Chapter Three
Chase
Sleeping was by far one of my favorite things to do. Unfortunately, it was not my father’s favorite thing for me to do. I sat up in bed as I heard his booming voice from the front room of my house.
Instantly, I regretted giving him the key.
“You don’t understand what having a job is. If you don’t show up to work, you don’t get paid. That’s what the real world is like,” my father, Reynold, said as he stood at the end of my bed.
“Slow the hell down, Dad. I went to work last week.”
“Last week. Really? Last week. I wish one of your brothers had stayed with the company. It makes me sick that you’re the only one willing to work for me, yet you don’t work at all.”
I saw the vein in my father’s neck pulse as he tried to calm his emotions over my work ethic. I didn’t actually mind going to work, but no one seemed interested in my opinions, and the company was still stuck in the ’90’s most of the time. That was exactly why my brothers had all moved on to other jobs. Dad never let anyone have an opinion in his company. When I made suggestions for streamlining our processes or adding social media, I was often met with negative feedback.
“You’re my son, Chase. And I had always hoped that I would be able to pass the company on to you, but I don’t know.”
“Dad, come on. I’m working hard. I just do a lot of shit from home. And, let’s be honest, you would have picked any of my brothers over me if they had wanted to be involved in the company.”
“Chase, you have to set an example. You’re more than just my son. You’re a high-level executive in the company and everything you do reflects back on us as an organization. And we aren’t talking about your brothers. Jackson, George, Nathan, and Jeremiah all had their opportunity to work for me, and they chose not to. You made the choice to work, so I expect you to actually work.”
“I know, Dad. I try to set a good example.”
“Then why did I pick up the newspaper this morning and read a story about you flying to Dubai with the wife of an Atlanta Braves player?”
I cringed.
I had hoped that story wouldn’t get published, and even had tried to bribe the tabloid not to write it. But knowing that it had been published in the Herald meant that more than just the tabloids had pictures from that trip.
“In my defense, I didn’t know she was married.”
“Chase, she has her wedding ring on in the photo.”
“Hmmm, that’s a wedding ring?”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. You spend your nights out with married women, and you’re drinking and partying all the time. I’ve just about had it with you. Life isn’t all about fun and games. When are you going to settle down? When are you going to get over this wild phase?”
“I’ll come to work today. Will that make you feel better?”
“Don’t mock me, Chase. Either you want a job at Foster Industries or you don’t.”
“Dad, give me a fucking break. You’re not going to fire me. I’m your son.”
“That’s it. I’m done with this. I thought closing our joint account was enough, but apparently it isn’t. As of today, I will no longer carry your loans, pay your debts, or provide you any financial assistance. You want to be a grown up, then I need to see you start acting like one. Settle down, find a nice girl, maybe even show up for work.”
“Are you seriously saying you’re not even going to pay for my house until I settle down?”
I saw my father think about everything for a moment. I knew he wanted me to calm down my lifestyle, and I had felt the money pinch when he stopped paying for most of my things. But cutting me off entirely meant I would have no money at all.
“I planned to hand this company over to you at the stockholders’ meeting. Now, I can’t see that as an option. I’m going to start looking for a suitable replacement.”
“Seriously, Dad? You’re going to fucking leave me with nothing?”
“You have until the shareholders’ meeting to get your life together. I don’t know exactly how you’re going to do that in only a few short months. But if you don’t, I’ll hand the company over to someone else. I would suggest you start by showing up to work every day!”
He turned and walked out of my room. The look on his face showed me that he was one hundred percent serious. I had seen that look before, and there was no way I could fight him on that. I had seen the same look in his eyes when he had told all four of my brothers they either needed to commit to working with him or leave.
I had seen that look in his eyes when I was in high school and continually fucked around and got bad grades. My father had always allowed us to make a reasonable amount of mistakes on our own, but at some point, he would snap and put his foot down. He got tired of the messing around and forced my brothers and me to make a decision about what it was we really wanted out of life.
My brothers had all tried to work with Dad, but he was too difficult for them to get along with. The job itself was a great job. The company was a great company. The problem always came back to working with Dad. He was stubborn and stuck in the past. Any kind of innovation was difficult for him, unless it was specific to the parts we made and the costs to make them. He seemed to totally miss the idea that social media, websites, and other changes could really bring in a lot of money or save a lot of money.
But I had to try. I couldn’t let him push me out of the company as he had my brothers. I wasn’t really good at anything else. I had to make it work with my father.
All four of my brothers had business degrees and other passions they wanted to pursue. I didn’t have anything else I wanted to do. I loved working at my father’s company. I just needed to fix things and bring him into the future. The constraint of showing up to the office day after day wasn’t really my thing, either. I liked it much more when he sent me off to check on our vendors or factories. But, I also needed to build up my persona so people actually took me seriously. I couldn’t make any changes if everyone just thought I was my father’s fuck-up of a son.
I jumped up and ran after my dad.
“Dad, don’t leave like this. Let’s sit down and talk about this. Stay. Have some breakfast.”
He paused at my front door and looked at me as if he was going to just leave.
“Make me some eggs and we can talk. But I’m not changing my mind. You need to show some kind of stability or I can’t give you the company. Stockholders need someone they can trust, and they aren’t about to trust you after all the publicity I’ve seen about you and your women lately.”
“I know, Dad.”
“What happened? You used to be so invested in the company. Is it all the women?”
I had to laugh. My father talking about me and my women was pretty damn funny. He was the king of affairs and secret rendezvous. Admittedly, that was all in his past. It was still hard for me to talk about leading a moral and upstanding life with a man who had cheated on my mother at least a dozen times while I was young.
My memory wasn’t all that good, but I could still remember a few of the women I had seen him with. My mother used to drive me past his office at lunchtime, and she would check to see who he was going to lunch with. Most of the time, it was a young blonde or brunette from the office. Sometimes, he would meet the women at a local restaurant, and other times, they left work with him.
I still remembered how he’d grab onto them and kiss them with so much passion that my mother would burst into tears. As a young boy, I vowed never to do such a thing to a woman as long as I lived. That was why one-night stands worked better for me.
The few times I had been in relationships, fidelity was something I could always assure my girlfriend of. I absolutely refused to ever cheat on a girl. Although, if they chose to cheat on their men, that didn’t seem to bother me as much. One-night stands were the best solution I could come up with. I met them, enjoyed them, and moved on. There wasn’t any of that emotional stuff to bog down my life with.
Women often didn’t even bother to hide the fact that they had a boyfriend or husband from me. They seemed justified in their betrayal and often told me of all the affairs their man had already had, and that they were in search of getting even with him.
I suspected that the baseball player’s wife I had traveled with probably made sure the paparazzi knew where we were. She was angry with her husband and desperate to get back at him, after he had an affair with a famous actress.
It seemed a sad existence to stay in a relationship where both people just wanted to have affairs and hurt the other person. That certainly wasn’t something I ever wanted to deal with. If I ever did find a woman to settle down with, I figured I would know she was the right one because I wouldn’t want to let her go after just one night.
“Here are your eggs,” I said as I joined my father at my kitchen table.
“Chase, I know it seems like I'm hard on you, but you have to get your life together. Meet a nice girl or something. Find a hobby other than sex and alcohol. You need to start finding your way in life.”
“I know, Dad,” I said.
The truth was I had thought about living a calmer lifestyle, but I just hadn’t been motivated enough. Spending my nights at clubs and parties was an easy way to keep busy all the time. I didn’t have to worry about the silence of being home alone or the loneliness of not having people in my life who cared about me.
Gambling had also recently become a fun hobby of mine. I enjoyed dabbling in some underground poker tournaments and betting on sports games. It was a surprising advantage when you knew the quarterback of a team was going through personal problems with his wife. Or when the head pitcher had just cheated, and his wife kept him up all night yelling at him.
I did have my family and my two best friends, Mathew and Carlos. But everyone else had their own lives and didn’t have time for me very much. My brothers were all busy. They just had too much going on for me to bother them. My best friend Carlos got married – it was a sad day when he got married to Maria. He had been my last hold out on the party scene, and when he settled down, I had to start going out alone. Mathew had a steady girlfriend and never spent much time away from her at all.
“Here’s the deal, Chase. You still have your job. Start showing up, and you’ll get a paycheck. It’s plenty enough for you to live on, if you stop buying rounds of drinks at clubs and throwing your money around like you have a money tree.”
“How can I show you I’m responsible enough to take over?”
“I don’t know. You’ll just need to start making some major changes, and we can talk about it. Certainly not seeing your face on the front of any newspapers for a while would help your case.”
“Dad, I’m going to make you proud.”
“I hope you will.”
We hugged it out, and my father finally left. I was left standing in my million-dollar house, hoping I would be able to figure out some way to get my bills paid. The good news was that if I showed up to work and waited for my paycheck, I took home over $20,000 a month. The bad news was that wasn’t enough money.
I had been borrowing money from Jose Escabar lately, and I didn’t really want to get behind on those payments. He was tougher than any bank would ever be. I had heard horror stories about what he does to people when they don’t pay him back on time. And I definitely didn’t want to be one of those people.
My gut told me I should have told my father about my hard money loans with Escabar, but I decided he certainly wouldn’t think I was being responsible if he knew about them. Unfortunately, I needed to get the money together quickly to make a payment to Escabar.
I clicked through my bank accounts on my phone and quickly realized I needed to get dressed and show up for work. Escabar expected a $10,000 payment by the end of the month, and that only covered a portion of what I owed him.
Panic started to set in at the thought of not being about to pay him back. I needed to figure out a new plan to get him his money.
It wasn’t an option. Paying Escabar back had to be my top priority. Nothing else mattered as much as getting him his money. I had to get my shit together. I had to figure out a way to make my father trust me and quickly, before I ended up having my legs broken.
I walked into my closet and pulled out one of my custom suits. If I had to head into work, I was going to be dressed for the part. Work wasn’t that hard for me. The problem was more in dealing with my expectations. I always wanted everyone to be happy that I was there. It was such a letdown to see people look at me as if I shouldn’t be in the office. I understood what my father was saying, though, and I would have to show up to work more often if I wanted the people in the company to believe in my ideas.
If my father wanted to see that I could lead the company, then that was exactly what he would see. I put my tailored suit on, with my Hermes shoes, and called our car service to come take me to work.
“Mr. Foster, I’m sorry, but you are no longer an authorized user of this account,” the operator at Select Cars said.
“What? How am I supposed to get to work?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Your father removed you from the account.”
“Fuck!”
I hung up the phone and paced around my house. I had a car in the garage, but I hadn’t driven it in ages. I couldn’t even remember where my keys were. I was about to give up, but then, I remembered how Escabar had treated the last man who didn’t pay him back.
I had watched him tear off the guy’s fingernails when he didn’t have enough money to pay back his loan. I wasn’t about to have any of my fingernails, or any other body part, removed. I needed to get things together so my father would give me his company, and I could have my financial stability back. Otherwise, I was going to be in big trouble with Escabar.
I needed to get my ass to work.
Why would my father take away the car service? It was how I always got to and from work. It was ridiculous. But, I wasn’t about to let that stop me.
I dug through the stacks of bills on my table and found the keys to my BMW underneath everything. My father was going to have to work harder if he was going to prevent me from proving that I deserved to be in charge of the company.
After a couple wrong turns, I finally arrived at work around ten o’clock, ready to take on my job and show my father just how responsible I was. It wasn’t the morning I had planned, but I was ready to kick some ass at work.