by Tom Stern
“I want to see where you work,” Walter eventually found himself saying.
Wallace looked from the TV, confused. “It’s a bunch of papers,” he explained.
“Yes,” Walter dug in. “Let’s go.”
Wallace shook his head and turned his gaze into the ground.
“I want to see,” Walter repeated.
The drive from Butner to Norman was flat and monotonous, each highway exit bleeding into the next along the sprawl of nondescript land reaching between them. Wallace’s car radio prattled on about stocks and shares and world business news that formed a sonic blanket of white noise perfectly matching the outside world streaming past. One was hard pressed to find a single distraction within miles.
Walter fought off sleep the whole ride as Wallace stared alertly out the windshield, driving with automotive hand controls accommodating the limited reach of his legs. Occasionally Wallace would lean in and turn up the volume on the radio to focus on some piece of information before turning it back down.
Finally, Wallace turned off onto one of the countless indistinguishable off-ramps. Then they were making turns amongst tantamount buildings until the car stopped in a parking space in a small parking lot in front of a small complex of office suites.
Wallace killed the engine and grappled his way out of the car.
Walter followed.
They opened double glass doors and stepped into a lobby that could have been any lobby anywhere the whole world over. They rode a similarly anonymous elevator to the second floor.
They turned right and stopped at one of the many gray doors that lined the off-white walls of the hallway, a simple plate beside the doorframe that read only the two words of the company’s name.
Wallace pulled a single key from his pocket. After a few clicks, they went inside.
As Wallace came into the space and turned back to hold the door, Walter could not help but notice a tangible calm settling over his twin brother’s demeanor, a weight lifting from his crooked posture, his jagged breath seeming to smooth ever so slightly, a flash of that familiar wonder and passion returning in his eyes. As Walter came into the space, he could not help but note that Halshfin Capital was even less remarkable than everything he had seen in Butner and Norman and everywhere in between. A single, cluttered desk sat towards the back of 1,400 square feet of otherwise unoccupied space. Banks of flat fluorescent light mildly illuminated the dull murkiness of the brand new drab, industrial carpet that reached from one end of the suite to the other. There were no offices, no interior walls, no adornments. There was a water cooler tucked in a far corner, and there were stacks and stacks of files lining half the length of the suite’s longest wall. Wallace closed the door behind Walter and turned the dead bolt locked before starting immediately across the room to his desk, powerless to the pull of his passion.
“There is a chain of cosmetic stores in Delaware,” Wallace explained, eagerly, as he walked, “that I’m fairly certain could be refocused into a nationally recognized brand.” Once he arrived at his desk, he picked up a file and reached back behind himself to extend it to Walter, who was still standing just inside the door taking in how little there was to take in at this multi-billion-dollar corporation.
“And there’s an entrepreneur in Amsterdam,” Wallace went on, searching the papers on his desk with his free hand, “who has developed a product that, if properly taken to market, will likely replace the knit cap as we know it.”
He eventually found that file and turned to extend it, as well, to Walter, nodding and reaching both hands forward to urge his brother to take them.
So Walter came across the suite and took them.
“I’m also buying real estate in the seventeen most promising neighborhoods in the country. A true variety of price points, really, but each with reliable, calculable upside.”
Wallace went searching for these files, too, continuing what seemed to be an impromptu tour of sorts, a tour he clearly considered a far more meaningful display of his work than a more traditional walk through the physical space of an office. But before he could isolate this file, he grew distracted by another undertaking. “There’s a small shipping business in Long Beach, California, that has absolutely no sense of its actual value,” he explained as he approached the stacks of files that lined the wall. “I’m torn up about it because I don’t mean to take advantage of a fellow human being, but if he does not understand his own worth, then what am I to do?”
Wallace found this file and put it in Walter’s already-
full hands.
“Take a seat,” Wallace insisted, pointing to the chair behind his desk.
Walter gestured to the floor instead.
Wallace shrugged.
So Walter lowered himself to the ground and positioned his back against one of the empty walls. He stacked the file folders at his side and began leafing through one as Wallace went searching for more to share. The folder began with a top-sheet summary before delving into a dense, daresay impenetrable, mass of statistics, financials, symbols, charts, and articles.
“When you look around with an open and inquisitive mind,” Wallace stated, sifting through a stack of files along the wall, “there’s really just so much out there to do.”
Walter didn’t hear his brother, though, lost instead in the indecipherable blizzard of information on the pages in front of him.
“Opportunities around every corner,” Wallace repeated at a higher volume, prompting Walter to look up and nod.
Wallace cracked a smile, which looked more like a wince. But Walter knew better.
“As long as we’re here,” Wallace went on somewhat apologetically, as though he wasn’t quite able to control himself, “maybe I should do a few things.”
Walter shrugged and indicated the stack of files he had to work through himself.
Wallace smiled again, this time sheepishly, even though it still looked like a grimace to the untrained eye. He turned, then, and headed sharply back to one of the countless stacks of documents along the wall. He pulled a few folders and flipped through them, stopping every now and again to puzzle over certain pages before placing the documents either aside or back atop the stack and resuming his search.
Walter looked around the empty space.
Strangely, it made him think about all of the music he still wanted to make.
“I’m proud of you, Wallace,” Walter said.
But Wallace did not hear his brother. Or if he did, he did not let on.
“I’m proud of you,” Walter repeated loudly enough that it clearly commanded Wallace’s attention.
Wallace just nodded.
“I’m going to come back every month or so,” Walter declared. “And I’ll call once a week. Just to stay connected.”
“I don’t need—”
“We’re family,” Walter said plainly.
Wallace fell silent. He lowered his eyes back to his papers. “Whatever that means,” he muttered, snidely.
“Whatever that means,” Walter repeated, earnestly.