He was easy going, warm, funny. He told me we were destined to be friends if not colleagues. I said I felt like we were friends already, and he instantly agreed! He confided in me that he was annoyed that I was a better writer than he was, but said he’d get over it by crying over his Emmy. We shared a similar smug charm. I thought, this is what it was like dealing with a Michael Rovner.
I learned that, years earlier, when I had been a prolific journalist, he had regularly taken compliments on my published pieces. What could be more Rovnerian than taking credit for someone else’s work, I thought. Over the years, I’ve written that I was an alcoholic in recovery, that I was fired as a private investigator, and that I spent half my life in therapy. Based on my life of too much sharing, I wondered what those people must have thought of him. There was definitely a “Fight Club” part to this whole thing.
He also mainly used his last name, only he mispronounced it: ROWV-ner, instead of RAHV-ner. I was told that the Massachusetts and Iowa Rovners preferred his style. I told him we didn’t do it that way in Philly. He told me that his ancestors came from Rivne, Ukraine, which at the time had been Rovno, Poland. I said that whenever I asked my grandparents, I was told that our family was from Minsky-Pinsky, and that was how people in that generation had tried to leave the past behind.
He said he would recommend me for the job at his company, but mainly because they would give him a $5,000 bonus for bringing in a new employee if I held out for 90 days. I told him that nothing would make me happier than enriching Michael Rovners’ bank accounts – a rising tide lifts all Michael Rovners. If it succeeds, I have promised not to tarnish our good name. He suggested that if I was hired, I use whatever form of Michael suited me. While this seemed like a big concession on my part, I thought we’d work out the details later, as I was used to just mentioning “Rovner”. He said he would send “a hilarious Michael Rovner-esque note” to the people who made the hire, adding that the rest was up to me “and the ghosts of Michael Rovner’s past.”
At the start of my first interview, the hiring manager said she was perplexed at first. “I thought the Michael Rovner who already worked here was on interview for this position,” she said. I was delighted at the potential confusion this would create in the world.