If I'm Honest Ch. 11

Chapter Eleven - BOSS FIGHT

It was strange, but Harvey got light on conversation right after that, as if he was working on something big on my behalf, which was fine, because he wasn't the only one who was busy, and having a break on what had been my whirlwind love life suited me just fine.

As Larry had predicted about a year ago, I'd finally decided it was time to make a break from Alexandria Investments, the company that had bought up my time so long ago. All my stock options had matured, and contract negotiations were starting to come up, the very thought of which had been sending me into dread.

I was done with call centers. I'd mastered the business better than anyone, but the industry was changing, and automated service systems were the new hotness, one that I didn't have as good a handle on as I probably should have. People weren't calling so much as they were interacting with tier one chat bots designed to screen through the people who hadn't done the basic troubleshooting, or didn't follow the simple instructions they needed for whatever it was they were trying to do.

Would it have been that hard for me to pivot and pick up the new trends, figure out how to stay ahead of the curve? Not at all. But my team was already doing that for me, and the idea of having to learn it all myself seemed mindlessly tedious. I was at the top of my game now, which meant it was time for me to leave.

Quit while you're ahead is a tough lesson to take to heart, but I decided I was gonna.

It also didn't hurt that when I looked into what my golden parachute looked like these days, in addition to all my options, I was landing on my feet in a way I couldn't have possibly imagined. Like, really couldn't have possibly imagined. When John and I had left Oracle to start something up on our own, within just a few weeks of that we were approached by Alexandria Investments. I'd been happy back then because I thought my shares in AI might eventually be worth a couple mil if things went incredibly well.

Good lord, I really should've stopped and looked at the ground as it went whizzing beneath us sometime along the way.

We'd been hurtling forward at a thousand miles a minute the entire time.

When I'd sat down to actually look at how much AI stock was worth, and what my exit options were, I realized that somewhere along the way, I'd gone from a guy who'd been lucky to be able to buy himself a house five years ago to a guy who was now worth just barely nine figures. Back when I'd bought the house, I'd barely been tickling seven, and those were on my best days.

Why the hell had I been penny pinching so much for the last few years when I'd been sitting on this much money, you may rightfully ask? I shit you not - I'd just never looked at the stock since I bought the house. I'd decided early on when we'd joined AI that looking at it was only going to be another stress point in my life that I didn't want to worry about, so I tucked it back in the furthest corner of my brain and didn't worry about it, because why would I? I didn't hate going to work each and every day, I got to call the shots and I (mostly) liked the people I worked with. That was more than enough.

Larry was surprisingly cool about me leaving the company. I strolled up to his office on a Thursday morning and asked his secretary to let me know when he had a few minutes. I'd expected Larry to freak out, to panic that I was going to bury his call center division with some new venture, but I put him at ease when I told him I was out of that business for good, and I didn't know what my next step was going to be, but it was time for a career change. I needed a new frontier to tame.

"Only two things I'm going ask of you, good buddy," Larry said to me over a glass of truly decadent scotch. "The first is just to sign a two-year non-compete contract. Shouldn't be a big deal, since you said you're out of the business, so if you're just blowing smoke up my ass, here's your chance to be a man about it and own up to that."

I laughed at him, rolling my eyes. "Make it five years if you want, Larry, as long as it's specifically relating to just call centers, and I'll still sign it. I'm not kidding - I want something very different for whatever I end up doing next, and staying in my comfort zone is only going to drive me nuts, so you're actually doing me a favor by making sure I can't fall back on it. Have the contract drafted up, and I'll sign it, any time between now and my last day, two weeks from tomorrow."

Larry grinned, raising his glass in salute. "My man. The other thing I'm gonna ask is simply that you do me a favor and not let me fuck up your legacy, what with all the blood, sweat and tears you put into your division. You've got two division heads down there, Zack and Jen, and both seem like they're doing killer work, but you'd know way better than I would. Who's the heir to the throne?"

"You need a decision right now, or can I tell you on Monday?"

He swiped his hand dismissively through the air, as if to make sure I wasn't worrying about it. "Take the weekend and tell me on Monday. You've probably been thinking about this for a long time, so I'm sure you already know and just want to make sure you get it right."

"Actually Larry, I just decided to get out a few days ago."

"Nothing I did, I hope?" Larry laughed. "I'd hate for it to get out that I was scaring off the talent, especially since I fired your buddy John last year. Oh shit! This isn't about that, is it? I distinctly remember you telling me at the time that you were cool with it! I believed you when you said you were cool with it, so it's uncool if you uncool with it and didn't tell me, man!"

I laughed hard at that, having to set down the glass on top of his desk, I was practically crying. "You have such a shit memory, Larry! Remember, John's wife used to be my girlfriend, and she was cheating on me with him basically right when we joined the company. I told you all of this back then, and that I didn't give a shit if you fired him! And I still don't!"

Larry smirked, tilting his head to one side. "Soon-to-be ex-wife, if the gossip's to be believed," he told me. "John sort of crashed and burned when I let him go, or whatever. I think she expected him to just land on his feet somewhere else immediately, but last I looked, he's still 'consulting' on his LinkedIn page, and I guess that losing her preferred lifestyle is a bit of a deal breaker for her. Maybe she's not advertising it yet, but I'm certain I saw her and Josef having dinner together the other night, and they were starting to look cozy. You think there's a chance there?"

"Well," I told him, "she also cheated on me with Josef, right when we started here. She was banging both of them behind my back, and when I eventually found out, shit got messy and I got the fuck out of there. I always assumed John had just won out. But maybe Josef's deciding to give her another shot. I mean, say what you will about Vanessa, the woman's one hell of a charmer."

"She'd have to be to juggle three of the smartest guys I know without one of them catching on sooner? How long did it go on?"

"Probably longer than I want to think about," I said, finishing off the scotch. "I know she was already banging Josef when we showed up at AI. He told me later, but I should've been suspicious at the time because she was the one who recommended the company to us as a good home for our skillset. It wasn't really her field, so the fact that she had a path lined up for us never sat well with me, but I tried not to think about it. I mean, it turned out you and John had sort of been college buddies, and John didn't even think about that until we were in the fucking room pitching you on the idea, so that should tell you what a dimwit he could be on his best days. Vanessa and John didn't start hooking up until we'd been with AI for at least a few months, at which point I guess Josef was mostly out of the picture, but I'm not sure how long he sort of lingered around on the peripheral. It was a few more months before I caught on."

"How'd you find out?"

"You remember that company retreat up in Vail you had, maybe six or seven months after we'd set up the Call Team Strike division?" I asked him. Larry had come up with the name, saying he wanted us to sound like a military unit or something. I'd suggested 'Call Team Six' but he'd said the reference wasn't obvious enough. I didn't care, so I didn't fight the alternate name. What's in a name, right?

"Great party!" Larry said. "I mean, we made some smart business deals while we were there with some other companies that also not-so-coincidentally were also on retreats nearby. You seemed like you were in good spirits the whole time!"

"Yeah, hate to tell you this, Larry, but you should never play poker with anybody. I was fucking miserable most of that trip, because we went out to dinner the first night, and Vanessa said she wasn't feeling good so John offered to take her back to the hotel, since you needed me to explain the business to the folks over at Apple."

"And?"

"Aaand after we finished meeting with Apple, when we headed back to the hotel, I decided I was going to go and chill in the hot tub before heading back to the room, since I didn't want to wake Vanessa, but lo and behold, when I headed into the pool room with the hot tub, there were John and Vanessa, en flagrante delicto."

"They were having a deli sandwich?" Larry asked, genuine confusion on his face.

"They were fucking, Larry," I sighed. "In the hot tub. Just daring to get caught. They were so caught up in each other that they didn't even notice me in the doorway. So instead of going for a swim, I headed back to my room, took all of Vanessa's things out of it and dumped them just outside of John's room, then headed down to the front desk and had the room key changed. Thankfully they had those little magnetic keycard locks, so it didn't even take a minute. I called back home and had my friend go into my apartment and pack up all of my shit. I wanted to fly back here immediately and do it myself, but we still had loads of shit to do in Vail, so my buddy handled all of it for me. I had him load everything that even vaguely looked like mine into a truck and move it into a storage unit across town."

"Jesus, you are fucking cold as ice, Deke."

"So when her key to the room doesn't work, she goes over to talk to John about it, but he's already coming to see her to tell her that all of her shit was on his doorstep. I sort of expected her to have some sort of meltdown, demanding that I open the door and that we talk it out or something, but instead she just moved into John's room with him, and we've barely spoken more than a handful of words since. I moved my flight back up a few hours so I wouldn't be on the same plane as them. When I got back from Vail, I moved all my stuff into a new apartment and had my name taken off the lease of the old one, severing the last few ties I had with her. About a year later, I cashed out a few of my stocks and bought a house, got a dog and moved on with my life. Never looked back."

"And John ended up marrying Victoria-"

"Fucking hell, Larry, Vanessa. I've told you her name is Vanessa like a dozen times in this conversation alone. Shit, you were at their wedding."

"I probably was, yeah, but I was blasted to the gills on coke, and I don't remember a thing," Larry laughed. "Other than I remember hitting on a bridesmaid who slapped me hard. Other than that, whole fucking day's a complete blank. Did they invite you to it?"

I laughed, rolling my eyes. "Of course they did, because they wanted to fucking rub my nose in it, as if to show me that the reason she was cheating on me was because of something I'd done. I didn't go, of course. John and I had to be coworkers here at AI, but I resolved to just keep the business relationship professional and icy, sticking entirely to the job at hand. You'd moved John into the center stalk by that point, and out of my hair, so I didn't really give a shit. It was around the time of their wedding that Josef confessed to me that Vanessa had been cheating on me with him before we joined AI, though he hadn't realized it, because she'd told him that her and I were in an 'open relationship,' so it meant that he could bang her with impunity. He told me he thought I'd dodged a bullet, because she was the most mercenary woman he'd ever met, with loyalty to nobody and nothing, and the only reason she got away with it was because she was as hot as she was. I didn't really ask him to elaborate on the timeline, because at that point I was two years free and clear of her, so what did any of it really matter, in the long run?"

"Josef's still with the company, Deke," Larry said. "Should I be worried about him?"

"Nah, me and Josef are all good," I told him. "I don't know for a fact that he didn't think it was cheating, but it certainly strikes me as the kind of thing Vanessa would've told him to get what she wanted. Back in the early days, when we were still at Oracle, we were swamped and working long hours, something I repeatedly told Vanessa to tell me if it bothered her, but she never said a word. Josef also told me that Vanessa had said the same thing about John, that they had an open relationship, but by then Josef had heard about the incident in Vail, and told her she wasn't going to get any affection from him unless she was free and clear of any other emotional attachments. Then her and John got married and I assumed it was all dead and buried. Josef probably did too."

"Maybe Josef thinks that since Vanessa and John are getting divorced, it's game on."

"Hell, you'd think he'd know better by now. What makes you think they're getting divorced anyway?"

Larry shrugged. "While John lost most of his stock options when I fired his ass for cause, since he was trying to get me ousted from the fucking company I started, he'd already bought a decent amount of stock before then, which he's legally entitled to hold onto, much as it pains me. Anyway, a lawyer came to me asking how much I'd be willing to pay for bundle of stock suspiciously around half the size of what John walked away with. I've been through enough divorces to recognize someone sniffing around for a whiff of what assets are worth. Mrs. Ma's the first and second made sure that when I married Lynn, Mrs. Ma the third and final, I had the sort of ironclad prenup agreement that if she ever left me or cheated on me, she wouldn't get a fucking dime. Shit, she'd actually owe me money, because she'd also be liable for all legal fees, both her team's and mine. But me and Lynn, we get along like pastrami and rye, so it's all hunky dory. So yeah, I'd say she's jumping ship."

"Fuck, I should remind Josef what he told me on my way out," I said, shaking my head. "The frog and the scorpion all over again."

"The what and the what now?"

I waved a hand in his direction. "Don't worry about it, Larry," I told him, standing up, starting to head towards the door. "Anyway, I'll have a name for a successor for you on Monday."

"Oh, I never did get a chance to ask you, how'd you like the Bulgotti?"

I stopped at the door, shaking my head with a soft laugh, looking down at my feet before turning back to look at him. "Can I offer you a piece of advice, Larry?"

"Hey, my dude, I'm always open ears, you know that!" he said, a giant smile on his face as he was refilling his glass with more scotch.

"Learn what you're talking about before you start talking about it," I said. "People are afraid of you and your money, so nobody wants to correct you, but I don't work for you any more, so I guess I'm above reproach at this point. The painting behind your desk is a Warhol, by one of the leading figures of the pop art movement. He's not just 'the soup can guy.'"

"Okay, but what's that got to do with the Bulgotti?"

I chuckled, rubbing the bridge of my nose for a second. "There's no such thing as a Bulgotti, Larry. The motorcycle you have here in the office is a Ducati. The tasty Korean BBQ beef you have catered in a couple of times a month is Bulgogi. The car you gave me is a Bugatti, and while it's a dream to drive, it's also the single most expensive thing I've ever owned, and that includes my house. I'm probably going to sell it off, because while it's a joy to drive, the insurance is high enough to make even a banker blush. But it's a Bugatti, not a Bulgotti."

Larry looked absolutely dumbstruck, and I figured, why not just let it all out.

"While I'm at it..." I continued. "Fish eggs are called caviar, not clavier - that's a musical instrument. And when you told me that you named the company Alexandria Indexes after the town where the greek oracle was, that's Delphi. Alexandria is where the world's largest library once was, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, so maybe the next time you decide you want to talk to someone about the history of the company, if you want to look like you know what you're talking about, maybe pick one of those two instead."

He looked angry, but not at me, which was funny to see. It was almost like the playboy filter had been yanked out from his eyes and now he was seeing the world a bit more clearly, for the first time in a long time. "Why the fuck has nobody told me any of this before?"

"I'm almost positive your secretary Ashley has, a bunch of times, and you've just either dismissed her out of hand or talked over her," I said to him from the door, not yet opening it. "You should listen to her more, a lot more. You'd have seen John's failed coup d'etat months earlier if you had. In fact, if you want a free piece of business advice, since you fired John a year ago, you've had a revolving door on that position, with three different VPs in ten months. Figure out a way to fire that dumbass Hunter you've got in there and give the job to Ashley instead. You're wasting her talents keeping her as a secretary. Anyway, I'll see you on Monday, Larry."

I didn't give him a chance to answer as I just headed out of the room, finally, for once in my life, getting the last word on the garrulous Larry Ma.

From there, I went down to my floor to talk to Zack and Jen one-on-one. I sort of knew who I was going to leave in charge before I did that, but I wanted to be certain about it. I talked to Zack first, and while he was enthusiastic and happy for me, he was very focused on what was going to happen with the Call Team Strike division - were they going to get new management, were they going to be reduced in headcount because of my departure, were they going to be expanded, who would be in charge, when would they know what the new org structure looked like, etc.

Jen, by contrast, wanted to know how I was feeling about all of it. CTS had been my life's work for most of the last decade, and she wanted to be sure that hanging it all up was my decision, and that I wasn't being forced out or anything. After I assured her that the decision was mine, and that Larry would've probably tried to talk me out of it if he'd thought he could have, she asked about what was next for me, and what I was going to do with myself when I wasn't flying all over the place setting up call centers and walking people through flow charts.

At the end of the conversation, I told Jen that I was going to recommend she be put in charge of CTS, naming her as my heir to the throne. She told me that she was extremely surprised by that, considering how focused Zack was on the bottom line all the time. That, I told her, was why I was choosing her instead. Zack had a great head for the business details, but he was shit with people, always thinking of his needs first and his people second, despite me constantly trying to drill work/life balance into him over and over in the three years since he'd been on the team.