The Billionaire Game (6 page)

But Lacey with a cause is like a dog
with a bone—specifically a starving pitbull with a bone fresh
off the butcher’s block. She sipped her appletini angrily,
shaking her head with her brow creased. “It’s
discrimination. Total double standard. Marvin in accounting was
looking at porn constantly—real porn, you don’t even want
to know some of the search terms he was using—and they had to
go through this whole process with verbal and written warnings for
months, and they still didn’t fire him! They probably never
would have if he hadn’t accidentally clicked the wrong button
during a meeting with a client!”

“Ha, I remember that!” I
said. It was all people had been able to talk about at Devlin Media
Corp. for weeks. Someone had even redownloaded the video and made an
autotune parody. I hadn’t been able to eat yogurt for a month
after watching that.

“But you come along, looking at
just a few dozen barely suggestive pictures, for perfectly legitimate
reasons even if it is on company time—”

“Yeah, but isn’t Marvin’s
dad, like, some big hotshot on Wall Street?” I interrupted,
trying to bring the good starship Lacey back down to Earth before she
began roaming the universe in search of new life and new
civilizations. “That probably had a lot to do with that.”

“Well, I’m technically just
a wedding away from owning half the company,” Lacey shot back.
Her face cleared. “That’s it! I’ll just get you
rehired! With an even better contract.”

“You don’t have to do
that,” I said. “I don’t want to take hand-outs or
special treatment.”

“Or even promoted!” Lacey
said, not hearing me through the haze of blissful charitable
planning. “There’s that position in—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your
horses. Hold those horses still! Do not let those horses leave the
stable.” I set down my drink and made Lacey look me in the eye.
“Don’t be all going mad with power now. I do not want to
have to interrupt my job search to depose you from a benevolent
dictatorship, and let’s be real, I am the superhero the people
would call on in their time of need.”

Lacey pouted. “Okay, maybe I was
jumping the gun a little with the promotion. But not much! You’ve
been there for years! You have tons of experience, and if you just
had some challenges to be passionate about—”

“But am I ever really going to be
passionate about receptionist-ing?” I argued, and quickly went
on before Lacey could point out that ‘receptionist-ing’
wasn’t a word: “I mean, is anyone? Does anyone wake up in
the morning and go, ‘oh boy, another day of answering phones
and scheduling appointments and being yelled at! Maybe there will be
a really difficult appointment to schedule and I can challenge my
mental abilities to the fullest! I can’t wait to see what gross
old man uses the fact that I’m trapped behind a desk to tell me
that I ‘sure do got a good breeding figure’ and offer to
take me back to his place!’”

Lacey waved her hands in surrender,
trying not to snort her appletini out her nose.

“You know, maybe this was a
blessing in disguise,” I reflected.

“How do you figure that?”
Lacey asked, getting the appletini situation back under control.

“Well…” I took a
breath. “Maybe this my chance to really focus on something I
can be passionate about. Maybe this is the chance to really launch my
business.”

My stomach lurched as I spoke the
words, the sounds of them solidifying into terrifying reality. Once
they were out there, there would be no going on—I would have to
go forward and try to live up to them. Could I do it?

“Maybe Asher was right,” I
said. “Not about being a horny asshole, obviously; but maybe he
was right about how I should expand my business. I’ve been
asking other people to treat it like more than just my hobby, but
have I really been treating it like more? Maybe this is my chance to
just go balls to the wall and really go for it.”

Lacey set her drink down. “Really?”

I held my breath and braced myself for
disappointment. Like, if even my best friend didn’t believe in
me, would I really be able to stay strong and believe in myself? I
flashed back to a memory of my mother’s face, puzzled, as
seven-year-old me wailed about her throwing away my refrigerator
drawings.
But Katie, they were just scribbles, they weren’t
that good…

But then Lacey was grinning so wide I
thought she might sprain something. “Oh my God, I have been
waiting forever for you to make this move!” she gushed,
grabbing my hands and squeezing them in delight. “Oh Katie, I
cannot even say how excited I am for you! This is going to rock! You
are going to rock! So many good things are going to happen for
you, oh my God, what’s your first move?”

I blinked back my tears of relief and
tried to maintain my cool, casual demeanor. I’m the sassy,
no-nonsense best friend, and we don’t cry; it’s written
into our contract.

“I want to get a real studio
space,” I said, “with enough room for equipment and a
good backlog of materials so I don’t have to rent or contract
out parts of orders. If I’ve got the numbers right I can maybe
even train some seamstresses”—and that would really be
the icing on the cake, to help nurture some new talent on top of
this. I had a happy little daydream I often secretly dreamed, of
mentoring young girls who would one day start their own businesses,
or providing money to destitute older women to help keep them afloat.
“Before that, though, I have to get a loan.”

“You know, Grant and I could—”

“No,” I cut her off. “I
refuse to mix business and pleasure. Or business and friends. You
know what I mean. I need to do this right, and on my own terms, with
real investors, not just my newly loaded friends handing me money
because they feel sorry for me.”

“Need any tips?” Lacey
asked. I could see her fingers itching to grab her cell phone and
call every bank and every investor she could until she found one that
owed Devlin Media Corp. a favor.

“Nah,” I said, heading her
off. “I’ve got an appointment booked this afternoon
already.” I grinned. “Wish me luck!”

#

Lacey had insisted on giving me a list
of potential back-up backers, which I had scoffed at as too big for
my needs. Secretly, though, I had been intimidated by the thought of
bringing my proposal to such august financial institutions, of trying
to present myself in a positive and responsible light to the same
people who evaluated loans for Devlin Media Corp., Apple, and the
United States government.

So now I was at Morningstar Bank, the
local chain with only about a half dozen locations in the state. This
one was run down, with scuff marks on the floor that no one had
bothered to rub out for the last years. Security personnel glowered
at you when you came in like they thought you might be all of the
Jesse James gang squeezed into one dress.

Wall Street this was not, and yet,
somehow, I was still more terrified right now than I had ever been
before at any point in my life.

And I’ve seen Stevie’s
feet, so that’s saying something.

“Ma’am?” The
receptionist caught my attention. “Our loans department will
see you now.”

He ushered me into a decrepit office
where an older man in a faded blue suit and a mustache that looked
like it had seen the other side of the Civil War sat at a desk,
sipping coffee as if he had a personal grudge against it. Given that
it looked and smelled as if it had come out of the La Brea tar pits,
I couldn’t say I blamed him.

However I could say that I blamed him
for the condescending expression on his face as he gestured for me to
stay standing, though. He flipped through the folder in front of him
and sneered. “I must have misunderstood Daniel. He said you
were looking for a loan, but this business is…”

“Trifles by Kate,” I
interrupted eagerly here, wanting to make my pitch as soon as I could
before my nerves gave out. “I craft high-end luxury lingerie
for women willing to spend extra money for real quality, comfort, and
satisfaction. If you’ll look at my tax documents there, I think
you’ll see that with the little time I was able to give it
before, it still brought in an impressive return. Now that I’m
expanding my business and focusing on it full time, I should be able
to show even higher profits. But in order to do that, I do need help
to start. If you’ll take a look at the timeline I included with
my application, I think you’ll see that even a conservative
estimate of the current market shows that—”

“That won’t be necessary,”
he said, flipping it closed. “Morningstar will not be accepting
your application for a loan. There’s simply not enough
guarantee of a return on the investment. I don’t know if you’ve
noticed, miss, but women’s underwear is available from a wide
variety of locations.”

“But not like this!” I
tried to explain desperately. “This is hand-sewn, using the
finest materials, tailored to the body and tastes of each individual
client—”

“Which only ups the cost of your
product,” he said, punting the file towards his wastebasket.
“How can you hope to compete in the marketplace?”

“I’m not trying to compete
with a Walmart blue light special!” I snapped. “I’m
trying to create a luxury product, in a brand-new field with barely
any other competition right now! If you could just get me in at the
ground floor—”

“I’m sorry, miss,” he
said, not sounding even remotely sorry. Sorry was a foreign country
to this guy. Sorry was another goddamn planet. “Your sales are
too small, and you have nothing to back the loan.”

“But—” I spluttered.

He waved a hand at me dismissively.
“You’re a bad bet, and one this bank will not be taking.
But we cordially thank you for choosing Morningstar for your
banking—”

“Frack Morningstar!” I may
have shouted on my way out the door, which, okay, yes, I may have
slammed. Except ‘frack’ might have actually exited my
mouth in the form of a slightly harsher word, I can’t quite
remember. My brain was a little cloudy at that moment.

Thankfully, even in the toughest of
times, we can always count on the support and understanding of our
family.

…are you done laughing now? I
know, I know, I’m hilarious, but I think I really outdid myself
with that one.

I shouldn’t be too hard on my
folks. They love me, I know—they just don’t take me
seriously. And there are some days where I seriously debate whether
I’d be willing to trade one of those things for the other.

But anyway, I guess it was mutual,
because I didn’t really understand them either. I didn’t
get why they always had to be as formal and stuffy as if they were
accepting a Medal of Honor when they were just walking the dog,
getting their hair cut, or going out to dinner. I didn’t get
why they were so obsessed with appearances, never going out the door
without a final check to make sure that a single hair hadn’t
drifted out of place or a single strand hadn't come loose from their outfit.
And I definitely didn’t get how they were so afraid of taking
risks they wouldn’t even try a new brand of salad dressing.

Yeah, I loved them right back, but for
all I understood them, they might as well have spent their entire
lives speaking to me in an obscure Baltic dialect. So I might just
have been able to forgive them for not understanding me except for—

“Oh Brian, darling, that is just
simply marvelous! Did you hear that, Katherine! Brian’s
supervisor told him that his work on the Dunsinane project was
‘definitely his most competent work this week!’ Isn’t
that so exciting?!”

--that.

I looked around the restaurant, hoping
for something to distract me so I wouldn’t have to hear my
parents drooling over my brother like he was an extra-rich tiramisu
with double fudge sauce on top. It was a classy joint, because heaven
forbid you ever catch my parents in a place that wasn’t.
Lighting was low, pooling on the red tablecloths tucked into cozy
mahogany nooks, and low murmurs of conversation whirled around the
room. The air smelled like red wine, perfectly cooked steak, and the
kinds of perfumes that if you have to ask the price, you can’t
afford it.

“Brian’s certainly moving
up in the world,” my dad put in, fairly bursting with steak and
pride. Mostly pride. “I think this company will really be the
right fit for you. Really make use of your talents.”

“Oh yes, all those others were
completely wrong!” my mother agreed. “Do you remember,
that simply awful man who told Brian he didn’t even
care
that Brian had graduated top of his class in Harvard?”

He’d told him that because Brian
had fucked up a business meeting so hard an entire convent of nuns
couldn’t have unfucked it, but you’ll notice that little
detail got left on the editing room floor of my mom’s story.

“Always been obvious the boy’s
talented,” Dad said with a misty look in his eye. “Ever
since he was a little man. I knew we could expect great things from
him.”

I needed a distraction before I puked.
Would it be too evil to ‘accidentally’ set a table on
fire with one of these crystal candlesticks?

“It’s just such a pity that
Kate hasn’t applied herself to finding her true potential—”

And yep, there it was, right on
schedule. I tried for a tight-lipped smile but I could feel it
failing on my face under the harsh glow of their disappointment.

When I was in elementary school, they
told me to take ballet class; I took the money and the permission
slip, and signed up for hip hop dance instead. They told me they
didn’t see any reason I should have to move out of the house
for college; I explained the concept of a party to them and then took
on two extra jobs to pay rent on my own apartment. Senior year they
took me aside and told me that they would pay for another two years
of college if I would just switch my major from studio art to art
history, since that would give me a much better chance of “attracting
the right kind of man”—I swear my mom time-traveled that
advice right here from the 1950s. I didn’t have the heart to
tell her that most of the guys who expressed interest in me were more
interested in getting a hand up my shirt than hearing a short
discourse on the use of color in Caravaggio canvases. And yet here I
was, single and unemployed, with the weight of a lifetime of unspoken
‘We told you so’s heavy on my shoulders.