Day after day
Day follows night as was most often the case. Day didn’t always follow night and night didn’t always follow day because in some cases one simply continued on to become the other. In this particular case the day that followed the night as was usually the case was a Monday. A Monday filled with gray skies, and traffic and rain. As Nadrea first stirred it was like any other. First, turn up the stereo to kill the silence in her home and in this case drown out the reminders that a few solitary moments of quite might bring of the night before. No victory to celebrate, no conquest to revel in, no new deep dark chapter of her sexuality awakened or no exciting need fulfilled. To the treadmill as the volume of NiN’s (Nine Inch Nails) “Pretty Hate Machine” echoed through the workout room. Sixty minutes later she was breathing heavily and covered in sweat as her recently taxed body tried to cool itself with a mixture of what could have been sweat and the vodka from the night before. But there were things to do and other victories to be had “the silly arrogant bastard” she thought to herself.
In yet another part of town the Husker was up an hour earlier than Nadrea and in his office reading documents, reviewing briefs and dodging, quite adeptly mind you, Christy’s probing questions. Friends come and go, but the business at hand was duty, his responsibility to so many others and his life. Not very often did he have a moment to himself, alone focusing on what he wanted rather than the wants and needs of others. For just a brief second he lost his focus. Thinking of something other than the task at hand, he thought of brushing his teeth Sunday morning before coffee, the freedom of for a few briefs hours in a wired and demanding world of being hopelessly lost to most and completely unaccounted for.
Around the mid point between the Husker being ever so minutely adrift and the time when Nadrea entered the office with category 4 hurricane force winds and rage. Vincent heard that his flight “Is now above 10,000 feet. You may now use approved electronic devices. However cell phones, and pagers are not approved for use anytime during this flight. For a list of approved devices please turn to page 113 of our complimentary in flight magazine.” He removes his Ipod from its case, placed the headset in his ears and spent the next six and a half hours on a plane flying from Regan National to San Jose. He was grateful that he could leave from national, the commute to Dulles was miserable and the train to BWI with bags in tow was not at all convenient. Other than the brief passing intellectual ponderence on whether or not bad airline food was better than no airline food. He was lost in the happy sounds of an innocent era 50’s Doo Wop & the classic sounds of the late great Momma Cass and the Momma’s and the Poppa’s Vincent was lost in his thoughts and calculations. At heart he was a geek, a good looking, heavily muscled, socially adept, cruel, sarcastic geek, but a geek none the less. He spent part of his teen years like so many other outcasts, playing dungeons and dragons, or parked in front of his Atari or Intelivision in his working class Baltimore neighborhood. In High School he took computer classes & developed an unnatural obsession with the laws of probability. It all started innocently enough with taking a “Chances and Gaming” class that hidden somewhere in the glory of gambling theme was a probability and statistics class. The school had a formal statistics class…no one took unless all other options for that period were full. Then an insightful teacher changed the title and the course work to be around the odds of winning in a gaming situation. Viola, it was over registered for every semester after the first, somewhere between a full house and what’s showing in the dealers hand in black jack it all clicked. In college, at the University of Maryland, he majored in Computer Science with a minor in Finance. Code was his gift, the understanding of source code and the probability of certain derived algorithms made him dangerous, very dangerous. After graduation Vincent took his first job as a programs analyst at a large beltway defense software company. There he was not only adept at the numbers but had the unique ability to relate the data both financial and technical to the tech and finance challenged in a compelling and meaningful way.
This was at a time when tech was rising to be king and he quickly moved up the food chain before the offer to move on to a company funded start up occurred. He was offered the chance to jump off into a world of “great” opportunity into the abyss. Sure he could use his skills and his perception to earn a fortune on options & other pre bubble pipedreams, or it could all wash away. The spin off company developed a webtraffic tracking interface that could be used to verify views and clicks for the emerging online advertising business. It evolved in to that and code based analytics for proprietary search engine crawlers for the goliath that was becoming what public would know as the internet. There had it second and sometimes in the world of technology first to market isn’t best, second or third to market becomes the ruling deity. They had it second and in this case second would come in first. During the boom years the old rules went out the door and a company that had a product, customers and was profitable was all but too good to be true. Vincent and friends had all three. The buy out was obscene and it never needed to IPO. And with that he exited the world of start up creator gracefully via stage left and took up as a partner in a venture firm that specialized in 2nd and 3rd round private placements and acquisitions of complimentary products to create a compete suite of offers and intellectual property that then could be sold off in larger chunks at a premium. M&A is what he is best at and his trip to the Valley is to take a good look under the hood of an emerging but cash strapped content delivery company. The world is changing and if the net brought us into the information age then the next revolution is to change how we received all of our entertainment; video, voice, movies, mates and news. It would be the killer application for the old guard media and new fortunes stood to be made.
But back in the morning Donna barely stirred as her alarm went off. She was tired and not at all in the mood for a Monday morning. Without exception her entire body was stiff and sore. From the arches of her feet to the top of her pounding head it hurt, it all hurt …and not in a good way. Her hamstrings were in knots, her back so tight that it hurts to be doubled over with a sour, crampy stomach. She was covered in sweat and shaking, it simply put was not a good day; she had the flu.
And so the day went as it usually does, the Husker read and met. He listened, and discussed. He was pitched to and pitched to others. Vincent thought and he thought, he probed and pushed. He was courted, cajoled, and romanced. In the evening he was wined and dined. The day was like so many others, one thought logically led to another, nothing unexpected, nothing shocking both side were well postured and protected.
Donna, she moped, sweated and slept, her fever broke by early afternoon and she felt almost human albeit slightly dehydrated but almost human by mid evening. Nadrea on the other hand was particularly curt, and her temperament was bordering on a sadistic dictators level of cruel. It was a typical day for her except for the rage burning inside of her. Each time there was a few seconds of silence, a moment to breath she told herself that Thursday wasout of the question. The arrogance and stupidity of that stupid man. How dare he call her “Nod”! His gentlemanly bullshit of jousting with her and just when she was convinced he was about to make an advance he ignored hers. She told herself that he probably had a dick like a little boy & that the silly impotent schmuck probably left his erectile dysfunction drugs at home. Without them he probably couldn’t get his tiny little stiffy to work at all.
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Copyright 2008 Michael Malflic
