D? Where are you? Why aren’t you answering any of our calls? Seriously?????
WHERE ARE YOU! I swear to god, if you’re in the hospital or something happened to you, I’m going to bring you back to life just so I can kill you for making us all worry.
This isn’t like you D. I hope you have a good excuse for this. Your mom is worried sick and crying.
Going home. I hope whatever you did tonight was worth it.
Rhett stood and placed a hand on my frozen shoulder. “You don’t look so hot, Buck. You okay?”
I stood there motionless, my phone resting in my hand like a gun I’d just killed someone with: heavy, cold, and unaware of the damage it had done.
III.
Discovery
Success has a price. If you aren’t prepared to pay it, you shouldn’t expect to achieve it.
—DAN WALDSCHMIDT
3 Months Later
12
I never expected to be where I am today. Living on the penthouse floor of a ninety-eight-year-old building, worth millions of dollars, and admired by people from Brooklyn to Brazil. If you’d told a younger me that I’d be here, I’d have said you were smoking rocks. But here I am, and there you are, looking in from the outside and hopefully getting what you paid for. I worked hard to get here, and if you continue following me, I’ll help you better your life and the lives of those you love most. I guarantee it.
In the world of tech startups and sales, three months, aka a quarter, is a long time. A lot can happen. And for me, it did.
On the first Monday in June, the first workday after Hell Week, when we achieved our goal for the twelfth month in a row and partied like savages, the newest members of NWA—Frodo, the Duchess, and I—hit the phones. On day one, the Duchess shot from the bottom of the almighty whiteboard to the top. She had a few of her father’s friends—CEOs, titans of business, and other suspects of questionable character—lined up to qualify and hand off, which meant she hit her goal in a few hours. She piled on more SQLs and deals throughout the month.
Even Frodo had a few connections—like trustees of Notre Dame who fondly remembered Arnold Bagini, the right tackle who often played through multiple concussions to bring their university glory. He qualified one of those on day two and added a few more. He didn’t end the month at the top of the board, but he was somewhere safe and comfortable in the upper middle.
And what about your boy Buck, you ask? Well, I made more than one hundred calls a day for two weeks but couldn’t get anyone on the line. Most of the numbers were fake, went directly to foreign voice mails, or led to receptionists who told me so-and-so was dead.
When I brought it up to Clyde, he said, “Part of the game, Buck. Welcome to the show,” before patting me on the back and telling me to keep at it. But when I eventually told Charlie, he looked at my list and realized that I, yes, only I, was being sent leads from the “Do not call, they’re absolute shit or dead” pile. If you’re wondering who was in charge of marketing’s lead distribution, it was Clyde. So much for a truce.
All of this is to say that I ended the month with a big fat, uncooked, and likely salmonella-infected goose egg. I earned nothing in commission; Frodo earned $535 dollars, and the Duchess, of course, earned over $1,500. It’s funny how the rich always somehow end up richer. Fortunately, no one had come close to qualifying anyone on their “Advance to AE, collect $200” wish list. Even the Duchess and all of her incestuous wealth connections couldn’t swing that.
The rest of the months followed the same pattern. Only after getting better leads with Charlie’s help did I start generating opportunities, which moved me a few spots up from the absolute bottom of the board. I even earned a couple hundred bucks in July and August, which I used to celebrate Soraya getting into her nursing program and pay for a dinner for her, Ma, and Mr. Rawlings at a fancy Manhattan restaurant as an apology for missing my Hell Week celebration dinner. Jason, still saltier than a sailor, declined the invitation.
Aside from that, all was cool on the home front except for two things. One was that Ma missed a few more days of work due to fatigue. I kept pressing her to go to a doctor, but she said she already had and that they said it would pass, that it was all part of the aging process. She hit me with the same line over and over again: “Jus’ focus on work, Dar.”
The second thing was that the real estate company that had sent Ma a letter in May, Next Chance Management, called every few weeks until I picked up and said if they didn’t lose our number, I’d have to “take care of them.” An empty threat, but it worked.
Which brings us to day one of September. A time when the junglelike heat of New York City begins to settle down, when yoga-pants-wearing, Pumpkin Spice Latte–drinking, and basic-as-free-cable Beckies emerge from their Southampton vacation homes like bedazzled cockroaches. A time when the whole city looks back at the summer like one long acid-laced dream that possibly couldn’t and absolutely shouldn’t have happened. A time when the Church of Sumwun, and all of its constituents, came under grave threat. Before long, we would be taking fire from the media, investors, and even stale talk-show hosts clinging to their dwindling viewers like Southerners and their “It’s not racist, it’s tradition!” Confederate flags.
In short, we were about to enter an all-out war.
* * *
It was the first Monday of September, and the war started after lunch. Frodo and I were discussing the merits of being born in summer versus winter and whether the time of year you were born actually had an effect on your character.
“It definitely does,” Frodo declared, drinking an entire can of Sprite in one gulp, letting out a stinky, hamburger-laden belch. He wore a T-shirt that read: EVERY DAY IS FIRST DOWN.
“Shit, Frodo. That smells,” I said, shoving him into the elevator.
“Sorry. But like I was saying, if you’re born in the summer, you’re fiery, like the sun. And if you’re born in the winter, then you’re cool, like the snow. Maybe even more relaxed.”
“You do know that Kim Jong-il was born in the middle of February, right?”
“I don’t know who that is. But most people I know named Kim are really nice, like my babysitter, my uncle’s wife, and Kim Possible.”
When the elevator opened, the floor sounded louder than it should have for a Monday at 12:30 p.m. People were shouting into their phones until they were red in the face, some of them were crying, and a few were pacing in circles, squeezing purple stress balls.
“What’s going on?” I asked Charlie, who sat with his head in his hands.
Without moving, he muttered, “The beginning of the end, Buck. The real beginning of the end. It’s all over the news.”
I flipped my Mac open and googled “Sumwun.” The first page was plastered with articles from every major news outlet: “Sumwun is now for no one,” “CEO Rhett Daniels declines to comment on murder,” “Assistants or assailants?,” “Tech darling of NYC drowning as we type,” “Psychologists or psycho killers?”
“Yes, that Sumwun, but I one hundred percent promise it’s nothing serious,” Eddie said into his phone. “These things happen. No, I know. Yes, it shouldn’t have. I assure you we’re doing everything in our power, Jack, so let’s just schedule some—fuck! He hung up. No one is giving us a chance to speak. Everyone knows.”
“Knows what?” I asked, still confused, staring at the headlines on my screen.
Reader: Every great salesperson has to go through tough times in order to find out what they’re made of. The best thing to do is to try to come out as unscathed as possible but to never forget the experience. Pain is a powerful teacher.
“Oh, Buck,” he said, grabbing me. “One of our assistants in China. He convinced a noncorporate user, some depressed sixteen-year-old girl from Arkansas, to go to China and meet him for a face-to-face session. Her parents and friends hadn’t known she went until they forced us to break our user confidentiality agreement and release her sessions’ transcripts. They called the Chinese authoriti
es, and the cops found the assistant’s apartment. But when they got there, the girl was tied up and dead on the floor. They’re looking for him now.”
Holy fucking shit. “So what happens now?”
“Everyone’s canceling. And every deal we forecasted for September is now down the drain. No one wants to sign their employees up for a service that could get them killed.”
Rhett walked out of his office and the floor went silent. His skin was whiter than I’d ever seen, as if he’d just thrown up the previous day’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Porschia handed him a microphone, and he stood in front of the almighty whiteboard with Clyde on his right. The Holy Trinity. He gripped the mic and closed his eyes.
“Listen,” he said, taking in a lungful of air. “There are no two ways about it. And frankly, I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. What the media is saying is true. One of our veteran assistants preyed on a user. And he murdered her.”
He dropped his head to his chest. Clyde placed a hand on his back. Everyone had tears in their eyes, including me. And what’s messed up is that I don’t think the majority of the tears were even for the poor girl; they were for Rhett, for Sumwun, for us.
“It’s my fault,” Rhett said, taking a tissue from Porschia and wiping his eyes. “I take full responsibility. We should have instituted better check-ins, a tighter vetting process, and not been so lax, especially with younger folks who have serious mental issues. I’m sorry.”
I’d never seen Rhett look so defeated, not even when we almost missed our number during my first Deals Week. Fear spread over everyone’s faces, and it truly did, as Charlie said, feel like the beginning of the end.
“What are we going to do now?” Marissa asked, stroking Clifford’s back. No longer a cute piglet, he was now a full-grown, stinky, market-weight pig.
Rhett, cheeks glistening, looked out over the sea of solemn salespeople who, though we were in our early twenties, were like his children. After a second, like Dr. Jekyll transforming into Mr. Hyde, he straightened his back, gritted his teeth, and balled his hands into knuckle-ripping fists.
“We are going to fight,” he announced. Everyone looked up, wiping their tears away. “Because this is war. And the only point of war is to win. Everyone who was on our side before, including the board, doesn’t want to touch us with a ten-foot pole. They say we had it coming all along, that we were growing too quickly, winning too much, and believing in what we were doing too hard.”
“BULLSHIT!” I screamed.
“Yeah, fuck that!” another shouted.
“That’s right!” Rhett roared into the microphone. “It is bullshit. Everyone wants you when you’re hot but drops you once you’re not. But you know what?”
“WHAT?” we shouted, as if we’d just gotten a shot of steroids.
“Fuck ’em! We don’t need ’em. We never did. Even the board. They want us to quiet down, to not speak with the press or do any interviews, but forget that. This isn’t something that’ll just blow over, and it’s sure as hell not something I’m going to let take us down. Will you?”
“NO!”
“That’s absolutely fucking right. Because we’re the best fucking salespeople in this entire fucking city, and we have proven it time and time again. So we are going to sell everyone to death. The prospects who want to pull out. The clients who are trying to cancel. The media, and even the board!” he yelled, a crazed look on his face now, like he had murder on his mind. “The true salesman,” he continued, pointing at us, “is a god! And God, not man, makes the rules! And we all know what happens when man tries to conquer God, don’t we?”
“Tell us, Rhett! Tell us what happens!” someone shouted, egging him on.
He laughed. He laughed so hard and so long, I thought he had lost it, that his company crumbling right before his eyes had broken him. But no, he stopped laughing, became very still, and brought the microphone closer to his mouth.
“He drowns, burns, and turns them to stone with less energy than it takes to breathe. And that is what we will do to our enemies. Because, as the Book of Nahum says, ‘The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.’”
The clapping went on for so long that it felt like it would be easier to continue clapping forever than stop. And while I couldn’t admit it then—because I didn’t want to see it—when I looked at Rhett breathing heavily in front of the crowd, something on his face made my heart plunge. Something that betrayed everything he had just said. Something more man than God.
Desperation.
13
I woke before my alarm went off. I was twenty-two years old and had never served in a war. I didn’t know any military drills, tactics, or strategies. I’d never read The Art of War, played Battleship, or even held a toy gun—Ma didn’t allow those. But I was ready to fight for Sumwun, to do whatever it took to win.
Reader: Salespeople are often separated into two camps: those who love to win and those who hate to lose. Before joining Sumwun, I was one of the latter. But once you taste what it feels like to win, to really win something meaningful—like your spot on the dream team—you will do everything to protect that feeling. Be careful of winning, it’s one of the most dangerous things you can ever do.
Ma wasn’t in the kitchen. She insisted on what the doctors had told her—that everything was fine—but she continued missing days of work and didn’t seem like herself. I knocked on her door. A hoarse voice said, “Come in, Dar.”
“You aight, Ma?” She was curled up in bed watching reruns of Judge Hatchett.
“Better than this one.” She pointed to the skinny teenager with tight cornrows being ridiculed.
“What’d he do?”
“Same as all these kids. Thought he was grown until he realized he wasn’t. Kids these days doin’ all types of things they never woulda dreamed of doin’ in my day. They need a healthy helpin’ of God and someone to slap them upside their heads.”
“Word, Ma. Not goin’ to work today?”
She took a sip of water and sat up, eyes fixed on the television. Her hands shook so much I had to take the glass from her.
“Ma,” I said, grabbing her hand. She weakly tried to grip my own but failed.
“My supervisor told me to take a coupla days off, Dar. Saw me coughin’ up a storm and I had a little blood on my mouth, so . . .”
My face got hot. “Blood, Ma? This can’t be right.” Either her doctors were lying to her, or she was lying to me. “You’ve been missin’ more days of work than before, you’re coughin’ up blood, and you’re losin’ your voice every other day. Plus, you can barely hold a glass of water. C’mon, Ma. What’s goin’ on?”
“Nothin’, Dar. Don’ worry ’bout me. It’s jus’ old age. The doctors say I’ll be fine in no time. But if this gets worse, I’ll head to the hospital. Deal?”
“Aight,” I said, still skeptical but not wanting to push the issue and make her feel worse. “Deal.”
A commercial flashed across the screen and then I saw it: a news clip featuring the photo of a smiling young girl with braces. I froze. The screen cut to another of an older Chinese man with a straight face and oversize glasses. The types you see pedophiles wearing in their mug shots.
“Sixteen-year-old Donesha Clark from Little Rock, Arkansas, suffered from depression. Her parents heard about a New York City tech startup called Sumwun, which they hoped would help her since traditional therapy wasn’t working. Her parents say that after a year of therapy with a Chinese man named Jiao-long Lee, Donny, as they called her, began to turn back into the smiling girl you see here. But all of that ended when Donesha flew to China behind her parents’ backs. Authorities say Donesha was lured by Mr. Lee, her therapist or, as Sumwun called him, her ‘assistant.’
“Donesha thought she was meeting him for a few days of in-person sessions, but Mr. Lee had other plans. After the FBI contacted Chinese authorities, they raided Mr. Lee’s home to find little Donny Clark tied up and d
ead, with multiple knife wounds, internal bleeding, and blows to the head from what may have been a lead pipe or hammer. Chinese authorities say Mr. Lee is still at large. Later today, we’ll speak with representatives from the company at the center of this controversy, including CEO Rhett Daniels.”
Ma shut the TV off and stared at me for a long time before saying anything. “Dar, you know ’bout all this mess?”
“Yeah, Ma. But we’re gonna take care of it. They’re tryna make us out to be bad people, but we’re not.”
“I know that, baby, but I don’ know if you wanna be caught up in all of this. It could end up hurtin’ you.”
I kissed her forehead. “Don’ worry, Ma. I’m not caught up in this. I’m jus’ someone who works at the company doin’ my job, tha’s all. I love you.”
“Love you too, Dar.”
I grabbed my bag and headed out. Down the stairs. Turn the corner. Wave to Mr. Aziz. But when I passed his bodega, he waved me over.
“Sabah al-kheir, Mr. Aziz. How’s it going?”
“Kullu tamam, Darren. Everything’s fine. But Soraya is inside and said she just saw something on TV about your company. Maybe head in there for a second?”
I walked in, the doorbells clanging.
“Darren!” Soraya yelled, wearing tight blue jeans, red flats, and a black T-shirt with NINA SIMONE FOR PRESIDENT written on it. I know it’ll make me sound soft, but every time I saw her felt like I was seeing her for the first time, like the earth only orbited the sun so it could see her from all angles.
Behind the transparent plexiglass display, surrounded by all kinds of colorful candies, beef jerky, and lotto tickets, she swung around and pointed to the tiny flat-screen TV in the corner of the store.
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