The Price of Arriving Early

Our second year brought customers we had no right to accept without help. Leah supplied that help. She was twenty-six, ran logistics for an independent distributor and could identify a foolish promise before I finished making it. She showed us what happened after an order left a screen and became a physical problem in a warehouse. During a late visit, she took my expensive shoes away from a loading hazard by catching my sleeve and pulling me close. Then she released it slowly and said I could thank her somewhere with better lighting. Leah chose the restaurant. I learned to let her.

Ruth, thirty-four, became our accountant after discovering that I was better at imagining revenue than describing when we would collect it. She owned her own firm and possessed a laugh that appeared only after somebody earned it. I earned the first one by admitting a mistake before she found it. We worked through a difficult forecast over supper, and Ruth pushed her glasses into her hair when the figures finally made sense. She said I was unusually easy to talk to for a man who expected an unusually large future. I asked whether she meant the forecast. She said she had finished discussing the forecast ten minutes ago.

Kate found us a larger office. At twenty-eight she knew New York property well enough to distrust every attractive photograph. I rejected a long, rigid commitment that had ruined a business I remembered from the other timeline, though I could not tell her why the dates frightened me. She found a more flexible arrangement at an honest price. When I visited her to sign, she had changed from a work jacket into a soft blue dress for an event afterward. Kate asked whether I would accompany her so she could stop explaining that knowing wealthy clients was not the same as having an interesting date. I said I would try to justify the distinction.

Ella prepared me for that event and several others. She was twenty-six, a stylist whose independent clients included people much more famous than I was becoming. She threw out the jacket I thought made me look powerful and replaced it with one that allowed me to breathe. While adjusting the cuff, she stood close enough that I forgot the sentence I had been practicing. Ella looked up and said the best version of me seemed to appear whenever I stopped rehearsing. Later, she sent a photograph of the finished outfit and asked which part of the advice I intended to follow first. I invited her to dinner without practicing the message.

Tess handled a new campaign. Thirty years old and impossible to hurry, she listened to my grand description of the next decade before asking what one customer could gain next Tuesday. Her idea produced our best advertisement. Tess celebrated by bringing a bottle to the office after everyone had left, then discovered Mia was still there. For a moment the room felt very small. Mia opened three glasses. The conversation became funny, then honest enough that none of us could hide behind work. Tess admitted she had not come only to celebrate a campaign. Mia said she had guessed, and waited for me to answer instead of rescuing me.

I said I was attracted to both of them and would not promise exclusivity I was not prepared to keep. It was less impressive than the effortless charm I had imagined a rich man should possess. It also left each woman free to decide whether another evening interested her. Tess preferred to keep things light. Mia wanted time and clear boundaries. Neither asked my permission to choose. After Tess left, Mia touched my cheek and said she liked me better when I sounded like a man with something to lose. I kissed her hand because it was the only answer that did not sound rehearsed.

Rose entered through the new office design. She was thirty-two, an architect with her own practice, and she regarded our fashionable meeting room as a place designed to make ordinary conversations feel unnecessarily expensive. She changed the layout, saved us money and created a terrace people actually used. One rainy evening she stood there with me beneath a shared coat, explaining how a city taught people whom to hurry past. Rose asked whether I had built the company because I wanted more things or because I wanted a different life. I could answer the first question with numbers. The second kept me beside her long after the rain stopped.

By the end of 2019, our annual revenue had passed eight million dollars. The company was worth much more on paper than I could spend, and I had begun to understand the difference. Ava urged us to keep enough room for a bad year. I already knew a bad year was approaching, though its scale still made me feel cold. We strengthened remote working, kept customer data portable and resisted an expensive office expansion. Some people called the preparations timid. I knew the word well enough to hear the same mistake wearing a different suit.

I did not try to profit from illness or panic. When the pandemic disrupted life in 2020, we offered useful service, temporary relief where customers genuinely needed it and support we had prepared people to deliver from home. Demand for remote collaboration accelerated. Our business grew because it could help existing customers keep operating, not because I had turned catastrophe into an advertisement. On a late video call, Zoe watched me rubbing tired eyes and said a man who supposedly knew everything still needed to sleep. She stayed online while I ate. The screen between us felt less like distance than a promise to remain there.