“Fine. Getting into the car now,” I tell her, handing over my luggage to the driver.
“Good. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow,” I confirm with her. “Drive safe.”
“Love you dad,” she says, and hangs up.
Renee. What the hell am I going to do with her? She’s switched to a new major every year, and now that she’s got her grandfather’s trust fund in her pocket, I don’t see a graduation in sight. It’s our fault really. My ex-wife and I had an acrimonious divorce, and by the end we couldn’t even be in the same room together. It was a case of marrying too early. I met her at Yale, in Economics 101. A year later, against the warnings from my parents, we married, and had Renee. Everything fell apart before graduation. She hightailed it back to her family in California, and Renee spent the next few years of her life shunted back and forth across the country before heading off to a succession of boarding schools, none able to hold her down.
It was during these years that I was working hard to rebuild the family fortune. We had incredible growth, and I was needed more and more. I ended up spoiling her to ease my guilt, and combined with the Lowell stubbornness, Renee is hell bent on doing things her way, by which she means nothing at all. Her mother’s exasperated beyond belief, but I’m not quite ready to give up on my daughter. Sure she’s had plenty of time to try and figure things out, and yeah, the money makes it way easier to put it off, but she’s got a good heart, and lots of confidence. One day she’ll figure it out, and when she does, she’s going to make a very big mark.
To be honest, she reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger. I dicked around too, sleeping around, drinking, partying, squandering my money until my dad cut me off, packed me off to Yale. It was a shock for sure, but I came out better for it. It gave me the discipline to found my own private equity firm with my best friend and roommate. I’m coming back from opening our third office in China. Hm, maybe that’s why dad did the same thing with Renee too, I muse as we pull away from the curb and back to the penthouse.
It’s a short drive back home, but I can’t relax and enjoy it. My phone’s pinging continuously and I’ve got a meeting tonight with a new company that’s revolutionizing how we record videos with our phones by letting users add masks, filters, and extra’s like glasses or hats or whatever they could want onto their video. It does nothing for me personally, but when I told Renee, she explained that it would be a hit and to snap it up. So tonight I’m going to meet the whiz kid who’s made this a reality. Hopefully it’ll be the first in a long string of technologies out of this kid. It’s not our thing to bring on individuals, but investments are investments whatever the form they take.
We’re heading to Atlantica, one of the premier nightclubs in New York. Normally I’d have a business dinner at Foglia, but the guy’s twenty-two and a geek, so he’s probably held dreams of drinking thousand dollar champagne and meeting hot women in his mother’s basement for years now. Whatever it takes to secure the client, I think as I call up the limo, yet another request of his, and head around to pick up the client. I never understood the appeal of music too loud that you can’t hear yourself think and fumbling around in strobe lights, but maybe that’s just my age.
Mike is standing outside the hotel we’ve put him up in, wearing a short sleeve button up over a blue t-shirt and chinos and chucks. He’s tapping his toes, looking each way, and when he spots my car, he waves eagerly. We pull up and he opens the door and slides in before the driver can get around to his side.
“Hey Nathan, right?” he says, eagerly pumping my hand. I try not to wince. I dislike the name Nathan. “Tonight’s going to be awesome.”
“Absolutely,” I tell him.
“I hope it’s okay that I invited a few friends along,” he says. “But I figure the more the merrier right?”
“Of course,” I tell him. Whatever the client wants.
The car takes us to the front of the hotel where the club is supposed to be. There’s already a long line of people, and Mike eagerly heads out of the car to meet up with his friends. They look about as cool as he is, and at least two of them look borderline underage. We get waved through quickly, and head straight for the elevators. The doors are starting to close when I catch sight of a beautiful woman in gold, hair soft as a halo around her, the metallic dress showing off her fantastic body. My eyes connect with hers- they’re a brilliant, piercing blue that draws me in- and then the elevator snaps shut. I barely hear what Mike and his friends are saying, I’m so stunned by her.