This is an excerpt from an upcoming space opera about gravity tractors and asteroid mining, just in time for the Artemis missions. It’s a fun little scene that ponders what happens when two billionaires actually have to get into the same room together.
Magnus Eton paced the well-trod hallway carpet outside the hotel conference room with mild distress. Ellis Currante and entourage had not yet arrived, and if Magnus were to actually go into the room, he would be put in the position of waiting for Ellis. As long as he remained kinetic in the hallway, he could claim to be doing anything other than waiting. Technically, he waited for no one. Especially not Ellis Currante.
And technically, his Assistant, Jared, had screwed up the scheduling again. “Dammit Jared! What time did you tell them again?”
“Lunch at 1pm, sir”
“And what time is it now?”
“Two-thirty.”
“And what time did we get here?”
“Two-twenty?”
“Two-eighteen, Jared. Two. Eighteen. Twelve minutes ago. Twelve!”
“I’m sorry sir I thought they would be here. Should I get the puppy?”
“No don’t get the puppy. I’m not uncomfortable yet. But it feels like I’m waiting, and I might be soon.”
“But you don’t wait, sir.”
“No kidding. Go see if he’s at the other door.”
“Sir?”
“It’s the grand ballroom or whatever. it’s got to have more than one entrance. Go find it.”
“It’s the Master Boardroom, sir. But you want me to go find the other doors to see if Currante is waiting near one of them?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t I just get the puppy?”
“Go! Check!”
“Right, okay. Right away.”
Jared, tall and lanky and fat-free, scurried around a hotel corner with footwork ingrained during his JV basketball days. At the next corner, on the opposite side of the Boardroom, stood a sartorial reek of seven, including a gleaming Currante – the infamous Ellis Entourage. Currante had a reputation for never traveling with fewer than four assistants, sometimes up to twelve or thirteen – lawyers and secretaries and trainers and barbers and dentists and psychic vampires and actual psychics and every other species of sycophant, sociopath, or succubus.
Ellis himself was a smooth and suave high-roller, clad in shiny Italian mohair, veneers brighter than an August day in Miami, and a thin and chiseled face from years of triathlon. His movements were dynamic and deliberate, like the specific firmness of his handshake, or the way his suitcoat would flare out as he talked with his hands.
“Oh sir, you’re here,” exclaimed Jared.
“Ah, Jared, my boy! There you are! How’s the ass-kissing business?”
“Very good, sir. Magnus will arrive momentarily.”
“Of course he will. Tell him I left.” Currante and team began to turn around.
“Wait, sir, he’s here. I just got a notification.” Jared pulled out his phone to fake receiving a text.
“That’s more like it. Tell him I’ll come in once he has a seat.”
“Sir, I don’t know if that’s going to work.”
“I can leave instead.” Ellis glared directly into Jared’s eyes while his entourage turned to leave again.
“How about I start a timer right now for ninety seconds? And we both go in then?”
Ellis nodded to the closest Assistant, on his right, who pulled out a phone to set the timer.
“Alright, I think we can work with that.” Ellis offered.
“Okay, great sir, I’ll go tell Magnus, Start timers in 3… 2… 1… start?!” Jared jaunted off to inform his boss of the new plan.
***
Magnus considered himself too important to dress up for other people – he was most frequently seen in stained sweatpants under tattered t-shirts, his blossoming belly creating an overhang of the shirt’s hem above his belt-line. Other people should dress up for him, never the other way around.
“They’re not in there.” Jared observed, peeking through the door on Magnus’ side of the Boardroom. “Time’s up but they’re not in there.”
“Go tell him I left.”
“Okay.”
Jared executed a well-rehearsed wind-sprint back down the hallway to Ellis, who was face down in his phone. “He wants you to know he left.”
“He wants me to know? Or wants me to think?” interrogated Currante.
Jared tried to freeze but betrayed himself with a slight flinch.
“Wants me to think. Go tell him to get his ass in there.” Ellis yanked open a Boardroom door for emphasis.
Jared sprinted back like the return from center court to the baseline. Breathlessly, “he’s ready, sir, he’s opened the door.”
Eton grabbed the door handles and threw the double set wide, “Ellis, you cocky–“
The room was empty and the doors were closed.
“Jared, what the fuck?”
The doors at the far end swung open with a loud unlatching, Currante bursting through swiftly, arms askew, “Waiting long, Eton?”