“You, my friend, are primed to chase after rabbits. But so’s nearly everybody. The assistant vice president wants to be the vice president, and the vice president wants to be the executive vice president. And he and all the other executive vice presidents want the corner office. Meanwhile, the CEO wants to acquire another company. We all want more, bigger, harder, higher, stronger. I know a hedge fund manager who has more money than God, and he still works Saturdays and Sundays. He misses his kids’ football games, often doesn’t eat dinner with his family, barely sees his wife and kids. It’s all frantic movement toward something we can never attain. All the while, we’re missing out on something. You know what that is, Will?”
“What?”
“It’s life. Being driven by ambition is just as bad as being driven by anger or fear or jealousy. It’s an insatiable drive. You need to know about mindfulness. Thich Nhat Hanh has some excellent books. Or this one.” He picked up the book on the table next to him.
“I see.”
“See, the thing is, Will, you already are what you want to be. Be who you are now. Realize how perishable our existence is. Understand?”
Will didn’t, but he nodded.
“I’m not sure you do,” Artie said. “See that dock out there?” He pointed at the window. Will stood, tugged down a slat of the venetian blinds, and saw the brown wooden dock off to the right.
“Yeah?”
“I have an oyster garden out there.”
“An oyster garden?”
“Not an oyster bed. I raise eastern oysters in a cage under the dock.”
“Huh. Do you sell them or eat them?”
He shook his head. “When they’re grown, I give them to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. They plant them on sanctuary reefs. They filter the water. Helps save the bay.”
“Huh.”
“The baby oysters, the spats, they affix themselves to an old oyster shell and then they don’t move. They’re never running away or running toward; they’re just being.”
Curiosity got the better of him, and Will had to say, “With your job — I guess I never would have expected, you know—”
“I wasn’t always where I am now. In the late nineties I was tasked to do a black op against the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. My assignment was to eliminate one of their leaders. Which I did.”
“Really?” Will was shocked to hear him speak about his prior work so openly.
“Couple years ago I took a trip back to Nepal. And while I was there I tracked down the brother of the man I killed. In Kathmandu.” Artie was looking off into some vague middle distance. “And I tried to make amends to the guy. I came clean — ‘I killed your brother.’ And this guy — his name was Manish — he didn’t look at me with hatred. He’d become a Buddhist monk; he wore one of those saffron robes. The look he gave me. I was expecting — I don’t know what I was expecting. Fury, I guess, or anguish. I thought he’d break down weeping, or lash out at me, maybe even lunge at me. That’s what I was prepared for. But the one thing I wasn’t prepared for? Was how he actually responded. The gentleness in his eyes. The look he gave me. So much... love. I don’t know how to put this in words, but Will? I was the one who broke down. I spent the next month there. Way up on top of a mountain north of Kathmandu. And it’s like I took myself apart, and then I put myself back together.”
“Wow,” Will said. “That’s incredible.” He thought that a lot of what Artie said made sense, but he didn’t want to think about that kind of stuff now. Maybe later, someday.
Artie smiled, kind of a sad smile, his eyes serene. He spread his palms. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“Yes,” Will said. “One more thing.”
55
Tanner Roast had survived without him. He spent half an hour going over administrative things with Lucy, signing some paychecks for the few employees who for some reason didn’t do direct deposit. Karen wanted to talk sales, which really meant agonizing over deals that should have been and still might be. Like the Four Seasons account.
“We can’t submit a new bid? It’s definitely lost?”
“The deal’s done,” Tanner said.
“That’s so totally not fair.”
“I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“I’m getting into a sort of scorched-earth frame of mind,” Tanner said. “Do me a favor. Get hold of City Roast’s S-1.”
“Which is what?”
“It’s a form you have to submit to the government when you’re planning to take your company public. It’s online.”
“When is City Roast going public?”
“In a couple of months, I think. Who’s this new kid hanging around with Sal?”
“The intern or whatever? From Northeastern, remember?”
“I forgot. Do I have to explain stuff to him? I’m a little preoccupied.” He remembered that he’d agreed to let a college sophomore intern at Tanner Roast learn the business of running a coffee company for a semester or two. But that was months ago. Before all this.
And then he thought of something. “Actually, tell that kid to get in here. Meet the boss. I want to teach him about delegating.”
Tanner sent the Northeastern student on a run to a sporting goods store and the Computer Loft. Meanwhile he called Carl Unsworth. “Do you have any downtime between lessons or classes or whatever? I need to talk to you.”
“Some. But I got a pretty full day today.”
“You don’t have to go anywhere. I’ll drop by.”
He left the office a few minutes later and took the turnpike to Newton Centre. Carl’s martial arts studio was in an office building that had a good deli on the ground floor.
Tanner had imagined that Carl’s martial arts courses were full of state troopers and FBI agents. Instead, it turned out that most of his students seemed to be suburban women. At least, the daytime classes. Carl wore workout pants and a T-shirt with his studio name emblazoned on it.
“Do you know anyone who knows wiring?” Tanner asked.
“Like an electrician?”
“Could be, sure — wait. Scott!”
“Who?”
“A buddy of mine who installs home theaters and TVs and sound systems and all that. I play squash with him.”
Toward the end of the day, Tanner met Jamie North for a drink in the Back Bay, at a loud after-work bar on Boylston Street. Tanner ordered a bourbon on the rocks. Jamie ordered a Diet Pepsi, because he had to return to the office. There was no small talk. Tanner tried, but Jamie was not a small-talk kind of guy. He didn’t even ask about Sarah, though he had to be thinking about her.
After ending his engagement with Sarah, Jamie quickly met another woman and was engaged within a few months. Clearly he’d decided he was on the marriage track and was going to get there one way or another. His male biological clock — there is such a thing — was ticking loudly. They had two kids and then quickly got divorced. So Jamie felt that he’d gotten the shitty end of the stick, that Tanner had won. He was a rival who had been defeated, and that made him foul-tempered.
Jamie listened to Tanner impatiently, drumming his fingertips on the table, playing with a straw’s paper wrapper. “What does that mean, you’re in trouble with the NSA?”
“They’re demanding the senator’s laptop. They claim there’s classified information on there.”
“Is there?”
“Yes.”
“Dude, you don’t mess with the NSA. Give it to ’em.”
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I don’t want to hand it over.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say. Do they have legal grounds to arrest me? This is what the NSA guy was threatening me with.”