24 Inches: A MFM Romantic Comedy

by Alexis Angel

  A dark mahogany conference table dominates the room. The room itself has priceless art hanging from two walls. The other wall is all glass, with panoramic views of New York City. And the farther wall is mounted with two-way video screens to allow for people to remotely dial in via videophone. A second flat panel television is on mute right next to the video screen with a constant update on Market Pulse. The reasoning behind the television is that if there is anything where minute-to-minute updates are needed, the Board will have an easy way of keeping abreast of the news.

  I'm hovering outside the conference room, but in truth I have no reason to be here.

  I mean, think about it. I'm a 21-year-old intern in the Private Equity Group. What possible reason could I have to be in a group of people who have a minimum individual net worth that starts in the eight figures?

  None. Except that I'm worried.

  The man I love is going to be attacked by these people today. Roy Purpus has called for a meeting that seeks to have this group of people vote against Mason as CEO. I can understand how that would be good for Mom, but I can't understand why Roy would fall for everything that's going on in the news. There's no way he can be viewing Red Lion as a viable investment alternative to everything else Kane Price has right now, can he?

  I walk in nonchalantly, as if I have every reason for being there, and sit down on one of the sofa-benches built into the wall. The spaces are usually occupied by Vice Presidents and Directors who provide support documents to members of the Board as well as administrative assistants who fetch papers, water, food, and any manner of sundries. I think I can blend in here. No one upstairs on the 18th floor is going to miss me. In truth, work has sort of ground to a halt today as the eyes of the Firm, and the entirety of Wall Street wait to see what will happen.

  There are a bunch of things that I can tell you about how important today is.

  No Firm in the history of Wall Street has ever kicked out their CEO.

  No Firm in the history of Wall Street has ever been ripped apart like ours is being now based on a power struggle between a husband and wife.

  No CEO has ever been in this much of the public spotlight as what the media calls the "Bad Boy of Wall Street." They used to call him the "King of Wall Street" but I think Mom pretty much came and ruined that.

  But then again, she seems to ruin everything.

  I sit and try to blend in as Roy Purpus strides into the room.

  He's a corpulent man, at least 400 pounds and he's known to begin sweating at the slightest of efforts. He's got a thick Texas twang and at least five chins and I can see that he's the exact opposite of Mason in every way.

  Sorry if I'm a bit biased, hun. I mean, he's the one that called the No Confidence Board Meeting. I just don't understand why. From everything I've researched he's always been rather indifferent to the investment direction of the Firm. In fact, as long as he'd had his payday he hasn't really cared where the money has come from or the ethical implications. But he's never been one to be an activist.

  "What are you doing here, girl?" a voice bites out at me from my side, immediately snapping me out of my reverie and jarring me back to reality.

  Standing in a rather tight black pencil skirt and black blouse stands the woman that I had been raised to think was my mother. Lorna Lowell.

  At first I don't know what to say, so I remain silent.

  "Well, girl," she sneers at me. "You're lucky you even have a job to come back to. Don't push it by sticking your nose where it doesn't belong."

  Right, I've pretty much had enough of her.

  I stand up, and I can tell there are a few eyes on me.

  "You know what, Mother," I say to her trying not to raise my voice. "I think I will stay here. Someone has to keep you honest."

  "Don't test me, Becca," my mother says to me. "I've ruined and brought down greater men than you can imagine. Your little boyfriend is nothing. You think you'll be saving him?"

  I can feel rather than see more eyes staring at me.

  "Lorna," Roy Purpus says from the side as he approaches. "Is everything okay?"

  Mother turns her head and looks at Roy with a scathing glare. "Go and sit down, Roy," she commands sharply and I jerk back in surprise at her tone. After Mason and then her, he's probably the next most powerful Board Member at Kane Price. He's a Senior Managing Director and he's been with the Firm forever. But what's even more surprising is that he listens to what Mother says, even meekly accepts her public rebuke of him.

  "We'll start the meeting as soon as I deal with my wayward daughter," Mother says, more to the room than to anyone in particular.

  But why is she giving orders?

  I need to stop this. Whether or not Mason Kane is here, someone needs to speak up.

  "Mr. Purpus, before you sit down and let my mother take over this meeting since Mason isn't here, there are a few things you need to know about what I found out about Red Lion Aviation," I say out loud to Roy, raising my voice. He turns around and looks at me, as if noticing me for the first time.

  I gulp. That did it.

  The entire room is now looking at me.

  But this is my chance.

  "I've done some research into Red Lion Aviation," I begin, my heart starting to beat a mile a minute.

  I mean, I'm 21 years old. I'm not supposed to be addressing the Board of Directors of one of the most powerful investment banks in the world.

  But here I am.

  God, sometimes I hate Mason for stranding me here like this.

  "And?" Roy asks.

  I notice Mom smile and walk to the head of the table.

  A few people eye her warily as she sits down at the head of the table where Mason would be sitting.

  I need to get what I have off my chest as quickly as possible.

  "We all know the reasons why we're either for or against taking a majority-minority stake in their company," I say. "We think they could grow, but they've got a horrible safety record."

  "That's not news," a Board Member that I can't identify says from somewhere in the room.

  They're already losing patience with me.

  They think I'm a petulant little girl.

  They're not going to take me seriously.

  But no one else is standing up to her.

  I need to continue.

  "After their last accident off the coast of Bali, I noticed something about their routes," I begin, reaching to the sofa-bench and pulling up my file that I had brought with me. "The number of passengers and routes began to decrease."

  "So?" a Board Member—again unidentifiable—asks me.

  "So, they began posting higher and higher profits," I say to the room. "Even as independent industry ratings agencies began to note fewer and fewer passengers."

  The room is silent at this point.

  "In fact, for an entire month at the beginning of this year, they had almost two weeks of planes that were running empty. Yet that was their most profitable month ever," I tell the room. "Don't you see? Something very strange is going on here. Something that probably violates the Anti-Money Laundering Act as well as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as well as a host of other US laws that could shut us down!"

  "Stop being so dramatic, little girl," Mother says dismissively from her seat.

  I turn to her.

  "You don't care anything for this company," I seethe at her.

  "Lorna, it may be something we wish to investigate," another Board Member who I remember being sympathetic to Mason says.

  "We will do no such thing based on the lunatic ravings of a little girl," Mother says out loud before looking at me. "Especially the rantings of a girl who has seduced my husband and your CEO and is now acting out like a spoiled and wicked little brat."

  There are gasps from around the room. Of course people have read the papers, but having to confront what they read with someone standing right in front of them is jarring.

  I stiffen my back and look at my Mother.

  "You'r
e overthinking what is merely a diversion for Mason, dear," Mother says to me. "You're nothing more than a plaything for him until he gets bored. Only this time, he's gone too far and allowed the company to suffer."

  "Mr. Purpus," I beseech the large man as he turns away from me. "You have to do something to delay the vote until Mason can be here to explain himself and tell you about his concerns about this company in person."

  Roy looks at me for a long moment. I can see pain and sadness in his eyes.

  "I wish I could," he says, shaking his head at me. Then he turns to Mom. "I think we can get started."

  I can't believe it!

  They're going to remove Mason from his own company.

  And there's nothing I can do to stop it.

  Tears begin to fall from my eyes as I see the world start to go dark. I wonder if I'm going to faint.

  "I would like to say a few words before you guys get started," Mason says.

  Wait.

  What?

  No, you read that right.

  That was Mason.

  Only he hasn't walked in.

  People are gasping and pointing to the television.

  He's sitting there next to the anchor on Market Pulse.

  "Hi, everyone," he says with a smirk; the same smirk he's used on me many times. I can see his eyes shift slightly. "Hey Becca."

  He can't see me, but somehow my cheeks turn red at being recognized by him.

  But wait a second.

  He's on TV.

  He can't see me. Right?

  Did he just say 'Hey Becca?'

  You're not supposed to be able to see two ways through a television, right?

  Apparently a lot of people are wondering the same thing too because they're talking amongst themselves and pointing.

  Mason smiles as if he's amused through all this.

  "In the future, you may want to turn on the television for the two-way video screen and not just leave the camera running, folks," he says on live TV. "Because right now I can see and hear the whole thing logged in from my computer. I've been there for quite a while now. And Becca was right. Do I have quite a story to tell you."

  All of a sudden, Mother notices something.

  And she turns very, very white.

  Mason

  Actually, thinking about it right now, this is probably the highest ratings that Market Pulse is getting today.

  The last time they probably had ratings this good was the last time I was on their show. Jesus, it feels so long ago that I was fucking Stacy Sawyer and I fucking shot my load all over the camera lens.

  I know, I'm shaking my head as well, Gorgeous. I can't believe I did that.

  The truth is, I was lost at that time.

  Sure, I called myself the Bad Boy of Wall Street or the King of Wall Street, but all I really was doing was just fooling myself into thinking that I wasn't a lost little boy.

  I mean, every other word out of my mouth was "fuck."

  That's still the case a lot. Old habits die hard.

  But fuck, think about what I used to do and compare it to now.

  To my life...after Becca.

  Until I met Becca I didn't have any boundaries. But it took almost losing her for me to see what my priorities should be.

  That's why, when we realized that we were looking at an impending vote of no confidence from the Board, I got Becca to give me everything she had dug up so far and I made a few educated guesses.

  Yeah, I had to leave town for a few days. There were a few hunches I needed to follow up on.

  And yeah, I know I could've told Becca where I was going. But, also remember Gorgeous, we're at war. And sometimes in war you have to hold your cards close to your fucking vest.

  So it actually made me smile as I saw the chips falling down just as I had expected.

  I knew Becca would come to the conference room after not seeing me. It's been a hard few days not being around her, but just seeing her through the video screen was enough to keep me going.

  Plus, once this is over, we'll have all the time we fucking need.

  Yeah, this is pretty much over. I've got this in the bag. I'm pretty convinced. You can rest easily.

  And listen, I know you've been in the dark for a bit. I've had information that you've wanted to know about and I kept telling you that I would tell you later. Well, later never came and things started coming up so I'm going to do one better.

  I'm going to show you.

  I smile and talk into the camera. I'm being broadcast to over 180 million homes around the country.

  Why not take Lorna out in one fell swoop in front of the whole country?

  Little payback for the long string of leaks and planted stories she's been doing to me the last couple months as she tries to sit in the big chair at Kane Price.

  "Good afternoon, America, my name is Mason Kane and I'm the CEO of Kane Price," I say, controlling my words so as not to come across too aggressive to the people who may not know that Lorna deserves it.

  When I approached the network the other day to come on Market Pulse, at first they were a bit skeptical. I mean, I came on the camera lens, remember? You can't just wipe that shit down with a damp cloth when trying to clean the lens. No, you gotta throw out the whole fucking camera is what you gotta do.

  But when they saw the information that I had found, and saw that I was ready to share it, they were more than willing to help me.

  After all, they were affected by this too.

  They just didn't realize it.

  "Many of you know me from my unfortunate event that I was involved in with a Market Pulse reporter several weeks ago," I say into the camera, trying to keep a straight face. "Caught in the moment during a sexual encounter, I may have unloaded more than I meant to during the interview. And from your perspective it may have looked like I came...on your faces."

  Fuck, I forgot to tell you. One of the stipulations that I had to agree to with the network was that any fines and the like if I didn't manage to come out beating Lorna would be borne by me. I agreed. I mean, if I'm unsuccessful then it's not like Lorna will spare either of us.

  "A lot happened in my life since then," I continue, thinking back to how I met Becca and the crazy fucking ride that the both of us have been on. "But my actions on this network kept coming back to haunt me."

  I sigh, and lean forward. "Look, I know what they say when they see shit like that. I know they think that I'm a loose cannon. How can you trust someone like that who calls himself the King of Wall Street to manage trillions of dollars of other people's money?"

  I can almost imagine America nodding its collective head.

  "And yeah, I may have tried to compensate for it by compromising a bit," I say. "When Ms. Lowell showed me the reports of clients getting jittery, instead of doing the hard work and apologizing to the nation, I made her the Chief Investment Counsel at Kane Price and married her. Thought it would repair my image."

  The studio is silent. "But it didn't. The demons kept coming back from that interview and they set off a chain of events that led me here, where I am one Board Meeting away from being removed as the CEO of the company that I founded."

  I can see the video screen of the Kane Price conference room. Everyone is watching the television. Those fucking idiots still haven't figured out how exactly to turn on the video call monitor screen that's hanging on the room. So I can still see them because the camera is turned on, but the viewing screen being turned off means they can't see me.

  "You've heard a lot about Red Lion Aviation," I say with a sigh. "You've heard that I don't think it's a viable company to invest in and this has called my judgment to lead the company into question. In fact I'm facing a No Confidence vote right now."

  The people in the conference room are still. They're enraptured. Lorna looks like she might faint.

  "Well, one of the interns at Kane Price did a little digging on Red Lion Aviation and they sent it to me," I say, pulling open the file.

  Here's whe
re I get to tell you everything, Gorgeous.

  "Oh, and the intern that did this? Her name is Becca Lowell, and I love her," I say to the camera.

  "Now I just heard a few gasps. I know what you're thinking. He's in love with his stepdaughter. His investment sense is skewed. He was caught fucking a reporter. His judgment is terrible," I say with a smile. "But let's really look at the facts, shall we?"

  Now I turn my head slightly so it looks like I'm looking directly at the camera.

  "To my Board of Directors," I say with declarative strength in my voice. "Becca is absolutely right. Red Lion Aviation flies planes nowadays, but they're only flying one to two flights per day. And they're all empty. Their profits are through the roof because they're getting investors left and right. And those investors are getting paid their returns based on new investments."

  I see the people in the boardroom stiffen. They know what I'm describing. A ponzi scheme.

  "But they have some very interesting employees," I say, not quite done. "They hired a woman a year ago who already had a job. Can we move the camera a bit?"

  I see the camera swivel and there, sitting next to me, is Stacy Sawyer.

  "Say hello to Stacy Sawyer, everyone," I say with a grin and I see consternation in my boardroom. "She was fired from this network earlier, but she didn't mind. Because she got a pretty big bonus from Red Lion Aviation."

  I look to Stacy. "Tell us what it was for Stacy," I ask.

  Stacy takes a gulp. I found her in Toronto after Becca handed me the file showing that Red Lion Aviation had hired her earlier in the year and had released her from employment shortly after the whole thing with her at Market Pulse.

  "My job was to seduce and catch Mason Kane on camera in a compromising situation," Stacy says, looking into the camera like a pro. "To cause him embarrassment and call his judgment into question."

  "Thank you, Stacy," I say with a wide grin. I can see on my laptop that people are starting to look at Lorna in the boardroom.

  "And who hired you, Stacy?" I ask, knowing the answer full well, but deciding to play it out.

  Stacy nods to me.

  "I was hired by Lorna Lowell," she replies. "Who is the majority shareholder and CEO-at-large of Red Lion Aviation."