We All Fall Down (5 page)

He nodded his head. “I think it would probably save some time … and frustration. I hate just standing there and waiting.”

“Me too,” I said, although a big part of it for me was that I didn’t want to climb into any more elevators.

“Sounds good. Let’s take the stairs.”

My father led us toward the stairwell, right beside the elevator. I was glad to get away from the windows. The view was nice, but nicer from a little bit farther back.

Somehow I’d expected the stairwell of the World Trade Center to be fancier or different in some way. It was just plain concrete stairs, metal railings, nine steps between landings, eighteen steps between floors. The sound of our footsteps echoed off the walls as we walked.

“You know what’s always struck me as stupid?” my father said.

“What?”

“Half the people who work here belong to fitness centers. They leave the office, jump in their cars or taxis and travel halfway across town to go and climb on a Stairmaster, when all they had to do was simply take the stairs instead of the elevator when they got to the office in the first place.”

“You said you take the stairs sometimes.”

“Sometimes, but not as often as I should. I like that it’s quiet and private. Just think, there’s a small city of people in this building and we’re the only ones in this stairwell for probably thirty floors.”

We continued down, floor by floor. I started trying to do the math in my head. There were 18 steps per floor and we were going down 22 floors. If there were 20 steps in each floor then that would be 440 … minus 22 multiplied by 2 … that would make 396 steps.

Now how many steps would it be to get up to the eighty-fifth floor if we were coming from the lobby? That would be 85 multiplied by 18, or I guess 84 because you started at floor 1 so you only had to climb 84 floors. But the lobby was at least three stories tall, so the second floor might actually be the fourth floor. And did this building have a thirteenth floor, or was the thirteenth marked as the fourteenth because of superstition or—?

“Here we are,” my father said.

In large black numerals on the back of the door it said “85.” He opened it and motioned for me to
go through. Instantly we were standing in an office. There were desks separated by partitions, computers, ringing phones, people sitting and standing and rushing around. It looked busy, almost frantic. The stairwell really was a quiet little oasis compared to this.

“This is it … this is my office.”

“John!” a woman called out as she rushed over. “It’s after eight-thirty and you weren’t here! I was ready to start checking the hospitals or the morgue. You’re never late. You got us all worried. Just where have you been?”

“I’ve was up on the Observation Deck.”

“The
what?”
she asked, sounding as shocked as if he’d just told her he’d been on an alien spaceship.

“The Observation Deck … with my son.”

“Your son … oh, that’s right. This is your day to bring him with you.” She looked at me. “So this is William.”

“Will,” I said.

“And Will, this charming but frantic woman is not an escaped psychiatric patient but my colleague, Suzie,” my father said.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said as she reached out, grabbed my hand and pumped my arm up and down.

“I’m pleased to meet you, too.” She was younger than my dad, small and blond and … well, kind of cute.

“And just for the record, you practically
have
to be a psychiatric patient to work here,” she said.

“Then Suzie must be truly crazy because she’s been my personal assistant for almost nine years.”

“Personal assistant,” she said, shaking her head. “That means secretary. I’m your father’s secretary.”

“You do a whole lot of things that go well beyond the role of secretary,” my father said.

“Yeah? Then how about paying me more instead of just giving me a fancy title?” she demanded, putting on a show of being angry.

“Suzie, if it were up to me you’d be the third-highest-paid person in the whole company, right after the president and, of course, me.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen. Now how about if you get to work so we can make this company a few million dollars and maybe, just maybe, some of it will find its way into my pay? You’ve already got three messages from London and you have a conference call with Paris in,” she looked at her watch, “in less than five minutes, and you haven’t even looked at the report.”

“Damn, I forgot about that call. Thanks for reminding me.”

“No problem. That’s just part of the job of a secre—I mean, a personal assistant.”

“Could you take care of Will, show him around the place, and I’ll have a look at that report?”

“No problem. Just get going.”

“Will, is that okay with you?” my father asked.

“Sure.”

So much for him spending the day with me. I’d expected him to pawn me off on somebody at some point. I just hadn’t expected it to happen within the first two minutes of hitting his office.

My father gave me a pat on the back like I was a five-year-old and then rushed off across the office. He had gone no more than a dozen steps when he was practically assaulted by a couple of women asking questions, and one of them shoved a report into his hands. They trailed after him and all three disappeared into his office.

“This place couldn’t function without your father,” Suzie said.

“We’ve sort of gotten used to it at home,” I said, sarcastically.

“He does put in long hours,” she said. “I can’t even count the number of times he’s tried to leave early to get home for a family meal or for something special—you certainly play a lot of school sports, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised that she knew that.

“It sounds like you were on practically every team in your last school.”

“All of them,” I said.

She nodded. “Your father’s always bragging about you.”

I shrugged, not knowing what to say about that.“I guess it’s going to be harder at high school, with more competition,” I finally said.

“From the way your father talks about you, I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble. He was always trying to sneak out to catch one of those games, and then one of our accounts would blow up, or somebody would grab him to talk about something and he just couldn’t get out. Like I said, I can’t even count the times that’s happened.”

Maybe I couldn’t have counted the times he’d
tried
, but I could easily have counted the times he’d actually shown up. I could have counted them on the fingers of one hand without even using the thumb.

I didn’t want to talk about that. It just got me annoyed. “Why do you have so many televisions?” I asked instead, pointing to a bank of ten sets mounted up on the wall, almost at the ceiling.

“Those are satellite-relayed stations from around the world. Each one shows the financial news from a country where we do business. That one in the corner is from France, and the one beside it is Italy … and then there’s Germany and Japan and Russia, and three are from right here in the States.”

“That one in the center is CNN, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s CNN. We watch it for breaking news.”

I looked more closely at the pictures. Each one was different, but there were a whole lot of similar features. Everybody sat behind a desk and was
wearing a suit, and there was a crawl of information along the bottom of each screen. On some of the screens the words were in languages I didn’t understand, and some didn’t even look like words, but symbols or squiggles.

“We need to know what’s happening as close to the time it happens as possible,” Suzie explained.

“Isn’t that hard with the sound turned off?”

“The sound is off here, but each set is being monitored by at least one person who is responsible for that zone.”

“People get paid to watch TV?” I asked in amazement. That sounded like my dream job.

“A few minutes could make the difference of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“It’s all relative. We have to know what’s happening everywhere because everywhere is connected to everywhere else. An oil tanker crashes in the Suez Canal and oil prices rise. An early frost in Florida hits the citrus industry and the price of orange juice rises. The central bank in Italy raises the interest rate and the price of the euro dips.”

I didn’t see how any of that could work.

“The world is a very small place. We are all connected as business and technology bring us all together.”

I guess I couldn’t really argue with that. I looked around the office “How many people work here?”

“This branch has just over a hundred people, while worldwide our company has more than twenty-five hundred employees.”

“That’s pretty big.”

“And your father is one of the biggest guys. He’s the senior VP in this office, which makes him one of the most important people.”

“Most important in this office?”

“Most important in the world. In this office he’s officially number two, but with the president away so much your father is often in charge, like he is today.”

“I guess I knew he was important. I’m still not sure, though, what it is that he’s in charge
of
. I know what you do here … sort of,” I confessed.

“It’s pretty simple. Just think of this as a really big store, kind of a version of the store at the corner of your street. But instead of individual customers we have companies that do business. Instead of dealing in hundreds of dollars we deal in hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. Instead of people walking in with cash and out with goods, all our transactions are electronic. Instead of serving a neighborhood we serve the whole globe. And here we don’t just sell, we also buy. Sometimes people walk in and sell us things. So instead of a store, it’s maybe more like a pawnshop. In any case, it all involves sales and money. We try to buy low and sell high. That’s how we make a profit. Does that make sense?”

“I guess so, but—”

“Suzie!” a man said excitedly as he rushed over. “I need to see the boss. Does he have any time this morning?”

“Probably not. He’s dealing with a very important client. This gentleman right here,” she said, pointing at me.

“Client?” he questioned, looking at me in a confused way.

“Yes, he’s the founder of a dot-com company. He’s the youngest billionaire in the United States.”

“I … I didn’t know … I’m pleased to—”

“Phil, I’m joking. This is John’s son, Will,” Suzie said and started laughing.

“John’s son?” Phil said. “In that case I’m even
more
pleased to meet you.” He reached out and pumped my hand enthusiastically.

“I’ve known your old man for a long time,” Phil said. “He’s a hell of a good guy. You must be very proud of him.”

“Sure … yeah … I guess,” I mumbled. “Proud” wasn’t usually a word that came to mind when I thought about my father.

“Your dad is the glue that keeps this office together. Without him the place wouldn’t be able to function. I wouldn’t even want to think about how many jobs he saved during the last downturn. I’ll catch up with your father later. You have yourself a great day!”

“Thanks.” I couldn’t help but wonder if people were saying these things because he was their boss or—

“Hang around here long enough and you’re going to hear a lot of people talking about your dad that way,” Suzie said in answer to my unspoken thought. “He really is very well respected and liked. That’s a hard combination for a boss to be—both respected
and
liked—but your dad manages it. Come on.”

I followed her across the office. I was amazed how noisy and chaotic it seemed. How did anybody get anything done with all of this going on? We stopped in front of a partially closed door—the brass plate indicated that it was my father’s office. Suzie pushed the door open. My father was leaning back in his chair, feet up on his desk. He smiled and motioned for us to come in.

His office was big, and one wall was lined with a gigantic bookshelf. There were pictures of me and Mom on one of the shelves. There was a couch, and two big, comfy-looking leather seats, and his desk was a polished, reddish wood … not that I could see the top of the desk, it was covered in files and papers.

“The figures are clear. We need to be buying until it hits ninety-five,” a voice said through the speaker phone on my father’s desk.

“I think ninety-five is too optimistic,” another voice said. “My projections take into account
factors that may result in sales peaking lower. Ninety-five doesn’t give us enough margin for error.”

“What are you suggesting?” my father asked.

“Ninety-four.”

“Ninety-four is being too cautious,” the first voice said.

“Better cautious than careless,” the second voice countered.

“I’m not just guessing, you know. I’m confident that the ceiling is at least ninety-five and more likely a point higher than that.”

“I don’t agree with what—”

“Gentlemen,” my father said, cutting him off.

“You have both stated your views—well thought out and backed by sound figures and reasoning—but now it’s time to make a decision. It’s time for
me
to make a decision.” He paused and took a sip from his ever-present can of Coke. My father honestly believed Coke was a breakfast drink.

“I have immense respect for both of you gentlemen. You are two of the best in the business.”

“Thank you,” one of the voices said.

“I’d have to agree,” said the second, and all three men laughed.

I looked past my father and out his window—or I guess, really, windows. The windows in the building were only about two feet wide in any of the offices, bordered by the columns that held the building up. Through the windows I could see
the North Tower over to the left. Behind it, and the rest of the open view, was of all of Manhattan. I could see the East River, the George Washington Bridge and, in the distance, JFK Airport. I looked closely and saw a tiny plane lift off. This was really an incredible view.

“I can’t argue with either of your positions,” my father said. “And I believe I would be seriously tempting fate to disagree with either of you. As such, I’m going to go for a position in the middle. We’re going to buy until it hits ninety-four and a half. A compromise. Does that sound reasonable?”