Encore: Chapter 36

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huey Portman carried the new chair into the office like it was a throne. It wasn’t such a big deal, but something about it — maybe the high padded back, or the serious-looking wooden arms — made him feel like an executive. He wasn’t going back to sit on the same folding chair as last zeman, but to get real work done. He was building something.

Over bein hazmanim three more bochurim had applied, and Rabbi Wasser had accepted two of them. There were others who’d inquired. There was a buzz about Modena.

Shuey had already booked tickets to Florida for the big executive directors’ conference in the winter, and, even though he wouldn’t have admitted this to anyone, he had put away the new suit he’d bought at the end of the summer, at the Nordstrom sale, for that. He imagined walking through the lobby in the sharp suit — he could wear it with the gray striped tie — and schmoozing with hundreds of other people who did exactly what he did. They would get it: The joy of new beginnings. The thrill of creating something from the ground up. The older ones, the ones he knew from magazine articles, would look off into the distance and smile as they remembered their early days, fighting for every dollar, building each relationship like it was the only one.

He would credit Avi Korman, the greatest boss in the world. Maybe, if he was feeling really comfortable, he would admit that it was Avi who’d saved him from the Kohl brothers and his freezing little office at Three-Star snacks. Avi had basically given him the job, paying his salary for a few months upfront and letting him run with it, he would say, with the unspoken conclusion that Avi’s confidence in him had paid off.