Trade Me (3 page)

“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” I say, and I start to leave.

“Tina.”

I turn back reluctantly.

“You were right about almost everything you said,” he says. “But there was one thing you were really wrong about.”

“Oh?”

He gives me another one of his smiles, and this one seems to curl around me, catching me up in a wave of warmth. “You said that I didn’t notice people like you.” His voice lowers. His eyes are relentlessly blue, and they cut into me. “That’s completely false. You’ve never been invisible to me. I saw you the first day we crossed paths, and I’ve been seeing you ever since.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. Against my better judgment, that little spark of something ignites in my stomach. A flame dances, ready to catch fire.

But I have to be vigilant.

“On the contrary,” I hear myself say. “This morning, you cut in front of me in the parking lot. You were three inches from me. And…” I hold up my sleeve, showing the damage.

He winces.

“So when I said you didn’t see me, I meant it. Literally.”

His eyes shut. “Shit.”

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m used to it.”

2.

BLAKE

The kitchen window of my house high up in the Berkeley Hills overlooks fog-shrouded waters, interrupted by the bulk of San Francisco to the south and the illuminated towers of the Golden Gate Bridge further north.

Twilight is coming and I haven’t turned on any lights. I’m surrounded by granite and stainless steel, and I’m considering the benefits of an apple that I’ve rinsed, when my phone rings.

To be precise, it’s not actually my phone. It’s the highly experimental video chat app on my even more experimental watch.

My pulse picks up a few beats. I love my dad. But there is, after all, a reason why his ring tone is the ominous-sounding Imperial March from Star Wars. He’s difficult, demanding…and I’m not about to make him wait. I tap my watch, accepting the call.

He appears on the tiny watch screen. Reduced to thumbnail size, he looks exactly like his publicity photos. His eyebrows are thick and bushy; his hair is turning to salt and pepper. Other than the hair, though, he looks a lot like me. Same wiry build. Same blue eyes; same Roman-centurion nose.

“Blake.” He must be at one of his standing desks, because he paces back and forth, his head shifting. In the back of my mind, I notice that the video is finally following his movements with nary a glitch. He frowns at me. “You’re backlit.”

“Julio,” I say. “Lights.”

My kitchen lights come on in a dazzle of brilliance—all of them, from the bright, recessed LEDs overhead to the warm under-cabinet lights that catch the gold flecks in the granite counter.

At the exact same time, the lights in my dad’s office shut off.

“Goddammit,” Dad says. “There’s an unintended consequence. Julio, lights.”

Obligingly, his experimental computerized environmental system turns his lights back on—and just as obligingly, mine plunges my kitchen back into darkness.

Dad lets out a sharp bark of laughter. I cross the room and flip the lights on old school with my elbow. “Okay, I’ll file the bug report. What’s going on?”

I’m holding the apple in my hand opposite the watch. I got it from the fridge a minute before and it’s still cold against my skin. In a few minutes, my hands will warm it up until it’s body temperature. I pass it to my watch hand.
One.

“We have to talk about the Fernanda launch in March.” Dad growls when he talks, an effect so powerful that unless he makes an effort to sound friendly, he comes off as perpetually angry.

I know him well enough to know that’s just the way he talks, but still, a hint of anxious anticipation gathers in me at his tone. “It’s only a few months away.” His eyes spear me. “I think you should run it.”

I swallow, feeling a pit open up in my stomach. This is far from the first time he’s pushed me to take on a larger role in the company, and it won’t be the last. And this particular role?

“Come on, Dad. Nobody wants
me
to do the whole launch. That’s not how these things work.”

One of his eyebrows rises. “Bullshit. These things work the way I say they work.”

I don’t think there is anyone in the world who could argue that my dad is not a great man—or, at the very least, a powerful one. Over the course of the last three decades, he built a Fortune 500 company from almost nothing. He’s right; the world bends to him, not the other way around.

I used to think that was cool.

“I know you want me to take on a larger public role, but I’m busy with school.”

He could point out that we scheduled the product launch to coincide with my spring break. Instead…

“Fuck school,” Dad says succinctly. “College serves only two purposes. It teaches people to bleat on command, like sheep, and it lets assholes think they’re ‘finding themselves’”—he illustrates this with air quotes—“by getting degrees in Russian Literature before they head into the real world and land jobs as insurance adjusters. You’re not a sheep, and you’re not going to be an insurance adjuster. Why do you give a shit?”

When my dad was my age, he’d already dropped out of Yale, started Cyclone, and made his first ten million dollars. Having avoided what he calls “stupid bullshit” all his life, he can’t figure out why I’m interested in it.

“I’m just as much a sheep if I follow in your footsteps,” I tell him. “Maybe I
do
want to find myself.”

“Hippy crap.”

“Maybe I have secret dreams of being an insurance adjuster,” I deadpan. “The forbidden is always tempting.” I switch my apple to the other hand. It’s the second time I’ve moved it.

He snorts. Other parents tell their kids they have to go to college if they expect to amount to anything. My dad has been telling me the opposite all my life, threatening me with a career as an insurance adjuster as if nothing worse could ever happen.

He regards me skeptically now. He’s forty miles away and his face is just an icon on an inch-sized screen, but I can still feel the force of his gaze. When he coughs, stocks plummet around the globe. It’s hardly surprising that he can make me feel uneasy with just a look. He’s that kind of man.

I’m not.

“It’s been six months since you left,” he finally mutters. “This is a really inefficient method of finding yourself, and I’m pretty sure it’s bullshit. You’re not trying to find yourself. You’re trying to lose yourself. You’re afraid that you can’t fucking do this.” He gestures widely to the office around him. “Well, I know you, and I say you can. Hurry the fuck up, Blake. I’m not going to be on top of my game forever. I need you. Run the goddamned launch.”

For the last year, he’s been offering opportunities like this to me. For the last year, I’ve had dreams where I say yes. Nightmares, really, ones that wake me in a cold sweat. During the last year, he’s pushed and prodded me. Every time we’ve had some version of this conversation, I’ve imagined telling him the truth.

I can’t do this, Dad. I have a problem.

But I haven’t told anyone that. Most days, I try not to admit it even to myself. And I already know what he will do if I tell him. He’ll look at me, frown, and toss out one of his foul-mouthed aphorisms. Something like
problems are for pussies.

Right now, at least I’m standing up to him, and he respects that. If he knew the truth? I don’t want to see him disappointed in me. Not now. Not ever.

“Not on top of your game?” I joke instead. “Shit. What do you need? A vacation?”

He doesn’t laugh at this. He folds his arms. “Maybe. Maybe something like that.”

I roll my eyes. I know exactly what it’s like when Dad takes a vacation: He doesn’t. For the last thirty years, he’s worked and worked and worked without stopping, waking up in the middle of the night to leave messages for his chief engineer about every last improvement he’s dreamed up. Going to some beach somewhere doesn’t change his habits; it just means that his key staff have to change time zones to match his schedule.

When I was a kid, the prospect of inheriting Cyclone felt like it would be the winning move in a worldwide game. Today, I know it takes strength. Determination. A will stronger than steel.

In other words, it’s going to take someone other than me.

“I get it,” he says. “You’re scared. You’re using school as an excuse. You think you can’t do this. You’ve bought into this bullshit that just because you’re twenty-three and barely an adult, blah blah blah, you can’t do this. Well, that’s fucked up. Stare your fear down. Come on, Blake. Cyclone needs you.” He frowns. “
I
need you.”

It’s a paradox. If I’m not strong enough to say no to my dad, I’m surely not strong enough to run the company. If he manages to break me down, I’ll know I can’t do it.

I also know that in a long-term battle of wills between my father and me, I will never, ever win. Nobody does. The only solution I can see is to
get
strong enough to take over before he breaks me down.

“Dad. I can’t.” The rest of the sentence is on the tip of my tongue.
I have a problem.

But he’s already rejecting this with a dismissive chop of his hand. “Can’t is for assholes.”

Can’t
is the only word I have. Going away to college was a stopgap measure, the best I could come up with to buy time to fix this thing. It’s not working. If this keeps up, he’ll break me before I’m ready. I switch my apple back to the other hand.
Three.

I know my dad
sounds
like a mean fucker, but that’s just the way he talks. He doesn’t play games. He loves me; he wants me to be happy. Cyclone made him happy, and so now he wants to give it to me. He expects me to continue his conquest of the world.

“Look,” he says. “We have a vanishing window here. The Board of Directors will let you take over in the name of continuity and public trust at this point. The longer you stay away, the less weight that argument carries.”

“You own 12% of Cyclone stock,” I point out, “and everyone fucking worships you. The Board of Directors will do whatever you damned well say.”

“Hmmm.” He frowns, but doesn’t disagree.

My dad may be something of a mean fucker, but he’s a mean fucker with prescient vision, brilliant business sense, and an almost preternatural ability to know precisely what needs to be done at any given moment. Hundreds of people depend on his decisions.

I switch the apple yet again to my other hand.
Four.

And the truth is… I know why he wants me to run the launch. It’s not about wanting a vacation or needing to slow down. It’s not even a manipulative attempt to yank me out of school and pull me back into his orbit.

It’s because a little over a year ago, Peter Georgiacodis—Cyclone’s Chief Financial Officer, my father’s best friend, the only person who could face my dad down and remain standing, and, incidentally, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a second parent—had a massive heart attack two nights before the launch of our third-generation tablet.

My father would never admit that preparing for our upcoming launch has afflicted him with anything so weak as lingering grief. He would never tell me that the memories are getting to him. He’d certainly never talk about fears of his own fleeting mortality. But when he says that he needs me, I suspect that’s what he means.

If he
were
just a mean fucker, if all he had to offer was cash, I could tell him to piss off. But it’s not about the money. Imagine that Darth Vader had the chance to raise Luke as his son. Imagine that he spent every day with him, loved him, and taught him everything he knew. Imagine that he put Luke first every day of his son’s young life, even though he had an empire to run and galactic rebellions to squash.

It’s easy to shout “I’ll never join you!” when some random asshole makes ridiculous claims about your parentage. It’s harder when that asshole loves you with a world-bending ferocity. And it’s downright impossible when you love him back.

Dad and I stare at each other for a moment, both of us desperately wishing the other will change.

“Compromise,” I finally say. “I’ll draft the launch script. I can do that and stay in school. But you’re still the public face of Cyclone. You stay in charge. You run it. Not me.”

His eyes bore into mine.

I want to do everything for him. I want to be everything he thinks I can be.

But…
Dad, I have a problem.

He doesn’t need to hear about my problem. I’m going to take care of it on my own, and when I do, I’ll come back. At that point, I’ll be the person he believes I can be, not just the illusion of a son he can rely on.

He lets out a long breath. “Fine. I can work with that. I’ll have George set everything up. Thanks, asshole.”

“You got it, you bastard.”

He ends the conversation.

And in that moment, I realize what I’ve agreed to. It’s not the work that convinced me I needed to get away from Cyclone. I don’t mind work. But Dad’s not the only one with lingering grief issues. He’s just the one who is managing his issues in a reasonably healthy manner.