The Fantasy Years

MINT BOWLS SAT AT THE CORNERS of the desks and alcoves in the wood-paneled offices of Tower Investments. Ben snapped up a mint and deftly unrolled its wrapper as he headed to the boardroom.

At least he didn’t have to make some bullshit conversation with Randy about how big Mr. Towers was. Now, he’d just have to face Mr. Towers himself. Why should Ben get nervous because the guy had a lot of money? Why should he have trouble breathing? Why should the world look more faint with each step he took towards Mr. Towers door? Why? Ben asked himself. He didn’t know. But the world did look more faint as he neared Mr. Tower’s office.

His voice cracked as he half asked-half plead, “Mr. Towers has a problem with his computer?” to Mr. Towers’s secretary, Bev, who pointed him, with a vague maternal smile, to the conference room.

“Yes, he’s waiting for you.”

Ben opened the door just enough to look in and saw to his horror, all the partners of Tower Investment. All of them. Or enough of them anyway. Sitting around the table.

“Hello Mr. Towers.”

“Hello…” Mr. Towers replied. He had the chiseled face of a strong and healthy man. A man who could hold himself in a fight. Or a polo match.

“What’s wrong with your computer?” Ben asked, looking at the laptop opened before him.

“Actually, it’s not a computer problem,” Mr. Towers said, with a twinkle in his eyes. “It’s a logic problem.”

“A logic problem?”

“More of a comprehension problem.”

The twelve other partners, dressed in suits, glanced at Ben, a sort of amusement in their stares. Ben’s throat tightened. He felt as if he couldn’t swallow. Or breathe.

Behind the faces of the partners, outside the sixteenth-floor window, was Cleveland, the Cuyahoga river, the city streets and blocks and other buildings uncoiling outward unto the hills making up the horizon. The magnificent gray sky hinted at the city’s industrial past, with its smog and pollution and production and might.

Inside, the room hummed with silence. Ben was paralyzed with fright, as if standing not inside a room but on the ledge beyond the window. Ben blinked.

“How can I help?”

“We spend a lot of time pouring over business proposals. Usually we’re pretty good at it. But this time, well, we’ve run across something that has us stumped.”

A couple partners nodded in tight-lipped agreement. If this was being “stumped” even that looked somehow like a preferable state, Ben thought.

Mr. Towers went on: “We’ve discussed it, weighed it, we’ve even taken a vote on it and can’t come to agreement about whether or not it makes sense. So we figured it would be best to ask another person for their input. An impartial outsider. That’s what we need you here for.”

“We need a regular person’s perspective,” chimed in one of the partners. “Someone outside the collective intelligence of the partners.”

Ben didn’t know he was regular; but he wasn’t going to quibble.

“Okay,” Ben said defensively.

“So we’re just going to read you a sentence and you can tell us if it makes sense. To you.”

“Okay.”

Ben wished Randy took this call.

Mr. Towers said, “Barry, read it, will you?”

The one named Barry, who’d called him “regular” swiveled slightly in his seat, then faced the page before him,

“The subscription-based business plan of Fidofood.com has the potential to capture the $1.4 billion pet treat market on a recurring basis, unique to the aforementioned human-to-pet reward-based relationship, completely insulated from seasonal variations in aggregated volume or business flow.”

“Does that make sense?” Mr. Towers asked.

The eyes of the long-since-graduated fraternity brothers bored in on Ben. The mint cracked too-loudly in his mouth. Mr. Towers asked, “Do you need it read again?”

Now that Ben understood that they really wanted his opinion, he said, “Yes, please.”

Mr. Towers read it again and not a word of it coalesced into anything meaningful to him. He really had no idea what to make of it. And he was a little flustered at being called here to show his confusion. Ben stood before the partners in his khaki Dockers and patent brown Hush Puppies and there they sat in their tailored suits, evincing a deadly, sardonic calm. There was a dizziness in the room. The height outside spun at Ben, as if he might fall.

“It doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Mr. Towers looked at him directly.

“Doesn’t make much sense, you say? Does it make any sense at all?”

“To be honest, no,” said Ben. He was bewildered.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Ben left the room, drops of sweat already collecting over his brow. Alone, returning through the wood-paneled hall but before he got back inside the IT room with

Randy, Ben mouthed the word, “fuck.”

Inside the IT Room, Randy asked.

“What was it? Did he have his caps locks on again?”

“No, they wanted advice on something.”

“A computer issue?” Alarm lit up Randy’s face. He had seniority.

“No, no. On whether or not a sentence in a proposal made sense. I helped break the tie.”