28. Cassian
CASSIAN
The prep call is at ten. I take it from the upstairs office at the desk by the window, with Sebastian on a chair beside me and a fresh cup of coffee neither of us is going to drink. Becca opens with two questions.
"Cassian."
"Becca."
"One. Is the engagement still on the table for narrative purposes."
"No."
There is a pause. Becca, in nine years, has not, in my experience, paused.
"All right."
"Two."
"Two. Do you want me to walk Roland through that this morning, or would you like to do it yourself in the room."
"In the room."
"Cassian."
"In the room, Becca."
"All right. I will, however, prepare him on the drive in. He is not a man who likes a surprise at a signing. He will accept it. He will not, in fact, walk away. He will, however, ask the price."
"Tell him I will pay it in the room."
"Cassian."
"What."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
"All right."
She hangs up. Sebastian, at his chair, sets his cup on the side table and folds his hands.
"Sir."
"Don't, Sebastian."
"No, sir."
"Bring the term sheet up. The original. The one Becca sent Saturday at twelve forty. Not the redline. The original."
"Yes, sir."
He goes for it. I sit at the desk with the small framed photograph of the property the year I bought it. I pick it up—after seven years—and look at it. Half-derelict. Two buildings still in scaffolding. The cliff path overgrown.
I set it back on the shelf face-down.
Sebastian comes back with the document. I take a pencil. A pen feels wrong.
I begin, line by line, to remove her.
Roland and Becca arrive at ten forty-five. I meet them at the door of the upper conference room. I shake Roland's hand. I do not, this morning, kiss Becca on the cheek. Becca does not, this morning, offer.
We sit. Three on a side. Roland and Becca and the senior analyst, Quan, who is, this morning, not making eye contact with me.
Sebastian, at my left. The small ceramic carafe of water at the center of the table is the wrong carafe — it is not the one the kitchen brought up on Thursday — but I do not, in this moment, ask about it.
I have, currently, more important things to remove.
"Cassian."
"Roland."
"Becca tells me you have, in the night, made a change."
"I have."
"Walk me through it."
I open the term sheet. I open the redline.
I turn, in the redline, to page four. To paragraph 6.
2, which is, in the original, the principal stability covenant, and which the original draft I wrote with Becca's office in early September listed three indicators for, the third of which is, in plain language, current marital or comparable stable domestic arrangement.
I have, this morning, with the pencil, struck the third indicator.
"Section 6.2."
"Mm."
"I am removing the third clause. The personal life clause.
I am, additionally, removing the recital on page two that references the December second wedding, which Becca's office added to the recitals on Saturday.
I am removing — Roland — the word fiancée from the document.
There are, currently, four instances. I have struck all four. "
Roland sets down his coffee.
"Cassian."
"Yes."
"That is — frankly, son, that is forty percent of what I, on Friday, was buying."
"I know."
"Roland likes a settled man, Cassian. Roland has been telling you, on every call, Roland likes a settled man. The, ah, fiancée, in particular?—"
"I know, Roland."
"—was a reason you, in this room, on Friday, talked your projections up by a full point.
That number, I will tell you in front of Becca, was a number I gave you because of the settled house.
I took her at her word. I took the dinner at its word.
I took, I will say, the orchids at their word.
The number I came in here with this morning is, currently, the higher one.
If we are striking the personal indicator, Cassian, the number — "
"I know."
"—comes down."
"I know, Roland."
"By how much."
"You tell me."
He looks at Becca. Becca, in nine years, has never made the small face she is, currently, making.
Quan has set her pen down. Sebastian, at my left, has not lifted his eyes from the term sheet on the table in front of him, but I see the small involuntary movement of his shoulder under his jacket as he registers the word comes down and translates it, in his head, into the figure he and I both know it is going to be.
"Cassian."
"Becca."
"A point and a half."
"All right."
"On the back."
"All right."
"On year one and year two."
"All right, Becca."
"Cassian, let me finish. All right is — Cassian. That is forty-one million dollars over the lock period. Are you saying all right without — "
"I am saying all right with full knowledge of the figure, Becca. Strike the third clause. Add the language. We will close at the lower number. I do not, in this room, want it raised."
"Cassian."
"What."
"Why."
I look at her. Becca's face, when she asks a question she is not, in the briefing, expected to ask, does the small honest thing that has, in nine years, kept me coming back to her firm. I look at her, and I look at Roland, and I look at Quan with her pen down.
"Because the original number was the number I would get for being a different kind of man. The lower number is the number I will get for being this one. That is the trade. I am, in this room, taking the trade."
Roland is very still.
"Cassian."
"Yes."
"Are you all right?"
"That is the second time in twenty-four hours someone has asked me that, Roland.
The honest answer is, no. I am not all right.
I am also — and this is the part of the answer that should, in this room, satisfy you — capable of running this property through the cliff annex without being all right.
The cliff annex is, in fact, why I am doing this in the first place.
It is why I started here at twenty-four.
It is why I am, this morning, restructuring around operational strength instead of around a wife.
I am, currently, the man who built the building.
I am no longer — Roland — I am no longer asking you to fund the building because I have, this Tuesday, brought home a fiancée.
The building is good. The numbers are good.
The staff is good. The deal — Roland — the deal stands on those, or it does not stand. "
Roland looks at me.
He looks at me, as a matter of fact, the way Becca said he would on the phone Saturday morning.
"Becca."
"Roland."
"Strike the clause."
"Yes."
"Strike the recitals."
"Yes."
"Lower the number a point and a quarter, not a point and a half. The man took it without negotiating. He gets a quarter for that."
"Yes, Roland."
"Cassian."
"Yes."
"You are — I will say this. You are, in this room, the first man in eleven years I have, in a signing meeting, downgraded and respected at the same time."
"Thank you, Roland."
"Don't, Cassian. Sign the sheet."
I sign the sheet.
I sign the sheet with the same pen I have, since I was twenty-six, used for all of my closings — a cheap blue one I bought, for one dollar twenty-nine, at a corner store on the night I closed on the original two buildings — and I pass the sheet to Becca and Becca, with her own pen, signs underneath.
Quan signs as witness. Roland does not sign.
Roland does not, in nine years, sign anything personally; he has, on staff, an office that does it.
The senior analyst, Becca, the witness — they will, this afternoon, route it back to his office in the city, and his office will, by Tuesday, return it.
The sheet is signed.
Roland stands. He shakes my hand. He shakes Sebastian's hand, which Sebastian, in nine years, has only had Roland Vance do once before, and Sebastian's expression, at the handshake, does not change, which is also, in nine years, Sebastian.
The three of them go.
I sit back down at the table.
Sebastian closes the conference-room door. He sits down on the chair Roland had sat in, which is, in nine years, also a chair Sebastian has not sat in. He folds his hands.
“Sir.”
“Don’t, Sebastian.”
“You signed.”
“I signed.”
“You’ve never walked away from a leverage point in a signing room. Not once in nine years.”
“I’m aware.”
“And you walked away from this one because she wasn’t in the room to confirm it.”
“And because she wouldn’t, in the next twenty years, respect a man who closed a deal with her name on the page when her name was, by then, also on a flight manifest.
“Sir.”
"She wouldn't have known, Sebastian. That is the point.
She would not have known the number. She would not have read the recital.
She would have, in Carmel, in two years, never heard the word 6.
2. And I would, currently, have known. I would have.
Every quarter, when the cliff annex came in higher than projected, I would have been adding a column in my head — because of her, because of her, because of her — and the column would have been a line on a private calendar that I would, in some part of me, never close. So. I closed it instead."
"I am proud of you, sir."
I do not, in this moment, look at him.
I do not look at him because I am not, currently, the kind of man who can be looked at when his head of operations of nine years has, in a conference room on a Monday morning at ten past eleven, said the sentence Sebastian has, in fact, just said.
I look, instead, at the small ceramic carafe at the center of the table, which is, as I noted at the start of the meeting, the wrong carafe.
"Sebastian."
"Sir."
"It was a win, on paper."
"Yes, sir."
"It was, on paper."
"Yes."
"It does not, currently."
"No, sir."
"No."
I sit with that. The conference-room door is, after a moment, opened by one of the assistants.
The carafe is taken out. A new one, the right one, the one with the small thumbprint Maren left on the rim Thursday night that I noticed at the dinner and did not, the next morning, have the housekeeper buff out, is brought in and set, by a young man who does not, in fact, know what he is bringing me, in the place where the wrong one was.
I look at the thumbprint.
Sebastian, beside me, watches my face for two breaths and then, in nine years for the first time, does not, as he stands, say yes, sir on the way out.