Clients From Hell Quotes

Kline Brooks left his new intern, Leslie, under my watchful eye while he flew out to L.A. for the day to schmooze investors and impress potential advertising clients for TapNext. I was certain she had been sent straight from Hell. The devil might as well have wrapped a big red bow around her neck and attached a note. Dear Georgie, Have fun with this one. Love, Satan I’d

We cannot save our clients from themselves. Someday in your career, Elayne, you will represent a man—almost certainly a man—who wants you to help him barter his soul to a demon for three wishes. When that day comes you may refuse his business, you may try to change his mind, but in the end if hell he wants, hell he will achieve.

You know what—gyms make the largest chunk of their profit from clients who pay their monthly dues on auto-pay but never bother to show up and use the gym. The DVD-rental companies make a good chunk of their profits from late fees; the credit-card companies make a fortune on sundry fines and penalties; the airlines’ margins are highest on ticket changes and cancellations… So, the key to running a successful business in America is to sign up a customer and pray he’ll somehow screw up…

That society seems to think my virginity is actually worth something is ridiculous. I don’t get anything for having my virginity, and I’m not compensated for losing it, but people seem to think they have the right to tell me—and other women—what to do with our bodies. A man’s virginity is worthless. Nobody cares if a man goes to his wedding day a virgin. There are no campaigns to preserve his precious virginity because a man’s virginity has no value. It’s expected most men are practiced at sleeping around. Women are the ones who pay the price in the eyes of society.

As I finished my rice, I sketched out the plot of a pornographic adventure film called The Massage Room. Sirien, a young girl from northern Thailand, falls hopelessly in love with Bob, an American student who winds up in the massage parlor by accident, dragged there by his buddies after a fatefully boozy evening. Bob doesn't touch her, he's happy just to look at her with his lovely, pale-blue eyes and tell her about his hometown - in North Carolina, or somewhere like that. They see each other several more times, whenever Sirien isn't working, but, sadly, Bob must leave to finish his senior year at Yale. Ellipsis. Sirien waits expectantly while continuing to satisfy the needs of her numerous clients. Though pure at heart, she fervently jerks off and sucks paunchy, mustached Frenchmen (supporting role for Gerard Jugnot), corpulent, bald Germans (supporting role for some German actor). Finally, Bob returns and tries to free her from her hell - but the Chinese mafia doesn't see things in quite the same light. Bob persuades the American ambassador and the president of some humanitarian organization opposed to the exploitation of young girls to intervene (supporting role for Jane Fonda). What with the Chinese mafia (hint at the Triads) and the collusion of Thai generals (political angle, appeal to democratic values), there would be a lot of fight scenes and chase sequences through the streets of Bangkok. At the end of the day, Bob carries her off. But in the penultimate scene, Sirien gives, for the first time, an honest account of the extent of her sexual experience. All the cocks she has sucked as a humble massage parlor employee, she has sucked in the anticipation, in the hope of sucking Bob's cock, into which all the others were subsumed - well, I'd have to work on the dialogue. Cross fade between the two rivers (the Chao Phraya, the Delaware). Closing credits. For the European market, I already had line in mind, along the lines of "If you liked The Music Room, you'll love The Massage Room.

We got it on file,” Van Dyne said. Vince could not believe what he had heard. “I thought people in your line of work didn't keep records? Safer for you and essential for your clients.” Van Dyne shrugged. “Fuck the clients. Maybe one day the feds or the locals hit us, put us out of business. Maybe I find myself needing a steady flow of cash for lawyers' fees. What better than to have a list of a couple of thousand bozos living under phony names, bozos who'd be willing to be squeezed a little rather than have to start all over again with new lives.” “Blackmail,” Vince said. “An ugly word,” Van Dyne said. “But apt, I'm afraid. Anyway, all we care about is that we are safe, that there aren't any records here to incriminate us. We don't keep the data in this dump. Soon as we provide someone with a new ID, we transmit the record of it over a safe phone line from the computer here to a computer we keep elsewhere. The way that computer is programmed, the data can't be pulled out of it from here; it's a one-way road; so if we are busted, the police hackers can't reach our records from these machines. Hell, they won't even know the records exist.” This new high-tech criminal world made Vince woozy. Even the don, a man of infinite criminal cleverness, had thought these people kept no records and had not realized how computers had made it safe to do so

At the heart of the Seven Principles approach is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams. They have an abiding regard for each other and express this fondness not just in the big ways but through small gestures day in and day out. Take the case of hardworking Nathaniel, who is employed by an import business and works very long hours. In another marriage, his schedule might be a major liability. But he and his wife, Olivia, have found ways to stay connected. They talk or text frequently throughout the day. When she has a doctor’s appointment, he remembers to call to see how it went. When he has a meeting with an important client, she’ll check in to see how it fared. When they have chicken for dinner, she gives him drumsticks because she knows he likes them best. When he makes blueberry pancakes for the kids on Saturday morning, he’ll leave the blueberries out of hers because he knows she doesn’t like them. Although he’s not religious, he accompanies her to church each Sunday because it’s important to her. And although she’s not crazy about spending a lot of time with their relatives, she has pursued a friendship with Nathaniel’s mother and sisters because family matters so much to him.

Mattilon’s law firm in the Paris directory. He wrote it out, brought it to an operator and said he would pay in cash. He was told to go to booth number seven and wait for the ring. He entered it quickly, the soft cloth brim of his hat falling over his forehead above the tortoiseshell glasses. Any enclosure, whether a toilet stall or a glass booth, was preferable to being out in the open. He felt his pulse accelerating; it seemed to explode when the bell rang. “Saint-Pierre, Nelli, et Mattilon,” said the female voice in Paris. “Monsieur Mattilon, please—s’il vous plaît.” “Votre …?” The woman stopped, undoubtedly recognizing an American’s abysmal attempt at French. “Who may I say is calling, please?” “His friend from New York. He’ll know. I’m a client.” René did know. After several clicks his strained voice came on the line. “Joel?” he whispered. “I don’t believe it!” “Don’t,” said Converse. “It’s not true—not what they say about Geneva or Bonn, not even what you said. I had nothing to do with those killings, and Paris was an accident. I had every reason to think—I did think—that man was reaching for a gun.” “Why didn’t you stay where you were, then, my friend?” “Because they wanted to stop me from going on. It’s what I honestly believed, and I couldn’t let them do that. Let me talk.… At the George Cinq you asked me questions and I gave you evasive answers and I think you saw through me. But you were kind and went along. You have nothing to be sorry about, take my word for it—my very sane word. Bertholdier came to me that evening in my room; we talked and he panicked. Six days ago I saw him again here in Bonn—only, this time it was different.

to exonerate him. Given the personalities involved, Skarpellos and Lama, I would suddenly discover that Tony was playing cribbage with a dozen elderly matrons the night Ben was killed. “Suspects are your job,” I tell Nelson. “I think we’re satisfied with the defendant we have. All we need to know is who helped her. Who carried the body, used the shotgun,” he says. “It’s an offer made to fail. Even if she were willing to enter a plea to a crime she didn’t commit in order to save her life, she can’t fulfill the terms.” He looks at me, like “Nice story, but it won’t wash.” Lama kicks in. “Have you heard,” he says, “we got a photo ID party goin’ down at the office? Seems the lady was a creature of habit. Ended up at the same place every night. A motel clerk from hell says she brought her entire stable of studs to his front door. We got him lookin’ at pictures of all her friends. Only a matter of time. Then the deal’s off.” Harry meets this with some logic. “To listen to you, our client already had all the freedom she could ask for. Lovers on every corner, and a cozy home to come home to when she got tired,” says Harry. “Why would she want to kill the meal ticket?” “Seems the victim was getting a little tired of her indiscretions. He was considering a divorce,” says Nelson. “You have read the prenuptial agreement? A divorce, and it was back to work for your client.” Harry and I look at one another. “Who told you Ben was considering a divorce?” I ask. “We have a witness,” says Nelson. He is not the kind to gloat over bad news delivered to an adversary. “You haven’t disclosed him to us.” “True,” he says. “We discovered him after the prelim. We’re still checking it out. When we have everything we’ll pass it along. But I will tell you, it sounds like gospel.” Lama’s expression is Cheshire cat-like, beaming from the corner of the couch. I sense that this is his doing. “I think you should talk to your client. I’m sure she’ll see reason,” says Nelson. “If you move, I think I can convince the judge to go along with the deal.” “I’ll have to talk to her,” I tell him, “but I can’t hold out much hope.” “Talk,” he says. “But let me know your answer soon. If we’re going to trial, I intend to ask for an early date.

Jackson gaped at her, wondering how this had all turned so terrible wrong. But he knew how. The woman was clearly daft. Bedlam-witted. And trying to drive him in the same direction. "You can't be serious. Since when do you know anything about investigating people?" She planted her hands on her hips. "You won't do it, so I must." God save him, she was the most infuriating, maddening-"How do you propose to manage that?" She shrugged. "Ask them questions, I suppose. The house party for Oliver's birthday is next week. Lord Devonmont is already coming, and it will be easy to convince Gran to invite my other two. Once they're here, I could try sneaking into their rooms and listening in on their conversations or perhaps bribing their servants-" "You've lost your bloody mind," he hissed. Only after she lifted an eyebrow did he realize he'd cursed so foully in front of her. But the woman would turn a sane man into a blithering idiot! The thought of her wandering in and out of men's bedchambers, risking her virtue and her reputation, made his blood run cold. "You don't seem to understand," she said in a clipped tone, as if speaking to a child. "I have to catch a husband somehow. I need help, and I've nowhere else to turn. Minerva is rarely here, and Gran's matchmaking efforts are as subtle as a sledgehammer. And even if my brothers and their wives could do that sort of work, they're preoccupied with their own affairs. That leaves you, who seem to think that suitors drop from the skies at my whim. If I can't even entice you to help me for money, then I'll have to manage on my own." Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. Hell and blazes, she was liable to attempt such an idiotic thing, too. She had some fool notion she was invincible. That's why she spent her time shooting at targets with her brother's friends, blithely unconcerned that her rifle might misfire or a stray bullet hit her by mistake. The wench did as she pleased, and the men in her family let her. Someone had to curb her insanity, and it looked as if it would have to be him. "All right!" he called out. "I'll do it." She halted but didn't turn around. "You'll find out what I need in order to snag one of my choices as a husband?" "Yes." "Even if it means being a trifle underhanded?" He gritted his teeth. This would be pure torture. The underhandedness didn't bother him; he'd be as underhanded as necessary to get rid of those damned suitors. But he'd have to be around the too-tempting wench a great deal, if only to make sure the bastards didn't compromise her. Well, he'd just have to find something to send her running the other way. She wanted facts? By thunder, he'd give her enough damning facts to blacken her suitors thoroughly. Then what? If you know of some eligible gentleman you can strong-arm into courting me, then by all means, tell me. I'm open to suggestions. All right, so he had no one to suggest. But he couldn't let her marry any of her ridiculous choices. They would make her miserable-he was sure of it. He must make her see that she was courting disaster. Then he'd find someone more eligible for her. Somehow. She faced him. "Well?" "Yes," he said, suppressing a curse. "I'll do whatever you want." A disbelieving laugh escaped her. "That I'd like to see." When he scowled, she added hastily, "But thank you. Truly. And I'm happy to pay you extra for your efforts, as I said." He stiffened. "No need." "Nonsense," she said firmly. "It will be worth it to have your discretion." His scowl deepened. "My clients always have my discretion.

So Lisa as your matron of honor and Stephanie as bridesmaid,” Cat was saying. “Do you know who Sean wants as best man?” “No. We haven’t gotten that far yet.” He didn’t hear any tension in Emma’s voice, but he guessed she was feeling it. Planning a wedding that wasn’t going to happen was weird, to say the least. “Maybe we could ask Mike’s oldest son—Joey, right?—to be a groomsman so he can escort Stephanie.” “I don’t know,” Emma said. “I don’t think it’s very fair to ask one of the boys and not the others.” “True. Maybe they could be ushers and then join their parents once everybody’s seated.” Sean had just decided to beat a fast retreat back to the living room, when he heard a chair scrape back. “We can talk about that later, Gram. Right now I should go wake Sean so he’s not still groggy when we ask him to fire up the grill.” He didn’t have time to escape, so he leaned against the counter and twisted the top of his beer. Emma paused when she saw him, and then grabbed his hand and dragged him down the hall to the living room. “Where did you disappear to?” he asked. “What? Oh, a client had an emergency. But—” “There are gardening emergencies?” She blew out an exasperated breath. “Yes. When you’re rich, everything’s an emergency. But did you hear what Gram was saying?” “Yeah. How the hell are guys supposed to pick a best man, anyway? I’ve got three brothers and I like them all. And what about Mikey? Or Kevin or Joe? It seems easier to pick a stranger off the street so you don’t have to play favorites. I guess maybe I’d ask Mitch. He’s the oldest, so most of what the rest of us know about catching a woman we learned from him.” “In case you’ve forgotten, you haven’t actually caught a woman yet. And it doesn’t really matter who you choose, because there is no wedding.” She was wound up like an eight-day clock, so he didn’t dare laugh at her. Her cheeks were bright and she kept spinning her ring around and around on her finger. Since there was nothing he could say to make her feel better about Cat wanting to plan their fake wedding, he slid the hand not holding his beer around her waist and hauled her close. “You worry too much,” he told her. “And you—” He kissed her to shut her up. And because all he’d been able to think about since the last time he’d had his hands on her was getting his hands on her again. And, most of all, because he liked kissing her. A lot. Maybe too much, if he thought about it. So he didn’t think about it. Instead, he lost himself in the taste of her mouth and the softness of her lips and the way her hands slid over his lower back, holding him close. “Oh,” Cat said from behind him. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” “No,” Emma said. “We were just…talking.” “I can see that.

From the day I met her at the wedding rehearsal, I couldn’t stop thinking of her beautiful face. I was forever drawing her, sketching her, and even tattooing her. How many people in Ellsberg were walking around with tattoos of Lark’s face? Whenever a client didn’t bring a specific image in and a woman’s face was involved, I used Lark’s. Hell, I hadn’t even noticed this fact until two happy clients showed off their tattoos and I realized the pinup girl and fairy princess had the same face.

He’ll be in a day camp for the first three weeks, then nothing. My mind keeps returning to the Middle East. It’s almost two months since I promised to send printed catalogues. I’ve done nothing. Every time I think about it, my will to invest in those relationships vanishes. My confidence that I can manage a long-term, expensive project has disappeared. And if I devote a lot of hours to designing and printing a catalogue, I’ll be ignoring other, more promising work. I don’t want to waste money on brochures that won’t produce income until some point far in the future. And with what I’ve learned from Bob Waks, I have even more reason to give up. I can’t see how we could interact with Middle Eastern clients in the manner that Bob suggests. It’s going to be very difficult to avoid sending complete proposals, and it will be almost impossible to do Glance sessions. The time difference is too much. I decide to drop the whole thing. I talk myself into this by arguing that I don’t think anyone in Kuwait or Dubai will be terribly upset. They weren’t pining for my presence, and they won’t miss me. In the back of my mind, though, I have nagging doubts. It’s hard for me to walk away from the potential for business, no matter how unpromising.

Weren’t you fucking somebody else last week, Friday?” I blurt out. I want to take it back immediately because it hangs there in the air between us like a bomb about to explode. “What?” she asks, and her voice goes soft. “Last week it was a different guy who took you to lunch.” I grumble to myself and get up, pretending to clean the counter. She thinks it over. “You mean Cody?” “How many are there?” She blinks hard. What the fuck? Friday never cries. Ever. I take a step toward her, and she steps back, putting her hand up like she’s going to push the air around me back. “How dare you?” she breathes. A tear falls over her lashes, and she swipes it away and then looks down at the back of her wet hand like she doesn’t know what the fuck a tear is. “Friday,” I say. I step toward her again. I soften my voice because I have no idea what to do. I have never seen this Friday before. I have only seen the one who can eat my balls for lunch. Hell, she’ll feed my balls to me if I piss her off enough. And make me like it. Four years and I have never seen her shed a tear. She turns around and runs into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. I lean my ear against the door and listen, but I can’t hear anything over the sound of the fan. I knock. She doesn’t answer. “Dammit,” I swear. I lean my forehead against the door. “Leave her alone,” I hear from behind me. I turn around because Logan is talking. “I can’t,” I say to him. I knock again, but she doesn’t answer. “Just leave her the fuck alone,” he says again. He’s pissed, I can tell. “You have a client.” He waves toward my customer like he’s Vanna Fucking White. “Work to do. So, you might want to get to it.” I heave a sigh and look at my client. “Just a moment,” I say. “Take your time,” he says with a grin. He’s loving the show, apparently. I pull my keys from my pocket and fit the key in the lock. I hesitate long enough for Logan to notice. “You shouldn’t,” he warns. I know I shouldn’t, but I am. I turn the key and let myself into the room. I find Friday washing her face. “What the fuck, Paul!” she cries. She turns back to the mirror and dabs beneath her eyes. She looks at me in the mirror. “Get out.” I close the door behind me and lean against it. “Why are you crying?” “I don’t know,” she bites out. But another tear slides down her cheek. “Fucking hormones,” she says as she swipes it away. All this because she has her period? I know better than to say that out loud. “Oh,” I say instead. She turns to face me, hitching her hip against the sink. She crosses her arms beneath her breasts, which pushes them up and makes little pillows over the top of that low-cut dress she’s wearing. My God. I look up at her face. She smirks at me. I like a smirking Friday a lot better than one who’s crying because I don’t know what do with tears. Not from her. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” I blurt out when she just glares at me. “Yes, you did.” “No, I didn’t.” “Yes, you did.

We spend the first couple of decades of our lives trying to figure out who the hell we are. Some people never find out. They keep searching and searching and searching. Or they’ll be different people with everyone. Never any consistent presentation of who they are. But if we can realize by our mid-twenties who we are, we have to ask ourselves this question: Do we like who we are? If the answer is yes, then we should spend the rest of our lives maintaining who we are. If you think about it, it’s that maintenance of self that is constantly attacked, challenged, or compromised on a day-to-day basis—not just in the business, but in life. It’s what gives you the hills and the valleys. But if you can maintain who you are, then you become a magnet of consistency to which all the inconsistent elements spinning around in your little hemisphere are drawn. Those elements—the clients, people in the office, your family—want to know who they are. Your consistency can bring the same to their lives, and if it does, they’re going to want to stick with you. It worked for me. After nineteen months I was promoted to agent. As for the people who didn’t work hard, they were still in the mailroom. I was right and they were wrong. What I try to give to trainees today is an understanding of the business and what it means to have power. There are two kinds of power. Your primary power is your character and your integrity. Your secondary power is your learned skills: your people skills, what you do to make a living, what you learned in college, what you’ve learned in dealing with other people. You must, in order to be totally successful, have control of both sets of power. If I ask the question “What does it mean to be thoughtfully political?” the answer, other than “Being kind,” is “To think.” Think about what you want. Then think about the people who are going to help get it for you. Then be political and figure out how to make those people happy about giving you what you want. That’s what it’s always been about for me. If you can do that, you can do anything. That is the whole secret to Sam Haskell. I don’t believe in the pursuit of power. When it is earned and deserved, it’s just there. It’s just got to happen as the result of other actions that you take. Whatever power I have is only because I’ve lived my life the right way, I’ve worked hard, I’ve had character and integrity in everything I do.

In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performance of any organization. As a leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team. Leaders in any chain of command will not always agree. But at the end of the day, once the debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision—even if that decision is one you argued against—you must execute the plan as if it were your own. When leading up the chain of command, use caution and respect. But remember, if your leader is not giving the support you need, don’t blame him or her. Instead, reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win. The major factors to be aware of when leading up and down the chain of command are these: • Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike. • If someone isn’t doing what you want or need them to do, look in the mirror first and determine what you can do to better enable this. • Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you are going to do. APPLICATION TO BUSINESS “Corporate doesn’t understand what’s going on out here,” said the field manager. “Whatever experience those guys had in the field from years ago, they have long forgotten. They just don’t get what we are dealing with, and their questions and second-guessing prevents me and my team from getting the job done.” The infamous they. I was on a visit to a client company’s field leadership team, the frontline troops that executed the company’s mission. This was where the rubber met the road: all the corporate capital initiatives, strategic planning sessions, and allocated resources were geared to support this team here on the ground. How the frontline troops executed the mission would ultimately mean success or failure for the entire company. The field manager’s team was geographically separated from their corporate headquarters located hundreds of miles away. He was clearly frustrated. The field manager had a job to do, and he was angry at the questions and scrutiny from afar. For every task his team undertook he was required to submit substantial paperwork. In his mind, it made for a lot more work than necessary and detracted from his team’s focus and ability to execute. I listened and allowed him to vent for several minutes. “I’ve been in your shoes,” I said. “I used to get frustrated as hell at my chain of command when we were in Iraq. They

I spent several months working with him, and did it in a more structured manner than previously—having, in the interim, developed the tools to do so. This client could only communicate a little at the beginning of our work together, but that was enough to start the ball rolling. Some girl at the college had developed a crush on him. He informed her that her romantic interest was not reciprocated. She became exceedingly vindictive, and set out to make his life hell. She spread rumors about his sexual habits. She encouraged some of her male friends to physically threaten him at school. She had people on hand to humiliate him constantly and unmercifully in transit to and from campus. Noting his distress, his parents alerted the school, but nothing was done to stop the ongoing torment. Unable or unwilling to tolerate the mounting peer pressure, the friends he had only recently made began to avoid and then entirely abandoned him. He began to break down, and as his behavior became stranger, his outcast status was cemented into place. And he broke.

It was tedious work; they had to reheat the dagger several times to cauterise all the wounds. The Falconer was half-mad with pain by the time they’d finished; his eyes were closed and his teeth clenched. The air in the enclosed room stank of burnt flesh and scalded blood. ‘Now,’ said Locke, sitting on the Falconer’s chest, ‘it’s time to talk.’ ‘I cannot,’ said the Bondsmage. ‘I cannot . . . betray my client’s secrets.’ ‘You no longer have a client,’ said Locke. ‘You no longer serve Capa Raza; he hired a Bondsmage, not a fingerless freak with a dead bird for a best friend. When I removed your fingers, I removed your obligations to Raza – at least the way I see it.’ ‘Go to hell,’ the Falconer spat. ‘Oh, good. You’ve decided to do it the hard way.’ Locke smiled again and tossed the dagger to Jean, who set it over the flame and began to heat it once more. ‘If you were any other man, I’d threaten your balls next. I’d make all sorts of cracks about eunuchs, but I think you could bear that. You’re not most men. I think the only thing I can take from you that would truly pain you to the depths of your soul would be your tongue.’ The Bondsmage stared at him, his lips quivering. ‘Please,’ he whispered at last, ‘have pity, for the gods’ sakes, have pity; my order exists to serve – I was carrying out a contract.’ ‘When that contract became my friends,’ said Locke, ‘you exceeded your mandate.’ ‘Please,’ whispered the Falconer. ‘No,’ said Locke. ‘I will cut it out; I will cauterise it while you lie there writhing. I will make you a mute – I’m guessing you might be able to conjure some magic without fingers, but without a tongue?’ ‘Please!’ ‘Speak,’ said Locke. ‘Tell me what I want to know.’ ‘Gods,’ sobbed the Falconer. ‘Gods forgive me. Ask. Ask your questions.’ ‘If I catch you in a lie,’ said Locke, ‘it’s balls first, and then the tongue. Don’t presume on my patience. Why did Capa Raza want us all dead?

And you say you want a new job, but something keeps you holding on to the old one, justifying why he’ll get better this year,” Mina added, holding her iced almond-milk latte in one hand as she swiped through a dating app with the other. “And he’s so clingy and expects you to be there for him twenty-four seven,” Ellen added. “And when you do finally get another offer, you get cold feet because you can’t even remember who you were without Mr. Wall Street in your life.” “You’ve got to get out,” Mina said, tilting her head to evaluate a digital suitor on her phone. “It’s time,” Ellen agreed. “Sarah agrees with us.” Rae felt the panicked sensation of a door that had closed before she’d managed to reach it, but she avoided interpreting their words as truth. She just went into defensive mode, disliking how the rest of the Scramblettes had apparently started a separate group chat to stage an intervention. “Things have been getting better,” Rae said. “I think I’ll be able to present my market size analysis to a client at a pitch meeting next week.” “You’re doing that thing,” Ellen said, “where the shitty boyfriend does one mediocre thing, but relative to everything else he’s done it’s amazing, and so you think this means he’s really changed.” The glare from Ellen’s engagement ring felt very bright, and Rae didn’t like the sight of it.

polite smile as I stepped around the glass desk, my heels digging into the plush carpet, muffling the sound of my steps. “Come along, child. We haven’t all day. The clients are waiting,” Ms. Cartwright snapped at me. Child. I brushed the fantasy of smashing the other woman’s face through the clear panels of glass from my mind. I had to stay focused. I hadn’t been risking everything I’d ever known for the last three weeks for nothing. Nothing was going to keep me from escaping this hell. Especially not this bitter old woman.

Let me tell you, son, that he who lies to his lawyer is a fool who’ll tell the truth to the judge. You have to speak plainly to a lawyer, who can then proceed to make things more complicated. If you want me to help you, you have to tell me everything, from A to Z, with your heart in hand, the way you would your confessor. You have to give me the name of the person who hired you to commit the crime. Of course it’ll be a person of some standing, in which case I’ll go to him to pay my respects. I won’t let him know that you told me he hired you. Trust me. I’ll tell him I’m coming to request his protection for a poor maligned youth. And I’ll make the necessary arrangements with him to settle the matter to our mutual satisfaction. And by saving himself, you see, he’ll also be saving you. Now if this escapade turns out to have been of your own doing, I still won’t drop you. I’ve gotten other clients out of worse predicaments…So long as you didn’t attack a person of standing, let me be clear, I promise to get you out of this mess. It’ll cost you, I’m sure you realize. You have to tell me the name of the injured party. And depending on his condition, status, and temperament, we’ll decide whether to restrain him with some protection or find a way to bring him up on criminal charges, to scare him off. Because if you know how to manipulate the decrees, no one’s guilty and no one’s innocent. As for the priest, he’ll keep his mouth shut if he knows what’s good for him. And if he’s hardheaded, there’s a remedy for that, too. There’s a way out of every predicament, but it takes a man like me. And your case is serious, I’m telling you, very serious. The decrees speak plainly: If this matter were to be decided in the courts, just between us, they’d lock you up and throw away the key. I’m speaking to you as a friend. You have to pay for your escapades. If you want to come out of this with your freedom, money, and reputation intact, you’re going to have to trust someone who cares about you, and do everything I say.

I put my playlist on shuffle mode and it’s giving my emotions whiplash. Songs bounce from Bad Omens, Eminem, Dolly Parton, Korn, to Sam Tinnesz.  One of the nice things about letting my clients choose the music during their sessions is I’ve been introduced to a lot of artists I might not have heard of otherwise. I’ve got one hell of an eclectic compilation rocking through my studio because of it.

Let us examine first the psychological and legal position of the criminal. We see that in spite of the difficulty of finding other food, the accused, or, as we may say, my client, has often during his peculiar life exhibited signs of repentance, and of wishing to give up this clerical diet. Incontrovertible facts prove this assertion. He has eaten five or six children, a relatively insignificant number, no doubt, but remarkable enough from another point of view. It is manifest that, pricked by remorse—for my client is religious, in his way, and has a conscience, as I shall prove later—and desiring to extenuate his sin as far as possible, he has tried six times at least to substitute lay nourishment for clerical. That this was merely an experiment we can hardly doubt: for if it had been only a question of gastronomic variety, six would have been too few; why only six? Why not thirty? But if we regard it as an experiment, inspired by the fear of committing new sacrilege, then this number six becomes intelligible. Six attempts to calm his remorse, and the pricking of his conscience, would amply suffice, for these attempts could scarcely have been happy ones. In my humble opinion, a child is too small; I should say, not sufficient; which would result in four or five times more lay children than monks being required in a given time. The sin, lessened on the one hand, would therefore be increased on the other, in quantity, not in quality. Please understand, gentlemen, that in reasoning thus, I am taking the point of view which might have been taken by a criminal of the middle ages. As for myself, a man of the late nineteenth century, I, of course, should reason differently; I say so plainly, and therefore you need not jeer at me nor mock me, gentlemen. As for you, general, it is still more unbecoming on your part. In the second place, and giving my own personal opinion, a child’s flesh is not a satisfying diet; it is too insipid, too sweet; and the criminal, in making these experiments, could have satisfied neither his conscience nor his appetite. I am about to conclude, gentlemen; and my conclusion contains a reply to one of the most important questions of that day and of our own! This criminal ended at last by denouncing himself to the clergy, and giving himself up to justice. We cannot but ask, remembering the penal system of that day, and the tortures that awaited him—the wheel, the stake, the fire!—we cannot but ask, I repeat, what induced him to accuse himself of this crime? Why did he not simply stop short at the number sixty, and keep his secret until his last breath? Why could he not simply leave the monks alone, and go into the desert to repent? Or why not become a monk himself? That is where the puzzle comes in! There must have been something stronger than the stake or the fire, or even than the habits of twenty years! There must have been an idea more powerful than all the calamities and sorrows of this world, famine or torture, leprosy or plague—an idea which entered into the heart, directed and enlarged the springs of life, and made even that hell supportable to humanity! Show me a force, a power like that, in this our century of vices and railways!

An example is Neil Patel. You can go to his site right now and he’ll walk you through everything from launching a Wordpress site, to setting up Google analytics, learning SEO, copywriting secrets, and literally a hundred other blog posts covering everything you’d ever need to know to be an online marketer. And it’s all free. But hundreds of people pay him every single day to do that work for them.

With means, if more than a little diminished means, of his own Ethan had done what his father before him, likewise a lawyer, had done, and had once in days past counselled him to do before it was too late, before this might spell an irrevocable retirement. He made a Retreat. (To be sure he had not been bidden so far afield as had his father, who’d spent the last year of peace before the First World War as a legal adviser on international cotton law in Czarist Russia, whence he brought back to his young son in Wales, or so he announced, lifting it whole out of a mysterious deep-Christmas-smelling wooden box, a beautiful toy model of Moscow; a city of tiny magical gold domes, pumpkin- or Christmas-bell-shaped, sparkling with Christmas tinsel-scented snow, bright as new silver half-crowns, and of minuscule Byzantine chimes; and at whose miniature frozen street corners waited minute sleighs, in which Ethan had imagined years later lilliputian Tchitchikovs brooding, or corners where lurked snow-bound Raskolnikovs, their hands stayed from murder evermore: much later still he was to become unsure whether the city, sprouting with snow-freaked onions after all, was intended to be Moscow or St. Petersburg, for part of it seemed in memory built on little piles in the water, like Eridanus; the city coming out of the box he was certain was magic too—for he had never seen it again after that evening of his father’s return, in a strange astrakhan-collared coat and Russian fur cap—the box that was always to be associated also with his mother’s death, which had occurred shortly thereafter; the magic bulbar city going back into the magic scented box forever, and himself too afraid of his father to ask him about it later—though how beautiful for years to him was the word city, the carilloning word city in the Christmas hymn, Once in Royal David’s City, and the tumultuous angel-winged city that was Bunyan’s celestial city; beautiful, that was, until he saw a city—it was London—for the first time, sullen, in fog, and bloodshot as if with the fires of hell, and he had never to this day seen Moscow—so that while this remained in his memory as nearly the only kind action he could recall on the part of either of his parents, if not nearly the only happy memory of his entire childhood, he was constrained to believe the gift had actually been intended for someone else, probably for the son of one of his father’s clients: no, to be sure he hadn’t wandered as far afield as Moscow; nor had he, like his younger brother Gwyn, wanting to go to Newfoundland, set out, because he couldn’t find another ship, recklessly for Archangel; he had not gone into the desert nor to sea himself again or entered a monastery, and moreover he’d taken his wife with him; but retreat it was just the same.)

I walked out into the parking lot and found the space he’d written on the rental folder.  I frowned at the bright yellow and black machine that sat there waiting for me.  What is that?  A riding lawnmower?  “This can’t be right,” I said to no one.  I was the only one out there, so I don’t know who I thought I was talking to, but having a thousand conversations in my head over the last twenty-four hours was making me question my own sanity.  Probably talking out loud to myself wasn’t any better, but what the hell … might as well change up the crazy every once in a while to keep it fresh. I pressed the button on the key ring and the headlights flashed on once, proving this was not a mistake.  “A Smart Car?  Are you kidding me?”  It looked like a giant, wasp-yellow roller skate.  Maybe not even a giant one; maybe just a large-ish roller skate.  Surely looking like a giant wasp flying down a country road was a bad idea for a girl with a sting-allergy… I debated in my head whether I should go and argue for one of the other fifty full-sized cars on the lot, but then gave up on the idea five seconds later.  “Screw it,” I said, annoyed as hell.  “Might as well get eight hundred miles to the gallon, right?!”  The tone of my voice had drifted a little over to the hysterical side, but there was nothing I could do about it.  I was barely hanging on, the stress almost enough to send me to the looney bin.  I just kept picturing Bradley saying, “You got married?  To a complete stranger?  In Las Vegas?  When you were drunk?  By a guy named Elvis?”  It was too horrible to fully fathom.  He’d dump me just for humiliating him in front of all his clients and his frat brothers and his parents.  There were so many people expecting me to be the perfect fiancée. I threw my overnight bag in the passenger seat and drove off the lot, wishing I could peel out and really express my anger in a satisfyingly loud and obnoxious way.  But I quickly learned that a Smart Car doesn’t know how to peel out; it’s not equipped to do much with its lawn-mower sized engine.  It just knows how to deliver me from Point A to Point B on a very small amount of gas with almost zero elbow room.  I felt like a clown buzzing around in her little circus car.  The only things missing were a little face paint and some floppy shoes.  At first I thought I was also missing one of those brass honky-horns that clowns carry around, but then I pressed on the steering wheel and found out differently.  Yes, it’s true.  The Smart Car comes equipped with a clown honky-horn.