Divestiture - Third Installment

On those occasions (by and large the trips to visit his parents in Tulia, in the Texas Panhandle) when he happened to encounter a peer from his youth, John rarely escaped questions regarding the coincidence of his financial success. He had by no means been talentless, nor was he ever lazy; he was salutatorian of 91 classmates and graduate summa cum laude from Texas Tech University (among those who applied for college (as many remained on the farms and ranches once their public-school tenure was complete) and made it in, a respected choice, as a good number of these had gone to regional junior colleges, and others had gone to Texas Tech or other universities to the south and east, while only two had gone out-of-state and one abroad). He had been a decent athlete during high school and had worked while getting his baccalaureate degree.

What John lacked for the longest time was a calling; passion escaped him invariable within weeks, sometimes days of acquiring a new pursuit. It became the trait by which he was known; a fellow student even once submitted a cartoon to the school newspaper in which a medium is consulted in order to predict John's next hobby, the medium replying with "this wouldn't be difficult even for a fake, because there's hardly anything left to pick from!" (This cartoon ended up generating trouble for the school, as some parents protested the "occult imagery.")

During his sophomore year of college he was changing his major for the second time when it occurred to him that a career counselor might be able to help him whom no ordinary, pre-specified work could satisfy. John, in a sense, felt dread at the thought of taking on a job created through the creativity and effort of someone else. It was all too clear to the counselor: John had the heart of an entrepreneur. That did not mean much to him right away, but it opened his mind to a new world of possibilities. His original attempts failed; he began with a lawn-mowing business, by which he hoped to gather enough clients to quit his other job, but he could not compete with larger companies in Lubbock. One of his roommates during his junior year was studying massage therapy, and so John convinced him to try to turn the house into a massage parlor with him. Again, he could not attract enough clients, especially in a college town. During his senior year he found himself writing a novel. It came to him while jogging one evening, a story about a police captain caught in the midst of espionage concerning a witness to a suspected murder and one of the officers on his force. He also met and started dating Kelly at this time. She and many of his friends thought the work was great and that he ought to publish it as soon as possible. He was even in the process of filling out the paperwork to apply for publishing with several companies (even though he wasn't supposed to, but who would find out?) he realized that this was the very thing he had dreaded all this time. He tore up the applications and threw them away right then.

He was, however, still determined to find a way to publish his work. It was at this time that he remembered a friend from Tulia, Sam Rizzo, who had left a year before him and gone to Austin to work for a bank after graduating from college. After saving up for a weekend trip, John and Kelly made their way down to Austin on a Thursday night. John walked into the bank the next morning and was almost immediately accosted by Sam, who was delighted to see a face from his past. Sam was only a customer service representative at the time, but he had, in anticipation of any possible impending promotion, already made himself fluent in all aspects of every financial product and service the bank offered. Sam led John through the process of determining the amount and type of loan he would need for the printing and assembly equipment he wanted, so that little remained to be done when John went to talk to the loan officer (who had some choice words for Sam later on).

John was approved for the loan, and soon he and Kelly, newly married and fresh out of college, were printing copies and petitioning bookstores as well as creating accounts on various market websites on the evenings and weekends. The business went very slow for the first year-and-a-half, with the pair selling only a few books per week at best, and sometimes none at all. John began working on his second book at this time.

They were well aware that John's parents had been plugging his book to their family, friends, and coworkers; what they were not aware of was that John's grandmother's cousin (whom he had met twice in his life) was a dear friend of a lady in Oklahoma City who hosted her own morning show. A viewer of the show wrote to her one day, asking for recommendations for books to get her father for his birthday, and John's book was mentioned. The orders increased that week such that John and Kelly were barely able to print and ship all of them in time. They saw that the book was tied to another on the hostess' list of recommendations on the market websites (in the form of "customers who bought this also bought..."). John called in sick to work on Monday morning from a motel room in Austin before meeting with Sam, now a loan officer, to negotiate another loan, this time for the purpose of purchasing another set of equipment and a tiny office.

Both of them quit their jobs and began printing the books full-time, and John completed his second book. Kelly's friend Thomas designed a website for A Priori Publishing, and almost immediately they received submission requests, despite not having asked for any. John ultimately chose his first client and added her first work to the company's list of products. They hired several college students, and there is little left to tell between then and the time of our narrative, other than that they moved the business to Austin after a few years, building their own small building and operating five assembly systems.

Even though Sam was now a branch manager of that bank, he still handled all dealings with A Priori Publishing himself. It was to Sam that John went today.

"Do you really think you're going to expand and add more clients? You seem to be pulling in the kind of income now that you always spoke of to me."

"It's not that. I need to safeguard against losing any of my existing ones. Simmons is getting old, and Fiorina just had a kid. I need to be sure I'm not going to have those less productive times and have to lay people off. I can add a couple more people, and I have a few employees asking for overtime, so I can make it work either way."

Sam nodded, not saying but understanding exactly what had prompted this decision in John.

"You remember my sister, Gemma, right?"

"Yeah, your older sister. I never knew her real well. I didn't see her much outside of when I went over to your house. She lives here too, doesn't she?"

Sam nodded again. "Well, her son Nathan's in his senior year of high school..."

"Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that. They got to that process right away, didn't they? Sorry, continue. Their son's a senior, and?"

"Well, he's a lot like you were back then."

John chortled. "You mean he's a kid that refuses to be satisfied and recklessly pursues what he thinks is freedom?"

"You know that's not what you were."

"Whatever."

"His parents also remind me of how your parents were then. Gemma has been asking me to come talk some "sense" into him."

"Well, I don't know what to tell you about that one."

"They'll be at the Andersons' houseboat party on the 4th."

John stared at Sam for a moment. "What, you want me to talk to him?"

"If fate allows it. It might be the best thing for him."

"And it might just drive him further into his dissatisfaction. He can't see things like I do. He won't believe a word of it."

"Believe a word of what? John, you've made it! You're your own boss, and you make great money."

"You have no idea how many times I've stood on the razor's edge between losing everything and getting by. One wrong step and it's all gone. And now...now I've lost the one thing that would have stayed with me, regardless."

Sam began to feel very uncomfortable. "Kelly's death was not your fault."

"I know. I don't know... but you see why I say I need to expand. I'm on that edge again, or I could be very soon. I'm sorry if I've ruined your day. I'll see you later."

"You haven't. Take it easy, and call me if want to talk or have some drinks or anything like that."

Outside, John climbed into his car and sat for a few minutes, staring at the highway before him and the hills on the other side of it. He thought about what it would mean to lose his business.

"God, how much more is going to be taken away?"

A thought approached from the back of his mind, arguably his own, but in a tone that made him fearfully unsure.

'Even if it were lost, things of far greater value remain with me.'

He started his car and pulled out of the parking lot. He was hungry, so he drove out to the moneyed enclave known as The Dominion.