Bricks and Mortar: A Novel by Howard Ten J

Author:Howard, Ten J. [Howard, Ten J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Nine

I rode the elevator up nearly every morning, the tension climbing with each floor. My steel box moved between the iron and concrete of the massive skyscraper, faster and faster. I felt the basement shrink in size underneath my feet. The ding that announced every floor and the rush of air from passing an opening made my heart pound. Extreme heights made me nervous, and the ride up to the penthouse office was something I never could get used to.

ZB Financial was much like any office in the morning: everyone amping up for the day, saying their hellos, and settling down at their desks. It was a great rush every time I arrived. Lingering inside my head, while I waved to Clara each time, was the thought Will I see him?

Zion just wasn’t someone to sit still, or so I was starting to learn when working alongside him. There were quite a few mornings when I walked out of the elevator to find out he was in New York. Or France. Or the Caymans. Or Switzerland. Or nowhere, because no one had any idea when he’d be back.

The headquarters of ZB Financial Services was based in New York City, where his team of investment bankers and traders operated. Margaret worked out of that office. Miami was Zion’s public relations hub and his main office. He usually didn’t leave for more than four or five days at a time and called me in on an occasional Sunday when he was jet-lagged and behind schedule. Still he just couldn’t stop from having his hands in everything that would let him. Though tired and disoriented, Zion still was unbelievably charming those weekend days.

He also managed to keep every meeting he’d scheduled with me and even sat in sometimes on meetings I led with the PR team, just to see how things were progressing. I couldn’t tell if he was working on the seminar project he had assigned to me, or if he was there to micromanage the team. Some days it seemed like I was the only one making decisions when it came to our project. Then Zion would pop in at exactly the right moment when we needed him. He was an invisible force that everyone acknowledged was there, even when he was in another country altogether.

The money-management strategies Zion was basing his latest project on—what he had termed the “Art of Wealth”—were gleaned from a book titled The Richest Man in Babylon. Our team was revamping the next tier of seminars and events, running through the planning of logistics for each location on the tour. Knowing it was going to be a long day, I set up a lunch where the guys and I strategically laid out the agenda for each event location. It was entertaining as we brainstormed ideas for promoting the company’s events throughout the country, and the concepts became quite suggestive. Some mocking inside jokes were made, and the meeting wasn’t really efficient in terms of producing concrete plans—that is, until Zion unexpectedly walked into the room.

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