Black Buck(30)

The cards are stacked against me. I didn’t have a daddy to play squash with the director of sales’ pops. No recruiter to lay up five interviews for me to bomb until someone took a chance on me because I was an athlete. The only thing that got me there was a momentary flash of courage—courage that was growing weaker by the day.



* * *





The day repeated in cycles of different SDRs grilling us nonstop. By the end of it, I was spent. Thank God Clyde never came back.

I grabbed my bag and headed for the elevator when I heard shouting. My curiosity outweighed my exhaustion. When I got closer to Rhett’s office, the door swung open and Chris, the small, sweaty, red-faced cofounder, rushed out like a hurricane.

“If you don’t take care of this, I will!” he shouted over his shoulder as he stormed past me.

I peeked in and found Rhett seated on a leather couch with a glass of gin in one hand and his forehead resting in the other. His pressed white button-up was wrinkled. I quietly backed away until he looked up, our eyes connecting.

“Oh, Buck, I didn’t know you were here. Everything alright?”

His eyes were bloodshot, and his olive complexion looked paler, as if someone had ripped off a few sheets of his skin to reveal the sallow, vampirelike inverse of his daytime self.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Sorry for interrupting. I’ve just been stuck in Bhagavad Gita all day and heard screaming so . . .”

He waved a hand and smiled, bringing the color back to his face. “Ah, don’t worry about that. Just boring startup stuff. Take a seat.”

I dropped my bag and grabbed the other end of the couch. His office was massive, about half the size of Qur’an, and had two long black leather couches, a full-size pool table, a desk made out of an old door, and, of course, floor-to-ceiling windows.

He slowly rose from the couch, and walked toward shelves full of books and bottles of bourbon, whiskey, vodka, and more. “Drink?”

“No, thanks, I don’t really, uh—”

“No worries. I probably shouldn’t as much as I do. But there’s something about a cold glass of gin at the end of the day that makes me feel more human.” He laughed. “Does that make me an alcoholic?”

“I guess it depends.”

He sat next to me. “On what?”

“On if you still feel human without it.”

He looked into his glass, as if there were answers at the bottom. “Clyde tells me you’re having a hard time.”

“It’s okay,” I said, admiring his books. Daniel Pink. Dale Carne-gie. Eric Ries. Andy Grove. All part of the standard startup CEO guide. “You like to read, huh?”

He laughed. “You could say that. But you still didn’t give me a straight answer. How’re you doing?”

“This shit’s tough, man,” I said before I could stop myself. “I feel like Clyde’s going harder on me than the others. Like I’m always a step behind.”

He set his glass down and nodded. “This is normal, Buck. If you feel like he’s going hard on you, he probably is. But it’s only because he sees your potential just like I do. This,” he said, waving his hands around, “means nothing if people aren’t pushed past the limits of who they thought they were. And, believe it or not, I know who you truly are, how great you can become.”

Damn. This guy believes in me more than I believe in myself.

Reader: Everyone thinks the key to succeeding in sales is motivation. Wrong. Motivation fades in an instant. But inspiration? Man, that’ll sustain you longer than accidentally overdosing on Viagra. Rhett, as you’ll come to see, embodied inspiration. He hooked me—even blinded me.



“And what about you?” I asked.

“Me? Ah, all’s well. We just need to hit this number. What you’ll learn, Buck, is that every single problem you have disappears,” he said, clapping his hands, “once you hit your number.”

I didn’t know where the time went, but it was 8:30 p.m. and my exhaustion returned like a dormant case of the clap. “It’s getting late, Rhett. I gotta go.”

“This?” he said, laughing. “Late? By next week, eight is going to be early for you. Go home, rest up, and be ready to kick some ass tomorrow. But I want you to promise me something, Buck. I know we haven’t known each other for long, but if you promise this to me, I’ll promise it to you.”

I waited for the guy to get down on one knee and profess his love to me, but I was thankful that he just said, “Promise me that you’ll always be honest with me, Buck. That you’ll never hide anything from me. And I promise to look out for you. To mold you in my own image and make sure you succeed.”

He stretched his hand toward mine. I knew that taking it into my own meant making a promise I couldn’t turn away from—a handshake I couldn’t undo. Like I said, I was already a minor planet in Rhett’s gravitational pull, and I liked the feeling. I took a breath and grabbed his hand. A small smile appeared on his face.

“I promise.”





9





After waking up with a headache the size of Kanye’s ego, I headed into the kitchen. But there was no sign of Ma. I walked downstairs and found her door closed, which was unusual. She normally slept with it open.