by Dima Zales
“Bye, Mom.”
“Bye,” she says and disconnects.
I finally initiate a video chat with Nero, and to my shock, my boss picks up the call personally—I fully expected to be vetted by at least one assistant.
He’s standing by the whiteboard in his enormous office, making notes with an erasable marker. His back is to the camera and far enough away that I can see his lean, broad-shouldered frame. His chestnut-colored hair is extra short—he must’ve just gotten a haircut—and though I can’t see his face, I can easily picture his strong chin and prominent cheekbones.
“If it isn’t the busy bee finally deigning us with her attention,” he says in a deep, low-pitched voice that makes his female assistants ovulate—though if you ask me, it sounds like a blend between a dinosaur roar and a bear growl. “You go on TV once, and that’s it? Are you calling to tell me you quit?”
“No,” I reply, trying not to give him the satisfaction of sounding defensive. “An emergency came up.”
He turns from his writing, and almost instantly, his face fills the screen. He’s looking right at me now, and I can’t help but notice that despite the upcoming conference, his typical devil-may-care heavy stubble still adorns his face.
“What emergency?” he asks, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I saw worry in those blue-gray eyes—but I dismiss such fanciful imaginings. Nero would only worry if the fund lost a bunch of billions overnight, which will never happen, given how shrewdly he runs the place.
I consider coming up with something better than the truth, but Nero is famous for his ability to detect lies. Word is, all he needs to do is hear a company CEO on a quarterly conference call, and he’d know how well the company is really doing. More importantly, Nero loathes BS to such a degree that the risk of getting fired is always lower if you tell him the worst kind of truth.
If he catches you in a lie, you’re dead to him.
“My elderly neighbor had a big emergency,” I say. It’s the truth, but only half of it. I hope he doesn’t dig deeper.
“What happened?” There’s no empathy behind the question, just mild curiosity.
“It’s her cat.” I stop on a yellow light so I can lean to the side and show him the carrier behind me. “She’s sick.”
“The cat is sick.” Nero makes the question sound like a statement, but I nod anyway.
He stares at me for a moment. His limbal ring—the circle around the iris of the eye—is oddly dark and thick, making the whites of his eyes whiter and the blue-gray deeper. I only notice this due to a magician’s fascination with visual illusions, of course—not because I enjoy looking into those eyes, and definitely not because I feel like a rabbit caught in the gaze of a snake.
“You let people take advantage of you,” he says, and I snap out of my daze as the light changes to green. Gritting my teeth, I yank my eyes away from the phone and rev up my gas.
I always knew he was cold, but this just highlights it. Of course he considers helping a nice elderly woman as being taken advantage of.
“Can I bring you up to speed on RANR over the phone?” I ask, ignoring his prior comment.
He looks at his million-dollar Patek Philippe watch and frowns. “We don’t have much choice, do we?”
I’m about to launch into my spiel about the company I’ve researched, starting with their revolutionary new product, when my automotive awareness screams in panic.
Though I don’t know what the danger is yet, I do know I’ve never felt this strong of a warning before.
Momentarily ignoring Nero, I laser focus on my surroundings in the hope that I can prevent whatever it is that’s setting off my alarms.
The last thing I want is to kill myself and the cat in a horrible car crash.
Chapter Eight
Though the intersection is bursting with vehicles and people, two targets stand out in my hyperawareness.
An express bus and an ancient Ford Crown Victoria.
The ginormous bus is hurtling toward me in the opposite lane, the driver clearly overeager to pass under the green light while the pedestrians are standing on the sidewalk for a change.
The beat-up Crown Vic is in the lane perpendicular to mine, going so fast that it’s bound to run over a few people on the red light—and then T-bone my Vespa.
Without fully understanding what I’m doing, I jerk on the handlebars as I max out the gas.
As my scooter turns, I catch a glimpse of the Crown Vic’s driver. It’s a man in his fifties, his skin oddly gray with a purplish tint. Something about his face rings a very distant bell, but I quickly lose sight of him, the express bus taking over my whole field of vision.
The bus driver doesn’t know he needs to slow down yet.
If my panicked brain miscalculated my current maneuver by just a tiny fraction, in a moment, there will be a Vespa/Sasha/Lucifur-shaped tortilla on the front of the bus—a tortilla the Crown Vic will then scrape off and turn into a human-and-cat-stuffed metal burrito.
In my haste, I pay no mind to any obstacles on the pavement, so I don’t realize I’ve run over the manhole cover until after it happens.
Like a bull at the rodeo, the scooter tries to throw me off.
My heart tries to jump off the Vespa without me.
I squeeze the handlebars with all my might and tighten my thighs until they cramp. When I don’t fly off, I vow to buy Ariel another year of gym membership for forcing me to use that gynecological-exam-chair-inspired machine.
Luckily, the carrier with the cat stays on too, but my phone isn’t so fortunate—it flies out of its holder and lands somewhere behind me.
Also, I have no idea if the bump has slowed me down enough not to hit the bus.
A second later, I clear the bus by the width of a soap bubble, but before I can exhale in relief, there’s a shriek of metal and plastic colliding.
The Crown Victoria has just slammed into the bus.
If I hadn’t acted as fast I did, I’d now be sandwiched between them.
Slowing down, I debate what is morally and legally required of me in this situation. The idiot in the Crown Vic is likely dead, but the folks on the bus should be fine, just inconvenienced. Someone should call 911, but my phone is in pieces under the bus.
Seeing at least a dozen people using their cells and gesticulating at the crash, I assume emergency vehicles have been summoned. If I want to save Lucifur, I have to get going again—she just got a shake-up on top of whatever is going on with her, and the vet’s office can’t come soon enough.
I speed up, and the rest of my path to Dr. Katz’s office is blissfully free of collisions.
One advantage of a scooter is that it’s easier to find parking for it. I leave my Vespa between two parked cars and unhook the carrier, ignoring a strange fishy smell from a giant puddle nearby.
“Almost there,” I whisper to the unresponsive cat. “Please hang on.”
The trip up the elevator and through the corridors happens in a blur.
Entering the vet’s office, I run up to the receptionist and rattle out, “My name is Sasha, and I have Rose’s cat here. She’s dying. You have to help me. Please.”
The girl launches into action. Before long, the tall and lanky Dr. Katz asks me about the cat’s symptoms and takes the carrier away, promising that he’ll let me know what’s going on after some testing.
I breathe out a sigh of relief. This office is pretty impressive. They’ve reacted to the emergency better than some places that cater to humans.
“Can I use your phone?” I ask the receptionist.
“Sure,” the girl says. “Come around.”
I walk over to her desk and realize I have no clue what Nero’s phone number is.
“I’m sorry, can you do a search on your computer for me?” I ask. “I need the main number for Gorin Fund.”
The girl gets me the number I need, and I call, only to learn that asking the lowliest phone operator to connect me with the head of the fund is not such a sim
ple task.
First, I get an assistant of an assistant, who is an assistant to one of Nero’s lowest-ranked assistants. I get bounced around from there, and I’m up two layers of assistants when Dr. Katz comes out, so I ask the grumpy assistant I’m speaking with to hold on for a moment.
The bastard hangs up on me.
“It’s a Gastric Foreign Body,” the doctor says to me, waving the black-and-white X-ray in his hand. “It’s consistent with the symptoms you described.”
“A what?”
“Here.” He holds the X-ray up to the light.
There’s a ghostly outline of a cat—with a key-shaped object in its stomach.
“You’re kidding me,” I say. “She swallowed Rose’s door key?”
“We see this a lot with dogs—with a wide range of objects.” Dr. Katz lowers the X-ray. “But it happens with cats too.”
It’s hard to imagine anything or anyone eating a key, but if I had to nominate a cat who could do something like that, Lucifur would be at the top of my list. The rest of the list would all be cats that look like Hitler.
“So, what now?” I ask. My insides feel cold, as though I myself have a metal object in there. “Will you need to cut her up?”
“No, nothing that serious,” Dr. Katz says, a crooked smile spreading over his narrow face. “We’ll get it out endoscopically.”
When I was younger, Dad had an endoscopy to diagnose an ulcer, but I didn’t know it could be done to a cat.
“She will need to be anesthetized,” Dr. Katz says when he sees me relax. “There are risks associated with that.”
“Is there any other solution?” I ask. “Can she just poop it out?”
Dr. Katz frowns. “I’d highly recommend the endoscopy.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m convinced, but this is Rose’s decision to make.”
“Actually, she filled out a pet care emergency authorization form in your name,” the receptionist says, brandishing a paper from her desk.
“That’s if we can’t reach her,” Dr. Katz says. “We need to try.”
Fortunately, they have Rose’s number in Lucifur’s chart—yes, cats have medical charts, and of course, this cat has a thick one.
It takes all but a few seconds of explanation to get Rose to agree to the procedure.
“I knew I didn’t just lose that key,” Rose says through the speakerphone after Dr. Katz leaves to prep the cat.
“How long will you keep Luci here?” I ask the receptionist while we still have Rose on the line.
“Every patient is different,” the girl says. “But we’re probably going to keep an eye on her for a few hours after the anesthesia.”
“But she’ll come home today?” Rose’s voice cracks.
“Yes,” the girl replies. “We’ll keep you both up to speed on her progress.”
“I killed my phone on the way here,” I say to both of them. “Call my office number if you need to reach me, and I’ll get myself a new cell as soon as I can.”
“Will do,” the receptionist says, handing me a business card with the phone number of the practice on it.
I write Rose’s number on the back of the card while Rose herself asks several more questions.
After we hang up on Rose, I excuse myself and rush to my scooter. There’s a tiny chance I can still get to the office before the 8:00 a.m. presentation, and I’m determined to try.
When I exit the doctor’s building, it takes me a moment to recall where I left my Vespa, but once I do, I run to it and jump on—at the exact moment when a yellow cab drives over the fishy-smelling puddle and sprays the foul substance all over me.
Dark, smelly splotches are all over my pants and shirt.
On any other day, I’d go home to change and get to work late, but right now, I don’t have that luxury.
Hopefully, the stuff will dry out and be less disgusting as I ride.
The rest of my drive to the office is like a scene from The Fast and the Furious, only on a scooter with a top speed of forty miles per hour.
My clothes don’t seem to smell anymore, but the stains remain. If I get to my desk, I could at least cover my shirt with the jacket I keep for days when the office AC spins out of control. Except it’s now 7:43 a.m., and Nero needs me to bring him up to speed on the stock before eight.
I sprint through the security desk and keep running until I get to Nero’s office.
Venessa, one of Nero’s assistants, looks me up and down without bothering to hide her overwhelming contempt. “There you are,” she says in a tone many bitchy women think exudes friendliness but really does the opposite. “Mr. Gorin left instructions in the unlikely case you arrived.”
I look at Venessa expectantly as I try to catch my breath.
“Since there’s no time for you to prep him, you’re going to need to personally present at One Alpha.” Venessa hands me a laptop, and since I’m too stunned to think at the moment, I just clutch the computer like a life raft. “Use that to prepare what you need on the way to the auditorium.”
I’m tempted to use the laptop to do more research on Valium and the nightmares it can cause, because it seems like I’ve been dropped into my worst one yet.
The building’s auditorium can house three hundred people, and One Alpha gatherings always leave the room packed with financial movers and shakers—plus members of the media who usually have to stand.
Venessa marches toward the elevator.
I stand frozen, my feet filled with lead. Aside from my disheveled state, I’m simply not prepared to speak about this stock. I rehearsed my TV act for at least fifty hours, and that was just a couple of lines. Not that being prepared would matter. The mere thought of speaking in front of all those people—
“Why are you standing there?” Venessa snaps, turning to look at me as she punches the elevator button. “Are you going to do your job or not?”
I drag my heavy feet to the opening elevator.
As I step inside, the reflective surface inside the car confirms the stains are still on my clothes.
The doors close.
Venessa wrinkles her nose. “Do you smell fish?”
“I have to prep,” I say and open the laptop, hiding my face as I frantically launch PowerPoint and think of what I’ll say if I don’t freeze up when the moment comes—which I probably will.
RANR is the ticker for Rapid Rabbit Biotech LLC, or (and this is a good joke to mention in the presentation) Rabid Rabbits, as industry insiders have nicknamed them. RANR will soon announce a new product called Focusall, a substance that will make Adderall seem like a sedative in comparison. I reviewed a lot of data on the drug, interviewed test subjects, and even managed to get my hands on a sample. It was when I was on the drug myself that I decided that we definitively, absolutely must get as much RANR stock as we can, high valuation or not. While on Focusall, I finished my usual analysis in a fraction of the time it usually takes, then worked on and completed a dozen other projects, all the while staying as focused as a Zen monk and as happy as a clam.
It was so good, in fact, that instead of flushing the rest of the sample down the toilet, I kept the pills for a rainy day. And as soon as the drug hits the market, I’ll find a way to get more—unless they discover side effects, which thus far seem to be mild to nonexistent.
It’s a testament to Nero’s respect for my analytical skills that he had our traders go on a buying spree of RANR as soon as I recommended it, and without me explaining any of the details. Now it’s one of our largest positions, and once—or rather, if—I give this presentation, the stock will likely go through the roof. Undoubtedly, that’s why Nero decided to include it in his presentation last minute: because part of the reason for these conferences is to create a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you sway other savvy hedge funders with your pitch, they will jump on the stock and drive up the price, making your investment that much more valuable.
Of course, the main reason for the conference is to shout, “Look at how smart we a
re at Gorin’s fund. Invest with us. Work for us. Don’t think about regulating us. Resistance is futile.”
Venessa drags me from the elevator and through the corridors, my nose buried in the laptop.
By the time we get to the backstage of the auditorium, I have a couple of very basic slides ready and, more importantly, a rudimentary idea of what I will say. However, none of this silences the insane heartbeat in my ears or slows my ragged breathing, and the world takes on a surreal tint.
Nero is already speaking on the stage. He’s introducing me with praising words, and his deep voice seems so amplified in my head that my brain threatens to explode through my eardrums.
“Go.” Venessa pushes me onto the stage, and as I walk to the podium on jelly-like legs, the lukewarm applause sounds deafening in my ears.
“You got this,” Nero whispers as he vacates the podium.
He must see something he doesn’t like in my face, because he takes the laptop out of my numb hands and plugs it in for me.
The hilarity of Nero Gorin doubling as an audio/video tech doesn’t penetrate my dread; all I can focus on is the debilitating conviction that I’m about to have a heart attack.
I take my place behind the podium and try to stand straight. Through the haze of panic, I realize that Nero is still standing next to me—and though I’m too pumped up with adrenaline to be sure, I think his muscular arm might be surreptitiously holding me up.
I’d sell my soul for some Valium right now. The fear I felt on TV is but a tiny echo of what’s happening now.
“H-hello,” I stutter into the microphone as I behold the crowd.
Three hundred hungry eyes stare back at me from the abyss beyond the stage.
The walls of the auditorium shrink, suffocating me.
Darkness closes in.
Chapter Nine
I wake up in the air.
Am I flying?
Opening my eyes, I realize that I’m being carried like a bride again. This time, the strong arms belong to Nero, and before I fully understand what’s happening, he lowers me onto a gray leather couch backstage.
