The Secrets Men Keep by Mark Sampson

Author:Mark Sampson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Now or Never Publishing
Published: 2015-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

CYCLE

Muizz is tagging along to the Tim Aspen meeting because he’s a sports fan. That’s the only reason. I have to keep it in mind.

He invites me out to eat beforehand, to an upscale lunch spot near the office. I don’t know its name; my colleagues in the marketing department just call it Home of the $35 Hamburger. I really can’t afford to eat here. But Muizz said he’d pick up the tab, said he had budget. (Nobody’s had budget, for anything, since last September.)

We get seated on the patio under broad imposing umbrellas. The wait staff are dressed uniformly in black and are all impossibly attractive. One of them stops by our table and we order a couple glasses of Riesling. Above us, a mélange of skyscrapers reach for the heavens—the RD Waterprice Tower, the ManuFord Centre, RIBC Place.

“So are you nervous?” Muizz asks me.

“About ordering?” I say, scanning the menu, which comes with a string tie. “Absolutely. I mean, look at these prices. I don’t know where to start.” I spot the apocryphal hamburger: it’s only $28.95, and comes with a ‘generous slice’ of asiago.

Muizz laughs once, more like a cough, his cheeks squeezing upward around his thin, sharp nose. “No, no. You’re funny. I meant our meeting with Aspen and his team. Are you nervous, Mikey?”

“Nervous how?”

“I don’t know. You ever meet a celebrity before?”

“Sure. Sure I have.” I immediately think back to when I was 11, growing up on the Island. I got to go on a tour of the local CBC studio because I had, even as a kid, begun to show interest in the news game. The tour guide introduced me to Roger Younger, who anchored the six o’clock news. Star struck, I remember thinking he was both taller and more handsome than he seemed on TV.

“Who did you meet?” Muizz asks, his grin like a razor blade.

“Uh . . . Kevin Spacey.” It seems probable; the guy gets around. “You meet anyone famous?”

“Oh yeah,” he says, and leans back coolly in his chair. Muizz’s hair is always the exact same length whenever I see him—like a light dusting of pepper on his gravy-coloured skull. I think: How does he do that? “A client of mine gave us a box at the ACC, and we get to hang out with Sidney Crosby whenever the Pens are in town.” He sips his wine. “Of course, Tim Aspen is a slightly bigger deal than Sidney Crosby.”

“He was,” I snort. I’m about to go on but then the waitress, high cheek bones and straight blonde hair, comes by the table. I balk and order an inoffensively priced stir fry. Muizz orders the Italian Delight pizza, but tells her not to put pork on it. She nods and takes our menus without writing anything down.

“Muizz, I do want to be clear,” I continue. “We can’t do anything with this guy. I mean, you know that right?”

“Hey Mikey, you’re in charge of sponsorships,” he reminds me for the third time today.

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