Standard Climaxes

Prophecy Electronics looked like a giant mirror on the outside, and felt like a giant mirror on the inside. The walls were covered in floor-to-ceiling glass that was always impeccably well-polished. Imogene found it a little hard not to get distracted by how good her reflection looked, even as she played the "Mr. Eklund's Daughter" card with the front desk receptionist, and Moss became distracted by the receptionist's Newton's cradle.

"Moss," she instructed, and pulled his suit sleeve forward. She couldn't help but notice the receptionist eyeing her, picking up the phone and dialing.

"We have to hurry," she hissed to him.

"Right," said Moss. "To be honest, I'm not quite sure why you brought me along with you. What if they're discussing confidential business dealings?"

"They are discussing confidential business dealings," she answered, furiously pressing the elevator button. "Did they really have to do it on the seventeenth floor? Right around lunchtime? Fuck."

Moss gasped. "You swore."

Imogene glanced at him. "Don't start."

The elevator dinged. It was full. She pushed past the crowd of lunch-goers and slipped in next to Moss. They were alone. She pressed the up button furiously.

"I just hope that when we throw open the doors, it looks really cool, and we look like secret agents, like Die Hard or something." Moss frowned. "Do you think they have guns?"

"No, Moss. This is my dad you're talking about. Chill out. We're doing Legally Blonde, not Die Hard." She paused. "Please tell me you didn't bring your gun."

He stared at her. "There's no scene like this in Legally Blonde. And no, I didn't bring a ruddy gun. I wouldn't have gotten through the TSA with it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

The elevator was taking too long. Imogene checked her phone again. They were minutes away from noon. She watched Moss bite his lip. She could remember kissing him, but she couldn't remember what it felt like. Only the image of it, and her eyes had been closed.

"Thank you for coming," Imogene said quietly. "Though I'm not really sure why you came."

He bowed his head slightly. "I'm just glad to be of service."

She felt like she couldn't get the words out. "Let me know...when I can return the favor sometime."

"Okay."

"Yeah."

She wanted to ask him something else, but the elevator dinged. She checked her watch.

It was 11:59.

"Shit!"

She grabbed Moss' suit sleeve and rushed down the hall, past the receptionist, and threw open the doors to the H.B. Laird Room.

"Stop the meeting!"

There were about twenty or so men in the conference room, and all of them turned to face her. They were, of course, all white, and all old, because that was how these things went, and they were all in poorly-tailored suits, perhaps because their old tailor was dead and/or dying. But more importantly than any of that, Imogene's eyes were transfixed on a pair of outstretched hands at the opposite end of the huge conference table, twenty fingers that had only just had a chance to brush against each other, but whose palms hadn't quite met.

Imogene's father, Weston, was chiseled and square-shaped, oddly short on wrinkles and grey for his age. Imogene had always been told that she looked a lot like her mother, with her round eyes and oval face. But in that moment, suddenly she saw what little of her was in his brown eyes, and his dark hair, and his slacked jaw. Was this what she had inherited from him? Bewilderment?

"Mimmy," he said. "What are you doing here?"

She pointed a finger at him. "You. What are you doing here?"

The old men at the table looked to Weston, who stiffened.

"What do you mean, 'what am I doing here?'" he asked. "These are my friends from Connect."

"Your 'friends?' Your 'friends?' What about me, Dad? Am I not your 'friend?'"

"Take it easy, hon."

"'Hon?' Oh, please. I'm twenty-six years old, and I'm old enough to know when I've been fucked over. And what a crazy fucking scheme this is, Dad. Doing it right under my nose. I bet you thought it'd be like taking candy from a baby, but you're taking candy from the wrong damn...M.S. in Computer Science!"

Weston frowned, and pointed to Imogene's left. "Who the heck is that?"

Imogene looked at Moss, who said "Hello." She turned back to her father.

"That's my associate. He's thirty-six years old."

"I don't care. I want him out of my office."

Moss dipped. "Okay."

Imogene waited for the door to close behind him before putting both hands on the table.

"Dad," she said slowly. "Can I talk to you? Privately? Without all these people here?"

Weston sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with both hands. "Fine. Everybody clear out. We'll resume in a few minutes."

The old men waddled out, eyeing Imogene suspiciously, until the door shut. Imogene stayed at the head of the table. Cool. Calculated. Freaking the fuck out.

"Imogene," Weston said calmly. "I don't think you realize that you're being a little entitled."

"Entitled?" she scoffed. "Yeah, I'm entitled. I'm entitled to something that you promised me. That you've been promising me, for years."

"Look," he snapped. "See, this is why—do you not hear yourself? You have no idea how these things work, Imogene. I built this company, from the ground up. I came from nothing compared to what you have. I built Prophecy out of your Grandpa's camper on nothing but Hot Pockets, a little money, and a dream. And now, you're all grown up and you expect me to just hand it to you, not off of a contract, or a written statement, or even solely on the basis of your skill, but because I nodded and said 'sure' a couple times when you were a little girl, when all five of your fingers still fit in the palm of my hand?"

"It was more than that," Imogene cried. "And you know it. I have skill. Why do you think I did all that work in computer science? Is my M.S. degree just wasted now? All the internships I did? At one of the hardest universities on the planet? I mean, you saw how dedicated I was, and none of it matters to you!"

She slammed both fists on the table. Weston jumped, and held out his hands, as though defensively.

"That's the problem with you," he insisted. "You don't understand what I'm saying. None of your work would have mattered. Going to the same computer engineering program as every other smart kid on the planet wouldn't have mattered. When I gave you the company, it wouldn't have been because you earned it. It would have been because you were my daughter. Everyone would have seen it that way. I would have seen it that way. And you would have, too."

Imogene shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense. You're not making any—"

"Just listen to me!" Weston snapped, finally standing.

Imogene stepped back from the table. She knew what she had to say. This was the moment she'd been waiting for.

"No," she told him. "No, Dad. For the first time in my life, I'm not going to listen to you."

Weston raised his eyebrows.

"I'm sick of you telling me who I should be," she continued. "Or what I should do. I'm twenty-six years old and you're still telling me that I can't drink or do drugs or have sex, and you're still dictating who I'm friends with and where I work and everything. And I've finally grown up and realized that nobody else lives their life letting their parents dictate everything that they do. I'm not fourteen anymore. And I've never once gotten into trouble. I've never done anything that warrants constant supervision. I deserve to live a life of my own, the way you did. I want to have my own experiences, and I want to live my own life, and I want it so bad that there's nothing you can do to stop me."

She inhaled, and realized her eyes were wet and her breath was shaky.

"Please, Dad," she said. "Please, just let me be CEO."

Weston looked at her for a long time, then at the table. She couldn't tell if he looked crushed, or relieved, or happy or sad, or anything at all, really. When he looked back up at her, he almost seemed teary-eyed.

"You're right," he said.

Imogene leaned back. Her fingertips left the table. When Weston sat back in his chair, he spread his knees apart and leaned over them on his elbows. Suddenly, she saw grey, and wrinkles, even though he was in good condition for his age, and something inside her softened. She had never seen him like this. Suddenly, his hands were shaking. Suddenly, he seemed distraught.

"When your—" He paused. "Sorry. You remember how difficult it was when Henrietta was younger, and she was figuring...all of that out. Every time she left the house with her hair long, with makeup on...I was terrified. It's a scary world out there for a girl. I was so afraid something awful was going to happen to her. And it was hard for her, being in the public eye that young, and...finding herself in a time when nobody else was doing that, or talking about that. I could only do so much to protect her. And when you came of age, I just remember thinking..."

He covered his mouth with his hand, and wiped his eyes, before looking back down at the ground.

"I couldn't handle feeling that out of control again. And I think, in keeping both of you as close as I did, I never let either of you be yourselves, or go after what you really wanted. For that, I'm as sorry as any dad can be, which is always, all the time."

Imogene wiped her eyes. She listened to her own breathing. Labored, slow. She noticed that she'd exhaled at some point, without having realized it. Something had removed itself from her being. Her shoulders were no longer tense.

"I didn't know that," she whispered.

"I know," he said. "And I can't say I did it because I love you. You deserve to have a life of your own."

He reached into a file Imogene hadn't noticed was on the desk, and slid a manila folder across the conference table. Imogene caught the folder under her hand, and tilted her head to one side.

"That's why," Weston continued. "I want you to know I've already set it up that all of our employees will get a share of the sale to Connect inversely proportional to their current salary. You and Henrietta will each get half of the share I've decided to take, equivalent to the value of our company at the end of our first ten years in business, which was twenty million dollars. This means that while you may not be CEO, you will be receiving ten million dollars regardless, which is all yours."

Imogene frowned. It was a lot to take in. "I don't get it."

"This was my plan for you all along," he said. "Ten million might not look like a lot to you, but it's the kind of money most people your age feel like they can't even dream of. It's nothing like this big old glass building your dad built. You won't be stepping into an old man's life. I'm giving you money to do what you want, whatever that might be. Maybe you want to put a down payment on a house, or start a charity. Or even just invest it. It's my way of saying..."

He paused, and his eyes went glassy. He tapped his knuckles twice on the table. Then, he breathed out, long and slow.

"It's time for your life to begin."

Imogene stared at him. The crisp folder was sweaty in her hands.

"Is it a tempting offer?" he asked, finally.

Imogene looked down at the folder. She opened it, saw the documentation inside, and closed it again. She set it back on the table.

"What's wrong?" Weston asked.

She couldn't quite articulate it.

"Well?"

"I don't know," she exhaled. "I guess I feel like...you're still making the decision for me. Even though you say you're not. I feel like you're telling me what I should want."

"Well, what do you want?"

In that moment, she realized that she'd never really thought about it. Maybe because all this time, she'd been so set on the idea of knowing, of having a future that was pre-planned, that didn't require her to think about it too much or struggle too greatly. There was so much privilege in that. All of a sudden, thinking about it now felt...gross.

She looked around at the conference room, and tried to picture herself seated in her dad's chair, in a cardigan and baggy jeans, shaking the hand of an old white guy to hand him fifty-two billion dollars worth of company assets. Instead of imagining herself on the cover of TIME's 100 Most Influential People, or in the middle of a CNN interview about the state of modern technology, or attending the latest Met Gala, she tried imagining herself skipping dinner to spend late nights on the phone, hitting a perfect par on the golf course to schmooze up some creepy CEO, or sitting at the head of a shareholder meeting to go over the year's profit margins.

There were certain things she'd never thought about. When she imagined them, they were just images. Images that felt less like a movie and more like a collage of jagged pieces, a ransom note written in mismatched letters. The uncertainty in it, the thought of being so clearly wrong about something as big as knowing herself, was nauseating.

The weird thing was, she couldn't think of anything else she'd ever wanted. Her computer engineering classes were interesting, but Carnegie Mellon had been just...okay, in a way she'd always been afraid to admit to herself. She'd procrastinated most of her homework, actually, and spent most of her time in the library, browsing the DVDs and typing away her Spider-Man fanfictions on her laptop.

London, on the other hand, was fantastic. She loved the busy streets and the old architecture and Channel 4 and Fenwick. She loved walking. She loved riding the train. She loved how grey the sky was. But most of all, she loved that she could walk down the street and no one would give a fuck about what she was doing or wearing, or how she was acting or thinking, or how pretty she was, or who she was. London was complete and total freedom.

Reynholm Industries, too. She could spend hours typing furiously away at her keyboard, or playing MarioKart, and no one would care. There was no one there to tell her what she could and couldn't do. She had good friends there—Jen and Roy, and Moss.

Moss. She thought about reading fanfiction with him, and how nice he'd been to her about it, and how she'd never smiled wider than when he'd sat down in her chair and gotten her "unstuck." She'd gone home that night and let all the words spill out of her. She'd never felt so alive, so free.

In that moment, something clicked.

"Do you not want it?" Weston asked.

Imogene looked up at him.

"Dad," she said. "You were wrong about drinking, you were wrong about drugs, and you were definitely wrong about sex. To be honest, I don't really know if I can trust you, when now that I've gone off to England and tried all of those things, and hung around the 'drunks and junkies,' I've seen just how exciting and fun it all is to live a little dangerously every once in a while."

She pulled the manila folder off the table, and into her lap.

Weston frowned. "You hung around the drunks and junkies?"

"It's not really important," she said, with a wave of her hand and a smile. "What is important, Dad, is that for the first time since I got here, I think you're right."