Chapter 2 The Deal
Colt
Tidewater closes and everything changes.
I've turned that sentence over enough times to hear how it sounds, and it sounds like every other junior in this building with a father two floors up and a deal he's certain is the one that finally cuts him loose from the name.
I know how it sounds and I think it anyway.
I feel it, this one is mine. Not eighty years of Bennet, not my father's hand on the back of my neck steering me into the room.
They picked the pitch I built. They picked me.
I've had two years at this desk and still walk into like the man it belongs to is about to come back and want it. I open the slide deck and start in. By the third slide I'm grinning at my own work. My father would call that a weakness. I call it being right.
My phone goes off. Summer.
Summer
Have a good day. Love you.
Me
Love you too.
Send. Face down. Back to the deck. I have a deal to build, a wife who loves me, a father about to find out there is one thing I can do without his name on it. The title slide comes up and I'm into it and the morning goes.
***
Cheyenne knocks at eight thirty and is in before I get yeah out.
"Page seven." She puts a cold brew with oat milk down on the corner of my desk. "Q3 came in over projection. We pivot off growth instead of risk, push fifteen above target, and they thank us for it."
I flip to seven. She's right. I tell her it's good.
She doesn't say anything to that, just a look that means she already knew, there and gone. "The old projections were embarrassing us."
"Did the bridge slide this morning."
"Course you did." She drops into the chair across from me, all the way back, one leg over the other. "Calloway's numbers on three, your model on seven. We open on trajectory and let the risk slide sit in the back as the answer to the question they're already asking by the time they get to it."
"Somebody's got to think two moves out while you're being charming at people."
"That's the split. I charm, you scheme."
"Architect."
"Scheme's shorter."
"You're lazy. It reads as efficient because of the suit."
We go through the back half of the deck.
She comes around to my side to see the last build, leans in close to the screen, walks me through it.
I finish it and look over to tell her it's done and she's already looking at me.
She doesn't look away. There's a smile on her face like the two of us are in on something.
I don't know what. I do good work in this building all day and most of it goes off into the building and nobody says a word about it.
When she looks at me like that it's like somebody caught it.
I look back at the screen and find my place.
"I've got my father in five."
"Go. Don't let him push you again, you've moved him twice this week." She stands, takes the cold brew she brought me, leaves with it. At the door: "Bridge slide stays. No matter how tired you get."
I'm thinking about my father before she's out of the doorway.
***
His office looks like a gentlemen's club and a natural history museum settled a custody dispute.
Wood gone dark with age. Hunting prints of birds nobody in this family has ever shot.
A globe in the corner that opens at the equator to a decanter of Macallan he has had refilled, never replaced, for as long as I've been alive.
Sonny Bennet sits behind the desk like he was poured into the room before they put the walls up.
Silver. Square through the jaw. The permanent brown of a man who owns a home on the water and keeps a calendar clear to be on it.
He doesn't look up when I come in. There's a stack of papers squared in front of him and he slides it a quarter inch left, considers it, slides it back, sets it parallel to the edge of the blotter, and only then says:
"Sit."
He says sit, and I sit. Tidewater pending, biggest deal of my life, and I still fold like I did at six.
He doesn't look at me yet. He turns a pen between two fingers. Lays it on the papers. Adjusts the angle a degree, then a degree back.
"Cheyenne's revisions." He picks up a coaster, turns the monogram to face him, sets it square to the corner of the blotter. "She's sharp. An asset."
"Yeah, she's good."
"Strategic."
He lets the word sit. My father doesn't spend praise, so strategic is about the most he's ever set down on a hire. He put it on the desk on purpose, so I'd feel how rare it is. And I do. He hands these out maybe twice a year, and I still chase them like a kid every time.
"You two move well together. Clients feel it."
"We work well."
He nods. Drinks. Sets the glass down and turns it a quarter so the cut lines up with the pen. Three things on the blotter now, a small fleet, all pointed the same way. He leans back.
"How's Summer?"
The turn is so smooth it's done before I know he started it. He's good at it, turning praise into worry, making her sound like a problem, and I never catch it happening until I'm already nodding along.
"She's good. Book's coming along."
"Another thriller."
Not a question. He knows what she writes. He's letting me hear that he has filed it and weighed it and assigned it the importance a man gives something his son's wife does with her afternoons.
"Editor is happy with it."
"Hm." He moves the coaster a hair. "She travels soon."
Not a question. He has her calendar. I don't ask how. The not-asking is a reflex I learned in this chair before I had words for what I was learning in it.
"Savannah. Couple weeks."
"Both of you so occupied." He looks up. First time since I sat. His eyes are pale and empty. Cold all the way down, nothing at the bottom of him. And I still want him to be proud of me. I know what he is and I want it anyway. "Ships in the dark."
He sets the coaster down. Squares it. Holds my eyes the length of time it takes me to want to fill the quiet, and then past that, so whatever I say next is something I say to get out from under him.
"I want you clear, son." He sets son down like a hand on a leash, deciding whether to take up the slack. "Tidewater is the largest thing through these doors in ten years. I need you undivided."
"I'm clear."
"Good."
"Close Tidewater. Then you and I have the conversation."
He doesn't say the word. It has hung over this desk for two years, always one deal out, always contingent, kept at exactly the height where I have to stay on my toes to keep it in sight.
He picks the pen back up. Turns it. Sets it at an angle to the fleet, corrects it to parallel, looks back at his screen.
I'm dismissed without a word spent on dismissing me.
I walk out lit up and hollowed out at the same time. He gave me just enough to keep me reaching and just enough to keep me in line, and I took it. Same as every time. The deck's still on my screen when I get back.
***
At six Cheyenne is in the doorway, jacket already off.
“Calloway called. He wants a tax-optimization section before the risk slide by Friday, or he ‘can’t take it up with confidence.’”
She does Calloway’s voice. It’s cruel and completely accurate, and I laugh before I can stop myself.
“We’ll rebuild the back half.”
I check the time. I told Summer I’d be home. I’m almost sure I did. But the day has swallowed everything since then, and I can’t remember what time I promised her or how late I already am.
“How long?”
“Three hours if he leaves us alone. Five if Calloway keeps texting you adjectives.”
I pull out my phone.
Me
Hey babe. Calloway wants the deck rebuilt before Friday. Going to be late, eat without me.
I read it before I send it. It's not quite true yet, we're in the office, not at dinner, the deck not yet the reason but I send it anyway. By the time she reads it it'll be true enough.
The reply comes a few minutes later.
Summer
Okay.
That's all of it.
We work until eight, rebuilding the entire back half of the deck.
We order Thai from the place that knows her order and still asks for mine. We make fun of Calloway while we eat. The cleaners come through, empty the trash, and disappear again. Outside the windows, the sky turns gold, then blue, then black.
The work clicks into place. So do we.
And for a while, being here with her feels easier than sitting across from my own wife at our kitchen table has in months.
Then Calloway texts another adjective, and I drop back into the deck before I have to think too hard about why.
***
When I get home later that evening the lamp by the couch is on. I find Summer under it in my old rugby shirt, her knees up, laptop balanced on them, hair in a knot that defies physics.
"Hey." I drop my keys in the dish, cross to the couch, kiss the top of her head like I have a thousand times coming through that door.
"Calloway's lost his mind. Wants the whole back half of the deck rebuilt by Friday because the man can't get through a sentence without an adjective. You should've heard Cheyenne do him."
She tips her head up for it and smiles.
"Sounds like Calloway."
"How's the chapter?"
"Slow." She looks back at the screen. "Got tangled in the middle. I'll get it."
I'm still running the deck in my head when I realize she hasn't said anything in a while.
She types something, deletes it.
"You eat?" I ask.
"Wasn't hungry."
I drop onto the arm of the couch and rub her shoulder, that spot by her neck she likes.
"You good?"
"I'm just tired, Colt." She tips her head, not quite onto my hand. "Long day in my own head."
"Yeah?" I press my thumb in a little. "Big day tomorrow.
Dad's circling the Tidewater thing, I think we actually land it this week.
" She makes a sound that could be mm or could be nothing, and I'm already running the morning in my head, the order I walk my father through the slides, and I give her shoulder one more squeeze. "You'll feel better after you sleep."
"Probably."
"Don't stay up too late." I kiss the top of her head and stand, and I'm thinking about the bridge slide before I've crossed the room.
She says something I don't quite catch. I almost ask her to say it again.
I don't.
I get ready for bed.
Summer comes in sometime later, after I’ve stopped checking the clock. She climbs beneath the covers with her back to me, and I drape an arm over her out of habit.
She doesn’t settle into me.
I notice. Some quiet part of me even understands what it means.
But it’s late. The deck is good. Tomorrow matters. She said she was tired.
I tell myself she’ll feel better in the morning.
I fall asleep easy.