23.
Levi
Back in New York. I couldn’t get that song out of my head: Back to life! Back to reality! even though getting ready to go into the office was certainly not any reality I was used to. Isla and I had stayed in Ibiza for a few more days, but I knew Cal was just marking off the days that I didn’t show up at BCM, and each day I didn’t was one more thing he’d hold against me.
“Well, honey, I’m off to my first day of work!” I said. Isla laughed, and so did I, though really, my laughter was to mask my nervousness. I couldn’t remember feeling this nervous about something before. I tried to ignore the feeling as I looked at myself in the mirror. Long-sleeved, light-blue shirt with white pin-striping, black dress pants, Italian leather shoes, black tie.
“You look great,” she said. “Very professional.”
“Thanks.” My tie felt too tight. I’d had to watch a video on YouTube to get it right.
“Are you nervous?”
“Not at all,” I lied. I gave myself one last look in the mirror and then turned away. “Here goes nothing.”
I got off the elevator and walked through the etched-glass double doors, where the receptionist sat behind a tall, L-shaped desk. She was young, probably in her early or mid-twenties, attractive, with blonde hair pulled back in a clip and a smart-looking business jacket with a pink collared shirt and black skirt. She held her hand out, smiling.
“Nice to meet you again, Mr. Bassett,” she said. I must’ve looked confused because she added, “We met at your father’s funeral. Briefly, though. My name’s Erin.”
“Oh, right,” I said, though I couldn’t recall meeting her. There had been a different receptionist here the day I’d come when Isla had to meet up with Cal. “Hi there. Nice to see you again. I’m here to see Cal.”
“He’s in his office. I’ll notify him that you’re here.”
“Great. Thanks.”
Past the receptionist’s desk was essentially a big room with partition board and dozens of desks, all of which were occupied by people that I sort of recognized, but couldn’t actually think of any of their names. Some were on the phone, others were typing on keyboards. I gave a little wave but hurried through, not wanting to stop and have a conversation yet.
“Hello,” I said. I continued past the glass-walled conference room, which was just a huge, oblong-shaped table with many tall-backed leather office chairs around it. It reminded me of a terrarium. My dad’s office was to the right; Cal’s was to the left. I went to the left and was about to knock on the door when it opened.
“Levi,” Cal said. He made a show of looking at his watch, a large gold Rolex. “It’s ten-thirty. Nice of you to decide to show up.”
The way he said it, it was as if I were late, though I was pretty sure we hadn’t specified a certain time. “Was I supposed to be here earlier?” I asked. “I don’t remember telling you what time I’d be arriving.”
He stepped back and gestured with his hand. “Let’s go into my office.” I stepped in and he closed the door. “Have a seat.”
Both he and my father had corner offices, though from what I could remember, Dad’s office was bigger, had the better view. Cal’s was still nice, nonetheless, and I sat down on the couch. Cal took a seat opposite me in a white leather wingback chair.
“You’re right,” he said, “we didn’t agree on a time.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“But would you like to
know what your father’s schedule was like? Would you like to know what an
average day for him looked like?”
I was about to say that I knew what an average day for my father looked like,
but then I realized, I didn’t have any clue at all. “Sure,” I said.
“Your father woke up every morning around five-thirty. He arrived here about forty-five minutes later, had his coffee while he read the Wall Street Journal, and then he had appointments and client calls for the rest of the day. Often ending with a business dinner.”
“Dad was very busy.”
“Our situation right now is a bit delicate,” Cal said. He rubbed his hands together and exhaled loudly. “I’ll be very honest with you, Levi: I find it rather troubling that your father has left his interest in the company to you, someone who has no experience with finance, other than freely spending money that isn’t his.”
“Ouch,” I said. “That’s a little harsh.”
“But not entirely untrue,
is it?”
“You’re making it sound worse than it really is. I think everything is going to
be okay.” “We have a management team,” Cal said. “These are people who are very
passionate, very dedicated to their work. They’ve gone through the CFA program,
they have MBAs, they’ve worked incredibly hard to get where they are. They take
their job seriously. We have 3.1 trillion dollars under asset management. I
know you might think that you have some clue about large sums of money, but I
can assure you, this is more money than you could ever possibly conceive of. Do
you even understand what we do here?” Cal asked. “What your father did here?”
“Manage people’s money?” I said weakly.
He gave me a stern look. “Yes, but it’s so much more than that. We leverage our clients’ assets and provide them with diversification and investment opportunities. And when it came to market forecasting, your father had a gift, which unfortunately isn’t something that can be taught.”
“He was always asking me
to come into the office so he could show me what he did,” I said. “So he
must’ve thought that some of it was teachable.”
“Some of it is. Most of it is, actually. But in every line of work, there’s
always going to be a few that have an innate talent for it, something that
simply can’t be taught. Can’t really even be put into words. So I’m not even
going to try.”
“Fair enough. And trust me, Cal, I’m not coming in here thinking that I know what to do, because it’s probably pretty obvious that I don’t. I would like to learn though.”
“Well,” Cal said, “seeing
as you have no experience in finance whatsoever, I expect that you’ll be
willing to step back and let the people who have been doing this for a while
continue to do what they’re doing, with little interference.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said. “But I do own the majority of shares in this
company, so I am technically the owner. Right?”
Cal nodded grudgingly. “That is correct. Your father worked hard, Levi, which
is something I hope you don’t overlook. It’s also something I hope you don’t
try to undo, either through ignorance or maliciousness. There’s no reason for
either.”
“I’m not trying to undo anything. And I don’t feel the least bit malicious about this whole thing. Ignorant, yeah, maybe a little, but I’m here to learn. I want to learn. Dad tried to have this talk to me right before he died and I pretty much blew him off, which I regret now. He wanted me to take a more active role here, and at the time, I didn’t want to.”
“I know,” Cal said. “It was always a hope of your father’s that you show an interest in business. It’s too bad it’s happening now, when he’s not here to see it. What I think might be best is if you let us do what we’re continuing to do. You do what you’ve always done. If you start meddling in stuff that you don’t understand, our clients are going to get scared, and they might decide to go elsewhere. We don’t want that. Your father wouldn’t want that. He’s worked so hard, Levi; we don’t want that to be for nothing.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “But I would like to be a part of it.” It was tempting to just go back to what I’d always been doing, pretend that Dad was really still around, but I didn’t want to not do this just because it was a little intimidating. Okay, a lot intimidating. Did BCM really handle trillions of dollars? That seemed like an absurd amount of money.
“Why don’t you go down to your office,” Cal said. He stood up, so I did too, and we left his office and he walked me down to my dad’s. Mine now. “I’ll give you some time to just think things over,” he said.
I stepped into Dad’s office and pushed the door closed behind me. The office was immaculate. The carpet was a square pattern, cream-colored; the walls, where they weren’t glass, were white, except for the wall behind his desk, which was painted a deep red. I went over to the desk and sat in his black leather executive chair. The chair was comfortable and could rock back and forth. There was nothing on his desk except a black leather desk pad and atop that, a laptop, which was closed. I knew that Dad had spent more time in this office probably than he had at home, more time here than he ever did with me. And now I was supposed to take this over, I was supposed to know what to do. The thing was, Cal was right—I had no idea, no clue, no experience whatsoever.