Page 11

11

ADAM

W hen I’m back at my desk at 8 a.m. on Monday morning, a call lights up my phone.

“Hey, Ted, how’s it going?” It must be something urgent if he’s calling this early.

Ted and I have been friends for years. He runs an electronics company we supply components to when they need something fast.

“Adam, I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’ve got some bad news. We’re closing the business.”

“Closing what business? Your business?” My heart takes a dive off the edge of a cliff without a support rope.

“Yes. I’m so sorry, Adam. We made the decision last night. I wanted you to be one of the first to know. You’ve helped us out a great deal, but we can’t make any profit from being middlemen for the Chinese market anymore.”

“But I thought you did a lot of bespoke work? Design and build?”

“Yeah, we do, but we’ve been losing money for years and …” He breaks off with a long sigh. “You know how it is, Adam. Hardware is tough. Staff are difficult to find and expensive, contracts are impossible, and no one wants to pa y what they really cost to deliver. They can do more and more of this bespoke work in China now.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’m so sorry, Adam. You’ve been a great guy to work with over the years. Decent. Fair. I hate to do this to you.”

“I understand, Ted. It’s business. You think the last order you did is your final one?”

“Probably. We might have a few bits and pieces as we wind down, but it won’t be much.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. You’ve been running almost as long as we have.”

A sigh whispers over the line. “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs, to tell you the truth.”

I huff out a laugh. “Me too.”

“It’s not worth it, Adam. You can’t fight a rising tide.”

God, I can’t think like that. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Keep in touch, okay?”

“You got it.”

After he’s hung up, I stare out the window at my wall again. No sunshine beaming down into the little courtyard area today. I chew the end of my thumb as I plug the numbers into the spreadsheet and my heart sinks. We were in a bad position before, but now … Ted’s business was at least ten percent of what we sell. It doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve already cut to the bone. Even if sales pick up with more publicity, it’s still not enough. We can survive a couple of months at best, and that’s if I really stretch it. I’m going to have to say goodbye to my wall and this little space. My throat tightens. Fuck.

I push up from my desk and tell Susie I’m going for a walk, and as I press down through the streets, past coffee shops and cafés, I study the faces of the people sitting and talking. A well-dressed guy with glasses is working on his laptop. Some of these people are no doubt techies who get paid top salaries in New York companies. I find a bench on the edge of a park eight blocks away. Ten years . To get nowhere. In fact, worse than that, I could have been saving thousands of dollars from a high-flying job. Is my mom right? Have I been messing around here? I set up this business because I love electronics, love designing and building things. I never thought Ted’s business would go down. I should talk to Janus; he’s the one person who would understand this. He’s been on the brink many times himself, but I can’t bear the idea. Not because he’ll say I told you so, but because he’ll be sympathetic and insist on lending me money. I’ve resisted that for years, too. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t talked to him about my company’s problems. Well, I’ll sleep on it tonight and check over all the figures with a fine-tooth comb tomorrow. But I’m definitely going to have to close the business down. I close my eyes as ice sheets across my skin. There’s no point in prolonging the inevitable, Adam. The newspaper references to my flourishing electronics company feel like a wasp sting.

I think about Anna and her dad and what she said about her competition getting stronger every year. How does anybody fight their way to the top? Is it luck? It’s not even that there’s some mythical pinnacle I’m trying to reach. I just want my business to thrive. Maybe Anna would understand that better than anyone.

The next day, I pull the team into my office and run through Ted’s call. Keith’s face is white, and Chris stares at the floor. In the past, I’ve shared the numbers and the fact that we’re not doing too well, but now I fill them in on what it all means. Susie’s eyes are glassy and she won’t meet my eyes.

“I wanted you all to be prepared, to give you some time to start looking for jobs.” I clear my throat. “I think we can keep the company going for a couple of months. Does anybody have any questions?”

“Is it really that bad?” Keith says.

“Yes. I’ve stretched to all the debt I can persuade anyone to lend to me. Would you guys like to go through it in detail?”

Everyone nods, so I pull up the spreadsheet I was poring over last night, and as their eyes scan over the sea of red numbers, and I talk through the issues, the mood in the room gets more and more subdued .

“We’re not selling enough,” José says as he peers at the figures.

Susie is looking at her hands. “We’ve also been spending more. It’s been getting more and more difficult to sell online. This is my fault.”

“No, Susie, it’s not,” I say. “You work damn hard, and I’ve always been impressed with what you do and how tenacious you are in stretching what little marketing budget we do have.”

“We have to make the right things to sell, too,” Keith adds.

Chris clears his throat. “We’ll all put our thinking caps on, Adam. We’ve got two months. The warning is appreciated. We can do a good job here at the same time as we’re looking for work.”

Everyone murmurs in agreement, and my eyes prickle.

“Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. I’m happy to give you time off for interviews when you need it.” I have the best team here, and my gut is tight at what’s coming down the line. I’ll have to get a job, too.

About an hour later, I glance up to see Susie leaning on my door jamb.

“With your increased profile, boss, we might have a chance of improving things. I’ve just been digging into the data, and sales have been up on the website over the last couple of weeks.”

I don’t know how we’re going to get ten percent extra out of that, but the guys are great, and I’m not going to let them down if they come up with ideas.

“What were you thinking?”

She sits down in the chair on the other side of my desk, and Chris appears in the doorway and raises his hand in greeting.

“I was talking to Chris about animal videos on TikTok and how much I liked them,” Susie starts.

“My girlfriend’s got a craaazzy dog,” Chris interjects.

“I know the core of people who buy from us are hobbyists with good technical skills, but I was thinking we could design some simple dog-themed electronics kits that ordinary people could make, maybe kids, like Rover’s Robot or The Beagle Bot , and use Chris’s girlfriend’s dog to promote them. We could put together some fun videos.”

I laugh. It’s so far away from a serious electronics company, but it would get us eyeballs. “I actually love that idea.”

“People could share their dogs as well as the kits they’ve made. We could run competitions to have a kit named after their pet. I’m sure I could come up with lots of things.”

Susie’s brain runs at a mile a minute. “These are all good ideas,” I say, smiling at her and Chris. I have no clue if it will get us anywhere, but where’s the harm?

She beams at me. “We’ll make a start on it.’

“I’ll check on Salty’s availability,” Chris chips in.

“Salty?”

“That’s the name of my girlfriend’s dog,” Chris says. “He’s a real grump.”

I laugh again, but also … “God, Anna’s dog is named Pepper.”

Susie’s eyes widen. “Of course she is! Salty and Pepper! That’s ridiculous. We could do a video of them together. Does Pepper have an Instagram or TikTok account?”

“I’ve no idea.”

She pulls out her phone and starts scrolling. “Oh, amazing!”

“What?”

“Half a million followers, Adam, that’s what.”

“For a dog?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Where have you been for the last ten years?”

I gesture at my desk, and she rolls her eyes.

“She probably charges a fortune for a post. Do you think she’d let us use Pepper?”

I purse my lips. That’s a big favor, but whatever, might as well go all out. “I can ask. Two secs.”

Would Pepper be up for trying some dog-tech toys?

“Okay. I’ve asked the question. I’ll give you a shout when Anna gets back to me.”

But my phone buzzes almost immediately in my hand:

Absolutely! Do you want me to bring her over later?

My eyes scan over the office, taking in the stained carpet and the old desks I took out of a skip. “Shit. She wants to come over here with Pepper.”

“Who? Anna Talanova? Are you shitting me?” Chris says, eyes bugging out as he follows my gaze around the room, lingering on the carpet stains and the scuffed walls. Our vibe is more bad seventies throwback than exciting tech startup.

“No way,” I say. “This office …”

Susie chews her lip. “Could we sort this place out today?”

“Today?” Chris’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline.

“What, before Anna gets here?” I glance around again.

“I’ve got a friend that does graffiti—we could make it really cool with a funky wall,” Chris says, hands flapping.

“That would be an amazing video backdrop.”

“We don’t have to do it all today, necessarily,” Susie adds. “But we do have to move quickly on it for it to help the business.”

“We’ve also got to design the kits,” Chris adds.

“Day after tomorrow?”

“Let me text Anna.”

We might have to sort one or two things at our end. How about the day after tomorrow?

I can come after practice.

Sounds good.

I wave at Susie and Chris. “Okay, guys, we’ve got until the day after tomorrow to do something here. Do whatever you need to do. Let’s see what we can organize in two days.”

Susie grins. “I’m on it, boss. And a dog influencer? That’s a sensible backup plan for when Anna quits professional tennis. She’s a smart lady. ”

I grin. “Yeah, I think she is.”

God, I’d never even thought of that. How long can you compete in professional tennis, and what happens afterward? All that work to reach the top, and then you have to give up what you love and find something else, or take a back seat and lose the thrill of the fight, of winning.

It certainly puts my business problems into perspective.