Hard Feelings by Jason Starr Page B

took the call. I hung up immediately. Without another thought, I entered the building through the revolving doors and looked up Rudnick, Eisman and Stevens on the building’s directory. When I got off the elevator on the thirty-second floor and approached the receptionist, I felt blood pulsing in my head.
    “Michael Rudnick, please.”
    The receptionist stared at me as if I were frightening her.
    “Do you have an appointment with him?” she finally asked.
    “Just tell him an old friend is here to see him.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, still seeming slightly afraid. “I can’t ask one of the lawyers to come to the desk without giving them a name.”
    I decided that the woman, who looked like she was about twenty-five, was probably a temp. A full-time employee wouldn’t have referred to Rudnick as “one of the lawyers” and I knew that if I kept being demanding I could get her to do anything I wanted.
    “Look, I’m a very close old friend of Michael’s and I wanted to surprise him.”
    “Can’t you just tell me your name?”
    “It wouldn’t be a surprise if he knew I was here.”
    The girl thought this over for a while then said, “Okay, he isn’t with a client right now, so you can go inside . . . I guess.”
    The girl told me where Rudnick’s office was—“straight back, all the way to the left”—and I thanked her for “helping me with the surprise.”
    I entered Rudnick’s corner office without knocking, stopping a few feet in front of his desk. He was sitting there, reading some papers, and he looked up at me, completely startled.
    Finally, he said, “What are you doing here?”
    I didn’t rush to answer. I stared at him for five, maybe ten seconds, wanting to milk this.
    “What do you think I’m doing here?” I asked, smiling menacingly.
    “The receptionist didn’t tell me you were here,” Rudnick said, as if this were his only problem with me suddenly appearing in his office. We continued to stare at each other until he said, “So what do you want?”
    “Fuck you,” I said.
    I was losing control now, outside myself.
    Rudnick stood up and came around the desk to face me. He was probably hoping he’d be able to intimidate me with his size, the way he used to. But now I was taller than him. He had forgotten this.
    “Look, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you or what you think you’re doing here, but if you don’t get the hell out of here right now I’m calling security.”
    I shut the door so no one else could hear what was going on. When I turned back around, Rudnick was holding the telephone receiver up to his ear and had started dialing.
    “Put the fucking phone down,” I said.
    He ignored me.
    “I said put it down.”
    Now he was looking at me. “I told you to leave.”
    “I know what you did to me, you fucking son of a bitch,” I said.
    I heard a faint voice on the other end of the line, saying, “Hello,” and then Rudnick hung up.
    He continued to stare at me for what seemed like a very long time, but it might have only been a second or two, then he said calmly, “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “Don’t play dumb,” I said. I wasn’t there anymore. I was just a body with a voice coming out of it. I heard myself say, “You know exactly what I’m fucking talking about, you perverted fucking bastard.”
    Rudnick looked blank-faced, pretending to be completely confused. “Look, I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, or what’s going on in your head—”
    “ ‘You’re gonna feel it.’ Do you remember saying that to me? Do you remember what you did to me afterwards?”
    He was staring at me, still playing dumb.
    “You’re gonna feel it?” he said, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
    “How about chasing me around your Ping-Pong table?” I said. “How about pinning me down on the fucking couch?”
    “Look, if you want to avoid a nasty scene, you can just turn around and leave here right now—”
    “I’m not