine. I just wanted more pictures. Heaven only knows why. I have more goddamn pictures, most of them in a box under the steps.”
He pulled out his wallet and thumbed through some of the old pictures covered in a bent piece of plastic. “I can’t even remove the cover without damaging this old thing. Look here. This is Tiki and, of course that’s a young me, and that’s our boy, Denny, not long after he was born.”
    He held an old black-and-white picture that had to have been taken 40 years ago. In the photo, both he and his wife seemed to say, “Look everybody! It’s a boy!” A young Mason and Tiki held the baby with an uneasy grip, but you could tell that the kid wasn’t going to fall… ever.
    “Dylan, these are the things I hope to never forget. No matter what happens, I want to remember Tiki this way.” He held the picture in both hands. “Of course, after she got sick, she wouldn’t let me take any more pictures. And these were all I had. After years of taking pictures, it turned out that I didn’t have nearly enough.”
    He put his wallet away. “Dylan, I have some memories that are more important to me than anything I could ever hope to do now. That’s what I’m scared of as I grow older… losing my memory. Inside…” He touched his chest by his heart. “I’ll never lose my Tiki. I hope someday, you can feel the same.”
    He paused and shook his head, as though he was uncertain of what had caused his little bit of rhapsodizing. Then, he stood to leave, tapping on the file with a finger. “Dylan, you know that you are appreciated here at Mason Brand, don’t you?”
    I started to think that he somehow knew about my dinner on Saturday. This was such an incestuous business. “Yes, sir. Of course I do.”
    “And you know that your aggressiveness and ambition are things that I prize, don’t you?”
    “You’ve made that very clear, Mr. Mason.”

    “Good. I just like to check in every now and then.” He gestured with the file. “See what you can do for this account.”
    I couldn’t recall Mason ever “checking in” before. I was sure it had something to do with Saturday. Had he somehow seen me with the Waverlys in the restaurant, or talking on the street afterward? I prized my discretion, but I was obviously going to have to be more careful. Regardless of the fact