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Show 'Lorraine Nelson A Biography " 116 After working at DDS for a month, I was surprised investors contributed capital to the enterprise-to say nothing of the seemingly endless supply of clients willing to chuck money on such a laughably fruitless plan. Ninety-nine-to-one. Rain dances, divining rods, the brightly lit miles of the Vegas strip all offer better odds. The owner and president of DDS is Antonio Benmen, "Tony" among friends, a short, bespectacled man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Joe Pecci's character in Good Fellas. As far as I could tell, Mr. Benmen was aware of this similarity and aggressively cultivated the image, wearing pinky rings, broad gold chains, and fancy Italian shoes. On occasion, he would clumsily stumble in and out of a New York burr, though I overheard he'd visited the city only once, and lived in Spanish Fork, a burb south of Salt Lake where he'd grown up. Employees seemed willing to put up with Mr. Benmen's silly pretense, so long as it didn't require much of their attention. On Wednesdays when the rest of us were tugging at the starched collars of our uncomfortable office day wear, Mr. Benmen would show up in khakis and 'fuck you' polo shirts with pictures of little ducks or bicycles or tiny trumpets printed on the fabric. He spoke to me only once. Real men only shake twice. I had just emerged from a stall in the bathroom after one of my two hour sitting sessions and Mr. Benmen was drying his hands at the basin, looking at me peripherally in the mirror above the sink. I had expected to catch hell for being away from my desk, not a tip on bathroom protocol. Excuse me? Real men shake twice. No more. No less. I hadn't even been using the bathroom, just sitting, waiting until I could no longer feel my rear-but Mr. Benmen seemed to think I had been relieving myself, and in a fashion unbecoming a "real" man. He finished and pitched the wadded up paper towel in the trash, walking out. I wondered if he actually counted (out loud?) to himself: one,... two. I wondered-if I wasn't a "real" man-what I otherwise might be. And I wondered if there were other matters of |