This Is Where I Leave You

situation. You hate me right now. Of course you do. I’m sure you’d like nothing better than to bludgeon me to death with a blunt instrument. What I did was inexcusable, and I feel terrible about it. I know you probably don’t believe that, but it’s true.”
    He smiled sheepishly at me, as if he’d just admitted something mildly embarrassing about himself, like he suffers from constipation or gets regular pedicures. Then he shrugged those broad spherical 102shoulders that throbbed like organs beneath his expensive dress shirt. I guess I’d always been somewhat envious of Wade’s shoulders, because when you get right down to it, mine are just your basic, stripped-down version, while Wade’s are the fully loaded models that fill a shirt perfectly and look just as good out of one. I could hope they’re obscenely hairy, the way some men’s are, but it would be futile, because Wade is the kind of guy who would never stand for shoulder hair. He’d have it permanently removed by laser, and even though results vary, he’d be the guy for whom it worked. I’d probably get burned or develop a permanent discoloration. This stuff is all preordained.
    Like most guys with genetically superior shoulders, Wade was an asshole, an alpha male who asserted his presence physically, through viselike handshakes and powerful backslaps, the kind of guy who needed to win at everything. His tone now was carefully apologetic, conciliatory even, but still, his expression radiated the smug satisfaction of having asserted his sexual dominance. I fucked your woman, his eyes said. Better than you ever could.
    “Are you going to keep fucking her?” I said.
    “What?”
    “Are you going to keep fucking my wife?”
    Wade looked over to Stuart Kaplan, who sat unobtrusively behind us on the couch. Stuart was the station manager and default head of human resources. It was something of a workplace irony that they couldn’t seem to hire the right person to run H.R., and after the last woman quit, Stuart had simply absorbed the department. Wade made fun of him ceaselessly on the air, called him Stuart the Suit. They had clearly met in anticipation of this meeting, to discuss the hairy legal ramifications of the marquee radio host sleeping with the wife of one of his staff . And now Stuart was sitting in to serve as a witness that I wasn’t being dismissed or subtly urged to resign in any way.
    “Listen,” Stuart interjected. “I don’t think that’s a constructive approach to take here - ”
    “You said you feel terrible about it,” I said, staring at the small patch of stubble between Wade’s eyes where he shaved his eyebrow. “So, that being the case, do you think you’re going to stop? I think it’s a fair question, and not at all irrelevant to this discussion.”
    “I think we should confine this talk to our professional relationship.”
    “So you’re going to keep fucking her.”
    Wade looked to Stuart for some help.
    “I know this is hard,” Stuart said.
    “How do you know that, Stuart the Suit? Did he fuck your wife too?”
    Stuart was sixty years old, had a closet full of identical pin-striped suits and a rattling chest full of phlegm from years of chain-smoking. His moods swung to whatever extent they did on the basis of his increasingly erratic bowel function. If he even had a wife, the odds of Wade or even Stuart himself wanting to sleep with her were probably quite low.
    “Judd,” Stuart said resignedly, which was how he said pretty much everything.
    “Stuart,” I said.
    He slid a document in front of me. It was a contract, acknowledging a significant raise, provided that I would indemnify Man Up with Wade Boulanger and WIRX from any future legal proceedings.
    “How are your testicles, Wade?”
    “They’re fi ne.”
    I hoped they were blistered and peeling, or at least caked in AD Ointment and sticking uncomfortably to his underwear.
    “Listen, Judd,” Wade said, returning to his prepared script. “You’re a fantastic producer. You’re integral to the show. Regardless of how things shake out personally, we don’t want to lose you.”
    I was being offered a consolation prize. Numbers had been crunched, risks assessed, and they had estimated the value of my broken marriage at another thirty thousand dollars a year before taxes. My life had just become inordinately expensive. I was going to have to pay alimony and keep up the mortgage on the house while renting my own apartment. Even with this raise,