Cash Out (2 page)

“You sure?”

“Just grab me a bag of frozen peas, if you can.”

“What?” Pause. “Oh, right, you're packin' peas now. Assume the boys don't care what brand?”

“Good one.”

“You gonna let me take a look?” It's like she's about to laugh. “I'm kind of curious.”

“You're crazy,” I say.

“Oh, that reminds me. Calhoun came over again.”

Calhoun. In our house? “Tell me you're kidding.”

“I'm not.”

“You let him in?”

“Don't worry. I just stood in the doorway, didn't budge. But he wants to talk to you.”

Calhoun is our freak neighbor. We try to cope with him, but after five years we've learned it's better to avoid him. It's a shame, and we feel like dicks, but we've learned one thing: If you
do
look at him, or wave to him or engage with him in any way, you
will
lose about ninety minutes of your life—ninety minutes lost in Calhoun's strange, gelatinous world.

“He said he'll come back.”

“Great.”

“Says it's urgent.”

“Sure it is.”

“The kids are screaming. Gotta run in a sec.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, and someone from FlowBid called.”

“Yeah?”

“Janice from Finance. I think. That sound right?”

I sigh. “Yeah.”

“She wants an FOD in the P6, or something. I wrote it down.”

“Okay.”

“Someone's crying. Gotta go.”

Pushing through the doors and into the San Mateo sunshine, I keep telling myself,
Three days.
In three days, not only will my wounds be healed, but my first round of stock options will vest, at which point I'll cash them out. Result: more than a million bucks in profit. I had never imagined the possibility of amassing so much wealth in one small moment; two years ago,
no one
would have guessed that FlowBid stock would increase like it has. But now here I am, just three days away from a whole new life.

In three days, my first block of options will vest—5,300 in all. It's the first of two installments from my original 2005 grant of 10,600 options, but I'm not going to stick around another two years to pocket the full grant. Hell, I won't even stick around another week.

As soon as the options vest, I'll call Smith Barney to place a same-day sale—purchasing my options at the grant price of $8, and selling them immediately at the current market price of $216. The funds will be wired to my FlowBid-issued account at Smith Barney, which will arrange to have the check printed two days later at its Menlo Park office near Sand Hill Road, the epicenter of the venture capital world. I'll show up in my Corolla, pick up the check, and proceed directly to nearby Mountain View to deposit it into our checking account.

The next day, I'll give FlowBid my two weeks' notice. I'm sure it will shock the hell out of them. Conventional wisdom around here is that only a numskull would walk away with $1.1 million when he can stick around two more years for another million—or much more, assuming the stock keeps climbing, assuming the bottom doesn't fall out. But that's the difference between the conventionally wise and me.

I want out.

We'll call our real estate agent to put our little peninsula cottage up for sale, for what's sure to be an insane profit. Seven years ago, we bought that little 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom place for $589,000; today, there's guaranteed to be a bidding war, and it's bound to go for at least a million. Par for the course on the peninsula.

That night we'll go out for Mexican food, to a worn-in, hole-in-the-wall place we love, peopled by longtime locals and phenomenal margaritas. The next day, we'll get up, pack the car, and head over the hill and south along the shoreline, straight for the coastal communities between Santa Cruz and Monterey, where we'll start the search for the perfect “beach shack.” Kate will say, “You're really gonna go barefoot the whole day?” And I'll glance back at her, a big grin spreading across my face, and nod.

Within a month, after all the dust settles, we'll have bought a waterfront property with great views and beach access. It won't be luxurious, just functional and well made. We'll either have a tiny mortgage or none at all, and the profit from our cottage sale will be sitting in savings.

Out will go the twelve-hour workdays, the endless chatter about the need for more server capacity, the continual asides about stock options and growing fortunes, the late-night slide-deck drills with a jittery VP three years out of college, the sheer exhaustion that makes you want to avoid eye contact with the world just so you can get home already. Out will go all those San Francisco dinner parties, those thinly disguised boasting contests where guests compete for top bragging rights on everything from whose house has the newest amenity, to who has the most “nanny help,” to whose kid is succeeding the most without trying. Out will go the Range Rovers and Mercedeses and BMW utility vehicles. Out will go Janice from Finance.

Out. All of it.

In will come Hondas and sandals and Fords and old VW buses with longboards tied to the roof. In will come locals riding on old beach cruisers, smiling back at us.

In will come our new life.

I want to do the things we'd stopped doing on the other side: making meals from scratch, enjoying lazy visits with friends, spending real time on the phone with loved ones, smiling at strangers, getting caught up in a good book. I want to work in the front yard and get my hands dirty, my body scraped up, my sweat mixed with dirt. Sure, it'll stink, that mixture of sweat and dirt—until I run across the beach and dive into the ocean.

We'll leave our TV in a box, in the garage.

Wi-Fi? We'll never even unpack the router.

I'll spend real time with my wife and children, the kind of time I never quite manage to spend in my current life, that life on
the other side
where I just can't stop to count my blessings.

We'll spend the whole summer on the beach. In the morning, Kate will run her three miles on the hard, wet sand as the boys and I prepare breakfast: melons, toast, and Raisin Bran, a coffee for Daddy. In the afternoon, I'll sit on our old canvas beach chair, a kid on each side of my lap, my father's forty-year-old Coleman sunk into the sand, icing apple juice, water, and a few cans of Tecate, as I read them another installment of
Robinson Crusoe
. When evening approaches, I'll take a siesta in the sand, the pulsing of the waves sedating me, the Pacific breeze washing over me, as Kate brings the boys home and sparks up the barbecue. At night, the boys and I will build castles and car garages out of blocks, the sound of crashing waves easing through the windows and mixing with the saxophone-heavy ska echoing throughout the house.

When the house is quiet, Kate and I will sit on the couch and hold hands and talk. We'll actually hang out and talk. We need that, Kate and I. We've needed it for a long time.

This is all doable
, I think as I hobble to my Corolla.
It's not a dream. It's a plan.

My reverie is interrupted by the sound of footsteps.

Then a bizarre sight: two little geeks, coming at me like a pair of bats out of hell, running awkwardly, each of them holding one end of a rope.

“Hey!”

Before I know what's hit me, they've got the rope wrapped around me, circling me in opposite directions, pinning my wrists to my hips. In seconds I'm wrapped up, immobilized, toppling over. The asphalt comes in and out of view, gets closer and closer, until I twist just enough to land on my shoulder. Shards of pain shoot through my shoulder, my back, my privates. Especially my privates. I screw my eyes shut, tense my muscles, and fight the pain.

And then, a high-pitched voice. “Stay cool, stud machine.”

What is this?
My mind is scrambling.
A prank?

I open my eyes. From my upside-down view, I see an unmarked white van skid to a stop. The side door rolls open, and I'm pulled off the ground and made to hop toward the van. When I try to resist, they poke me in the spine with something hard and threatening.

My head floats. “What the hell is this?”

“Wouldn't you like to know,” one voice says, shoving the barrel of something deeper into my back.

“What do you guys want with me? I have a wife and kids at home.”

“I'm sure they're darling.” They push me. “Sit down.”

What choice do I have? Grimacing, I hop to one of the bench seats.

“Hit it.” The van peels out of the parking lot.

I give my kidnappers a quick glance; they look dimly familiar. The tiny driver is a rail-thin, pasty-skinned nerd in his thirties; I swear he's wearing a Star Trek shirt. The guy seated beside me is tiny, too, with jeans pulled up to his ribs—not floods, but high-riders. I can't help but give them a very long double take.

The third guy is small but muscular, with a giant head of wavy, flaming-red hair—he may be the alpha male in this pack of tinies. He sits on the bench seat ahead of me, turns, and squeaks, “You realize what you were about to do back at that doctor's office?”

I squirm in the rope. It's getting looser.

Little Red squints at me. “You were about to emasculate yourself.”

And then I realize where I know them from: work. Maybe not Little Red, but the others. Nevertheless, the realization that they're FlowBid guys comforts me a little.
Maybe this is some kind of FlowBid prank
, I think,
a bizarre “abduction” for a wacky corporate offsite.
But I know I'm fooling myself.

“If this is about my vasectomy, you're too late.” I shift my weight, trying to find relief from the hot pain shooting through my crotch. “I just had it.”

The van skids to a halt, and I'm launched off my seat. Shots of agony surge up to my rib cage and down to my knees. I lower my lids and hiss.

Star Trek says, “The Enterprise has landed.” Little Red snarls.

High Rider says, “His Treo said noon. I have it printed right here.”

He's right. My vasectomy
was
scheduled for noon, but the doc's office had called and asked me to come an hour earlier. I just hadn't changed the time on my Treo.

Star Trek asks, “Should we dock?”

High Rider closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. “Proceed.”

Star Trek hollers, “Prepare for warp speed.”

We jerk forward.

High Rider stares at me a moment. “We need to discuss Fitzroy.”

Crap.

Stephen Fitzroy is my CEO. That's my job: I write his speeches. I travel on the company jet with him; I go to his compound to work on speaker notes and slide decks; I put words in his mouth. Stephen Fitzroy is worth nearly a billion dollars; he's one of those visionaries who's always in the right business at the right time.

A lot of people don't like Stephen Fitzroy.

I look around the van for guns. Nothing.

High Rider squints at me. “You may recognize us. Of course, hotshot pretty boys like yourself usually looked right through us at FlowBid. We were expendable, weren't we, Dan? IT guys like us.”

IT guys? Aw, man.

I try to stay calm. “No, I remember you.”

“Good, because we remembered
you.
Sure, we got outsourced. And him over here”—he nods to Little Red—“his job got offshored to Bangalore. But we remember you.” He glances at Star Trek, who snickers. “How could we forget the tall and charming speechwriter to the great Silicon Valley icon Stephen Fitzroy?”

I shake my head. “I'm not like that, guys.”

“You may not have known our names, but we knew yours. How could we not, Dan? All that interesting IT activity of yours? All that inappropriate use of FlowBid IT resources?”

Wait, what?

“You know, the kinds of activities I don't think you want your CEO knowing about.”

My heart sinks and my skin cools.
IT guys.
When it comes to the network, those guys can go anywhere and see anything. Like the calendar on my Treo, for instance.

The van makes a hard left. High Rider pulls out some kind of printout. “Here I have a high-level summary of the IT activity of one Dan Jordan at FlowBid. It's quite interesting.” He glances at me. “So, in no particular order: approximately one hundred and fifty-six hours spent on personal e-mail accounts. Ninety-eight hours spent working on your personal Web pages. The photocopying of some twelve hundred pages of fliers for your son's preschool, at a cost of six hundred dollars to the company. And the laser-printing of some three thousand Yahtzee score sheets for some stupid prank, at a company cost of nearly fifteen hundred dollars.”

“Oh, come on. Find me one FlowBid staffer who doesn't use the goddamn Xerox machine.”

“All right, then.” High Rider takes a thick red folder from Little Red, and glances at me as he pulls out a page. “From one of the many personal e-mail accounts of Dan Jordan, employee number 452 at FlowBid, I read you correspondence from said employee's private Yahoo! Mail account to Dave Hatch, reporter at
BusinessWeek
.”

Shit.

“ ‘Hi, Dave,' ” he squeaks in a mocking tone. “ ‘This e-mail is not for attribution, but you are free to use it for your profile of Stephen Fitzroy. I am his speechwriter (you and I met after Evan's keynote at CES last month), and now that I have spent nearly two and half years with him, I think it is only fair to FlowBid shareholders (and the public) that your story be as comprehensive as possible. Again, this is not for attribution; as a former journalist myself, I am trusting you will respect my wish to remain anonymous. My livelihood relies on it. So, with that, here are a few things you may want to look into.' ”

High Rider pauses, exchanges glances with Little Red. “ ‘Stephen Fitzroy has, shall we say, a pretty bad reputation around the office. He's often reduced lower-level female employees to tears by making fun of their weight and questioning their intelligence. . . . He has three sexual-harassment claims and one paternity suit pending against himself and FlowBid; the company's trying to settle them out of court. . . . Fitzroy had the company jet fly him and his wife to a Palm Springs vacation (on FlowBid's dime) the same day FlowBid laid off sixty people in favor of less expensive employees in India. . . . Fitzroy believes in the value of ‘strategically sabotaging' office rivals; he considers it one of the factors behind his early success in business. . . . Some of the brightest and most successful people at FlowBid have left the company because they refuse to work with him. . . . Oh, and did I mention he has hair plugs?' ”