“I don’t think we can do this for twenty percent. Neither of you has the experience to handle the growth you’re about to see. We’ve been in contact with other industries besides just football, and there is a much larger market for this than you’re anticipating. Navigating growth like this is critical. Because of that, we would require a fifty-one percent interest so we would be assured it was handled correctly,” Greg said.
“But that would mean giving up control of our company,”
Sunil said.
“You would still run the day-to-day, but this would protect our investment,” Rob said.
“Absolutely not,” Denzel pushed back.
David shrugged and stood up. The rest of his team followed his lead and began to gather their stuff.
“Wait!” Sunil panicked. “There has to be a compromise that leaves us in control of our company.”
One of his mom’s most potent closing tools was the
‘takeaway.’ To make it work, the other side had to know that you were willing to walk away.
“There would have to be safeguards in place,” David said to join the negotiation.
“Whatever you want,” Denzel agreed.
At that moment, Greg got it. His dad had clued him in to David’s end game. He wanted someone to oversee the rapid growth because it wasn’t something a couple of tech guys would necessarily know how to manage. That was why his brother had insisted that Rob, Ron Pennington, and Grace Davenport be hired as consultants to help VRS launch Dare and Corvus’s product.
David left to go to class now that he knew negotiations would go their way. In the end, they agreed to forty percent ownership interest. Not all the parties were necessarily happy, but they all felt they could make it work.
◊◊◊
David had assumed that Lisa’s funeral would be sometime during the coming weekend. So, when he got the notice that it was today, he’d had to scramble to be able to attend. He hadn’t realized that Lisa’s family was Jewish.
It was held at a local funeral home. Because there wasn’t much notice, some people came as they were. But a majority had dressed nicer, with men in suits or slacks and jackets and the women in dresses. Dark colors prevailed, but not everyone was in black.
David was stopped in the foyer by a young man.
“I know you from somewhere.”
David thought for a moment and couldn’t remember ever meeting him before. Then a young woman stepped up.
“Michael, that’s David A. Dawson, the actor,” she said, then turned to David and asked, “Why are you here?”
“I visited patients in the children’s oncology ward, where I met Lisa and Sadie. I wanted to come and say goodbye to Lisa and see if there’s anything I can do for Sadie and her mom, Janis.”
It turned out that Michael was married to Paige, and the two of them decided to be his guides to help keep him from making any missteps in an unfamiliar situation.
David saw a basket of skull caps and went to take one since he saw everyone else wearing them.
Paige put her hand on his arm.
“If you’re not Jewish, you’re not expected to wear one.”
“Sorry, I just assumed,” David said, a bit embarrassed that he didn’t know.
“TV seems to get it wrong and usually portrays our non-Jewish guests wearing yarmulkes. When I was a kid, I used to complain because they feel a bit strange until you get used to them,” Michael shared.
“Thanks,” David said as they walked in.
The room was set up with a center aisle. In the front, on a rolling platform, was a plain pine coffin covered by a cloth embroidered in Hebrew. David went to the front and
said a prayer for Lisa. Sadie and her mom were sitting up front, so he stopped and said some meaningless words that you say in a situation like that.
It was obvious that they were barely holding it together, but they both grimly acknowledged his words. He went to the back and found a seat.
He didn’t know why, but he was surprised when the rabbi was a woman. She spent some time comforting Sadie and her mom and then got up front and started to tell anecdotes about Lisa and say what she could to comfort the family.
As the rabbi talked, David’s thoughts turned inward.
Time was the one thing no one could stop. What it doesn’t change, it destroys; time tears down everything. People do all they can to desperately hang onto the past, their memories, and themselves.
Like so many who went before Lisa, their memory would soon fade. Eventually, they would become a shadow of our memories. That was all there was left. Lisa was gone.
When his mother faced her own mortality, she’d promised to start living life to its fullest. David had—no, everyone had to ask themselves if they were genuinely squeezing every last drop out of the little time they were given.
For himself, was he doing everything he could to create what he wanted out of life? If not, when would he start working toward that? The problem was that he’d forgotten that he didn’t have unlimited time. That bitch never stopped. Did he plan on waking up when he was 30, or worse, 60, and realize he’d let time slip through his fingers?
Was this it? Was this the future he’d dreamed of?
What would it take for him to begin to act? Or better yet, what did he really want? Kicking the can down the road left his options open to all possibilities. But he knew that he was letting time slowly grind him down and start to take
those possibilities and slowly remove each one. It would do so until he was out of choices, ultimately out of time as his number was called. The sad part was that it could come too soon, as it had for Lisa.
David sat there, listening to the rabbi tell her stories of what a lovely girl Lisa had been and what a tragedy it was to lose someone so young. It made him reevaluate everything.
Coming to USC to play football had been nothing but frustration to this point. What was so clear to him in that moment was that he’d let it all happen, just as his uncle said. On day one, he should have focused on football and made it clear to the world that he should have been this year’s starter at quarterback.
It had been he who went along with the insane idea of playing defense. He’d somehow convinced himself that was okay. But instead of dwelling on what went wrong to get him to where he was right now, he’d finally matured enough to clearly see what was in front of him. He was redshirting, and if you put a gun to his head, David would admit that was the best decision.
After the loss at Utah, and the injuries beginning to pile up, he had seen a different team at Monday’s practice.
Combine that with an interim head coach, and this was a wasted year. His playing a handful of additional games now wouldn’t make a difference next year. More than likely, he just risked getting hurt again.
But there was a light at the end of the tunneclass="underline" the Notre Dame game. David vowed to change his focus to beating them. Doing that would set him up as next year’s starter.
Matt was having a rookie year where he looked good one moment and terrible the next. In the three games David had played, USC had won.
So, the bulletin board fans and media had already started comparing the two. If David could win the Notre Dame game, he would be set to take over in spring ball.
The only caveat was, it would depend on who the coach was.
If Coach Merritt lost his interim label, David would have to admit that USC was a mistake and transfer. He still got messages from the Oklahoma coaching staff telling him they were keeping track of his progress.