Chapter Six
Adam
"Jeez, that's hard core," Bugsy said as I recounted my parents' reaction to the news that we'd be running the Agape Resources wind turbine project on our own. "An arranged marriage in this day and age? That's some kind of serious fucked up!"
Jeffrey "Bugsy" Wiseman had been my best friend since the first day in fourth grade when we'd punched it out on the playground to prove who was a more loyal Chicago Bears fan. Bugsy had won the fight by landing a punch that had broken my nose, but afterwards he'd led me to the nurse's office and asked her to call his father, a world-renowned plastic surgeon, then solemnly waited until his father had shown up to assess the damage. Once Dr. Wiseman had declared that there would be no lasting damage, but that I needed to avoid sneezing for a few days, Bugsy held out his hand and declared a truce. I solemnly shook it and from that day on we were best friends.
I quickly learned that Bugsy had been nicknamed for his ability to emulate the famous Jewish mobster, Bugsy Siegel. Like his namesake, my blond-haired, blue-eyed friend with the jaw that, even as a child, looked like it was made of chiseled marble, was exceptionally handsome and had a charismatic personality that could charm even the most reticent. My friend was also adept at wheeling and dealing on the playground, and often wound up with a pocket full of lunch money after running a card or dice game somewhere out of view of the adult who monitored the playground. No one ever reported him because Bugsy had a way of making your loss feel like the biggest win of your life.
We'd gone to the same college prep school and had both been admitted to MIT the same year. We'd roomed together and earned a reputation on campus as the mobster and his sidekick, which was mostly attributed to Bugsy's penchant for dressing like a modern version of a character out of a 1930s gangster movie. Not many could have pulled it off, but, for Bugsy, it worked. Girls fell for him with such regularity that I often had to run interference and deliver the news that he had moved on and they should, too. Sometimes the girls would cry, and then it would be my job to comfort them. Often, the girls would turn their attention from Bugsy to me, but those infatuations had more to do with the girls wanting to stay inside Bugsy's orbit than wanting to date me, so I shrugged it off and spent a lot of time in the engineering lab. I watched Bugsy work his magic, though, and over time I cultivated my own methods of impressing girls. But despite my efforts, I often struck out. Soon I gave up chasing girls and focused my attention on the engineering lab where I could work on one of the many projects that Bugsy and I conjured up during our late night drinking sessions.
The lab was where Bugsy and I did our best work. During our freshman year, we'd heard an engineer from Denmark talk about the potential of wind power and I had become obsessed with creating a turbine that could be used in smaller areas than the traditional wind farms required. We spent years mapping out potential designs and then testing them in various yards around the MIT campus, but what we accumulated was failed project after failed project. Nothing had panned out—until we were seniors.
One afternoon, we were in the sustainable energy engineering lab when Bugsy and I finally hit upon an idea that seemed like it could work for the individual consumer. It was an individual turbine that generated more than enough power for one home, and allowed for the excess power to be transferred to a holding station where it could be redistributed to those without turbine power. The design was small and sleek, which brought down the cost of manufacturing it, and the cost of installing the turbine would be recouped through the sale of energy back to the grid, and the overall cost of energy for the consumer would be dramatically lowered. It took us another year to perfect the design and test it, and by then we were both being courted by MIT to pursue Master's degrees.
Bugsy turned down MIT's funding offer in order to start Agape Resources. His father gave him a small portion of the start-up money, and Bugsy had hustled in his usual way to come up with the rest. We discussed asking my father to invest, but both of us had decided that this would be an absolute last resort. Bugsy understood that my father was a hardline oilman who was not going to take kindly to his son developing the technology to cut into his profits. He had also witnessed the results of my father's violent temper, but we had an unspoken agreement never to discuss this aspect of my family.
When I approached my father about starting my own business, he told me in no uncertain terms that I could either pursue a master's or step into a position at Wallace Oil: those were my only two options. So, I'd started down the road to the Master's degree, but a year into it, I'd realized that all the theoretical knowledge I was amassing wasn't anywhere near as interesting as working with my best friend to try and make our dream a reality. In the middle of the spring semester, I quit school and took an entry-level job in R&D at my father's company. It had been the kind of job that kept me busy enough, but not so busy that I couldn't spend part of my work day consulting with Bugsy on turbine designs and possible investment avenues. For the past four years, I'd split my time between the bogus job at Wallace Oil and my project with Bugsy. Now that I found myself without a job and exiled from my family, I was unsure what the next step was going to be.
"It was cold. They're both cold, and I'm just a tool in their game," I replied. "The question is, what am I going to do now? I've got few assets and no place to live, and I'm definitely not going to marry that girl. I don't care if she's queen of the universe with the face of an angel and the body of a porn star."
"Hmmm, you sure you don't want to reconsider? Well, you're welcome to stay with me as long as you need to," Bugsy said as he motioned me over toward a display he'd had set up in one corner of the office. Agape Resources' offices were, in reality, a space that had once been leased by the Church of the Divine, a fly-by-night religious ministry that had moved out quickly, leaving the office space full of church-related materials that Bugsy had incorporated into the office layout. Bugsy hadn't bothered to remodel. Instead, he'd set up his desk on the platform where the preacher had given his Sunday sermons and put my desk at the bottom of the steps, making me the single member of the co-worker congregation. I hadn't even gotten a desk chair; instead, I sat on a wooden pew, which, in all honesty, made for the perfect place to stretch out and think when things got stressful.
"I was thinking maybe we could move up the northern Indiana project, and I could go on the road," I suggested as Bugsy handed me a stack of printouts that he'd dug out of the bottom of a pile of papers. He wasn't neat, but there was a definite order to his disorganization.
"Take a look at that report," he said as if he hadn't heard me. "It talks about the potential for individual power generation. Harvard did the study."
"Did you hear me?" I asked as I sat down on a step and began reading the introduction to the study. Irritated, I muttered, "I already saw that one. In fact, I was the one who gave it to you, Bugs."
"Yeah, yeah, I heard you," he muttered as he tapped the keyboard and then printed something out. He walked over to the printer, pulled out the sheets of paper, and then walked over to me where he sat down and handed me the sheets. "Here's your car rental, a room at the local Amish B&B, and a list of contacts for Corner Grove. Why don't you hold off on leaving for a few days and we'll celebrate your independence?"
"What the hell?" I said as I took the papers. "When did you do this?"
"Eh, I've been working on the Indiana project for a while now," he said. "Piece by piece, my friend, that's how you eat the whole elephant."
"Are you on drugs?" I asked looking up at him on his platform.
"No, but that could be arranged. Interested?" he asked. When I shook my head, he continued, "C'mon, Wallace, we need to cut loose and have some fun! Besides, I've already arranged a night of pure debauchery for us."
"What the hell, Bugs?"
"I'm always three steps ahead of you when it comes to planning," he said grinning mischievously. "We'll head out to the clubs and throw a blowout bash to end all parties. We'll get the usual suspects to pony up and foot the bill, and then we'll rake in some cash to fund the next phase of Agape's development."
"Are you serious?" I asked.
"As a heart attack, my friend," he grinned. "I'm serious, Adam. We can fund this thing fully if we play our cards right. We'll get some investments and we'll plough them back into the business and fund your trip. Plus, we'll have some fun doing it. Don't tell me you've forgotten how to have fun!"
"What do you think?" I shot back defensively.
"Now that's the spirit!" Bugsy said as he cheerfully punched my shoulder. He turned serious for a moment and said, "You know you're going to have to live on a budget while you're selling the project, don't you? Can you do that?"
"You're an asshole, you know that?" I said shaking my head. "I practically live like a monk."
"Uh huh, a monk who wears Prada and Ferragamo," he said with a knowing look. "Look, all I'm saying is that you need to keep the expenses to the absolute minimum on this trip, but you need to make it look like we have all the money in the world. We need to land the contract and get the turbines into production with the money we have right now. We can't afford any additional expenses because my dad's investment money runs out at the end of the summer. I want to put as much as possible in savings so we don't have to cut corners on the design elements."
"I get it, I get it," I said waving him off without looking up from the report I was reading. Bugsy had always respected the fact that I remembered more of the technical details than he did, and that my methods of researching and designing the turbines had been what had gotten us to this point. He was the public face of Agape Resources, but he never failed to acknowledge that we were equal partners in the business. I muttered as I read, "Besides, I'll only need to be down there for two days—three at the most.
"I hope that's all the time you'll need. What do you think?" he asked after I'd quickly skimmed the report.
"I think we'd better get moving on our plan or else these engineers are going to beat us to the punch," I said seriously. "They've got a lot more funding behind them and since they're being touted by Harvard and its alumni, they'll get more publicity. However, I'm not convinced that their turbine can beat ours."
"Well, there's that good news," Bugsy said with a grim smile as he ran a hand through his tousled, blond curls. Over the past few months, he'd morphed his look from modern old-school gangster to hygienic surfer dude. It wasn't the first time Bugsy had changed his look, but I knew this look wouldn't last long because it didn't offer the seriousness he was going to need as he negotiated contracts.
I, on the other hand, had a look that hadn't changed much since the fourth grade. Tall and lanky with dark eyes, thick eyebrows, and full lips, I'd occasionally let my curly black mop of hair grow only to head into the barber and request that he hack it back into a more tamed look. But no matter what I did with it, my hair always looked slightly wild, making me always appear to be more serious than I actually was. I attributed part of this to the fact that next to Bugsy, everyone looked serious."
"So, let's get this party started, shall we?" Bugsy said as he began tapping the screen on his phone. He scrolled through his contacts and zeroed in on the gang he wanted to fund tonight's action.
While I finished rereading the Harvard study and making notes on the plans, Bugsy called around and found a bar in the South Loop that was willing to host the festivities. In true Bugsy fashion, he arranged for everything to be ready to go in a short period of time, and then winked at me as he finished his last call.
"Let's go have a sauna at the club and then grab some dinner," he said as he tucked the phone in his front pocket and motioned toward the door. "Tonight we're going to let it all hang out, my good friend! We’ve got ten days until you’ve got to get out and sell, sell, sell! Let’s make the most of it!"
I knew from experience that this statement could have many different meanings, but I'd also learned that it was usually better not to try and anticipate what they might be.
#
"Will you look at that?" Bugsy said as he flashed me a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. When we pulled up at the front door of Blast, Bugsy's nightclub of choice, there was a line stretching out almost two blocks. Club kids dressed in a wide array of designer clothes texted each other as they waited to find out if they'd be deemed worthy of entry.
"This is insane!" I said as Bugsy tossed the keys to his black Audi R8, a graduation gift from his parents, to the valet and warned him not to scratch it.
"It's a great turn out," Bugsy said scanning the line and quickly identifying several scantily clad young women that he wanted let in immediately. He indicated which girls he had chosen and the bouncer sent a liaison out into the crowd to fetch them as he waved us in.
Inside, the club was pounding with a beat provided by Kygo, an EDM DJ that Bugsy had asked to fly in and oversee the night's dance music. The disco ball above the dance floor spun in time to the music, shooting out short bursts of light to the beat. As the expensively dressed bodies writhed on the dance floor below us, Bugsy popped the cork on a bottle of Cristal and quickly poured the golden liquid into flutes, offering one to each of the pretty ladies who'd been ushered onto the private balcony overlooking the dance floor.
"To new ventures and new acquaintances!" Bugsy shouted holding his glass up in a triumphant toast. "May we live like kings!"
I gave my friend a wide grin as I tapped my glass against his and then drank deeply from it before turning my attention to a beautiful redhead in an emerald-green dress that looked like little more than a handkerchief. She smiled at me over the edge of her glass and then suggestively licked her brightly painted lips after she finished drinking.
I was mesmerized by her green eyes and her voluptuous body, and before I knew it, we were headed for the dance floor where she cast a magical spell as she pressed her body against mine as we spent the next several hours engaging dancing with and grinding against one another to the beat of the music.
On the last trip back up the stairs to the balcony, I took her hand and pulled her into a side room off one of the landings. I knew these rooms well because the club had specifically remodeled them to serve as convenient spots for quickies between club goers. Formerly supply storage closets, the rooms now had low lighting and plenty of space, and more importantly, they kept the bathrooms free of the less savory activities that tended to require police intervention.
"In here," she said as she grabbed my hand and pulled me into the room, closing the door behind us. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me toward her for a deep kiss as she pressed her body against mine. She was aggressive, but I liked that and I followed her lead. When she moved my hands to her shoulders I slipped the thin straps of her dress off and slid them down to expose her large, heavy breasts. She smiled as she wiggled the dress down over her hips and stepped out of it. Clad only in her strappy high heels, she unzipped my pants as she leaned forward and lightly bit my bottom lip before dropping to her knees and taking the entire length of my shaft in her mouth.
"Wait, wait," I gasped.
"What's wrong?" she said looking up at me as she stuck her lip out and gave me a faux pout. "Don't you want me to?"
"No, I do, I just..." I began as she leaned forward and deep throated me again.
I groaned loudly as I slid my fingers deep into her thick hair and pulled it away from her lovely face so I could watch her as she licked and sucked her way from tip to base, stopping only long enough to run her tongue around the edge and lap up the liquid that already oozed from the tip. She smiled as she looked up at me and took my entire shaft deep into the back of her throat where she held it for a moment before pulling back and teasing me with her tongue.
"Oh my God, baby," I groaned as she sucked harder and moved her mouth faster. I hear her moaning as she moved her mouth up and down, and I couldn't stop myself from holding the back of her head and thrusting deeper into her mouth. She moaned loudly and nodded frantically as I moved my hips back and forth, using her mouth and feeling her lips pulling me closer and closer to an intense climax.
An instant later, I exploded and felt the redhead stop moving as I throbbed and jerked in her mouth. As the waves of pleasure flowed over my body, I sagged against the wall and looked down. The girl's green eyes looked up at me as she flashed me a sexy grin. I reached down and pulled her up off her knees and kissed her deeply before asking, "Now, what can I do for you?"
"Oh, nah, I'm good," she said as she tipped her head sideways and smiled. "Bugsy paid me up front, so it's all good! Is there anything else you want? He told me the sky was the limit!"
The pleasure I'd felt suddenly sunk into my gut and twisted like a knot as I realized what had happened. I forced a smile as I shook my head and said tersely, "I'm good. Thank you." The redhead grabbed her dress off the floor and quickly slipped it over her head then leaned over and kissed me before pulling the door open and heading back into the club. I followed her as soon as I'd put a lid on my anger.
I found Bugsy in the balcony surrounded by a circle of stunners. He was entertaining them with a few of the lame magic tricks he'd learned specifically for this purpose.
"I need to talk to you," I growled as I motioned toward the hallway. He followed me after assuring the girls that he'd be right back.
"What's up?" Bugsy asked as he flipped a quarter with one hand.
"You paid that girl to have sex with me?"
"Yeah, so?"
"You son of a bitch," I said as I grabbed the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. "You don't think I can get my own women? You're such an asshole!"
"Hey, hey, hey, the watch the suit," Bugsy said not at all concerned about the fact that his best friend and business partner was extremely angry with him. "Look, I know you can get your own women. You've done it a million times. It's been a rough day and I just thought I'd grease the wheel and make sure there weren't any loose strings that would interfere with our business right now."
"Fuck you, Bugsy," I grumbled as I let go of him. "I don't need your fucking charity!"
"It's not charity, Adam," he said calmly. "It's just good business. Neither one of us can afford to have a woman interfering with our business right now. Keep it simple and straight forward and you can still get your rocks off, you just won't get trapped in something that will distract you."
"You're a fucking cynic, you know that, don't you?" I muttered.
"No, I'm a pragmatist, my friend," he said with a smile.
"Same difference," I said as I shot him a dirty look.
"No, it really isn't," he replied seriously. "A cynic thinks everyone's aim is to screw him. A pragmatist realizes that everyone will, but doesn't take it personally."
"Fuck you, Bugsy," I said as I turned and stormed away.
"See you at home!" Bugsy called after me.
I marched out of the club and headed back toward Bugsy's apartment, angry and feeling more alone than I ever had before.