FaceMate

By Steven M. Greenberg

Alex Daugherty may be autistic, he may be dysfunctional, but he's a genius; and he's come up with a brilliant website that will match you--or anyone you've ever loved and lost--up with an exact double. With seven billion people on the planet to choose from, he's convinced he can do so with amazing accuracy. Ah, but what will happen to you and to your perfect double when they are found? Ben Atherton, the celebrated billionaire venture capitalist, a newly recruited backer of Alex's company, is about to find out. 
FaceMAte is a fast-paced tale of self-discovery populated by authentic, evolving characters and presented in polished prose that verges on the poetic without being baroque. It fits best into the upmarket fiction category, but is appropriate to and enjoyable by all segments of the reading public

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jul 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642375909

Book preview

loss.

1

He must have carried the knife with him.

Carried it in his hand right out in the open, for all the world to see; if there’d been anybody outside that night or watching through a window who might have seen it. But there was no one, apparently, who did; at least no one admitted to it during the next few days when the detectives canvassed the neighborhood to gather all their evidence, to dot their investigative i’s and cross their forensic t’s, as such things are done in such cases by such offenders at such nightmarish times. And as for someone having happened to notice him and not having managed to remark it, well, it wasn’t as if a glimpse of creepy Eugene strutting down the street carrying a dagger in a quiet residential neighborhood wouldn’t have rung an alarm bell or two and prompted a 9-1-1 call.

But, bottom line, no one seems to have seen him, no one at all; meaning that he must have left his house sometime after dark and walked those hundred and fifty or so yards from his place to the Sommers’ residence with that dagger featured prominently in his hand: Clear evidence, if evidence were even the slightest bit required, of intent, of deliberate premeditation; though premeditation was something of a moot point in the end. Sure, since everyone knew right up front that the defense team would enter a plea of criminal insanity right from the get-go. Yes, it went without saying that criminal insanity would wind up being crazy Eugene’s ultimate plea.

So they reasoned logically that he left his house sometime after dark, walked the hundred and fifty-odd yards, knife in hand, then stood outside the windows watching the young folks at the party having their fun. Windows in the plural, as the prosecutors phrased it, seeing that his footprints were found beneath more than one of them, both to the sides of the house and to the rear; he standing there patiently waiting, evidently holding that dagger at the ready in his hand the entire time, since the blade of it was much too long to slip into a pocket of those grungy khaki slacks he always wore, and way too jagged at the business end to have been tucked inside his waist band, say, without leaving some visible evidence of its presence there on his skin: His father’s dagger, presumably, although the less-than-cooperative Mr. Everhardt would neither confirm nor deny its provenance for the sake of shielding his son. Parents of even the most outrageously destructive offspring can be like that. But diligent research showed that Eugene’s dad had been a hunter once, back in the day, and had a whole steel cabinet full of guns in his house kept locked up tight: unfortunately the dagger not having been one of the items locked in there. Had it been tucked away in the cabinet, obviously, the night of the party would have been remembered in a whole lot nicer, fonder way. Oh, and as to the story hereafter to be told: well, this might have been no more than a chronicle of marital contentment and accumulated wealth, with not one hundredth of the fascination Ben’s life, and the lives of everyone around him, engendered in the end.

So, there it is, regrettably: Even agreeing to leave the violence offstage, as the best dramatic convention would require; even then, this horrid act, this blackest and nuttiest of deeds, is not a very auspicious beginning for what will ultimately turn out to be an uplifting tale by most interpretations of the term. That much is agreed.

But where else could such a strange adventure start out? For after all, it was Eugene’s senseless act that night that set the whole train of events in motion. And it was from that night—that awful, agonizing night—that all of the subsequent pathways in the story will inevitably spring.

To relate it with due justice, with all the multifarious weaves and threads along the way: That’ll require an omniscient narrator as guide. But to tell it properly, to get into the joy and pain and pathos, the omniscient narrator will have to slip into the minds of each of his characters in sequence and see the world through their eyes more subjectively than he possibly could have seen it through his own. That’s the soundest way to get to know the several folks intimately involved, each in his own proper turn.

And, given that dictate, as far as characters go, not a lot of them, in fact, so we might pick and choose. But of our choices, it’s eminently arguable that far and away the easiest and most persistent personage to usher our piqued curiosity back thirty years to the time and place of the prefatory events that night and thereby send us blithely on our way, will be no other than the notable and lovable and ever-fascinating….

Eddie Parker, he of the good times and of regrettable, perpetual debt.

So let the tale begin with him. And having made the managerial decision to send him to the plate as lead-off man, to have Mr. Eddie Parker of Red Bank, New Jersey, batting first, stadium full, opening game of the season, pitcher at his stretch, edge of our collective seats, breathlessly anticipating: Let me tell you straight out the gate, right from the outset, blissfully unaware of what awful things that memorable evening would ultimately bring:

Eddie

was

PSYCHED!

Well, sure; he was always psyched about something or other. Mostly psyched to the up side of the situation; but on occasion, some chance occurrence might get him a trifle down. The super-highs—well, they would mostly come as the result of a lucky trifecta, say, that paid out forty-five-to-one, or maybe the feel of some new, exotic beauty on his arm. The occasional low? An endless string of crappy dice might do it, disastrous hands at poker maybe, or sure-thing tips that turned out total duds—Oh yeah, or possibly one of those not-so-rare occasions when a gambling debt came due.

Today—this seemingly promising evening—Eddie’s mood partook a little of both. One of those bloody debts was due, all right. Yes, but the good news was, that there was money flowing in by the pipeline-full to make up for the bleed. The only thing that Eddie had to do just at the moment to square things with the gangster lenders, was to get his best friend Ben to open the fiduciary spigot, and his fear of busted kneecaps would be gone. And so that persistent enthusiasm that Eddie wore so brightly on his sleeve was trending mainly to the upside just now. This farewell party, once Eddie got that snazzy little grin of his stirred into the equation, would turn out to be a gala time for all.

Down the sidewalk, tripping lightly up the pavement leading to the house, up three wooden steps to the porch, through the open doorway, into the crowded vestibule, past the smiling kids with various refreshments in their hands, a folded paper in his fingers carried banner-high: Close-columned, microscopic print—It was the stock page, from the looks of it. And Eddie waved it triumphantly, exultingly, as he made his gleeful beeline through the crowded front-room, in the general direction of…. Well? Who else would he be looking for, but his lifelong buddy, the astounding money-maven, Ben?

Ben was sitting on a sofa at the far end of the room with his arm draped across Lizzie’s shoulders. Ben’s arm was always draped across her shoulders; or slung around her waist; or his hand nestled in her palms, or resting on her lap, or her hand perched lovingly atop his knee. They never disengaged for very long from one another’s touch. And when they were obliged to put a painful pause to touching, whether the wrenching separation was due to Ben’s required trips to school or to some other vexing bit of business that kept one from the other for just little a bit of time: Well, you might just have to figure that they were united at the soul, a spiritual union, and had been linked like that ever since the day they’d met back at a dance in eleventh grade. They were a sickening pair, those two, like two old boring married folks—Ah, but everyone had always envied them anyway. There was an innate charm, there was a fundamental kindness in them, the both of them, that all the kids had always loved

Ben looked up at Eddie from the sofa with a prescient grin across his face. He figured what was coming sure enough. That Journal stock page in Eddie’s hand—Ben could read the numbers just as well as Eddie could. Everything was trending upward, just as Eddie’s finances almost certainly were trending down. He’d win a little one day, then lose a lot the next. And what he didn’t lose, he squandered on the girls. Which, by the way, turned out way, way better in the end. At least his gangster bankers wouldn’t tend to finance that.

But stocks? No, Eddie’s passion had never been for stocks. The money from them: Well, that was a different thing entirely. So money was the issue here, as it all too often was with Ed, and since it was, Ben went straight ahead and asked him:

OK, Eddie, give me a number, pal. What’s the bottom line?

"What, Benny? You think I’m hittin’ you up for dough again?"

"Hey, I know you’re hitting me up for dough; and I don’t even mind you hitting me up for dough—I’m used to it by now. What I’m asking is—how much?"

Aw, man, it’s not that much this time, Benny—A couple grand is all—Maybe three tops. Yeah, three’ll definitely handle it, and then I’m totally in the black.

"OK, great, I can definitely come up with three; I’ve got three in the checking, I’m positive of that. Now if it’s more than three, that might be something of a problem, because I’d need to go to the bank, and I don’t have time to go to the bank before I leave for school. But if it’s only three—You need it right away? Like Monday morning early? I’m on the road first thing tomorrow, so…."

Yeah, well that’s just it, though, Benny. That’s the thing. Look, you don’t even need to write a check. Let’s do this instead, OK? Let’s just make our periodic distribution from the fund a couple weeks ahead of time. There’s plenty in there now to cover it. You see what your friggin’ automotives are up to as of Friday’s close?

I know, I know, but they’re headed higher still. Just let me write you out that check, man; you can pay me back later if you want—Or not; it’s up to you—But I hate to dip into the group’s investments when they’re really on a roll, so….

But Eddie was determined: mind made up, foot put down. Nope—he shook his head and wagged his finger –No more checks from Bennie, no more cash advances from Liz. How many times had they helped him out these past few months alone, huh? And that’s not figuring last year, and the year before, and…. "Please, he said. Come on, Benny, there’s plenty in the fund; and even if we draw a little out, it’s gonna grow again, right? And soon–so…."

Ben shook his head and Lizzie smiled complacently at his side. She had a mind of her own, for sure; but she and Ben were so much alike, they generally thought alike and acted alike. So if Ben came to the conclusion that something was OK, Lizzie almost always went along.

OK, OK, Ben agreed at last, nodding his head in reluctant resolution. "I guess we could draw a little out if you’re that dead set on doing it. Let me see the paper, Ed—That’s the weekend Journal, right? With Friday’s close?"

It was, and Eddie handed it across. Whereupon Ben unfolded it, fluffed it out, and read. Or no, ‘read’ wouldn’t be the proper term to use. Ben never really read the stock page; he merely scanned. Ben scanned financials the way an all-star point guard scans the court for open men. His mind had always worked that way, with results that needed to be seen to be believed.

OK, pal, OK, I guess we could draw a little of it out if you really want to go that way. If I realize the last month’s profits first thing Monday morning, let’s say dump a little GM and Southern Company only, I can distribute…. Umm, let’s see…. Ben looked down at the paper again, swiping with a finger, then glanced up at the ceiling, calculating in his head. OK, I figure … oh, probably four grand apiece without touching the really profitable stuff. That enough? If not, I can….

"Yeah. Yeah, more than enough. That’ll fix things really great. I won’t need a cent from you—from either of you—Hey, that’ll be great, Bennie. That’ll be…."

Eddie went on for a good five minutes longer, filling the babbling room with his gratitude and enthusiasm. This was a periodic ritual with him—not weekly or monthly, thank heavens, but often enough. Poor Eddie always owed—and usually owed big time. His cash flew out the window before it even trickled in. Maybe if he hadn’t been born and raised right here in coastal Jersey just ninety minutes north of Caesars and Bally’s and the rest of the Atlantic City joints; maybe if he hadn’t turned twenty-one two years ago and had the photo-ID proof; maybe if he hadn’t loved to rest his elbows on the tables so often and so long—craps and poker being the ones that did those eager elbows so much ill—maybe if the glitzy females hanging on the guys with cash in hand hadn’t been quite so gorgeous, quite so willing, quite so taken with the big bucks being spent—maybe then he could have done what the other kids there at the party had done with their periodic pay-outs from the fund: Sprung for tuitions, say, opened little shops and eateries, stuck their unearned fortunes in the bank. Or maybe done what Ben himself had done—for Ben had always been a kind and selfless guy—namely paid his parents’ mortgage on the house, bought a nice but cheapo car for classy transportation, put a little bit aside to help with baby sister Jennie’s education. Eddie could have done a bit of that, of course. But then, if he’d done a bit of that, he wouldn’t have been Eddie Parker, the carefree mover and shaker who’d long been Ben’s best friend. Ben was good old Ben; and Eddie could be nothing else than good old, spendthrift Eddie. And in the end, even all the misery about to happen to them both could never alter that.

So Eddie, having thanked his friends sufficiently, went back and joined the party with the rest–Which was a sort of farewell party, by the way–a sendoff get-together for handsome, nice guy Ben. Lizzie, it seems, had thrown a party for her darling Ben every end-of-August for the past four years, just before his heading off to school. Not so very far a heading off to school, admittedly; and his leaving wasn’t likely to be for very long, since he drove back every other weekend to be with Liz. And, as far as distance was concerned, the trip from Red Bank to Philly through the Jersey country roads took just a matter of an hour-forty-five when the traffic was light; sometimes a trifle less, seeing as Ben made the trek in the ‘72 Corvette he had purchased with a prior windfall not too different from this latest windfall that would help get Eddie out of debt. Philly to Red Bank in Ben’s refurbished ‘Vette or Red Bank to Philly in Lizzie’s dinged-up yellow Ford. Whichever one had fuel in the tank and air in the tires on any given weekend, the two of them were never far apart for very long.

They’d been together, and almost never parted, since that wondrous eleventh grade dance. A regular Romeo and Juliet phenomenon all right, a love connection right from the very start: First glance to fall in love—no kidding or exaggeration, truly. First love for the both of them—first and only, just like the romance novels tell. A bond, a connection so intense and all-pervasive from the evening of that fateful meeting on the dance floor to the no less fateful evening of the party here at Lizzie’s home tonight—so intimate a bond that they were looked at by their friends and classmates right from the very get-go as spoken for, so steadfastly committed one to the other that the boys had stopped approaching gorgeous Lizzie for a date, and the girls no longer batted eyes at Ben, lean build, red sporty wheels or not. Tedious folks—disgustingly so—despite their uncontested attractiveness and wit and brains.

So this was no great shakes of a farewell party, as farewell parties go, not too many dour-faced celebrants here in Lizzie’s home to say goodbye—And why should it be that solemn an occasion anyway, viewing things objectively? A going-away gathering for someone you were bound to see again in a week or so? Bah! Eddie’s sudden interruption promised to be far and away the high point of this Sunday’s bland soiree.

So, Eddie—Georgene said Ben’s gonna cash us in a couple weeks ahead of time. Alan Serwin cornered Eddie fifteen feet from the sofa where Ben and Lizzie sat. Alan was at Rutgers now, studying something useless and arcane. Eddie neither knew nor cared exactly what that field of study was.

Georgene? How would she know?

She heard, I guess. Weren’t you guys discussing it over by the couch?

Yeah, right. Well, it’s no deep dark secret anyway. There’ll be a profit distribution in a day or two.

You know how much we’re gonna get?

Around four grand I think. Ben’ll tell everybody later.

Lucky we got Ben, huh? What would all us nitwits do without Ben to watch our backs? Hey, you know if he’s plannin’ on sellin’ his car?

His car? The ‘Vette?

Yeah, somebody said he might be sellin’ it. Is he?

Not that I know of, man. Why would he sell it? He needs it to get home every Friday evening to be with Liz.

Yeah, but I thought, y’know, with him up at school and all, and she’s got that old heap for traveling—Anyway, somebody said it might be available, and I thought….

Hey, do me a favor, Alan, will you?

Sure, Ed, whaddya need?

Don’t ask him about the car, OK?

OK—But why? Why shouldn’t I ask him?

Why? ‘Cause the dumb bastard’ll give it to you if you ask him, that’s why.

Yeah, he’s like that, isn’t he? He gives all kinds of shit away. Hey, I even remember him buying Jim Willis new tires for his pickup right after graduation, and … yeah, he even bought some new clothes for creepy Eugene back in twelfth grade—Remember Eugene, with those filthy khaki pants he never changed out of?

Eugene Everhardt you’re asking? Sure I remember. He lives just down the block from Lizzie, you know. I see him every once in a while out on the street. So … Bennie bought him clothes, you’re saying? That I don’t remember specifically. But it’s not that big a shock either; Bennie did stuff for everybody. And shit, Eugene definitely needed new threads, although if Bennie bought him some, I don’t remember old Eugene ever wearing them. I think … yeah, come to think of it, I think that last time I saw him, a couple of months or so ago, he still had those raggedy-ass, grungy pants on.

Well Ben bought him new stuff; that I remember distinctly. He brought a big bundle of nice new clothes to him in school; had it in his locker and gave it to Eugene quietly, so nobody could see, and…. Anyway, why is Ben like that, Eddie? You know him better than anybody, so—What’s the scoop with that?

"Lizzie—she’s the scoop. You know how they say misery loves company? You know that hackneyed phrase?"

Sure. So?

Well, happiness loves company too, I guess. Benny is just about the happiest, most satisfied guy in the world. He’s been that way ever since he’s been with Liz. And it’s like he wants the whole world to be happy along with him. So he gives shit away—You get it now? So don’t ask him about the car. And anyway, it’s a junker in the first place. Bennie bought it—Didn’t you ever hear how Bennie bought it?

No, I don’t think so. Whaddya mean, how he bought it?

It was a piece of shit, man. He bought it as salvage and fixed it up himself. He didn’t know beans about cars, but he bought a book and scrounged up the parts—You know Bennie—Once he puts his mind to something, he does it like a pro.

He sure does, said Alan with a look of awestruck wonderment on his face. They were all in awe of Ben, even Eddie who had lived with the awe and wonder on a daily basis since the age of ten. Lucky we’ve got him, offered Alan. Where would we have been if Ben Atherton hadn’t been around?

Alan was right, of course. Lucky as hell, the lot of them. For Ben was in a class apart from everybody else they knew conceived of mortal man. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! This big-brained Ben Atherton—Man!—The guy was a wonder of wonders when it came to plain old smarts—But more specifically, more productively—turned out he was an absolute phenomenon when it came to picking stocks. And not just stocks alone, mind you, no indeed. For he had got the kids’ investments spread out into all other manner of moneymaking avenues as well: Futures, commodities, everything that could generate a hefty profit, and do it on the quick.

The preface to the story was a Coastal Jersey legend, just about. Tenth grade—six months or so before the time that Ben had happened onto Liz. Mr. Disner’s civics class: He was a good teacher, long, tall Mr. Disner was; and when the class made it to the section on US economics, he gave the topic life by having the students play around with stocks.

Made-up money—‘Disner Dollars’, the kiddies called them: Each student got a thousand Disner Dollars as a phony nest egg: Pick your stocks and see how well you do. A third of the class gained a little, two-thirds lost—probability fell a little short of the median there, as it all-too-often does….

Until the numbers got to Ben, that is. He was where the probability tables really came into their own and made up for the not-so-prosperous residual two-thirds. Ben won—And big! So big, so inordinately BIG—HUGE—VAST!—that Mr. Disner grabbed him after class and asked him how the holy (expletive) the guy had done so well—Umm, you know, whether it was maybe due to his dad being an accountant and all.… Well, shrugged Mr. Disner hopefully, that is, whether Mister Atherton senior might maybe know some secret little tricks of the trade relative to investments that he might see fit to pass along to.….

But no; Ralph Atherton, Benny’s dad, was a pretty good accountant, truth be told, but a not-so-great investor when it came to picking stocks. He never made a lot of dough beyond his modest salary and minimal extra perks. Benny didn’t acquire his investing skills from the agnate side of the X-Y chromosomal pair. Where exactly it had lodged in the genetic code was moot. Wherever, however, Ben was a flaming wonder at investing anyway, not too different from a neonatal chess phenomenon who checkmates all the pros, or some tiny baby Mozart clambering up to the piano and plunking out sonatas at the daunting age of two. Ben was just like that and maybe more-so—unbeknownst to anyone, including himself—until that civics section and Mr. Disner’s pedagogic genius brought his propensity for profit to light.

So that was it, then: Wherever the damn thing came from—well, there the damn thing was. That high-school class had blindly stumbled on a golden goose just ready for the plucking—So why in the world not go ahead and pluck it? Why not cash those gilded feathers in for a profit?—A negotiable profit in genuine dollars this time?

Which is precisely what the youngsters did—or rather that’s what Ben did. Half the class manned up and opted in, the other half stayed out, regretting their reluctance thereafter to their dying days. The half that ventured in went out and raised a little capital: The girls baked cookies, the boys washed cars. They paid the high school janitor a crumpled pair of twenties to lend the kids a hose and leave the water on—A carwash would look a lot more like a legitimately charitable function if the patrons thought it was officially sanctioned by the school, Ben thought. Within a month, they piled up pretty near two thousand bucks in capitalistic seed crop. And Ben Atherton, boy wonder, boy-Croesus, went to work. Old pal Eddie Parker was a member of the opt-in group—a veritable workhorse with the hose and sponge, as the auto washing proved—Plus, Ed’s uncle was a broker, fortuitously enough: Sure he’d take the project on—Why not? A broker gets commissions on the trades whether they turn out bad for the guy who antes up the cash or good.

And lots of trades there were. Scads. Daily, weekly; hourly sometimes. Ben was on the phone and in the brokerage very early and very late each business day. His schoolwork didn’t interfere—Hell, he was getting straight ‘A’s anyway; he always did, always had. How much extra effort did it take to read his father’s Wall Street Journal every morning splayed out on the table next to the box of Cheerios and low-fat milk?

"Everything’s in there, Eddie—absolutely everything you need to know. Read every article on every page—even the ads. Everything essential gets printed in the Journal every single day." Ben spoke and Eddie tried to take it in; he read with gusto every weekday morning front to back, as told to do—But nobody other than Ben ever totally caught on.

And so the kids got rich, relatively speaking. A million-three and change over four years, split fifteen ways—Ben would never take more than his fifteenth share despite the other kids’ offering and urging: What more could you do with it anyway? Eighty-something grand apiece to pay in full for Ben’s salvage-built Corvette, and Lizzie’s ratty yellow Mustang—Oh, and there was Eddie’s gambling money too, all-too-quickly lost, and his stipend for the pretty show girls on the boardwalk—a more productive investment satisfaction-wise, as those exotic girls turned out to be.

As for the other partners in the venture, those intermittent big-buck windfalls paid a few of their tuitions too, for Kenny Harper and Tom Krajewski when college came around. And the kids who weren’t bound for college—they had seed money for other things—A bump shop for Jim Hetherington, the hot dog joint that Tom and Andy Joiner opened right across the Avenue from the school.

Free money, easy money—effortless, really—though Ben liked the process way more than the proceeds therefrom. It was nothing but a mental game to him, like learning to fix his classy cheapo car. He cared much less for the income than any of his happy partners did. For—way, way more precious than the income ever was or ever could have been—he had his fondest wish of all … in darling Liz.

Liz… Liz…. When Eddie barged into the room and let his profit-taking bubbles effervesce, Benny had his arm around Liz, as always. And when Eddie shook his head in diffidence and admiration, Liz nestled into Benny’s shoulder the way she always did, the way she always had these wondrous six years past. He was happy. She was happy. He would be home next weekend, or she would take the drive to Philly in her Ford; they’d make their plans by Friday night. A week’s parting was the minimal hiatus they were gathering for, there in her comfy little home—That was what they must have thought.

Outside the window looking in that night was our disheveled boy from down the block, a painfully shy boy, much ridiculed and teased, who dressed in filthy slacks and rarely spoke to anyone. In school, before the class of ’82 went off their separate ways—off to college or someplace local to find a proper paying job—many of the meaner sort had bullied him, made fun of him. Ben hadn’t, nor had Lizzie; they’d been invariably, exceptionally kind.

But their kindnesses and courtesies didn’t really matter in the end. Eugene Everhardt bore a deep-set grievance against all the world and all that gleaned a drop of joy therefrom. And that deep-set grievance would explode in tragedy that final fatal fearful Sunday night.

It was a night that would change Ben forever. Maybe it helped to make him what he finally became. Maybe it helped to make him more than he had ever hoped to be. But one thing was for sure: It took from him the one and only girl he never ceased to love. Back then, he thought he’d never see that one and only girl again.

Ah, but in a weird and wondrous way—for once, and only once, in his financially inimitable life—Ben Atherton, the awesome genius, the money-mental wonder …

was absolutely wrong.

2

Hey, Bennie! Bennie—LOOK!

Eddie was psyched. Eddie was so excited he was trembling. He wasn’t in arrears—far from it—He wasn’t joyous. He wasn’t effervescent. His days of gaming debt and youthful effervescence were over long ago; they’d never come again.

But psyched he was, assuredly: You could see it in those big, wide, bulging, reddened eyes, the florid face, the shuffling bodily rush.

These days Eddie didn’t get as all-out purple-faced excited as he’d done back in his youth. Oh, maybe once in a while on the private jet to London, say, with a gin and tonic in his hand, and his fly unzipped, and some aspiring Hollywood starlet kneeling down in front of him (Don’t tell Mrs. Parker, though): Maybe then he’d get his face to flush and his eyes to bulge the way they had in former times when he and Ben were back in school.

But now? No, now he was a calmer sort of fellow in his middle years—practically sedate, you’d have to say. Lots of money does that for a man. Age does it just as well, I guess, though money calms a person way more efficiently and in much less time: The really rich are really pretty calm, you see. Forty million in investments, plus the real estate and corporate stock and all, and it gives the antsiest of fellows reassurance, instills more confidence than the diffidence he’d shown in former days. So whether it was wealth alone or the simple mellowing crust of maturation, or maybe an amalgam of the two—In any case, Eddie was a way, way calmer sort of fellow in his mid-life years than he’d been back in his youth.

Well, usually he was. Generally he was—But you sure couldn’t call him perfectly calm today!

No, today—today he was—well, for him, at least, the guy was pretty flat-out frantic, as he brushed right past Ben’s goalie-of-a-secretary Cindy in the antechamber and straight into the enormous office of the Company founder and CEO, bolted wholesale into the room, where Ben sat at his desk incredulously glancing up, and hit Ed with the inevitable question:

"Jesus, Eddie! What the hell is…?"

Ben posed this uncompleted inquiry because it was evident that something pretty damn significant was … well … up. After all, this was hardly the ideal time for getting interrupted: Ben had that meeting with the Braverman people a little after noon—which Eddie quite obviously knew—And it was getting toward eleven now. And, you know, it takes some time for preparation. And if a potential big-bucks buyer isn’t totally prepared on a mega-million-dollar deal like this, why the sellers can just about eat him alive, checkbook, moneybags and all; and so….

But Braverman Corp meeting be damned, there was Eddie, all crimson in the face, and he was obviously psyched about something. Psyched—feverishly psyched! And on the rare occasions when this generally placid guy got psyched these later days—let alone feverishly—you couldn’t hope to brush him off; hell no. You simply had to bite your tongue and listen to him vent. And so Ben set the research papers neatly on his desk, glanced at the zillion-dollar Patek Philippe on his wrist, shook his head, took his half-frame reading glasses off and set them deftly on the papers, met Eddie’s gaze with a minimum of genuine interest, and queried:

Well, Eddie? OK, go ahead, shoot, I’ll bite. Spit it out and make it quick. I’ve got that meeting with the Braverman team at twelve-fifteen, so….

So Eddie finally coughed at least a prefatory statement out, as Ben had asked his pal to do. It had taken Ed quite a little while to catch his breath and get his trembling hands to slow their rhythm of vibrato—Whew!

Forget the goddamn Braverman bullshit, Benny Boy, Eddie blurted out in double time. It’s peanuts, pal; it’s nickel-dime, penny-ante crap. This one is BIG; this one is the mother lode. I just came across the friggin’ thing sittin’ on my desk this morning—MAN!—and … and—look, we gotta jump on it. Now—Right now. Today—before anybody else muscles in. Look—Just look it over for a minute and you’ll see what I mean. Here, check it out right now, Ben; read the first two pages; just shuffle through a second, pal, and then….

Eddie went to set the folder on Ben’s desk, but Ben waved a hand to hold him off.

Not now, Eddie. Please. I’ve got this whole stack of numbers to go through, and it’s just about eleven already, and….

"Yes now, right now. Hey, have I ever steered you wrong when I was sure about an offering? Have I?"

Had he? All right, so maybe he had. Sure he had. That pharmaceutical fiasco six months back—Man! They’d lost a pile of cash on that one—twenty million, maybe more. But Eddie hadn’t been as all-out hyped about the lethal diet drug as he seemed to be about this proposal, whatever the hell it was. And the last time he was sure, the last time he was red-in-the-face trembling like this, they’d closed that ultra-profitable coup on Claxon Corp. Publishing and made a massive mint; and so….

OK, look, Ben offered, nodding. You got two minutes and not a second more. Run it by me quick—two minutes maximum—and then I’ve got to get back to these figures. Really. If you can lay it out clean and simple in a couple of minutes flat, go ahead, otherwise….

Sure, Ben, sure. Two minutes is all I’m asking here; I know you’re pressed. Just listen to the concept, and if you like what I tell you—which you will, I guarantee—I’ll go ahead and make the call and get our tootsies in the door, OK?

"OK already, fine—So what’s your fabulous brainstorm this time, Eddie? Plastics?"

"No, not plastics, for Chrissakes, Bennie. Plastics—shit! Hey, this thing is gonna be bigger than any plastics you ever saw—Hell, it’ll be bigger even than Facebook, I swear—We dropped the pop-up bigtime by not jumping in on Facebook early on, remember? So this time let’s not screw up, OK?"

Bennie shrugged and shook his head. Facebook—DAMN! The memory of missing out on Facebook when they’d had the chance gave Ben an agonizing twinge.

OK, continued Ed. so here’s the thing:

The thing, eh? Ben glanced down at his watch again and pursed his lips. OK, two minutes—maximum—for the ‘thing’ and then….

Ben reclined his swivel chair, picking up the glasses he had just set down and slipping the metal temple-piece between his lips. There was about five percent of his attention available to Eddie just then—a twentieth at the max—and the other nineteen twentieths percolating over Braverman’s figures and the quickest way to get the greedy bastards down to a palatable price, leaving AthCorp a decent profit. Ben knew commercial values, the present and potential worth of any marketable company up for bidding anywhere in the universe, practically to the cent or pound or yen; his mind scoped out the capitalist marketplace the way an eagle scans terrain for prey—Not that he looked the part of a financier, however, for Ben was still a photogenic type of guy for a fellow in his middle-fifties: more like the beach set than the desk set, frankly, with his copious head of hair, still fractionally gray; still lean and scaphoid at the belly; still bright-of-eye and wrinkleless-of-face. Ben was a pretty nifty fifty-five with the chronologic meter running; of that there could be little doubt.

Now Eddie, on the other hand—Associate Chairman Eddie, Head of Market Research for the Atherton Group, who was an exact contemporary of Ben’s—Eddie looked as though he could have been Ben’s older brother or uncle, or … not quite old enough in appearance to be a youthful-looking dad, but not that far a stretch.

But getting back to Ben again and to the action of the hour, the Braverman deal had got his eyes to redden up a bit from lack of sleep, and those pouches underneath his lower lids these past few days: Today, this morning, Ben looked a trifle wearier than the norm, a little less his youthful self. Tired, antsy; and therefore five percent of his attention span was about the upper limit of what he could spare for Eddie’s new pet project—whatever the hell it might turn out to be.