Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

32

“Final numbers aren’t in yet, but second quarter operating expenses are running constant at roughly negative twenty-seven thousand per day. Projected per-player revenue is off target day by day at two sixteen, one forty-two, one eleven, two nineteen …”

The numbers washed over Lowell Gantcher. All bad news. He looked around him at the paneled walls of the L.G. Entertainment conference room. He glanced at the people sitting at the long table. Senior operations managers, project managers, sales managers, accountants, bean counters of every stripe, the ineffective marketing ass wipes, the pricks from promotions with their dinner giveaways and frequent player cards as the height of their uninspired ideas. All of them sat there at the trough, waiting for their next paycheck. But the truth was, they weren’t going to get them the following Thursday. There was no money left. They were alien beings to him, these workers, from another planet where you went to work, did your job, got paid for what you did, and lived on what you earned. If they understood overleveraging at all, it wasn’t something they did. It wasn’t their religion.

He was the real alien, he supposed. He wondered what he looked like to them: whether all the Xanax he’d been taking made him appear like a broken robot whose faceplate was about to spring off, or if their faith in him convinced them he looked normal.

It was supposed to be easy to be a CEO. The hard part was supposed to be getting there. Twenty years of building, working long hours, sucking up to bosses and bankers, hitting numbers, winning bids. But now look at him. He’d tripped at the finish line and gone facedown on the asphalt.

Gantcher raised his gaze to the glass that looked out into the main office in time to see a bulked-up, stocky figure moving quickly. Dwyer. A rush of adrenaline hit him in a sickening burst that almost had him throwing up and lunging out of his chair to run at the same time. The figure continued past the room. It was just Williams or Willoughby or whatever his name was, some fireplug he didn’t know well who worked in site planning. Gantcher caught himself gripping the edge of the table.

Relax, for god’s sake, he urged himself to no effect, when Janine Mohrer, a young woman from accounting who issued checks for most of her day, walked in.

“Mr. Gantcher …” She interrupted the meeting, her face chalky white with fear, causing his own alarm to deepen in a way he hadn’t thought possible moments before. “There’s a problem with the insurance policy on the town house job. It had lapsed.”