Fake It 'til You Make It, page 5
Hell, maybe a full sale of the business is the only way forward.
But can I give up everything I’ve built, designed, created, because I can no longer stand to even utter my ex-best friend’s name aloud?
Three minutes late by my watch, the building concierge calls the apartment. GQ are here. I stop tossing the ball, answer the intercom, and tell the concierge I’ll come down to the foyer to meet the GQ bunch.
Glancing in the mirror one more time, I correct a misplaced strand of my unusually combed, tamed and styled hair, and wiggle my shoulders to adjust the position of the shoulder pads in my new suit.
I don’t look like me. Messy hair, casual clothes, sneakers. That’s me. The guy in the mirror looks more like Roman, or even my brother on one of his red-carpet appearances, though he’d usually have an unnaturally attractive blonde on his arm, too.
But this is a gentleman’s quarterly magazine and the interview is about the world of business.
My palms are clammy as I head downstairs in the elevator and I feel jittery, like I’ve overdosed on caffeine. It’s no wonder I ordinarily leave these things to Roman.
I close my eyes for a moment of calm and the elevator halts. Bracing myself with a smile, I open my eyes. But instead of the elevator doors opening to the team from GQ, they open on the seventh floor of the building, and who is standing there but Lady Big Panties, her face murderous, her hands on her hips.
She’s pouting and the first thing I think is, her lips look soft, natural in size and color. I don’t mean to draw a comparison to Fleur’s lips, but yes, a thousand times more natural and elegant than lips with fillers.
Big Panties’ hair is wet, the make-up and fake lashes from last night are gone, and she’s wearing a white string vest with a pair of tiny bed shorts. She’s like the girl next door that every guy whoever read a Spiderman comic wanted to date as a kid (and big kid!).
She glares at me and seems to want to speak. Then she blinks and, I think, checks out my new suit. Her mouth opens and closes silently, like a goldfish.
‘Are you getting in?’ I ask, reaching out a hand to stop the doors from closing.
She steps inside.
‘The foyer?’
She clears her throat. ‘Yes. Well, no, actually. I was on my way to see you.’
Confusion knits my brows. ‘Why?’
‘Because…’ Her eyes shift to the left as if she’s thinking of a response.
‘Because?’ I don’t mean to sound patronizing but I’d expect a little forethought before some random woman came to knock on my door, wearing hardly any clothes.
‘Well, I thought you were— Were you alone? In your apartment?’
This girl is all kinds of weird. Thankfully, the elevator reaches the foyer and this time, the doors do open to the journalist and production team from GQ.
Big Panties’ eyes shoot open, like a near-nude deer caught in the lights of a camera crew. She looks to the crew, then up to me. Then she thrusts one arm across her chest and presses her knees together. She isn’t naked but she sure feels like she’s exposed in her little outfit.
This is brilliant.
I lean down to her ear and tell her, ‘This is GQ magazine and the only thing that could have made this better is if you were wearing those big panties of yours.’
When she glowers at me, I do something wholly uncharacteristic. I wink at her. And the thunder that comes back to her expression is worth good money to see. Her cantankerous nature just met with karma.
She pushes me out of the elevator and starts furiously thumping the button for the doors to close. The last thing she must see is my beaming smile. Somehow, the woman whose name I don’t even know has made me laugh properly, for the first time in ages.
I turn to the GQ bunch, who all seem to hold a bemused expression, except Kirsten Stirling, the journalist, who I can tell wants to know which semi-naked girl I just rode downstairs with.
I’m about to clarify that I don’t know the woman and that she is certainly not a conquest, if that’s the insinuation behind Kirsten’s expression, when she holds out a hand and says, ‘Theodore? Nice to meet you.’
‘It’s just Ted.’
‘Ted.’ She gives one stern nod and I wonder whether she’s always so curt or if she’s put two and two together and has decided that I’ve been cheating on my fiancée.
How wrong a person can be.
Out of sheer stubbornness, I choose not to correct her.
Kirsten is young, at best guess about my age, which means she’s done well for herself to be a staple features editor at GQ already. I respect her for her work ethic. And I know she’s made her own way because no one who has been handed their position on a silver platter would be wearing All Star converse with a tailored suit.
Even I splurged on a pair of shoes that are killing my feet just to make sure they match the suit for this interview. How Roman wears these fancy shoes all day long is beyond me. I’m counting down the minutes until I can get back into a pair of shorts and some sneakers.
The camera crew – two guys and a girl – busy themselves setting up lights and reflective screens and set the scene for Kirsten and me to have an ‘informal chat’ on the lounge sofa and chair. I offer drinks and I’m thrilled when they only want water because I’m better with Mike’s multi-option water tap than his complex coffee machine – something that would be more at home in a chain coffee store.
We come to sit – me in the armchair, Kirsten on the sofa, both posed informally so that we neither face toward nor away from each other.
Kirsten explains what she’s hoping to achieve from the interview, the crux of which, I understand, is to highlight some kind of difference between Roman – front man – and me – tech nerd – and no doubt to intrude on my relatively private life.
She seems to have moved on from the air of animosity I witnessed downstairs. Now, she’s full of smiles as she rights a few strands that have snuck out from her hair tie and crosses one leg over the other, placing her hands on the notebook that rests on her lap.
I’m nervous. This is not my forte. I much prefer sitting in a quiet room, coding, reimagining, and inventing than giving the company, or worse, myself, the big sell.
‘I am going to record the interview, just so I don’t have to make so many handwritten notes,’ Kirsten says. She isn’t asking my permission, since she’s already placing her phone down on the coffee table between us and I can see she’s already recording.
‘No problem.’
I clear my throat, which feels dry, then take a sip of cold water. It’s not that I can’t easily converse with people. I’m not entirely socially inept. But I am uncomfortable. Even more so than usual, which I suspect is because I know at some point questions will arise about my private life, and how on earth am I supposed to answer them when I don’t even have my head around it yet?
Kirsten’s next words are spoken with what I would describe as a telephone voice, and I know we’re now on the record. ‘First, thank you for giving us your time today, Ted.’
I nod. ‘Thanks for coming East last minute. I appreciate the effort.’
‘All part of the job,’ she says, eying me closely. ‘Why are you in New York?’
Heat builds in my palms. I interlock my fingers, hoping the slight tremor I feel won’t show. She has no idea how complex the answer to her seemingly innocuous question really is.
‘Business. Always business.’ I offer a smile. Faux airy.
It must work because she moves on. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. How did you go from college student to being a co-founder of what is predicted to soon be a billion-dollar tech business?’
‘Can I tell you anything that Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t already come out with?’
She laughs with me, and I think, Screw you, Roman, I can be personable.
‘Honestly, I think everyone in my family wanted me to be a pro ball player, like my brother, but I wasn’t good enough, and the only other thing I really enjoyed was computer science, so that’s where it started. I was just a failed athlete who happened to find coding the most natural thing in the world, ironically, given there’s nothing natural about a tech verse.’
‘I’d love to explore that further. Do you think failure made you who you are?’
‘I suppose in a way it did.’ My mind wanders from baseball to my failed engagement. My failed friendship. Maybe I should start seeing the biggest relationship breakdowns of my life as an opportunity. ‘I guess there’s always something to be learned from failure.’
I wonder what exactly I’m supposed to be learning from my fiancée doing the business with my best friend.
For the next twenty minutes or so, Kirsten covers most of the questions I’ve heard before (albeit by telephone or through email, my preferred interview method). She covers business start-up, business growth and goals, what Silicon Valley is really like, and if it is still the Silicon Valley it was in the days of teenage Zuckerberg. I can respond to these things on autopilot, having been asked similar iterations of every question over the last decade.
She doesn’t grab my attention until she asks, ‘What is it like to be working so closely with your best friend? Can friendships really survive business?’
I wonder if she knows. Whether the word is getting out on the grapevine. I don’t think so. I don’t think Fleur or Roman would have disclosed it. It hardly portrays them in a good light. It’s not exactly Instagrammable. And I’m sure my brother wouldn’t have said a thing. I trust Mike with my life, let alone my secrets.
But evidentially, I can’t trust Roman.
‘Not in every case,’ I reply. ‘Though in ours, it has been successful. Roman and I are exact opposites. Our skillsets complement each other.’
Kirsten smiles, much softer now than in the foyer. ‘I guess it’s true what they say, sometimes opposites attract.’
Sometimes, I think. Roman and I are opposites. Fleur and I are opposites. She uses her beauty, her self-confidence, her effervescent presence in company, to be adored by many, not least her hundreds of thousands of social media followers.
Yet, Fleur and Roman aren’t opposites; they’re alike in many ways. They’re both chameleons, for a start. I guess I just haven’t been on the receiving end of their changing colors until now.
‘Have you and Roman ever had crossed words?’ Kirsten asks.
She has no idea how hilarious her question is.
‘Crossed words,’ I repeat.
‘Business disagreements? Life disagreements?’
She emphasizes the word life, and again, I’m left considering whether my life has become gossip. I hope not. I’m not ready and this interview has proved it.
‘No. Not disagreements. We hone and temper each other’s ideas sometimes, but disagreements? Not really.’
As I speak, I stare across to the cityscape. The tall, protruding buildings against the calm, cloudless sky. Huge banks, massive companies, reside in those buildings.
Roman and I have disagreed of late, even in a business context. We agree that we may have reached our potential with our current growth structure and it’s time for a new wave of financing.
He says it’s time for us to take a back seat, enjoy what we’ve built, claw back some time for ourselves in our lives.
I’ve told him that it would take something catastrophic for me to want to take a backseat.
Catastrophic, like the breakdown of our relationship. An untenable working partnership. A complete and irrevocable lack of trust.
I come to stand and move to the window, lost in my thoughts.
He hasn’t, surely? He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
I’m aware Kirsten has asked me something.
‘Sorry, I missed that. Could you repeat the question?’ I ask, turning to face her.
She asks again but my mind is too busy with its own questions.
What would be worse? If Roman were to tell me he is in love with Fleur? Or if the whole reason behind all of this, him stealing the woman who I should have spent the rest of my life with, was just to force me into agreeing to an IPO?
‘You seem like a reserved, private man, and I was just wondering how you came to be engaged to Fleur Dumont, who seems to live her life very much in the public eye?’
I stare at her, almost laughing at my idiocy…
‘We met at my brother’s birthday bash. Roman introduced us.’ It occurs to me how much more likely a relationship between Roman and Fleur had been right from the start. Shrugging, I tell her, ‘Like you say, sometimes opposites attract.’
But most of the time, like-minded people screw like-minded people.
At the end of the interview, I show the GQ team back down to the foyer and Kirsten tells me that once she has combined Roman’s interview with mine, she’ll send the feature to her editor in chief. I make polite noises but I couldn’t care less. What I just told her isn’t real, it isn’t truth. It’s all publishable crap.
The camera guys head out to the street, where they’ve temporarily parked their van, and start packing up. Kirsten shakes my hand and tells me, ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Ted, you’re not a typical rich guy.’
I raise one brow questioningly – what exactly did you expect from me?
‘You’re very… considered. Most of the tech millionaires I meet are eccentric at best and otherwise full of themselves.’
I smirk. ‘Like Rome?’
She releases my hand and smiles mischievously.
As I watch her leave the building and climb into the van, all I can think is that being more like a typical millionaire, more like Roman, is exactly how I should behave. Then, maybe I wouldn’t feel like someone has ripped out my soul every single day from the moment I wake up until I eventually fall asleep.
8
ABBEY
As is typical of Nate’s wife, Meredith has booked a restaurant as far away as she could get. Dee and I are riding the subway. Tonight is the night that she’s going to tell Nate she’s pregnant. First stop, Nate. Second stop, Mom and Dad.
‘How’s the morning sickness?’ I ask when she stops WhatsApp-ing with Brett.
‘Real. But the fatigue is worse. I feel like I’ve been clubbing and having wild sex all night for days in a row.’
‘Well, I guess you’d know. Isn’t wild sex precisely the reason you have nausea?’
Dee grins at me, despite her tiredness. ‘Brett and I were friends with benefits for a while; you know this. But disappointingly, I think the deed that sewed the seed was actually an unmemorable hangover quickie.’
I snort. ‘I probably wouldn’t lead with those details when you’re telling Nate.’
Our brother is the kind of man who always colors inside the lines. There’s black and white and no grey area when it comes to his ‘good person’ code.
‘Ha, imagine.’ Her laughter turns to an actress version of a groan – theatrical, eyes to the ceiling, as if the world is about to end. ‘Grrrr, tell me why we have to trek to the Upper East Side.’
‘Because Nate is paying and you and I otherwise can’t afford to eat fine-dining.’
‘Solid reasoning.’
We get off the subway on 77th street and walk on to a restaurant on 78th. I realize I’ve subconsciously become even more protective of my sister since finding out she’s carrying my niece or nephew. I’m making myself stand taller, broader, filling a bigger space and walking so close to her through busy areas that no one can knock her. When she climbs steps, I brace myself for her to trip or slip.
By the time we arrive outside the restaurant, Dee is folded over laughing at the story of how I got caught in my bedwear by GQ magazine when I tried to chase after Mike to give him what for about his noise nuisance.
When tears of humor are rolling down her cheeks, I start to see the funny side, a little.
‘Imagine if I end up on the cover of GQ! I definitely won’t be laughing then.’
She rubs her knuckles under her eyes and I confirm that she doesn’t have smudged mascara.
‘Anyway, we have a name for the man in apartment 8B now. Mike?’
I nod. ‘Michael Thomas. Not that it matters.’
‘Of course it matters. Not only do you have an actual name to vent at or swoon over but we can also find out how he’s famous. GQ don’t interview just anyone.’
I’ve been so concerned with being exposed in hardly any clothes and the relentless banging from upstairs at ungodly hours of the morning (and sometimes during the day) that I haven’t bothered to think about who the man living above me might be.
Dee is already typing his name into a search engine and I hold open the heavy glass door to the restaurant, relieved when a member of staff from the eatery takes over and welcomes us.
‘He’s a Major League Baseball player!’ Dee announces, turning to smile at the suited man holding open the door. ‘That’s settles it, the banging in the penthouse is definitely sex.’
‘A baseball player?’ I think of his broad shoulders and height – I guess that fits, not that I have the first clue about baseball. ‘I still think the sound is too rhythmic.’
As the suited man waits for me to take off the short tweed jacket I have teamed with a plain black dress and my new white Dior shoes, Dee places her hands on my shoulders in the manor of a kindergarten teacher reasoning with a toddler. ‘He’s a pro-athlete, who’s apparently recovering from injury, which is code for has nothing better to do, and just look at all these images of him. He’s with a different woman in every one.’
Reluctantly, I glance at the phone Dee is now holding up for me to see. I can feel myself squinting as I look at the man in the images. He’s quite often wearing shades. Most often in full baseball kit. Frequently mid-action on a baseball field. So I guess that’s why he doesn’t always look immediately like the guy I’ve met, but the resemblance is definitely there. It’s him alright.
‘You should totally get in on that action. That’ll cure you of your heartache.’
The front of house guy tells us to follow him to our table.
‘Thanks, but he’s not my type.’
