1. Reed - Two Years Earlier

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REED - TWO YEARS EARLIER

“GET RHYTHM” – JOHNNY CASH

B efore my grandfather died, he told me you can’t chase what you want in life, that what’s meant for you will find you.

Essentially, that destiny is real.

And honestly, I think that’s a load of BS.

I don’t believe in destiny.

Life is about sacrifice. It’s about discipline, and it’s about doing those things you don’t want to do.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t consider myself cynical per se, it’s just that there are no magic pills, no easy route to the life you want. I believe it’s dangerous to get caught up in that mindset.

The things we all seek—love, money, health—are on the other side of boring, everyday actions: going to work, making dinner, calling your girlfriend (I’m long distance with mine), completing a hard workout, and keeping tabs on good friends.

That’s my philosophy, anyway, and I find myself thinking it over on this hot day in the latter part of July as I walk to work. I take my usual route along the riverwalk through the rebuilt streets of downtown Chicago, like I do twice a week these days, on Wednesdays and Thursdays. On the other days, I’m able to work remotely from my apartment.

A light breeze this morning makes the heat tolerable—refreshing even. The ‘L’ train screeches along the tracks overhead, cars honk, and I can smell the air from the Canadian jet stream that flows south from the northern forests over the water of the Great Lakes, its freshness saving this city from being just another dirty old town.

After the majority of the city burned down in 1871 in the Great Chicago Fire, the leaders of the city got together and re-organized, then—through the years—reconstructed, the city. Instead of the charming but sometimes logistically difficult we’ll-just-put-another-random-road-here-because-we-need-it structure you see in old American cities like Boston, they gave birth to an organized Chicago, using a planned grid system for maximum efficiency.

As an efficient guy, I appreciate that.

I cross the Chicago River and look up at the building where I work. My job is in technology sales with a big corporation, and our offices are in an ugly, thirty-seven-story black box with little decoration.

An architect would remind me that it was built in the late 1960s, during the brutalist architecture boom. Some people say the goal of that building movement was to demoralize and humiliate the working population, to remind them that they’re working-class scum. I guess if they made the buildings too beautiful, the worker bees would get distracted?

Personally, I think that’s going a little far. I think the architects of this building were probably just blindly guided by the trends of the era.

Still, it is a mildly demoralizing structure to walk into every day.

I take a moment to myself on the walkway by the river before I head in. The Sears Tower (I still call it that) rises on one side of me, so I pause the self-help podcast I’m listening to—Tim Ferriss—and marvel at its magnificence for a moment.

7:35 a.m.

I’m twenty-five minutes early. Excellent. I am a man of habit.

The early-morning commuters walk in swarms around me, headphones on, everyone on the way to their nine-to-five. There’s a certain beauty to the bustle of it all.

If I smoked cigarettes, I’d smoke one right now. But I don’t. Your chances of lung cancer accelerate by up to thirty times when you smoke.

I smile, looking up at my building. Even if they did build it specifically to look ugly and demoralize the population, bring it on. I like a challenge.

Like I said, I’m a structured guy. I run my life by the numbers.

Two.

The number of months until my girlfriend gets back from grad school. Sam just has to finish her summer program. Then boom .

Three.

The number of kids I’m going to have with Sam. (We’ve talked about it.)

Twenty-eight.

The number of years I have left to work in tech sales—starting now, at age twenty-seven, assuming $100,000 a year with steady pay increases—to retire comfortably if I live until age ninety-six. These numbers allow for two major recessions, but reflect an overall uptrend in the stock market. I admit, I set myself behind two years by serving in the Peace Corps, but I’m okay with that, because not everything in life can be quantified.

Ha, that’s just a little jokey joke. I’m hilarious, I know. Look, I might enjoy my routine, but I’m not a total stiff.

Also, there’s still some math that needs to be worked out depending on whether my kids go to college or not, and whether I pay for that.

See? I can be flexible.

Before passing through the door, I glance at my reflection in the building’s glass. I own two suits, and today I’m wearing the navy blue one with a blue tie and white button down. Tomorrow will be the gray one.

I pass through the doors, becoming one of thousands of anonymous worker bees.

In the elevator, I press the button for floor twenty-eight and wait politely while the others come inside.

Maybe it was my father who instilled in me this appreciation for structure and stability. My father’s father died when my dad was seven. My father remembers watching him pass away, helpless to control what was unfolding on the couch while the man suffered a heart attack.

When he grew up, my father got a job as a paralegal and worked for forty years in the federal building here downtown—stability and a federal pension and all that.

While I ride up the elevator, I type a text to my girlfriend.

Reed: Good morning, sweetheart! Have an incredible day :)

Samantha is in grad school for business at Berkeley, and it’s a little early for a good-morning text since she’s still sleeping on the west coast. But I want my words to be the first thing she sees when she wakes up.

I’m a dedicated boyfriend. Fuck off with that red-pill, don’t-show-interest shit. We’re in love. I send her a good-morning text. She sends me one back.

Usually.

I press send on the message as I exit the elevator at my floor, heading to my cubicle.

I walk through rows and rows of cubicles until I finally arrive at mine, a partitioned-off area I share when I’m in the office with a tenured sales guy named Jay, who is thirty-nine. At twenty-seven, I appreciate that he can share his fifteen-plus years of corporate experience with me, as my mentor.

As I settle in, I pick up the picture of Samantha and me on my desk. It’s from a barn dance in college. We were a couple of kids without a care in the world back then—twenty-one year old seniors, loving life.

Since then, we’ve had our ups and downs, like any couple, I suppose. Among the hardest of them was when I left about three and a half years ago to do the Peace Corps in Bolivia and she went west to do her MBA. We split up momentarily.

But ultimately, in the long term, we’re a good match.

I smile as I log on to my laptop.

In September, she’ll be completely finished with her MBA from Berkeley, and she’ll move back to Chicago. I’m so looking forward to finally being together in person again. And this time? Conceivably forever.

I stare at my login screen, which features my tech company’s logo: ChiConCyber. Known in the biz as Triple C.

You need your business protected from ransomware? You come to us, baby. Everyone needs protection online these days.

It’s been a long and winding road, but I have the big three figured out, finally.

Stable, well-paying job? Check.

Long-term partner? Check.

Awesome city? Fucking check again.

I’m not rich—as I noted, making $400 per month in the Peace Corps and deferring my student loans certainly didn’t help—but it will come. In twenty-eight years, according to my numbers.

Life is about discipline.

I pull the little box I got this week out of my pocket and put it on the desk, next to the photo of Samantha and me.

Then I head down to grab my coffee from Reed’s Coffee Shop—same name, so you know it’s good. When I get back, Jay is there in our cubicle, with a wry grin on his face.

“Morning,” he booms.

“Morning.”

“Thinking of proposing?” He nods toward my desk, his eyes landing on the ring box. “I’m sorry to say, I’m married. And though I’m flattered, I’ve always been a tits man. You’re a little on the skinny side for me. Como se dice en Colombia? Flaca?”

“I was in Bolivia. And flac- oh ,” I emphasize. “O is masculine, and I’m a man. And I’m proposing to Samantha when she moves back to Chicago in September, yeah. I’ve been carrying it around with me this week. I don’t know why, exactly.”

“Oh?” he says.

“Yeah, so I’m really proposing.”

“And when do I get to meet this alleged girlfriend Samantha ?” He makes air quotes around both words.

“Jay, she’s real.” I grin as I open my Outlook.

“I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m not from the Instagram-is-real-life generation like you are. Where’d you meet her? Only AI Girlfriends?”

“She’s real, and she’s spectacular.”

“I bet. So…” Jay beats his hands on the desk, like he’s doing a drum roll. “You ready for the dad joke of the day?” He glances at the photo on his desk of his wife and two young kids.

“Hit me.”

“How do you make God laugh?”

“I don’t know. How?”

“You make a plan for your life.”

I can feel my brow furrow. “That doesn’t sound like a joke. Plus, that’s dumb. We need to plan our lives out. That’s how planning works.”

“Fuck you,” he counters. “It’s a dad joke, and it’s hilarious. I’m dropping so much wisdom you don’t even know.”

“I don’t get the joke part of the joke.”

“Happened to me, man. Thought I’d be a bachelor for life.” He leans back in his office chair, putting his arms behind his head. “Then I faked being my wife’s fiancé to piss off her ex. Turned out the sex was bomb, and she was the one. Now I nut in her every night, and it’s the best.”

“That’s disgusting. I’m going to call HR.”

“And tell them what? That I told you I like to fuck my wife? Grow some balls, flaca .”

“I feel like you’re trying to tell me something. Yes, I’m going to marry Samantha. She’s the one. Trust me.”

“Kidding, man! Why so serious? And how’s the sex with Samantha?”

“It’s fantastic. And personal. Thank you for asking!”

“I mean it’s gotta be hard to have when she’s two-thousand miles away.” Jay throws his hands up, palms toward me.

I pull out my Moleskine notebook with a pale blue cover and jot something down.

“Another song idea?” he asks.

“Yeah. ‘Why so serious?’ I can do something with that.”

“All right, enough of this relationship-chat bullshit. You ready to sell the fuck out of some software, motherfucker?” Jay pounds his desk.

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.”

“Really? Not a thing?”

I shrug. “I mean, I could use an adventure. Maybe sing some of my songs on the big stage? That’s the dream.”

“Dreams. I remember when I used to have those.” Jay looks at my notebook. “Sing one for me right now.”

“Not a chance.”

“Some proposal this is. I don’t even get a song?”