Black Buck(12)

“Good man! Thought you would’ve backed down after a few seconds, but you didn’t. Solid.”

“Darren,” Rhett said, stretching his hands around. “This is the gym. Mac’s our in-house personal trainer. We have locker rooms with showers, soap, towels, and anything else you need. Let’s continue.

“The office is one large bisected circle,” he explained as we passed a quiet group with their heads down in their laptops.

“This is where marketing sits. They usually spend the day writing copy, emails, working on ads, and supporting sales.”

A pale white woman with brown hair and freckles looked up, waved to me, then focused back on her computer.

“Jen,” Rhett said, causing the woman to look up again. “Meet Darren. Darren’s going to be one of our new SDRs.”

“New what?” I asked.

Jen stood, grabbed my hands, and got so close to my face that I swore she was about to kiss me. Like Mac, I had seen Jen in Starbucks on dozens of occasions, to the point that I knew she preferred soy milk over whole, yet when she looked into my eyes, it was as if she were seeing me for the first time. How does no one recognize me?

“It’s so nice to meet you, Darren! We can’t wait to have you on board. If you’re getting the royal treatment from the king himself, you must be special. By the way, has anyone ever told you that you look like Sidney Poitier?”

“Um—”

“Really?” Rhett said, incredulity in his voice as he stared at Jen.

Finally, we can stop all this bull—

“I thought MLK,” he finished.

“No.” Jen shook her head. “Definitely Sidney.”

“Uh, no, never got that before. But thanks.”

We walked on, passing offices featuring different scenes like flipping through TV channels: white people huddled around a table, shouting into a phone; the blond guy from earlier writing on a whiteboard as white guys and girls nodded along; two white guys doing push-ups, slapping their hands together after each one; a pack of white girls eating salads.

“Hey,” I started to ask, “where’s all the Bla—”

“Heads up!” someone yelled before two scooters flew past us.

We came to the far side of the office, where there was a meeting room that ran the length of the hallway.

“This is Qur’an, the main conference room,” Rhett said, opening the heavy wooden doors and pulling out a leather-backed chair for me. I took a seat in front of the long mahogany table.

“Sort of corporate, but we like it. Makes us feel more serious.” He pointed to the table studded with triangular conference phones. There was a large flat-screen TV on the wall across the room, and we were surrounded by glass. Glass floor-to-ceiling windows, like the ones on the sales floor, and clear glass walls. But why the hell is it called Qur’an?

Before I could take it all in, a small, sweaty, red-faced guy with hair sticking out in every direction burst in.

“Rhett,” he said, breathing heavily.

“What is it, Chris?”

“Lucien called. He wants to chat. Now.”

Rhett waved him off. “I’ll call him later. Don’t worry about it.”

“But, Rhett—”

“Dammit, Chris. I said I’d call him later. Stop worrying, will you? It’ll all be fine. I promise.”

“Stop worrying? How in the world can we stop worrying when the board is breathing down our fucking necks, Rhett? You tell me how and I will.”

Rhett didn’t say anything. He just looked at him. Chris nodded and left as quickly as he had come.

“So,” Rhett said. “What do you think of all of this?”

“I don’t even know what all of this is, man. Is this some kind of illegal operation or an insane asylum?”

He laughed, squeezing my bicep. “Definitely not illegal, but I can’t say the same for this not being an insane asylum. Most of us here are crazy, crazy enough to think we have what it takes to change the world and all of that other startup bullshit. But here it’s true. You saw it for yourself, Darren. The burning passion, the unrestrained madness, the electricity. Can you feel it?”

I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t. There was something like lightning in the eyes of everyone I saw. It burned through each of them, like it would destroy them if it wasn’t put to use. It was something I also used to feel before I allowed myself to become complacent.

“I can,” I said, looking down the length of the table. “But I definitely don’t have that spark, Rhett. At least not anymore. I don’t even know what you do here.”

“I told you; we sell a vision.”

“Yeah, but what vision? What does the company actually do?”

“Don’t worry about that yet. I want you to be as pure and pristine for your interview as possible. We can discuss specifics afterward. I promise.”

“Interview? What’re you talking about? I need to get back downstairs, man. The Starbucks could be on fire and I wouldn’t even know.”

He yanked me up by my elbow and pushed me toward the windows. “What do you see, Darren?”

I looked down and flinched. Gridlocked taxis, buses, and trucks flooded the street below us; cyclists wove in and out of them like threadless needles; smoke rose from food carts on the corners; men and women hurried across the avenues, some likely wondering if the babysitter would work out, others worrying if they’d be able to make rent. From where I stood, I felt like God.