Finally, it ends. Craig crosses over to the other side of the trampoline and takes us through another hallway, this one with green lights running along at floor level. He turns and opens the door and we are in a boardroom, which, by contrast, is rather normal, a corner of the building with panoramic views, a large oval table, and the requisite pair of screens at one end.
I’m surprised to see Craig taking a seat at the table. I thought he was a kind of acrobatic house butler, but it appears he’s the investor. We make our pitch. Cyrus talks, Jules reads out the numbers, I follow up with the technical details. Craig is on his phone. He occasionally looks up, smiles, gives us a thumbs-up, and then continues to do stuff on his phone. It’s obviously nothing important; I can tell he’s just scrolling his Instagram.
When we are finished, Craig stands up and applauds. “That was great, guys,” he says. “Really great.”
Jules asks Craig if he has any questions.
Craig rubs his chin. I wonder if he thinks this gesture makes him look older. “Yeah,” he says. “I think it’s great, I mean, I think it’s fantastic. But the question is: are you going to kill everyone?”
Cyrus, Jules, and I glance at each other. Is it the liberal thing again? Is he worried we’re a bunch of socialist murderers?
“I mean, are you going to kill everyone?” Craig asks again.
“We’re not sure—” Cyrus begins.
“You gotta be sure. You gotta be one hundred percent abso-fucking-lutely sure you are going to totally crush-kill everyone out there.”
“We really don’t have any competitors in the marketplace,” Jules says.
“You have to crush the church, and you have to kill Facebook. You’re like a church/Facebook mash-up. You gotta kill both of those guys.”
“I think, realistically, we would get a decent amount of growth even if we didn’t try to compete with Jesus or Zuckerberg.”
Craig springs toward Cyrus and eyeballs him. “I always check for the killer in everyone. The assassin. Are you an assassin?”
I see Jules give Cyrus an imperceptible nod. “I most certainly am, sir,” Cyrus pledges.
“Fuck yeah!”
“I will kill everyone and anyone.” Cyrus’s tone is like the EKG of a dead person. “I will assassinate all my enemies, and I’ll even kill a few friends while I’m at it.”
“I knew it!” Craig says. “You look like a hippie, but you’re a fucking ninja.”
He leads us out, back through the green hallway, across the trampoline, and to reception, where we surrender our bracelets and retrieve our shoes.
“Thank you for your time,” I hear Cyrus and Jules say, and then I shake little Craig’s hand and we’re back in the parking lot, falling over ourselves.
For weeks, we pretend to be Craig. “What do you want for dinner, Cyrus?”
“I want to kill everyone and eat their eyeballs.”
“Should we hire the very serious woman from Vassar to do our accounts?”
“I don’t know. Is she an assassin?”
“Can we please talk about runway?”
“Nope. I’m too busy killing everyone. Every fucking one.”
The joke never gets old.
Ten
BRINGING UP BABY
Finally, Cyrus agrees to an interview for an online magazine. He asks me to come with him. They’ve said something about a photo shoot in a disused church. On the way, we consider all the angles the story might take. “What if they secretly hate me?” he says. “What if they don’t put it in the tech section or the business section but in the sexy-minister section?”
“They could call it Missionary Style.”
“Hey, maybe they’ll let us borrow one of the outfits and we can go home and play nuns and priests,” he says.
“Totally. But only if I can be the priest.”
“That would be super sexy.”
“I guess your suit won’t fit me,” I say. Suddenly, I’m annoyed at having to accompany him. “Why isn’t Jules here?”
“He said he wasn’t going to stand around and watch me tell everyone how important we are.”
“Guess that makes me the sucker.”
The taxi swerves and he slides toward me. “Let’s ask them if we can do the interview together,” he says. “I would love that.”
Now I feel ridiculous. “No, don’t be silly. They want you.”
“It’ll be even better,” he insists. “I’ll call them right now.”