Fuzzy silhouettes moved beyond those doors: jumping, running, and whizzing by all to the sound of Wiz Khalifa’s “We Dem Boyz.” Something small and round, like the Golden Snitch from Harry Potter, ricocheted off the glass.
Rhett turned to me. “You ready?”
I straightened out my shirt and nodded, unsure of what I had to be ready for.
The minute Rhett opened the door, something flew at his face, and before I could register what it was, I found one in my hand.
“Whoa, the brother can catch!” someone shouted from the lawless scene in front of us.
Brother?
“Good reflexes,” Rhett said, pointing to the purple stress ball in my hand.
Everything happened so quickly, I hadn’t even realized someone had thrown one at me. I turned it over and saw the word SUMWUN in white cursive. When I looked back up, my eyes readjusted to the chaos in front of me.
A sea of people ebbed and flowed, spilling out of every corner, entering, leaving, standing on desks, huddling in offices, sitting under tables with fingers in their ears as mouths moved at hyperspeed, throwing balls at one another. Is this real or was there something in those pancakes?
People zipped by on scooters with mugs of hot coffee in their hands. Clusters of guys and girls wrote on floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the East River like they were in A Beautiful Mind. Dogs barked and chased one another. A few people wielded purple-painted Louisville Sluggers behind others sweating on phones, as if they would bash their heads in for saying one wrong word. There was a girl walking around with a piglet in her arms, petting it as she laughed into the headset nestled in her orange-red hair.
I turned to Rhett, who was casually scrolling through his phone. “What is this?”
“This?” He shrugged, smiling at me. “This is the sales floor at 9 a.m. What else?”
“But how can anyone work?” I swung my head around, searching for an answer. “People are on the phones, but there’s music blasting from—where’s the music even coming from?”
“Everywhere. We had speakers installed in every room, even the gym. It’s good for parties, but it also lets everyone know when we’re celebrating a new deal, like now.”
“Gym?”
“Yeah, you wanna see?”
“Sure.”
“Twenty K, Rhett!” an indistinct voice yelled from the void.
“Throw it up!” Rhett said, pointing toward the whiteboard nailed to the wall next to us.
“Already did!”
We took a right and walked down a narrow corridor until we arrived at a door with a workout calendar on it. Rhett opened it. Inside was a small spotless gym with weight benches, dumbbells, treadmills, a flat-screen TV, and other meathead paraphernalia. A white guy with Mediterranean features—black hair, chestnut eyes, olive skin—and more chiseled than Adonis and Hercules put together abused a leather punching bag.
“Mac, Darren. Darren, Mac,” Rhett said.
I had seen Mac in Starbucks before, accompanying Rhett on some of his afternoon coffee runs, so I stood there waiting for him to recognize me as the “Starbucks guy,” but he just pulled off his gloves and extended a calloused hand. I extended mine and he squeezed it, almost bringing me to tears, but I didn’t relent. I just held his stare until he laughed and smacked the shit out of my back.
“Good man! Thought you would’ve backed down after a few seconds, but you didn’t. Solid.”
“Darren,” Rhett said, stretching his hands around. “This is the gym. Mac’s our in-house personal trainer. We have locker rooms with showers, soap, towels, and anything else you need. Let’s continue.
“The office is one large bisected circle,” he explained as we passed a quiet group with their heads down in their laptops.
“This is where marketing sits. They usually spend the day writing copy, emails, working on ads, and supporting sales.”
A pale white woman with brown hair and freckles looked up, waved to me, then focused back on her computer.
“Jen,” Rhett said, causing the woman to look up again. “Meet Darren. Darren’s going to be one of our new SDRs.”
“New what?” I asked.
Jen stood, grabbed my hands, and got so close to my face that I swore she was about to kiss me. Like Mac, I had seen Jen in Starbucks on dozens of occasions, to the point that I knew she preferred soy milk over whole, yet when she looked into my eyes, it was as if she were seeing me for the first time. How does no one recognize me?
“It’s so nice to meet you, Darren! We can’t wait to have you on board. If you’re getting the royal treatment from the king himself, you must be special. By the way, has anyone ever told you that you look like Sidney Poitier?”
“Um—”
“Really?” Rhett said, incredulity in his voice as he stared at Jen.
Finally, we can stop all this bull—
“I thought MLK,” he finished.
“No.” Jen shook her head. “Definitely Sidney.”
“Uh, no, never got that before. But thanks.”
We walked on, passing offices featuring different scenes like flipping through TV channels: white people huddled around a table, shouting into a phone; the blond guy from earlier writing on a whiteboard as white guys and girls nodded along; two white guys doing push-ups, slapping their hands together after each one; a pack of white girls eating salads.
“Hey,” I started to ask, “where’s all the Bla—”
“Heads up!” someone yelled before two scooters flew past us.
We came to the far side of the office, where there was a meeting room that ran the length of the hallway.
“This is Qur’an, the main conference room,” Rhett said, opening the heavy wooden doors and pulling out a leather-backed chair for me. I took a seat in front of the long mahogany table.
“Sort of corporate, but we like it. Makes us feel more serious.” He pointed to the table studded with triangular conference phones. There was a large flat-screen TV on the wall across the room, and we were surrounded by glass. Glass floor-to-ceiling windows, like the ones on the sales floor, and clear glass walls. But why the hell is it called Qur’an?
Before I could take it all in, a small, sweaty, red-faced guy with hair sticking out in every direction burst in.
“Rhett,” he said, breathing heavily.
“What is it, Chris?”
“Lucien called. He wants to chat. Now.”
Rhett waved him off. “I’ll call him later. Don’t worry about it.”
“But, Rhett—”
“Dammit, Chris. I said I’d call him later. Stop worrying, will you? It’ll all be fine. I promise.”
“Stop worrying? How in the world can we stop worrying when the board is breathing down our fucking necks, Rhett? You tell me how and I will.”
Rhett didn’t say anything. He just looked at him. Chris nodded and left as quickly as he had come.
“So,” Rhett said. “What do you think of all of this?”
“I don’t even know what all of this is, man. Is this some kind of illegal operation or an insane asylum?”
He laughed, squeezing my bicep. “Definitely not illegal, but I can’t say the same for this not being an insane asylum. Most of us here are crazy, crazy enough to think we have what it takes to change the world and all of that other startup bullshit. But here it’s true. You saw it for yourself, Darren. The burning passion, the unrestrained madness, the electricity. Can you feel it?”