Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Mon/May/2008 07:00 AM
Pepper
There were three statues visible from the bed in the master suite, each of a different Roman Emperor. He couldn’t recall their names. Since he had no alarm clock, no deadlines, no unwanted demands on his time, there was seldom any reason for him to get up at a predetermined hour. Of all the perks that came with wealth, that was probably his favorite. Even so, he hated to let an entire day go by while he slept, so he made a point of rising by ten on most days. He hated alarm clocks, electric, windup, they all set him on edge. Even the sound of an alarm in a radio ad or TV commercial could send him through the roof. Instead of a clock, he slept with the blinds open, and judged time by the three statues. If he woke and sunlight was on the left side of the first statue’s face, it was far too early to be doing anything. If he opened his eyes and saw a glow on the third Emperor’s right profile, he leapt out of bed, ready to play catch-up, whatever that catching up might entail. Today he opened his eyes and saw a dim light landing square on top of the second statue’s head. Normally, this would be an ungodly early hour for him, what the working folks called 9 a.m., but this was a busy day. He’d scheduled several events that he was looking forward to, and one which he’d been wanting to scratch off his list for quite some time now.
His name was Jeff Pepper. Age: fifty-two. He was five foot eleven inches tall, with a medium sized frame, and a slight paunch from too many nights spent eating well and to excess. His hair was salt and pepper grey - extra salt at the temples. His face was smooth but blotchy. He had terrible teeth. They’d always been bad, but an illness in his early thirties had required serious treatments - chemicals pumped through his body, radiation, test drugs - they’d saved his life, but one or all of them had made his teeth even worse. He never asked his doctors if that was true, it was simply his guess, a self diagnosis. It was also his opinion that fixing his teeth would erase the only sign that he had almost died. They reminded him that each day he was living on borrowed time. Still, in a year or so he might have some work done. When he greeted people at events, or welcomed them aboard his yacht, he knew exactly what they were thinking when they shook his hand and opened their eyes wide, if only for the briefest second, before pumping his arm and returning the smile. They really were terrible teeth. Aside from that, there was nothing extraordinary about his appearance. Someone meeting him on the street might mistake him for a salesman of some kind, or someone who worked with numbers. In a way he did work with numbers, billion dollar figures, all of them his own.
He was loaded. Beyond loaded. His net worth was the stuff of legend. The type of figure that had to be removed when calculating averages for the regions in which he owned property. If the third richest man in the world lives in a city, figuring the value of each citizen’s estate is thrown off by a discrepancy in the tens of billions of dollars. He had done well for himself, very well for a skin-of-the-teeth high school graduate with only two weeks of college education. His wealth came from a childhood hobby – computers. He and his friend had written some code, designed some software, and started up a business. As it so happened, they did this at just the right time, as people were starting to bring some new tools into their homes, including the personal computer. Their products were just what was needed, and since they’d struck at such an opportune moment, using just the right plan, they’d managed to corner the market on ninety-seven percent of the computers in the world. That meant his pockets had been well lined since his twenty second birthday. By thirty one he had almost died, but he didn’t. He underwent the medical treatments, lived in the compound he’d bought for his family in Eastern Seattle, and read - classics, contemporary volumes, new age, Zen, true crime, mystery, the whole caboodle. Then, once he’d gotten better, he started buying stuff, and starting stuff, and doing the things he’d always dreamed of. In the last twenty odd years he’d tried his best to spend all his money, but it just kept pouring in, despite the fact that he never went back to work for the company he had co-founded. What was the point?
Now he sat in his bed. The silk pajama top was cool on his chest, just the right temperature. The air in the room moved ever so gently, again, just to his specifications. He spun his legs over the edge of the bed, paused to take a deep breath, then stood up and walked across the room to an enormous television set. He turned it to the 24 hour business news channel, glanced down at the ticker tape stock updates running along the bottom of the screen, then cranked up the volume and walked into the closet suite, where row after row of warm, low lighting glowed down on the racks of suits and shoes. The lights brightened as he entered the room, a ring of light following him down the aisle as he picked out his clothes for the day. He heard the sound of Will's shoes padding across the carpet in the main room. In olden times, folks would have called Will his butler, his right hand man, the Jeeves to his Wooster. ‘Course, Will was just the front line for an extensive support staff. He knew how things worked behind the scenes. Yes, he could lounge in bed all day, deciding when to get up on a whim, what his routine would be, but at the same time, there was a small army of people always on hand, watching, waiting to see when he would need what, and for exactly how long. His staff, the full staff, not just the twenty-four hour people, had probably been at the compound for two hours now. His cook, Theresa, would have had breakfast ready for each of them as they showed up on site and were briefed for the day. The staff needed to know of any work being done on the property, any guests staying at the compound, and any special events taking place that day or later in the week. Everyone ate breakfast during the meeting, then, after they left, Theresa would prepare Jeff’s meal, usually the same menu she prepared for the workers, which she’d then put on standby, ready for delivery the moment she got the word from upstairs. On certain occasions, Jeff enjoyed getting up early, without warning, and slipping into the line to eat with the crowd. A few times he’d actually taken them by surprise, but now he thought they were looking for him, and much as he enjoyed eating with them, he didn’t want them to get out of practice, especially if he had any lady friends over. His female companions seemed to love the morning service just the way it was. Never the less, Jeff knew the moment someone in the hall had heard his TV switch on, that a series of events had been set in motion downstairs. Word went from person to person. A call was no doubt made to his personal assistants from the foundation to let them know he was on the move. Theresa would have put the finishing touches on his breakfast, set it on a serving platter, and whisked it out the kitchen door, where someone placed the day’s newspapers next to the covered dish as it passed through the main hallway. The tray went up the stairs, down another hallway, and was finally placed in the hands of William, who brought it inside, arranged the meal on the nightstand beside Jeff’s bed, and went about tidying the room and silently correcting Jeff’s mistakes.
“Sir, I have your breakfast ready,” William called assertively from the main room.
“I’ll be there in one minute Will. What do we have today?”
“Theresa went with a Mexican theme for the day. Quite good actually, but a bit on the spicy side. Huevos rancheros.”
“Huevos rancheros, eh? Do I have practice today?”
“Yes. Mr. Morita is setting up now. He should be ready for you in an hour.”
Mr. Morita was his trainer. Jeff been studying one form of martial arts or another for the last fifteen years. He didn’t know that he was any good, but it was fun, it appealed to the nerdy computer programmer in him he guessed. Jeff grabbed a shirt and tie off one of the shelves and headed towards the smell of food.
“If I’m gonna be kicking and jumping around, I better start digesting this spicy breakfast.”
Jeff walked out of the closet with the clothes, which he tossed on an armchair to the side of the bathroom door, then he walked over and sat down to eat. Will walked over to the chair and straightened the suit. He glanced at the shirt and tie and picked them up in his hands. They didn’t match. He turned to Jeff, who was taking a massive bite.
“Phew,” Jeff fanned his mouth. “These are spicy.”
“Ms. Parker and Mr. Drake have also been phoned.”
Jeff nodded, those were his main people from the foundation, Nina and David, the ones who channeled all the information to him about, well, everything - his investments, his charity, work, what need his attention, what didn’t. He thought of them as not just his eyes and ears, but his arms and his legs. They kept his circus going.
“Great. Anything I should know about?”
“I believe that’s everything,” Will replied as he slipped into the closet, quickly selected a better shirt and tie, and picked up a different pair of shoes.
“Did Nina say anything about the University?”
“Yes, they’re expecting you around noon.”
Jeff looked at the clock at the bottom corner of the TV: 9:06. He glanced at the statues outside the window. They never failed him.
“Great, they’re probably gonna wanna eat lunch over there. I better take it easy on this.”
Will walked back into the room, slipping the newly selected accessories beside the suit, unnoticed.
Jeff turned back to the TV. He thought someone onscreen had said his name, but nothing they were discussing seemed to relate to him. No logos were on the screen for one of his companies. He must have imagined it. Megalomania was setting in. He thought everything was about him. Well, probably not, they probably had dropped his name. If they did didn’t mention the other guy in the company a few times an hour, then they mentioned him, the weird one, the guy who’d left, but still made all the money. They were the winners of the greatest widget award. Hell, their software was probably running every graphic he was seeing on screen. Jesus was he ever bored with programming.
He took another forkful of eggs, chewing slowly as he thought things over. Today. Today, he was going to the University to check on one of his grants that had been nagging at him. He had tons of grants out there, tons of research and education and public service money circulating, probably more than he even knew, but he tried to keep some tabs on them whenever they came to mind. The people at the foundation handled all of it for him, but as Oprah once said, no matter how rich you are, you’ve gotta sign your own checks. Otherwise, you ended up like Elvis, or Howard Hughes, or Britney. No, he couldn’t lump himself in with Britney yet. But the point was, you stop signing the checks and people get control of your money, they insulate you, they let you become “eccentric,” then fully insane, then they grab the rubber stamp with your signature, and sell themselves the farm. He swallowed his eggs and looked over at Will.
Will wouldn’t steal my farm, he thought to himself as he watched the guy inspecting his suit, pulling at a piece of thread that didn’t meet his approval. Will was his Jeeves all right, all he cared about was that Jeff didn’t walk out of the house looking like anything less than a dapper billionaire. Jeff pulled out his own outfits each morning, but he knew Will shuffled them around each day. For all he knew, Will was in on it too, like most wealthy folks, this was one of his little amusements.
So he was going to the University cause something was bothering him. A red flag of sorts had popped up. He had tons of funding out there, but he also had his pet projects, things he got excited about, or started up, then usually lost interest in, but kept funding. It was one of those projects that he was going to check on. He was a sci-fi nut, so lots of his personal projects came from watching old movies and TV shows. Occasionally something newer would pique his interest. In 1995 he’d seen that Dustin Hoffman movie Outbreak, which had given him an idea. That was back when the Ebola virus was the worry of choice. There’d been books, documentaries, two competing movie projects, all about that issue. How he’d ended up seeing the Hoffman movie he couldn’t recall, must have been on the plane, or maybe he’d produced it. Well, that had given him an idea, he wanted to fund research to find a way to treat this sort of virus outbreak. The movie opened on a village in trouble, with two apparent researchers investigating the problem, only to leave and call in an air strike that drops a hydrogen bomb on the site. Not exactly a cure, but it had gotten Jeff thinking. What if someone could come up with something that could treat those people? A formulation of something that could be dropped from a plane onto an infected village and instantly treat every man, woman, and child on the ground. He didn’t know how they’d do it, he wasn’t a scientist, but he must have seen something like it on Star Trek or somewhere. He’d talked to Nina about it, who took the idea away with her, wrote up a proposal, ran it past him again, and then sent it out. That was twelve years ago. Eventually they’d gone with someone at the University in Seattle, a world renowned guy who seemed like a dream choice for the project, and that had been that. From time to time Jeff had heard updates on the progress, or received a copy of an article that had been published in one of the journals. Then it had all faded from his thoughts, until about six months ago that is, when he’d suddenly remembered the whole idea. He’d probably caught a rerun of Outbreak on Spike TV after a James Bond marathon and asked Nina to get him everything she could find on that “Ebola bomb cure thing” as he put it. So she’d done some checking and brought him a big binder full of stuff, but when he read over everything, it didn’t add up. They’d been funding it for a dozen years, and yet, aside from a few early findings and a handful of studies, no publications had been coming out of the lab that in any way related to cures. The foundation had kept sending the checks, and the researcher, some Raj guy, had kept cashing them, but nothing he published to meet the grant requirements seemed to have anything to do with cures, everything was about ways to propel whatever substance he’d devised into as wide an area as possible. Jeff was no scientist, but everything he was reading seemed to be about “the bomb” part of the idea, with nothing about what exactly would be scattered through the air to stop the infections.
A murmur in his gut told him something was fishy.
He almost always went with his gut. It had treated him well over the years, told him when to start his company, told him when to leave, told him when he had cancer, and told him when something wasn’t right. At the moment, his gut was hurting him, and it wasn’t from the huevos rancheros. He wanted to meet with this researcher face to face, get a tour of the labs, bring along some experts from the foundation and see what they thought was going on. Nina had set up the appointment the week before. He had no doubt the scene at the University was chaos and confusion as they prepared for his arrival. Good. If nothing else, it would be interesting.
He finished the eggs and slid the plate to the edge of the nightstand. He’d had too many. Hopefully Mr. Morita would go easy on him today, but probably not. Will had set up his suit for after practice, and was just coming in with Jeff’s workout clothes. Jeff stood up, took the white pants and top, and walked into the bathroom. He was done thinking about the grant inspection for the time being. Now he was trying to remember the moves Morita had taught him last week. He motioned with his hands absentmindedly, trying to remember that particular defense. Hopefully the old guy wouldn’t pull it on him first thing. Ah who was he kidding? Morita always pulled that stuff on him. Jeff didn’t mind, and Morita always said to him, “You want to be fat, dimheaded billionaire, or do you want to keep sharp?”
Sharp sensei. Sharp.
Jeff closed the bathroom door and changed into his workout clothes.
There were three statues visible from the bed in the master suite, each of a different Roman Emperor. He couldn’t recall their names. Since he had no alarm clock, no deadlines, no unwanted demands on his time, there was seldom any reason for him to get up at a predetermined hour. Of all the perks that came with wealth, that was probably his favorite. Even so, he hated to let an entire day go by while he slept, so he made a point of rising by ten on most days. He hated alarm clocks, electric, windup, they all set him on edge. Even the sound of an alarm in a radio ad or TV commercial could send him through the roof. Instead of a clock, he slept with the blinds open, and judged time by the three statues. If he woke and sunlight was on the left side of the first statue’s face, it was far too early to be doing anything. If he opened his eyes and saw a glow on the third Emperor’s right profile, he leapt out of bed, ready to play catch-up, whatever that catching up might entail. Today he opened his eyes and saw a dim light landing square on top of the second statue’s head. Normally, this would be an ungodly early hour for him, what the working folks called 9 a.m., but this was a busy day. He’d scheduled several events that he was looking forward to, and one which he’d been wanting to scratch off his list for quite some time now.
His name was Jeff Pepper. Age: fifty-two. He was five foot eleven inches tall, with a medium sized frame, and a slight paunch from too many nights spent eating well and to excess. His hair was salt and pepper grey - extra salt at the temples. His face was smooth but blotchy. He had terrible teeth. They’d always been bad, but an illness in his early thirties had required serious treatments - chemicals pumped through his body, radiation, test drugs - they’d saved his life, but one or all of them had made his teeth even worse. He never asked his doctors if that was true, it was simply his guess, a self diagnosis. It was also his opinion that fixing his teeth would erase the only sign that he had almost died. They reminded him that each day he was living on borrowed time. Still, in a year or so he might have some work done. When he greeted people at events, or welcomed them aboard his yacht, he knew exactly what they were thinking when they shook his hand and opened their eyes wide, if only for the briefest second, before pumping his arm and returning the smile. They really were terrible teeth. Aside from that, there was nothing extraordinary about his appearance. Someone meeting him on the street might mistake him for a salesman of some kind, or someone who worked with numbers. In a way he did work with numbers, billion dollar figures, all of them his own.
He was loaded. Beyond loaded. His net worth was the stuff of legend. The type of figure that had to be removed when calculating averages for the regions in which he owned property. If the third richest man in the world lives in a city, figuring the value of each citizen’s estate is thrown off by a discrepancy in the tens of billions of dollars. He had done well for himself, very well for a skin-of-the-teeth high school graduate with only two weeks of college education. His wealth came from a childhood hobby – computers. He and his friend had written some code, designed some software, and started up a business. As it so happened, they did this at just the right time, as people were starting to bring some new tools into their homes, including the personal computer. Their products were just what was needed, and since they’d struck at such an opportune moment, using just the right plan, they’d managed to corner the market on ninety-seven percent of the computers in the world. That meant his pockets had been well lined since his twenty second birthday. By thirty one he had almost died, but he didn’t. He underwent the medical treatments, lived in the compound he’d bought for his family in Eastern Seattle, and read - classics, contemporary volumes, new age, Zen, true crime, mystery, the whole caboodle. Then, once he’d gotten better, he started buying stuff, and starting stuff, and doing the things he’d always dreamed of. In the last twenty odd years he’d tried his best to spend all his money, but it just kept pouring in, despite the fact that he never went back to work for the company he had co-founded. What was the point?
Now he sat in his bed. The silk pajama top was cool on his chest, just the right temperature. The air in the room moved ever so gently, again, just to his specifications. He spun his legs over the edge of the bed, paused to take a deep breath, then stood up and walked across the room to an enormous television set. He turned it to the 24 hour business news channel, glanced down at the ticker tape stock updates running along the bottom of the screen, then cranked up the volume and walked into the closet suite, where row after row of warm, low lighting glowed down on the racks of suits and shoes. The lights brightened as he entered the room, a ring of light following him down the aisle as he picked out his clothes for the day. He heard the sound of Will's shoes padding across the carpet in the main room. In olden times, folks would have called Will his butler, his right hand man, the Jeeves to his Wooster. ‘Course, Will was just the front line for an extensive support staff. He knew how things worked behind the scenes. Yes, he could lounge in bed all day, deciding when to get up on a whim, what his routine would be, but at the same time, there was a small army of people always on hand, watching, waiting to see when he would need what, and for exactly how long. His staff, the full staff, not just the twenty-four hour people, had probably been at the compound for two hours now. His cook, Theresa, would have had breakfast ready for each of them as they showed up on site and were briefed for the day. The staff needed to know of any work being done on the property, any guests staying at the compound, and any special events taking place that day or later in the week. Everyone ate breakfast during the meeting, then, after they left, Theresa would prepare Jeff’s meal, usually the same menu she prepared for the workers, which she’d then put on standby, ready for delivery the moment she got the word from upstairs. On certain occasions, Jeff enjoyed getting up early, without warning, and slipping into the line to eat with the crowd. A few times he’d actually taken them by surprise, but now he thought they were looking for him, and much as he enjoyed eating with them, he didn’t want them to get out of practice, especially if he had any lady friends over. His female companions seemed to love the morning service just the way it was. Never the less, Jeff knew the moment someone in the hall had heard his TV switch on, that a series of events had been set in motion downstairs. Word went from person to person. A call was no doubt made to his personal assistants from the foundation to let them know he was on the move. Theresa would have put the finishing touches on his breakfast, set it on a serving platter, and whisked it out the kitchen door, where someone placed the day’s newspapers next to the covered dish as it passed through the main hallway. The tray went up the stairs, down another hallway, and was finally placed in the hands of William, who brought it inside, arranged the meal on the nightstand beside Jeff’s bed, and went about tidying the room and silently correcting Jeff’s mistakes.
“Sir, I have your breakfast ready,” William called assertively from the main room.
“I’ll be there in one minute Will. What do we have today?”
“Theresa went with a Mexican theme for the day. Quite good actually, but a bit on the spicy side. Huevos rancheros.”
“Huevos rancheros, eh? Do I have practice today?”
“Yes. Mr. Morita is setting up now. He should be ready for you in an hour.”
Mr. Morita was his trainer. Jeff been studying one form of martial arts or another for the last fifteen years. He didn’t know that he was any good, but it was fun, it appealed to the nerdy computer programmer in him he guessed. Jeff grabbed a shirt and tie off one of the shelves and headed towards the smell of food.
“If I’m gonna be kicking and jumping around, I better start digesting this spicy breakfast.”
Jeff walked out of the closet with the clothes, which he tossed on an armchair to the side of the bathroom door, then he walked over and sat down to eat. Will walked over to the chair and straightened the suit. He glanced at the shirt and tie and picked them up in his hands. They didn’t match. He turned to Jeff, who was taking a massive bite.
“Phew,” Jeff fanned his mouth. “These are spicy.”
“Ms. Parker and Mr. Drake have also been phoned.”
Jeff nodded, those were his main people from the foundation, Nina and David, the ones who channeled all the information to him about, well, everything - his investments, his charity, work, what need his attention, what didn’t. He thought of them as not just his eyes and ears, but his arms and his legs. They kept his circus going.
“Great. Anything I should know about?”
“I believe that’s everything,” Will replied as he slipped into the closet, quickly selected a better shirt and tie, and picked up a different pair of shoes.
“Did Nina say anything about the University?”
“Yes, they’re expecting you around noon.”
Jeff looked at the clock at the bottom corner of the TV: 9:06. He glanced at the statues outside the window. They never failed him.
“Great, they’re probably gonna wanna eat lunch over there. I better take it easy on this.”
Will walked back into the room, slipping the newly selected accessories beside the suit, unnoticed.
Jeff turned back to the TV. He thought someone onscreen had said his name, but nothing they were discussing seemed to relate to him. No logos were on the screen for one of his companies. He must have imagined it. Megalomania was setting in. He thought everything was about him. Well, probably not, they probably had dropped his name. If they did didn’t mention the other guy in the company a few times an hour, then they mentioned him, the weird one, the guy who’d left, but still made all the money. They were the winners of the greatest widget award. Hell, their software was probably running every graphic he was seeing on screen. Jesus was he ever bored with programming.
He took another forkful of eggs, chewing slowly as he thought things over. Today. Today, he was going to the University to check on one of his grants that had been nagging at him. He had tons of grants out there, tons of research and education and public service money circulating, probably more than he even knew, but he tried to keep some tabs on them whenever they came to mind. The people at the foundation handled all of it for him, but as Oprah once said, no matter how rich you are, you’ve gotta sign your own checks. Otherwise, you ended up like Elvis, or Howard Hughes, or Britney. No, he couldn’t lump himself in with Britney yet. But the point was, you stop signing the checks and people get control of your money, they insulate you, they let you become “eccentric,” then fully insane, then they grab the rubber stamp with your signature, and sell themselves the farm. He swallowed his eggs and looked over at Will.
Will wouldn’t steal my farm, he thought to himself as he watched the guy inspecting his suit, pulling at a piece of thread that didn’t meet his approval. Will was his Jeeves all right, all he cared about was that Jeff didn’t walk out of the house looking like anything less than a dapper billionaire. Jeff pulled out his own outfits each morning, but he knew Will shuffled them around each day. For all he knew, Will was in on it too, like most wealthy folks, this was one of his little amusements.
So he was going to the University cause something was bothering him. A red flag of sorts had popped up. He had tons of funding out there, but he also had his pet projects, things he got excited about, or started up, then usually lost interest in, but kept funding. It was one of those projects that he was going to check on. He was a sci-fi nut, so lots of his personal projects came from watching old movies and TV shows. Occasionally something newer would pique his interest. In 1995 he’d seen that Dustin Hoffman movie Outbreak, which had given him an idea. That was back when the Ebola virus was the worry of choice. There’d been books, documentaries, two competing movie projects, all about that issue. How he’d ended up seeing the Hoffman movie he couldn’t recall, must have been on the plane, or maybe he’d produced it. Well, that had given him an idea, he wanted to fund research to find a way to treat this sort of virus outbreak. The movie opened on a village in trouble, with two apparent researchers investigating the problem, only to leave and call in an air strike that drops a hydrogen bomb on the site. Not exactly a cure, but it had gotten Jeff thinking. What if someone could come up with something that could treat those people? A formulation of something that could be dropped from a plane onto an infected village and instantly treat every man, woman, and child on the ground. He didn’t know how they’d do it, he wasn’t a scientist, but he must have seen something like it on Star Trek or somewhere. He’d talked to Nina about it, who took the idea away with her, wrote up a proposal, ran it past him again, and then sent it out. That was twelve years ago. Eventually they’d gone with someone at the University in Seattle, a world renowned guy who seemed like a dream choice for the project, and that had been that. From time to time Jeff had heard updates on the progress, or received a copy of an article that had been published in one of the journals. Then it had all faded from his thoughts, until about six months ago that is, when he’d suddenly remembered the whole idea. He’d probably caught a rerun of Outbreak on Spike TV after a James Bond marathon and asked Nina to get him everything she could find on that “Ebola bomb cure thing” as he put it. So she’d done some checking and brought him a big binder full of stuff, but when he read over everything, it didn’t add up. They’d been funding it for a dozen years, and yet, aside from a few early findings and a handful of studies, no publications had been coming out of the lab that in any way related to cures. The foundation had kept sending the checks, and the researcher, some Raj guy, had kept cashing them, but nothing he published to meet the grant requirements seemed to have anything to do with cures, everything was about ways to propel whatever substance he’d devised into as wide an area as possible. Jeff was no scientist, but everything he was reading seemed to be about “the bomb” part of the idea, with nothing about what exactly would be scattered through the air to stop the infections.
A murmur in his gut told him something was fishy.
He almost always went with his gut. It had treated him well over the years, told him when to start his company, told him when to leave, told him when he had cancer, and told him when something wasn’t right. At the moment, his gut was hurting him, and it wasn’t from the huevos rancheros. He wanted to meet with this researcher face to face, get a tour of the labs, bring along some experts from the foundation and see what they thought was going on. Nina had set up the appointment the week before. He had no doubt the scene at the University was chaos and confusion as they prepared for his arrival. Good. If nothing else, it would be interesting.
He finished the eggs and slid the plate to the edge of the nightstand. He’d had too many. Hopefully Mr. Morita would go easy on him today, but probably not. Will had set up his suit for after practice, and was just coming in with Jeff’s workout clothes. Jeff stood up, took the white pants and top, and walked into the bathroom. He was done thinking about the grant inspection for the time being. Now he was trying to remember the moves Morita had taught him last week. He motioned with his hands absentmindedly, trying to remember that particular defense. Hopefully the old guy wouldn’t pull it on him first thing. Ah who was he kidding? Morita always pulled that stuff on him. Jeff didn’t mind, and Morita always said to him, “You want to be fat, dimheaded billionaire, or do you want to keep sharp?”
Sharp sensei. Sharp.
Jeff closed the bathroom door and changed into his workout clothes.