Page 115 of Return Billionaire to Sender

Gerrold is nodding. Junior’s piping up; he wants more investigation into this offer. Gerrold asks me to walk with him while his legal looks at it.

So we walk. We follow Vallejo toward the water.

I decide to level with him. I tell him my father wants his company. I let him know that my father will look a lot better on paper, but it won’t be real in the end. I’m pre-empting it with something concrete, with the best thing he’s likely to see. I tell him that even my team is surprised by the seeming gift of it. I tell him that there’s a PR angle in it that may or may not happen. I tell him that I think he should take the deal.

“I appreciate your speaking plainly,” he says.

We walk for a bit in silence.

I’m feeling bad about the historical retrospective, now—the way we shined on his ego. He wants to be a good guy and he is one, and I played on that. He’s about my father’s age, and for a second, I wonder what it would’ve been like to grow up with a guy like this.

The offer is signed not two hours later.

Before we are even out of the building, my security head pulls me aside and lets me know that it was the son who was courting my father; they caught him putting in a call to my old man down on the street. He’d even forwarded him the PDF to look at.

I’m happier than I should be that it’s not my people.

“Do you want us to tell Gerrold?” my security head asks.

“He knows. On some level, anyway,” I say.

I get my admin to find us a nice table for eight somewhere. We’re gonna do some celebrating, and then I’ll leave and they can all get drunk and dance. But they won’t be taking Elle. I’ve got after-dinner plans for her.

27

Noelle

I getto the restaurant early. It’s one of those glam hotel lobby places that make you feel like a princess.

I have a cocktail with Nisha while we wait for our people. Nisha is speculating wildly about Malcolm’s black eye. “He’s gotten into things with strangers before,” she says, “but usually it’s somebody he knows, and I’ll bet you so much money that they deserved it. He doesn’t go for people who don’t deserve it.”

I nod, feeling bad having to pretend that I don’t know. The pretending has to stop. Not just with her.

I try not to think about that. We’ll have a nice dinner with the gang. I’ll tell him right after.

“Coralee thinks it’s connected to the generous offer,” Nisha continues. “Like something happened. What? But it could be really good PR. That has to be what he’s going for. It’s not like the court-ordered coaching suddenly gave him a heart. No offense, but wouldn’t you just keel over?” She turns to me. “Oh my god, that was kind of offensive, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean like it’s ineffective—”

I’m laughing. “No offense taken.”

Nisha and I talk and laugh, and at one point I’m thinking I need to invite her over when this is all finished, maybe for one of our fifth-floor dance parties. Then I remember there won’t be any more of those. The building is going down in sixty-some days.

The rest of the traveling team arrives minus the legal people. There’s some vetting thing they have to hammer out. The team is excited to be going home.

“I honestly thought we’d be here forever,” Walt says. “I thought I was going to have to miss the Voidz concert.”

People are talking about what they’re gonna do when they get back to the city. When they ask me, I say I’ll be mostly looking for a new place and getting ready to move.

“A better place, I hope,” Nisha says.

“I hope so,” I say. But no place can possibly be better than 341.

More people arrive. Apparently we’re supposed to start with the apps and the drinks and not wait for Malcolm.

“He usually swoops in for the entrée,” Lawrence says. “Quick cameo.”

We file in to the restaurant and order all the outrageous things, and it’s fun. The traveling team is totally fun.

I text Malcolm at one point. Just a frown emoji, like where is he?

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