Fleishman Is in Trouble

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

And in our laughter we heard our youth, and it is not not a dangerous thing to be at the doorstep to middle age and at an impasse in your life and to suddenly be hearing sounds from your youth.

Once, the Leffers had told them, at a dinner, that they had a German tutor, and that both they and the kids were learning German and that they were going to spend all of Christmas vacation next year in Germany, celebrating their new knowledge until they sounded like soldiers in the Third fucking Reich. Cyndi had dropped her voice down low and said, “You cannot compete with that kind of immersion,” and Rachel had nodded emphatically and said, “So true, I never thought of it like that,” like no one had ever said that practice was important for reinforcing information, as if the entire education and athletic supercomplexes weren’t built on that notion.

SETH AND HIS co-workers were born imperialists, and so would pillage the city for tiny, cash-only ramen places or Thai restaurants that had a secret, ultra-authentic room behind the kitchen where the staff also ate and where they would insist on eating, too. They were the best and the only and the highest and the chef was trained in Beirut as a prisoner of war and the waitstaff had to get scuba training so that they could understand what it meant to touch pleasure and the restaurant itself used to be a church or a secret meeting place for the Illuminati or a Tibetan monastery that only the hottest, most favored Tibetans were invited to. It was not just about owning the city. It was about owning everything beneath and above and behind the city, too. Finance guys were the fucking worst.