But now, pitching myself for a job I absolutely must have, there’s a thousand conflicting thoughts spinning around inside my head that have nothing to do with the agency business.

She’s familiar with my résumé. This is about chemistry.

Me…in a single sentence…?

“That’s a damned good question,” I say to this agency superstar, snapping back to the here and now. “I’ve thought about how best to describe what I do, who I am. And here’s my answer, if you’ll pardon my French: I’m a guy who makes shit happen.”

“That’s certainly to the point.” She chuckles. “Especially in our business. And especially for an account guy. Great attitude.”

The waiter sets our salads in front of us, escarole for me, farro and quinoa for her, and asks if we want any more iced tea. Tea? I want a martini.

“Read this column in Adweek right after I started at Marterelli. Headline was ‘Making Stuff Happen,’ but what the columnist wrote about was making shit happen. Especially for account leaders. That was all I needed. It spoke to me.”

“You’ve got a great track record,” she says, “a strong, unique résumé, that’s for sure. Loaded with references.”

“Thank you! Hey—I’m an ex-Marine. Heard the call, 9/11 changed my whole perspective on life. Signed on for two years right out of Columbia University, and ended up in Iraq, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, Platoon Leader.…”

“Thank you for your service! Where?”

“Fallujah. Second Battle—the bloodiest conflict of the entire Iraqi war. We lost a lot of soldiers. They lost more. Tough stuff. I saw things I’ll never be able to erase from my mind. But we ran the insurgents out and took the city back. And I helped make it happen.”

“Your résumé isn’t quite that…colorful.”

“That was a lifetime ago. Honorable discharge, and I leverage my journalism degree and my leadership experience from the real world into a starting job with Marterelli. Fabulous, for a little while. Did the CrawDaddy thing. Then we lost the account—no fault of ours, hell, we made history with that spot, blew their business through the roof! Anyway, back then the agency was far from flush, had to pare down. So I jumped ship, painful for both Paul and me. Landed the job at Thompson—where I ended up running the Burger King business, as you know.

“Couple of lifetimes later Paul and I reconnect, over beers. They’ve grown to a fabulous midsized agency by now, and we simply had to get back together! We did, ‘partners,’ in theory, and now I’ve got the biggest job in the agency—unless they want to make me president.”

“Maybe they should…”

“If it were up to me…but, Paul’s not ready to go, not even close. So, there’s nothing left for me to accomplish there. Time to move on.”

The waiter’s back with our main courses—strozzapreti for Linda and the seared scallops pour moi.

My iPhone’s in my pocket, and vibrates with a text message. Of course, I ignore it.

“Another question: what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in this business?”