Chapter 1
Lanie
I stared at the screen, feeling like I was gazing right through it, as if it weren't even there. The figures in front of me, all the numbers and symbols splayed across the spreadsheet, they all seemed to melt into indecipherable hieroglyphs. It felt as if I were floating, floating up out of my office chair, out over the city of San Jose, which stretched out across the horizon visible through my floor-to-ceiling window, shrouded in a misty fog on this cold fall day. And as I floated, I drifted, pulled by some unseen current across San Francisco Bay, over the water, out toward the endless blue of the Pacific.
“Lanie.”
Somewhere beyond the clouds, a distant voice seemed to be calling my name, but I couldn't quite hear it, as if it had just been an echo coming from the ground below, so far below that skyscrapers looked like dollhouses and people like ants, and—
“Lanie!”
I snapped out of the daydream, yanked back to reality by the harsh voice.
“Uh yeah, Todd?” I asked, looking up.
Todd was in his fifties, and while some guys that age could still look good if they took care of themselves, Todd hadn't taken care of himself. Ever. The years had not been kind to him. He had a shiny bald pate, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair (far more pepper than salt) that still clung tenaciously to the sides of his round head. He had terrible posture, and walked around slumped over as if carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was short, maybe five and half feet, and had a bad case of “skinny fat”—thin, pale arms and legs, but a very round, protruding paunch that threatened to burst through his cheap shirt with its missing button and permanent sweat stains under the arms. Oh, and to top it all off, he had a god-awful case of halitosis. Usually you could smell him before you saw him. I don’t know why my father kept him around.
Well, all right, he was unattractive and kinda creepy, but he had a great nose for investments, I guess. He had helped my father make a lot of money over the years. Still, as talented as he was in that area, I still felt a little shiver of disgust crawl down my spine every time he leered at me. He was always trying to peek down the front of my blouse, and I had caught him staring at my ass plenty of times as well. Instinctively, I pulled the front of my blouse closed when he stepped into my office.
“Your father wants to see you,” he grunted. “Something about the Meyer file, I think. I dunno. Just go see him. You don't look like you're too busy there.”
“Uh, thanks Todd, I'll do that.”
He just kept standing in the door, staring at me.
“Is there anything else, Todd?”
He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something, but then promptly closed it and shook his head. He turned and shuffled off, his round shoulders hunched over, and disappeared.
Suddenly, the message alert tone sounded on my phone. I got it out and saw that it was a Quickchat notification from my younger sister.
“Oh Alice, what is it now?” I muttered under my breath. My sister was a lot younger than me—she was still in her teens—and she seemed to spend all her time on this new Quickchat app which was taking the country by storm. I guess the big appeal was that you could talk about something in the short ten or fifteen second video, and just from what you said, clickable links would appear on your screen.
With a sigh, I opened her Quickchat message.
“Oh, my word, Lanie,” she said in her short video, “you won't believe Kim Kardashian's new Instagram photos! She's trying to break the internet again! Check 'em out! Soooo crazy, yo!”
A link popped onto the screen, obviously to the new photos. I had no interest in clicking on it. Man, these teens really needed to find more productive ways to occupy their free time.
I put my phone away and stood up, relieved to have a break from work for a while, because today things had just felt really mind-numbing. I had hardly gotten anything done, and it was already eleven in the morning.
I walked briskly out of my office, heels clopping on the slick tiled floor, and walked to the end of the corridor where my father's office was. There was the familiar sign on the door, reading “Fred Carmichael, CEO.” I had to walk past this door every time I headed to the bathroom, and was thus reminded multiple times a day that my father was head of the company I worked for. Hell, every time I printed something with our letterhead—Carmichael Inc—I was reminded of this fact.
I had initially been grateful that my father had arranged a position for me in his investment company right after I had finished grad school. I had hoped to have gained some valuable experience and insight into the world of investing, which had always been my passion—and I had, in a sense, but it hadn't been the stepping stone I had hoped it would be.
No, instead I had been stuck here, dealing with old people's conservative, safe investments into established industries and companies. Slow, steady progress, low risk. That was what my father dealt in. And while it paid off overall—slowly—very slowly, I might add—it just wasn't what a young go-getter like myself was really after. I wanted to get into exciting, high-risk (but very high reward potential) tech start-ups and cryptocurrencies. After all, we were here in Silicon Valley, heart of America's tech industry, with some of the brightest minds in the world flocking here to try to make it.
My father just wasn't interested, and instead of allowing me even a little leeway to try to venture into this field, he simply kept me on old, “safe” investments for his wary, elderly clients.
I sighed, feeling like I was stuck in a rut, and knocked on the door.
“Come on in.”
While we had been out in California for most of my life, my father was a Texan, born and raised. Despite his decades of living in California, he still retained his Texan accent.
“Hi, Dad,” I said as I walked in.
He smiled warmly at me. Even though we disagreed on business strategies, I loved him, and he loved me dearly. However, in here, business came first.
“Have a seat, Lanie,” he said, pointing at the chair in front of his desk.
“What's up?” I asked as I sat down.
He stared at me for a while. It was unsettling, almost like looking into a mirror, because he and I had the same eyes. The facial structure was of course very different—I had inherited my mother's slender, petite build and bone structure, while my father was broad-shouldered and heavyset—but I had gotten his large brown eyes and strong eyebrows. It was uncanny how similar his were to mine (minus the eyebrow plucking, of course).
“You aren't happy here, Lanie, are you?”
The directness of his question shocked me—he was usually very diplomatic, and talked around issues before getting to them, but today he was cutting straight to the chase.
“Well . . . no, Dad, I'm not. And you know why.”
He nodded sagely, still smiling.
“You and I, we see things quite differently when it comes to investing. I'm from the old school, and you—you're a young, driven risk-taker, ain't you?”
“I just want to try to venture into something a little . . . a little less safe, Dad. You know this.”
“I do, and I've been thinking about it. You've been here for two years now, and you've worked hard. You've done well, even though the cases I've assigned you haven't been ones you would consider exciting, risky, or even interesting.”
“Well Dad—,” I began, but he held up a hand to silence me.
“I ain't done yet, Lanie,” he said, his tone stern but gentle. “Hear me out, will ya?”
I nodded.
“And I knew that you weren't interested in those cases I was assigning you. I knew it. But do you know why I did it?”
“You wanted to see if I could handle responsibility? If I could work hard and put in the hours and effort required to handle a prudent investment, even if it really wasn't in the field I was interested in?”
The corners of his mouth curled up into a broad, proud smile.
“That's it,” he said. “That's it, my girl. I'm sorry that you've been doing something that you're not interested in all this time, and I'm sorry if you've felt that I was holding you back. You know that wasn't my intention.”
“I know, Dad, I know.”
“But you do understand the value of the experience I've given you? You know why I did what I did, don't you?”
I thought about this for a bit. He had given me valuable experience, that much was true. I had certainly learned a lot about the world of investing while working with him, even if it wasn't the side of the investment world I really wanted to be in.
“You know what I enjoy doing most, besides working,” he continued.
I nodded. “Playing guitar.”
My father was a very accomplished musician. He was, in my humble opinion, one of the best guitarists I had ever heard. Whenever he wasn't working, he was playing guitar, and as busy as he was, he nonetheless managed to squeeze in some guitar time every day. If he hadn't been so focused on his company and working, I was pretty sure he could have been a household name as a guitarist.
“That's it, Lanie, that's it. You know how much I love my music. And I've told you how old I was when I first picked up a guitar, haven't I?”
“You have, Dad. Thirteen years old. You were in seventh grade, and your Dad gave you a guitar for your thirteenth birthday.”
He smiled.
“Best damn gift I ever got. Wait, no, second best. The best gifts were your mother's hand in marriage, and then the gifts of you and your sister.”
I had to smile.
He glanced across his office at an electric guitar mounted in a glass case.
“You know who played that, don't you, Lanie?”
Of course, I did. I had heard the story a few hundred times.
“You know I do, Dad. Stevie Ray Vaughan.”
“One of the greatest, Lanie-bug, one of the greatest. And you know what makes a great guitar player?”
“Uh . . . practice?”
He nodded, still smiling.
“It ain't glamorous, it ain't exciting, it ain't fun. It can be downright frustrating. It can make you hate the damn instrument sometimes. But if you don't sit in that basement, playing your chords and scales over and over and over again for hours on end, you'll never be great. You go get up on stage when you haven't worked your fingers to the bone practicing, and you know what's gonna happen? You're gonna screw up. You're gonna be sloppy. People will laugh—and you'll be shut down before you can even begin. Do you get what I'm saying? Do you understand me, Lanie?”
I did. This had been my practice. This had been my hours of strumming chords and picking scales in a basement. But why was he bringing this up now? What was the point of all of this? I mean, I was halfway through a case right now. And while progress, admittedly, had been slow, there was at least progress being made.
“I understand, Dad. And don't get me wrong, I'm really, truly grateful for this opportunity. I have learned a lot here. And I'm glad that you noticed my hard work.”
“I always notice hard work and efficiency, Lanie. That's what has made this company a success over the years. Not just me. Some CEOs like to take all the credit themselves, as if they single-handedly climbed the mountain. But the thing is, Lanie, it ain't no mountain. It's a pyramid, built by human hands, and without those hands, I wouldn't be where I am. And I include your hands in those mentioned. You too, in your short time here, have made a very valuable contribution to this company.”
“Even though I haven't been, uh, as enthusiastic as I could have been about some of the cases I worked on?”
He chuckled softly.
“Yep. Even though you haven't been crazy about some of the stuff I assigned you to.”
“Well uh, thanks, Dad,” I said, still unsure of what the whole point of this meeting was. “I um, I appreciate that, I do try my best.”
“Yes, you do, Lanie, yes you do. You always have, really. It's something I've admired about you, something that's always made me immensely proud to be your father.”
A feeling of warm, glowing pride spread across my body. It felt good to have someone—especially my father—say such things.
“Thank you, Dad. I'm really happy that you feel that way.”
“I mean it, Lanie, I really do. And that's why I called you in here this morning.”
“Okay Dad, so uh, so why then?”
He smiled again at me.
“Because I'm firing you, Lanie. You're done here.”