Chapter 9: Junior
Jason Cole kept his blazer draped where passersby could see its lining, his business cards in a silver holder at the center of his desk.
"SVP hours," he told Daniel, the analyst across the partition, though Daniel had not asked. "Board prep all morning. You know how it is."
"Right," Daniel said. "Can you move your mug? It is on my cable again."
Jason laughed like Daniel had made a joke and slid the mug aside. His cubicle sat mid floor at Vanguard Capital, close enough to the glass offices to borrow their importance, too far for anyone important to stop. On the desk: a framed conference photograph, a leather notebook he never wrote in, a spreadsheet kept open for atmosphere.
His actual work arrived in batches: update this list, forward the deck, do not edit the deck.
Whitmore, a managing partner, crossed the floor with a client, and Jason stood halfway up, smile ready.
"Whitmore, good morning," he said. "Jason Cole, investor relations, Senior Vice President. If your guest needs anything, I am right here."
Whitmore looked at him, then at the cubicle, then back with the pleasant blankness of a man searching a drawer.
"Thank you," Whitmore said. "It is Tom, yes?"
"Jason," Jason said. "Jason Cole."
"Of course. Good man." Whitmore turned to his client. "Tom handles a lot of our internal flow."
Daniel made a small sound into his coffee.
"I let it go," Jason said, sitting down. "Strategic people think in outcomes, not names."
"Sure." Daniel stood with an empty folder. "Hey, can you cover reception for twenty minutes? They asked for a junior, and you are the closest one."
"I am not the closest junior. I am not a junior at all."
Daniel shrugged and walked off smiling.
Jason typed an email he would never send, deleted it, and checked his phone. A text from the watch service glowed: renewal due Friday, late returns billed. He turned the phone face down and admired the watch instead, heavy and gold toned. In photographs, it told the truth he needed.
The phone rang. Chloe. He cleared his throat, lowered his voice half a register, and answered.
"Chloe. Hold on, let me close my door." He stood and mimed pulling a door shut at the edge of his cubicle. "There. You have me. How is my favorite person?"
"At the foundation, pretending grant budgets are fun," Chloe said. "Are you free Saturday? There is a viewing I want us to try."
"Saturday is tight, partners circling a deal. But for you, I will move a mountain and bill it later."
"You sound important," she said, teasing him.
"I sound employed. Dinner Thursday, that place with the terrible parking and the perfect martinis. My treat, obviously."
"Obviously," Chloe said.
"Always, and I mean always. That is the Cole standard."
He did like her. He liked even more the man he became in her sentences: senior, settled, generous, a man whose credit had never been declined in public.
His inbox chimed: card statement, second card statement, a notice from the penthouse leasing office, quarterly payment due Monday, no grace period. He stared until the numbers blurred and filed them in a folder labeled STRATEGY.
The penthouse was leased by the quarter, furnished by the month, and his by neither. The car downstairs belonged to a leasing company with his signature on page nine. Even his Thursday suit came on courtesy credit, extended to men who looked like future payers.
At lunch, in the break room, someone had left a magazine open on the counter, and Lily Hart was looking up at him from the page.
The profile called her a visionary, used the words self made, put Aurelion at four point six billion, and ran her photograph large: Lily beside the Meridian, calm as weather, one hand on the hood.
"Research," he told Daniel, who had followed him in for coffee. "Know your market."
"She is your ex, right?" Daniel said. "From the startup days?"
"Ancient history. I helped her more than that article admits. That battery cooling approach they keep praising? Mine, originally. I was generous about credit back then. Too generous."
"Wow," Daniel said. "So she owes you."
"She owes me a life," Jason said, and heard how true it sounded in his own ears. "I had the investors, the polish, the future. She had a workbench and a stubborn streak. Look at her now. Look where they parked me: middle of the floor, because this firm does not know what it has."
Daniel nodded toward the magazine. "She looks like she knows what she has."
Jason folded the page down hard, creasing her face. All afternoon it stayed in his head anyway, Lily smiling out of a fortune that should have had his name on it too.