The Christmas Gamble

by Sienna Ciles

  “You two didn't have any children?” I asked as he shuffled out onto the porch in front of me.

  He shook his head sadly. “She couldn't,” he said. “Medical issue, you see. My family urged me to leave her, to find a woman who could give me children, but I refused. Irma was the one I loved, the only one for me. And if God had decided that she and I couldn't have children, well I was fine with that.”

  Wow. I was even more impressed now. Something like that would have been a deal breaker for many people. Not for Jackson “Bill” Carmichael though. “Well, you must have made the right choice then, Mr. Wallace,” I said, “seeing as you two were together for so many decades.”

  “Oh, I did, I did. And not once did I ever look back or have any regrets. No sir, not once, not ever. Those years I had with her were more valuable to me than any investment I ever made, any deal I ever brokered, any company I ever had shares in. All that, it's fine and dandy for a man to occupy his time with and dedicate his energy to, but in the end, none of it really matters. Love is what really matters.”

  He looked up at me, a playful sparkle in his eyes.

  “You must be quite surprised to hear someone like me say something like that, I'll wager.”

  I laughed. “I . . . yes, actually I am a little surprised.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said with a laugh, “even someone like Bill Wallace, investing tycoon, needs love. And the older you get, the more you realize how important it is.”

  “It is, I know that,” I said.

  We sat down and I took his box of pesto pasta out.

  “Should I go and get some plates and cutlery from inside?” I asked. I assumed someone like him wouldn't want to eat out of takeout containers.

  Surprisingly, he shook his head. “No, no, that'd just mean more washing to do later, and my domestic helper has taken the day off. And besides, the food tastes as good, no matter what you eat it out of.”

  I smiled. Bill Wallace was a lot more relaxed and laid back than I had imagined him to be. First impressions could definitely be wrong. “All right,” I said, pulling up my chair to the table on the porch and getting my burger and fries out of the bag. “Oh, and I got us blueberry smoothies too,” I said, taking the smoothies out and passing one to him.

  “Plant Power,” he said, grinning as he looked at the bag and the containers. “You chose wisely. And you've done well with the first task I assigned you.”

  I didn't want to say outright that I knew—or at least that I thought I knew—why he had told me to do this. Instead, I wanted to see if he would volunteer this information willingly. “Thank you,” I said in response, and said no more.

  “Well, go on,” he said as he opened his box and dug his fork into the creamy pasta, “give it a try, see what you think.”

  I opened my burger box and was greeted immediately by a delectable scent. The burger itself looked fantastic—full and plump and loaded with toppings. I gave it a tentative bite, still feeling skeptical about the fact that it had no meat in it at all. It was, despite being meatless, actually very tasty. The texture was quite different to that of a beef burger, but the flavor was quite similar, and the peanut butter and chili sauce added an interesting thick creaminess with a smack of spicy goodness. “Mmm,” I said after wolfing down the first mouthful. “That's actually really good.”

  He nodded as he chewed slowly on a mouthful of pasta. “It really is, isn't it?” he remarked after he had finished his bite.

  I nodded, taking another bite of the delicious burger. “It's great,” I remarked. “Really great. But I'm curious . . . what got you into eating like this. I mean, it's just that, well . . .”

  I trailed off, blushing as I realized that I had been about to comment on just how old he was—and thus how conservative I thought his ideas would be. Way to stereotype people, Lanie. I wanted to kick myself.

  “Because I'm an old fuddy-duddy whose ideas are too firmly rooted in past traditions to change?” he said, smiling mischievously.

  My blush intensified. “Oh, I didn't, I wasn't going to—”

  He held up a hand to silence me. “No need to be like that, Miss Carmichael. I'm in my eighties and I'm a very old man. Don't worry, the mirror I look into every morning and evening never lets me forget that. But think about something, I'm still investing now, in my twilight years. I'm still making money, still tracking trends. Do you know how much I'm worth?”

  “Uh . . . a billion? Well over that? I'm sorry, I don't really know.”

  He chuckled. “I am a billionaire, yes. Many times over, in fact. I could have retired years ago. I could have stopped at the age of thirty, to be honest, and lived very comfortably off what I had made by that age for the rest of my life. I had already made millions by that time. But I didn't, you see. Now, why do you think that is?”

  I looked around and scratched my chin as I considered this. I was guessing that his modest lifestyle had something to do with it, although I couldn't quite put my finger on it. He reached into his pocket and took out a late model iPhone—yet another surprise. My father, in his sixties, was still struggling to get the hang of using a smartphone, and here this old man in his eighties was using this year's iPhone.

  “I want to show you something,” he said, tapping the screen. After a few moments, he passed the phone to me. On the screen was a black and white photo of him in his younger years. He looked quite dapper and handsome. Next to him was a pretty woman, she was plain but elegant.

  “This is your wife?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Pretty, wasn't she? That picture was taken two years after we were married.”

  I was wondering what this had to do with the question at hand.

  “She doesn't really look like a movie star though, does she?”

  I wondered if there was a polite way to answer this, if he was somehow testing me. I decided to be honest. “Well, um, no, I guess she doesn't. She's pretty though.”

  “I was a well-known millionaire at the time that picture was taken. I had a large social circle. Beautiful women would approach me all the time. And I'm talking absolutely gorgeous women—Hollywood actresses, models, singers. But I never strayed, not even once. I had no desire to. Irma was my rock, my everything. Now, look around you. What do you see? Is this a mansion? Do I have a garage full of Ferraris and other sports cars?”

  I shook my head. “No. This is a nice house, but it's pretty much standard for an upper- to middle-class neighborhood. And your BMW is what, ten years old? A mid-range model, too.”

  “Fourteen years old, and still going strong,” he said with a wink. “That's because I stick to the maintenance schedule to a T. Take care of your things well, and they'll reward you with longevity and reliability. And yes, my house is rather modest for a man of my financial stature. I could buy a mansion and rub shoulders with movie stars and the richest people in the country… but, why would I? I'm happy here. This is home. I don't need excess, I don't need frills, and I don't need a beautiful but greedy, empty female as arm candy. I continued to work because it was what I loved doing, not because I wanted more and more—but more importantly, because I'm obsessed with the evolution of culture, of society, of how trends come and go, how they explode, and then fizzle out. Investing is all about two things, Miss Carmichael: timing and reading trends. Did you know that I own shares in Plant Power?”

  I was quite surprised to hear that. “Wow, you do?”

  “Yes. You see, I've been tracking trends for decades—and I still track trends. I have a Facebook account with thousands of 'friends,' if you can really call them that, a Twitter account, and subscriptions to a substantial number of online publications. A few years ago, I started noticing a rise in the popularity of plant-based eating. I started doing research on the topic, as I always do when I feel that I've picked up the scent on a trend that's about to explode. I thought to myself, 'This is taking off. This is going to take off in a huge way. The time to buy in is now.’ That was three years ago. Some of my peers scoffed at the idea
. Why? Because they didn't bother to do any research on the ground. To them, the idea smacked of the hippies they used to loathe in the sixties, when we were younger. They dismissed it as something that would be a mere flash in the pan.

  “Me? I looked at what young people were saying. I always have. Did you know that I bought a number of shares in the Doctor Martens shoe company in the early ‘90s?”

  I shook my head and laughed. “That was some foresight on your part.”

  He shrugged. “It was easy enough to predict. We saw in the ‘80s with the emergence of MTV how the fashion sense of rock and pop icons affected how teenagers dressed—and we all know about the purchasing power of the teenage market in this country. I happened to be spending a lot of time in Seattle in 1990, and I looked into the music scene there. Not my kind of music, not at all—all that screaming, whining, loud guitar and bashing drums. That grunge was horrible music. But unlike my peers, who again scoffed at it and dismissed it as a tiny underground fad for pot smokers and unemployed burnouts, something that would fizzle out in a year, I read the signs. I knew this thing was going to explode, and I saw what all those bands were wearing—so I knew that within a year or two, when their music videos were being shown across America, the youth of this nation would all be dressing like that. And sure enough . . .”

  “It happened,” I said, completing his sentence. I could not help but be awed by how well he could read trends. “So, the same sort of thing has happened—is happening—with this whole plant-based eating thing, huh?” I asked.

  “Yes—and I'm surprised that you, as a young person, haven't seen it.”

  “I'm surprised, too,” I said, a little embarrassed.

  “Make some friends on Facebook, or wherever, who aren't the type of people you'd usually associate with,” he said. “Fill your news feed with opinions that you'd never hear in your social circle. Read the types of publications you never would have considered reading before. Broaden your net and pay very close attention to little things that seem to be gathering momentum. It'll be hit-and-miss at first, I can tell you that, but the more you do it, the better you'll learn to read the signs. And the better you're able to read the signs, the more likely it is that you'll be able to get in and buy at the right time, when the price is still low, before it skyrockets. And if you can do that . . .”

  “I'll be well on my way to making money, real money,” I said with a knowing nod.

  “Precisely, Miss Carmichael, precisely. Now, I have another job for you.”

  I was excited. He was finally giving me tips, and this sounded like it could be something a lot more insightful than simply getting him food. Would I be helping him research markets? Seeking out trends that were about to explode? Buying and selling shares?

  “I'm organizing a ball, a party,” he said with a smile. “I want you to go through my address book with me and help me send out some invitations to the guests.”

  What? Like a popped balloon, my enthusiasm was deflated . . . and just like that, it was as if I were his freakin' secretary again. Great, just great . . .

  CHAPTER 8

  Jax

  I cracked open another beer and reached into the cooler to get one for Pete. “Heads up, man,” I said as I tossed it to him.

  He caught it and grinned. “Thanks, buddy.”

  I leaned back in the chair and looked out over the city, staring at the sea of sparkling lights that stretched from horizon to horizon.

  “Man, you really do have a great view from up here,” he said. “Smart move buying a place up on a hill with a huge roof deck like this. And hey, check it out, you could probably make it if you jumped into your pool from up here. Probably . . .”

  I chuckled and shook my head, imbibing a long, deep sip of the cold, crisp beer. “It's too high and too far. The water is deep enough, I think. The deep end of my pool is what, ten feet? That'd be enough for a jump from this height. But it's the distance that would get you. You'd have to be an Olympic-level long jumper to make the distance. And if you didn't . . . the poolside is hard, hard stone. You'd break your legs at best from this height . . . and at worst . . .”

  “I know, I know,” he said, taking a long swig of his beer. “I'm not young and dumb enough to try it any more. Maybe if we were seventeen, yeah . . . But we have a bit more sense in our heads these days.”

  We both laughed.

  “Just a little more though, huh Pete?” I said with a wink.

  “Just a little, buddy, just a little. Hey remember that time we jumped off C Rock into the Harlem River when we were sixteen?”

  I nodded and grinned. What a memory that was. “Man, to have the balls of a sixteen-year-old again huh? We just didn't think of consequences at all, did we?” We both laughed.

  “I'm surprised that we didn't wind up dead, or paralyzed—or in prison or something. Man, we pulled some crazy stunts back then,” remarked Pete. “How high was the jump off C Rock?”

  “A hundred and ten feet from the highest spot, right?”

  He nodded. “That was it, yeah. A hundred-and-ten-foot drop into the Harlem River. Man, it felt like you were falling forever. And when you hit the water—”

  “It was almost like hitting concrete!” We both laughed again.

  “Damn man, and what did we do when we survived that jump?” he asked.

  “We climbed right back up there and did it again—doing triple backflips the next time!” We clinked our beer bottles together and grinned.

  “We were crazy then man, totally nuts,” I said.

  He nodded, and we both sat and sipped on our beers in silence for a while. It was good, sitting here and reminiscing about old times. It helped us—especially Pete—get our minds off the terrible news about his father. He needed this, and so did I. Uncle Caleb really was like a second father to me, and I had been devastated when Pete broke the news to me. Still, as awful as it was, there really wasn't much we could do about it at this stage.

  “We had no idea we'd end up like this huh?” commented Pete, breaking the silence and pulling me from the web of my thoughts.

  “No, none. Two kids from the Bronx, who were always getting put in detention, who didn't get the best grades, who hung around with the wrong crowd and did crazy stuff . . . Hell, I didn't even know if we'd make it to twenty-one in those days.”

  “And yet here we are, at the age of thirty-two, two multimillionaires who came out to California after teaching ourselves to code in that cockroach-infested shoebox sized apartment we shared after high school.”

  “Yeah, we had nothing but a suitcase full of clothes between us, and a computer each. And we drove that clapped-out thirty-year-old van the whole way across the country!”

  After another laugh, Pete chuckled, “Good old Suzie!” Suzie was the name we'd given that old rust bucket of a van.

  “She served us well, Pete. She wasn't much to look at, and had more rust holes in the bodywork than a piece of Swiss cheese, but that motor was strong. She didn't break down once on that drive across the country.”

  “I wish we'd kept her. We could have put her on display in front of our building. It would have served as a great little piece of inspiration for our junior coders. I mean, that was what we came from, and now look at us. Big houses, even bigger bank accounts. You're driving a Maserati, and you've got a bunch of motorcycles and a jet ski, I've got my Porsche collection and my boat . . . How things have changed, Jax, how they've changed.”

  “I know man, I know. But for everything we've achieved, for all the stuff we own and the riches we've accumulated, I sometimes miss those days when we had nothing. Life was so much simpler then.”

  He sipped on his beer and nodded. “It was Jax, it was. I miss those days too, sometimes.”

  We both sat in silence, sipping on our beer. Pete checked his phone after a while and sighed.

  “It's getting really late,” he said. “And you have to fly to LA tomorrow morning.”

  I nodded. “I do, yeah. We'd better get to bed.”
>
  “I can drive,” he said. “I feel fine.”

  “No Pete. You've had what, six? Seven? Yeah, seven beers, I believe. You're in no state to drive, especially not a sports car. Come on, man, this house is huge and there are plenty of guest bedrooms. Pick one and sleep here.”

  “Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “But I left all my lights on at my place.”

  “You've got a housekeeper, Pete. Call her and tell her you're not coming back tonight. She can turn them off.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that's true. I'll do that now. Well come on then, Jax, let's get some sleep.”

  We stood up and took one last look out over the city. Then, as we turned to go inside, I stopped and gave him a quick hug. “You're my best friend, man,” I said. “And if you ever need anything, I'm here for you. Don't ever forget that.”

  “The same goes for you, Jax,” he said. “And thank you for tonight. I needed it.”

  “I know, man, I know. So did I.”

  * * * * *

  I woke up with a groan and hit the snooze button on my alarm clock. I had been dreaming about her—about Lanie. It was weird, seeing as we had only met once, and it had been such a brief encounter. Yet since we had met, I hadn't been able to get her out of my head. And I couldn't even get away from her while dreaming, apparently. Again, I cursed myself for not getting her number. I really, really needed to see her again . . . But how? I had searched Facebook for the name “Lanie,” but nothing came up. I didn't know where she worked or what she did, so I didn't know how I would be able to find her.

  However, I didn't really have the time to think about that right now. I had to get up—despite the pounding headache—and get showered so that I could get on the plane and get down to LA.

  I had to admit that I felt a little annoyed at my aunt for forcing me to do this. I now had to take a day off work and lose valuable time for this. I realized that I did have a lot to learn about how to be a successful CEO, and I appreciated her help . . . but why had she only taken an interest in me now?