The Medium of Desire Read online

  “I need money to start a business.”

  “Start a food cart. Start a kebob stand. Don’t they have those in Brazil?”

  “Yea they do, but.”

  “But what? Start a kebob stand and build up your bank account and clientele until you can open your own restaurant. Start something small and scale it up. I draw pencil sketches before starting on a painting, so I don’t waste all the expensive materials.”

  “I could set it up right on the edge of the park, and people could just eat around here,” Paco said with a sweeping wave of his arm.

  “You’d be Richmond’s hidden culinary secret.”

  “I don’t want to be a secret.”

  “Not a secret, but you know what I mean. You’d have people wandering all over the Fan looking for this tucked away little park, just itching to get your kebobs.”

  “And people would be asking for directions and talking about it. I could put away some scratch while angling towards opening the real thing.”

  “The stand will be the real thing.”

  Paco gleamed, staring in awe at the vision of his future enterprise, but then his face turned dark, and his gaze fell to the ground.

  “What?” Brett asked.

  “This idea has the same problem as opening a restaurant.”

  “What?”

  “Money man. I don’t have any money.”

  “I may not have the scratch to help you open a restaurant, but I can help you with this.”

  “Nah, man. I don’t want your hand outs.”

  “This isn’t a hand out. It’s a business investment.”

  Paco ran his tongue over his bottom row of teeth, shaking his head horizontally at first, but gradually bobbing his head up and down.

  “I’m open to taking investments,” Paco said. He extended his hand out and they shared a firm handshake.

  “How much money do you think we need to get started?” Brett asked.

  “$7,000,” Paco replied, without hesitation.

  Brett doubted there was much science behind a number Paco threw out on a business plan he had considered on the spot.

  “Alright. I’ll get you $7,000.”

  Chapter 4

  Coping with her first hangover in months, Olivia snuck past the McCann & Co. receptionist, well after the workday had begun, blackout sunglasses covering her eyes, two large bottles of coconut water and a salad in her bag, and tumbled down into her cubicle. Without taking her salad to the refrigerator, she logged on to her computer and launched into a project to look busy as quickly as possible, like she’d been working all morning. In a flash, she had her spreadsheets open, clicking and copying data from one sheet to the next, writing formulas to organize and synthesize the data to create a meaningful basis for analysis. About a half hour of intense concentration and unfettered work later, her phone buzzed in her purse. An email. She nervously opened her account and looked at the top of her inbox. She had one new email from the HR Manager of the Dorsal Fin Fund. Had she gotten the interview? She clicked on the email and started to read. She was astounded. It wasn’t just an offer to interview, it was an offer, from a college friend of hers, Rachel Ludlow, whom she hadn’t even realized was affiliated with the fund. She hadn’t talked to Rachel in a couple of years, but they used to be thick as thieves. How perfect. Footsteps shuffled behind her, and she suddenly realized that on her screen was proof of employee treason. She minimized the email and glanced over her shoulder to see one of the summer interns nervously treading by, a cup of coffee in each hand, a faint stench of alcohol in the air as he passed. Work hard, play hard. He had it all figured out.

  She turned back to her computer, relieved, and sat in a sort of meditative gaze. Would she really leave the safety of her laureled firm for the uncertain seas of a start-up? Could she take that sort of career risk?

  “Glad you finally decided to join us,” Matthew Weiss said, startling her from behind. She minimized her email before spinning around.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You dipped out before noon yesterday and you drag yourself in here, I speculate still drunk, and you have the audacity to ask me what I’m talking about?”

  “What do you want, Matthew?”

  “I want you to run a test on a new algorithm I’ve created.”

  What new algorithm? She thought Matthew was exclusively an outside sales partner. What was he talking about, algorithms? He probably couldn’t spell algorithm.

  He handed her a flash drive, and she slid it into the USB port. She clicked on the sole file, and needed only a glance at the first spreadsheet to see what was painfully obvious, that she was looking at her own work.

  “This is my algorithm.”

  “Correction,” Matthew said. “This is my algorithm. Of course, you did play a hand in sorting through some of the more menial processes, sort of like my apprentice I suppose is an applicable term, but this is most certainly my algorithm and that was well explained to the directors after your presentation of my work, what when you left work before noon yesterday, it only made sense that you had misspoken a few times when you took credit. I mean, clearly you’re too irresponsible to even sit at your desk for a full day’s work!”

  “You’re stealing my work.”

  “It’s not stealing. I pay you to create things, and I determine how they get used.”

  “I don’t work for you. I work for the company.”

  “I don’t see it that way. I have the power to hire and the power to fire. Your continuity here is a product of my good graces.”

  Raging with inner-turmoil, her mind raced along a spectrum. At one extremity was her job at McCann & Co. in New York and all her work on the algorithm and all the safety and prestige of a job such as this, and on the other extremity was San Francisco, the city of her generation’s dreams, and a risky job at an upstart hedge fund led by smart talent and her college friend. The decision was easy. She could design another algorithm, but she couldn’t go on working for this asshole.

  “I quit,” she said.

  “Excuse me? I can’t hear you.”

  “I said, I quit,” she screamed. A silence descended on her quadrant of the office. Cleo appeared within her line of vision. A satanic grin spread across his face, happy as an arsonist who has just set a wildfire.

  “You quit to do what?”

  “I quit because I want to work in San Francisco with people who will respect me and not steal my work and not constantly sexually harass me. I deserve better than this misogynistic shit hole of a firm.”

  “Great. Quit. Goodbye.”

  “You’re such a prick.”

  “You just can’t wait to get out of here, to scurry out to geek land where you’ll get treated with a little dignity.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “Well I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait six months.”

  “I’m moving this week.”

  “I’m afraid you’re not.”

  “You don’t own me.”

  “Brilliant math mind,” Matthew said, loud enough for all the eavesdroppers to hear. “Not too much thought for words though, ay? Have you read your employment agreement with us? You signed a six-month do-not-compete clause when you started working here, just like everyone else in the firm. And because you quit, you get no severance. Brilliant strategy, really. Now you’ve got fifteen minutes to gather your things before I call security.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Matthew crossed his arms and laughed diabolically, like a caricature of a James Bond villain.

  “Steal my algorithm. I don’t give a shit. It’s one of many. I hope you go blind reading about my success in Forbes.”

  “I’ll cancel my subscription just in case,” Matthew said, adding, in the most sarcastic tone: “Good luck.”

  Olivia grabbed the few effects around her desk that were actually hers and stormed towards the elevators, lightheaded, her chest constricting as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.

>   A week later, Olivia stood amongst piles of boxes of her things, making a final pass through the place to make certain everything was packed and accounted for. Her phone rang, again. She had screened calls all day and wasn’t about to break her resolve. A knock on her door brought welcome relief. It was Cleo, popping over to say goodbye.

  “Hey girl.”

  “You’re a tough one to get a hold of these days!”

  “I’ve been packing.”

  “You’ve always been too busy for calls.”

  “I feel that changing. I know I’ve only been out of the office a few days, but I feel so different. I feel life coming back to me. It feels good. I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking through the last few years.”

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t describe your social life as colorful.”

  “That hurts, coming from my only friend.”

  “You weren’t always like that.”

  “No, I wasn’t. Just the last year or so.”

  “The last two years,” Cleo said. “And then there were the first two years, when you were getting started.”

  “Was I ever fun?”

  “You’re fun, except when you get it in your head that you can climb to the top of a broken ladder.”

  “So why do you stay if you think you can’t?”

  “I’ve got work life balance. I’m not trying to get to the top, never have, never will. I get paid well, I work a little more than I like, but I’m content with where I am. You were never content.”

  “That’s what I’m going to work on. Being content, working on myself.”

  “I think that’s best. Have you figured out where you’re going?”

  “I’m going to Richmond, to chill with my parents.”

  “That’s nice. I wish I had the rest of the summer off!”

  “You could always quit and join me.”

  “Tempting. I think I’ll stay at this as long as I can bear, which, granted, may not be much longer.”

  “You’re great.”

  “You’re better.”

  “None of it really matters anyway.”

  “None of it at all. Make every day worth it, Olivia.”

  “Thanks, dear. You too.”

  They hugged it out, and after Olivia assured Cleo she had all the moving help she needed, they sat on a chair-like stack of boxes, drinking wine from solo cups and debriefing the past four years. Olivia didn’t know if she was making the right move, but with her freedom back, she sensed new opportunity. Maybe life didn’t have to be all about corporate success and chevrons, bank accounts and bonuses, power suits and cliques, electronic digits and bling.

  The movers came and her things were moved from apartment to truck. She signed a storage form, said goodbye to her things until it was time to move to San Fran, gathered her two suitcases, loaded them into the car she had stubbornly refused to give up, despite its infrequent use, and gazed up at her apartment one more time. When she emerged from the opposite side of the Holland Tunnel, with New York City in her rearview mirror, she rolled down the window and held up her middle finger to the city she was eager to leave behind.

  Chapter 5

  Despite trying to sleep, Brett’s phone kept ringing. He only knew one person maniacal enough to call him back-to-back a half dozen times. He’d been putting in fourteen hours a day for the past several days, and when he hadn’t been working, he’d been drinking into the late hours of the night at this little café close to his house. He hoisted himself out of bed and staggered to his dresser and answered his phone.

  It was Salina. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “I don’t get the impression you care what you did to me as long as you got me on the phone.”

  “Ouch. Rough. Late night last night?” Salina asked.

  “It was, actually.”

  He wished he hadn’t admitted that because now he felt guilty. Like he had confessed to a crime and was now subject to punishment. He wasn’t in the mood to be punished.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Let’s get together. I need to talk to you.”

  “I would love to, but I’m in the middle of finishing this awesome painting I’ve been working on. I think I told you about it, the one of the spiders crawling away from a cave fire on the beach underneath the starry Pacific night sky. I still wonder what that really bright golden star is over Nicaragua.”

  “Have you tried Wikipedia? Look it up.”

  “I’d rather wonder. I like wondering.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “I know you tell people that. You’d tell them anything to sell a painting.”

  “I tell everyone you’re a genius. Now can I please buy you lunch?”

  The conversation paused. Brett surveyed the dirty clothes scattered around his bedroom. He hadn’t cleaned in weeks. He really wanted to get back to his spiders painting, while he was inspired, while the vision was crisp in his mind. Salina was usually sensitive not to ice his motivation, when he had it.

  “You don’t usually put me on the spot and leave all this intrigue in the air. What’s so urgent?”

  “What am I going to do with you? How are you going to make money if you always refuse to talk business?”

  “I’ve made it this far.”

  “Please just let me buy you lunch today. You must want something. Car. Money. International fame.”

  He thought about Paco’s kebob stand and the need for seed capital.

  “Since you’re asking, I would like $7,000,” Brett said.

  “$7,000? That’s rather specific. Why do you need $7,000?”

  “Paco wants to open a kebob stand. Lend it to me and you can just not pay me that much down the road.”

  “And you’ll give me your afternoon?”

  “Are you going to make me sign a contract, too?”

  “No. I just need to float a few ideas by you, introduce you to a couple of people.”

  “Pimp me out.”

  “Network you.”

  “I see through your Gen Y euphemisms.”

  “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

  Chapter 6

  Brett was watching expectantly from his window when Salina arrived in her shiny forest green Land Rover. She parallel parked and strutted across the street, gold bracelets dangling on her arms, sharp stiletto heels punishing the asphalt, his neighbor’s head turning as she past. The woman was a capitalist to a fault, but she knew how to wear a romper.

  “Ready?” she called to Brett.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not on your life.”

  Brett ran downstairs, and they climbed into her SUV.

  “I thought you were going to make me drag you out of there,” she said, peeling away from the curb.

  “I’m not that difficult.”

  “You make me blow up your phone until you want to strangle me.”

  “I don’t know why you think I think like that. Aren’t we on the same team?”

  “Same team,” she said with a smile, “but living in very different worlds.”

  “We all live in a world of our own making,” Brett said.

  “Come on,” Salina said, “Let’s make our rounds, so you can get back to work.”

  They took a short ride across the Fan, and parked in front of an art gallery on Broad Street: Galerie de Supernova. He had never seen it before. An up-start. Seemed like a new gallery opened every week. He wasn’t surprised given the minimal capital and limited comprehension of business principles it took to start one of these things. All a would-be proprietor needed was a space. Of course, to run a successful art gallery like Shockoe Artspace, Candela Books + Gallery, or the glave kocen gallery required a great deal of experience and not a slight helping of wisdom, but those twin qualities were afterthoughts for places like this Galerie de Supernova – considerations only made after the proprietor’s accountant had sent over dozens of pages of numbers covered in blood red ink. Brett followed Salina into the studio.

  “Becky, Becky th
ey’re here,” a young woman squealed. Becky came running out of the back. Both had to have been in their early twenties, not unlike him, but they were green as hell. Their studio was opulent, likely funded with family money.

  “We want to display your work in our opening exhibition,” the taller, brunette girl said.

  “Your work is so wild, archetypal and primitive. We love your images of fire, crashing waves, cave men eating raw meat, abstract, roaming buffalo,” Becky said, twirling her blonde hair around her index finger.

  Did they just call his art primitive?

  “It’s like cave art,” said the brunette. “We want to differentiate our studio by having more basic paintings by local artists.”

  Basic?

  “Your work is just so simple,” the girl said. “So few lines. So little paint. I know the average person doesn’t get it, hell critics probably have trouble with it, too, but we think we can sell your work, Brett.”

  Did they think if they belittled him he would capitulate to whatever terms they desired? These cookie-cutter girls in their polo shirts and khaki pants like they were on their first trip outside the pink, gilded confines of the sorority mansion. He noticed the TJ Maxx art hanging on their walls, paintings of lamps, paintings of smoky cityscapes, hardly paintings at all. Really more of a collection of whatever they could find laying around than a sleeves-rolled-up curation.

  “The point is, Brett, despite your rawness, despite that you’re up-and-coming, we’re ready to display your art because we understand you. We think you can grow into something great. We want to grow with you.”

  Brett vaguely understood that Salina typically sold his paintings in the few-hundred to few-thousand-dollar range, and the reason he had Salina was so he never had to deal with the negotiating bullshit. Dealing with catty bitches and wrangling business terms was Salina’s job. Why was he even here? Was Salina pulling back on her services? He hoped to hell not. He prayed to God this wasn’t a glimpse into his future, dealing with neophytes that couldn’t tell a print from a painting.

  “So what is it Brett?” the brunette asked. “Are you ready to step into the big leagues?”