“You’re a lucky man.”
“In more ways than you know.”
I arrange to have his suitcase and clubs delivered to my apartment, and we head down to the VIP bar. We navigate our way through the hotel with Caden in close proximity.
“I want to show you this,” I tell him.
We take a seat at the bar, and he looks around at what always reminds me of an old-time club—dark paneled walls, the smell of cigars, and Peter, the bartender, dressed in a bow tie, black vest, and pants.
Said bartender nods at me. “What can I get for you?”
“Peter, I’d like the bottle of Michter’s Celebration Sour Mash Whiskey.” I turn to Christopher. “It has an amazing brawny spice and leather flavor, with a bit of oak.”
“Sounds like you memorized the marketing materials.”
We study the bottle when it arrives. “Michter’s distillery was the first in the United States, but it was forced to close during Prohibition in 1919. They resurrected the brand in the 1990s.”
“How do you know all this?”
“The owner stays here at the hotel, and I bought a case. It was expensive, but right up the alley of people who come into the VIP lounge.”
“Do we drink it over ice?”
“According to the owner, yes—one large chunk.” I give Peter a nod, and he places a clear square of ice in the tumbler in front of each of us and pours two fingers.
We take a sip. “This is incredible,” Christopher marvels.
It burns for a second but goes down like butter. “I love this stuff. I was told that after the barrel blending, the mixture is hand-bottled and finished with this eighteen-karat-gold lettered label. You should see the special boxes it came in.”
“I need to order some of this,” Christopher says, taking another sip. “In fact, I need some partner gifts—maybe this is my answer.”
I listen to him talk about his work and realize he’s the only true friend I have. I have work friends, but no one that I can totally be myself with. He’s known me most of my life, and despite my warts, he still shows up when he knows I’m struggling. I want to tell him all about what’s going on with Maggie—get his perspective on the whole thing—but if I did that, I’d have to come clean about my feelings for her.
He made me promise when I was fifteen that I’d leave her alone. He made it very clear that if I crossed that line, he’d beat me to a pulp, and I’d never have children. I don’t know if he still means that, but I’m not sure I’m brave enough to risk it at the moment. I’m losing her. I can’t afford to lose him, too.
“So tell me about this woman,” he prods, as if he can read my thoughts.
“I’m not ready to talk about it.”
“Makes sense. You’ve just sipped some expensive stuff. We need to find you the cheap crap. Maybe some Mad Dog?” he teases.
“That shit tastes like cough syrup.”
“But you’ll get drunk, and then you can open up and tell me.”
“I’ll tell you at some point.” Or not.
We move to the sportsbook but hardly pay attention to the college football game playing. Our alma mater plays in the Big Ten, but they tend to run from the middle of the pack to the bottom, and they don’t get a ton of press coverage outside the Midwest.
Christopher gives me a funny look. “Everything here uses the software you built in grad school, doesn’t it?”
I nod. “We’re close to being able to market it to other hotels.”
“What exactly does it do?”
“Are you asking as my friend or as a potential broker for my business?”
“I do work with some of the foremost developers in the country. If you need help there, I’ve got you covered, but my usual area is pharma. I’m interested as your friend.”
“Okay.” I glance up at the ceiling. The software is my baby. I have two developers who work from offices here on property on a secure server, and we’re building this together. “The competitors in this space aren’t quite as advanced as we are. They use large cash registers, and the systems don’t talk well to one another without someone pushing buttons behind the scenes.” I take a deep pull on my drink. “After you check in at the hotel, you have the ability to enter your room by fingerprint.”
“I hope it’s more accurate than my phone, or everyone will be locked out.”
I smile. “It is. We store the prints but don’t upload them where law enforcement could get to them. Once you’re a guest of the Shangri-la, we track everything to maximize your experience. We know if you spend two hundred dollars at the blackjack table and move to the nickel slots, which shows you see, which restaurants or stores on The Broadway you visit. Your information runs in real time from one spot to the other.”
“That’s so Big Brother.”
“We’re trying really hard to not make it that way. We don’t use facial recognition, and our systems don’t register you until you check in. Plus, as soon as you check out, your information is dumped from our system. If you’re a frequent guest and member of our loyalty program, we maintain some of the bigger-picture information in a different system. But this level of detail helps housekeeping with bed linens and towel counts for their cart. If we know you like to drink Michter’s whiskey and like to play mah-jongg, the internal systems will move a bottle around so you have it at your table without a thirty-minute wait. No one has to send a guy to go find it at the VIP lounge. The software is designed to give you a feeling of first-class accommodation without having to add a ton of staff.”
“Do you think there’s a use outside of a place like this?”
“Absolutely. We think our software‘s perfect for all-inclusive resorts or even your basic three-star hotel looking to step up their customer service.”
“How are you going to market this?”
“I‘ve been pretty focused on making it work well here, so I haven’t figured that out.”
“We should have a conversation with Mason and Cameron from my firm—”
“Not sure I want to give up any piece of the pie to investors.”
Christopher grins wide. “That’s the beauty of venture capital. I think they could put you with someone who would take the load off your plate. Yes, you’re giving up some control and a piece of the pie, but they can catapult you to the next level, and you can be as involved or as uninvolved as you’d like. You have an amazing piece of technology, and the software is being tried and tested in a private resort with over three thousand rooms and fifty thousand guests using the casino each day.”
“I’m happy to listen, but I’m not promising anything.” I do know that at some point I’m going to have to focus on the either the software or the hotel. It can’t be both.
“Perfect. Are you drunk enough yet to talk about this woman?”
He’s going to keep harassing me. He’s like a dog with a bone sometimes. Staring into the amber liquid in my glass, I open up. “I’ve known her for a long time. I realized early that she was my ‘it’ girl.”
“Why are you just telling me now? I mean, I watched you screw your way through half a sorority in college.”