• Finn knows what the people in the office call him. Tool. Douche-bag. Sycophant. He’s heard it all before. But as the head of global sales, Finn is not paid to care about the agency prattle.

• During his twenty-five year career, Finn has done many things of which he was not proud.
  • The women. Mary, the buxom office manager with whom he’d had a three-year affair. The escorts in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Singapore. The boss he had on her knees in a London conference room. He has confessed nothing to his wife, Jill. Why involve the children?
  • Enemies. Finn has a habit of fabricating reasons to dismiss people he doesn’t like. The senior manager who found out about him and Mary. The admin who had asked investigative questions about Finn’s expense reports. Finn spent entire fiscal quarters destroying others who had objectives counter to his own.

• Despite his lack of concrete accomplishments, Finn has worked for large companies with solid brands, and he has a sizable network of executives who have risen over time and generally think Finn is a good guy.

• As he begins his new position at the highest compensation level of his career, Finn wishes he could change. No one wants to be known as a tool, douche-bag, a sycophant. He, like anyone else, would prefer to have a reputation as a competent professional, a winning father, a supportive husband, and an all-around decent guy. But like people, like any corporate entity, in a final SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, change is more often driven by a Threat than an Opportunity. Finn makes it his work to account for such threats before they drive change.

• Steve, a director of U.S. accounts, walks glumly into Finn’s corner office with a view of the flanks of other, taller buildings. He plops down in the open chair and rattles off his weekly status report, prompted by a sheet of paper with bulletpoints. Finn does not like Steve. Steve is tall, dark, handsome, and Finn can already tell that some of the younger, more attractive women at the agency would be willing to have an affair with Steve, if Steve was that type of man. As far as Finn can tell, Steve is that type of man. Like Finn.
  • What’s wrong?
    • I won’t hit the number. My top rep has quit, and he’ll take people with him.
  • Finn barely musters a shrug. One must be prepared to make quota despite the unforeseen. That’s why they call them “quotas.”

• Finn explains to his boss, the chief executive, that Steve’s team is not going to make the number this quarter, and Steve should ultimately be responsible.
  • Aren’t you ultimately responsible, the chief executive asks?

• Finn’s son Quinell is lithe and athletic. He plays soccer, football and basketball and plays them all well. When Quinell was in Pop Warner and AYSO, Finn used to enjoy attending all the weekend games. But the last several years, Finn has attended fewer and fewer. He blames business travel and career demands, but the truth is Finn can no longer look into his son’s eyes with innocence. Now that Quinell is in high school, Finn doesn’t enjoy waiting for him after games while he makes his rounds with various friends. Many of them are very attractive young women. Finn could easily imagine himself offering them internships at the agency, summer jobs at minimum wage, just to have an excuse to swing by a lovely new intern’s cubicle.

• Shiloh, Finn’s daughter, looks like her mother used to. Long blonde hair, wiry, bow-legged, so tall for thirteen that she slouches. Finn remembers her as a kindergartener, when she habitually spread her legs on the couch and touched herself. At first, Finn found this act curious, watching his daughter as one might watch leopards bounding across an African desert on television. Once, Shiloh began idly touching herself in front of guests, and Finn yelled at her to stop with an anger he didn’t fully understand.
  • These days, Finn asserts no such authority over Shiloh, who only listens to Jill, and mostly ignores him before flouring her face with makeup and going out with some pockmarked Indian boy with a ponytail and a harelip. Jill thinks he’s nice. Finn knows better, as he did when the kindergarten-version of Shiloh spread her spindly legs. Boys are never nice.

• Finn’s wife, Jill, is unrecognizable to him. She’s twice the size she was when they first met. Twenty years ago, she was his assistant. When they have sex, he tries to remember what she looked like when she was thin. He never calls to mind any of the other women he’s slept with during their marriage. Jill is the mother of his children; their lovemaking is sacred. For that reason and others, Finn completes the task efficiently.

• On the way to a meeting, Finn sees Steve leaning against a cubicle wall, talking and laughing with a dark-haired woman in her mid-20s whose crossed arms fail to hide the fact that 1) she is well-endowed and 2) she might be attracted to Steve. Finn waits until he is down the hall before examining the cubicle floor map to find the name of this girl. Maeve Garner. Lovely name.

• When he is not in a meeting, Finn daydreams about flying out his office window on a hang glider, above the playground where the kids at the nearby daycare center play. In the dream, they watch him with admiration. Look at the man in the suit who can fly. They want to be him someday.

• Finn conjures up a reason to pass by the client services cubes and Maeve Garner’s cubicle. Her hair is looking tousled today. Her face is flushed. Her gym bag is on her desk. She says she’s just been on a run. Of course. Women like her go on runs. Jill doesn’t run. Men like Finn never run. Men like Finn stroll. Men like Finn are followed.
  • Maeve says hi. She sounds peppy, enthusiastic. Finn guesses that it is unlikely anyone has called him a douche-bag in her presence.
  • Where do you run?
    • Out by the man-made lake.
  • I do too. We should run together.
    • We should.

• On his way home, Finn stops by the sporting goods store and buys a pair of running shoes and shorts.

• Maeve says she’s a slow runner, but Finn is surprised that he can keep up with her. His performance buoys his spirit. As they go around the lake, Finn tries not to stare at Maeve’s long, twig-like limbs, her narrow, blemish-free face with high-cheekbones. She has a perfect nose: in profile, an elegantly upended question mark. Finn asks only questions, offers no information about himself or his family.
  • Maeve is twenty-eight.
  • Used to work as a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical company.
  • Currently single. Her boyfriend left her after five years.
  • Likes, but doesn’t love the agency.
  • Favorite musician is David Byrne. Finn tells her that he saw Byrne and the Talking Heads play for three hours at Madison Square Garden in the mid-80s. He went to no such concert and has no idea whether such a show existed. In fact, he’s not certain he can name a Talking Heads song.
  • After the run, Finn is sweaty and hungry, and Maeve is flushed and tousled. They pass by Steve in the lobby, and Finn is the first to say hello.

• Finn takes his family to beginner hang gliding lessons. Quinnell texts multiple girls on his iPhone, and Shiloh has the gall to bring the Indian kid. Jill complains she’s too big for the simulator. That’s nonsense, the guide says. Finn remains silent.
  • Finn gets on the simulator, and the fan blows wind through his hair and remembers that as a child, he loved all things airborne. Airplanes. Superheroes. Space Shuttles. He waves to imaginary people below. Maeve is among them.

• Finn and Maeve run three times a week. Maeve is funny, charming, intelligent and perhaps most importantly, available and not tied down by family. Jill notices that Finn has lost ten pounds over the past few weeks. Finn tells her that he runs the treadmill during lunch.
  • When you get to our age, you have to do more to keep the pounds off.
  • Jill stares hard at him. Finn stares back quizzically.
  • What?

• Finn knows he and Maeve should stop. He has been through this enough times at enough companies to know where this is heading. Maeve has not asked once about his wife or children. Finn estimates that he is a significant gift away from her bed. He feels guilty for wanting to stray again. He wants to change. But does he need to?

• Finn goes on a hang gliding lessons on his own. He flies with an instructor off a small hill. He imagines that he is flying in verdant New Hampshire over the house where he grew up. The house has green shutters and white shingles and a large yard near a marsh and a reservoir. In the air, he misses New Hampshire so much that his breaths are shallow. He misses being asked what he really wants to do with his life, being seen as a person with future potential. On his next run, he will tell Maeve that she will miss being seen as a person with potential one day. By the time the lesson is done, Finn decides against saying too much.

• When Finn walks into the office, he sees Steve laughing at the entrance of Maeve’s cubicle. Finn walks into the chief executive’s office and explains that he will have to put Steve on a performance plan. The chief executive stands and shuts the door.

• The following morning, to his consternation, Finn is on the performance plan. The chief executive has heard that Finn is more concerned with flirting than managing his team. Finn’s been ousted at several companies for this precise issue.

• Finn invites Maeve to a hang gliding lesson. As Maeve rides the simulator, she invites Finn to a David Byrne concert, and Finn says yes, he loves David Byrne. At the end of the lesson, Finn takes Maeve’s hand, and she doesn’t pull away.
  • You’re married.
    • But I adore you.
  • You’ve done this before.
    • Finn looks down at his shoes. Even as he is, in fact, contrite, Finn also knows that he must appear as contrite as possible. Maeve removes her hand from his.
  • So have I. It’s kind of a pattern for me. It’s something I want to change. Friends?
    • No, Finn thinks. No point. Sure, he says.
  • Maeve hugs Finn, lightly, in a friendly way. Then she heads for her car. I’ve got a few extra tickets, she says. Maybe your family should come.

• The next morning, Finn sees Steve doing calf stretches on Maeve’s cubicle wall. He’s in running shorts. Even odds that Maeve sleeps with Steve, maybe better, Finn thinks. The walls of Finn’s office are bare. He has been here less than six months. He hasn’t even put up his framed diplomas from Stanford and Northwestern. Finn looks at his portrait of Quinnell, Shiloh and Jill. Will he ever be able to look them in the eye without feeling like a tool, a douche-bag, a sycophant? Finn puts the photo and his diplomas in a box. He looks out his office window at the nearby daycare center playground. He phones the executive recruitment agency. As Finn is being transferred to his headhunter, he daydreams of flying out and above the children in his best suit. The children watch him with admiration. They want to be him one day. The headhunter picks up.
  • What can I do for you?
    • I’m looking to make a change.

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