21 | Keith

August 2014

Keith was squeezing in one last meeting before Karina came home tomorrow for the summer. He had arranged to take off the entire week she was to stay with him before she spent the second week with Jaya, an arrangement they had confirmed a few nights ago. They still spoke every few weeks, usually about Karina, the house or other administrative tasks they shared, and caught up on the outlines of their lives. Occasionally, Jaya brought up an anecdote she’d remembered about Prem and they would laugh about it. Other times, when she claimed to actually sense Prem’s spirit in someone else, Keith grew so uncomfortable he’d find a way to end the call.

When they’d spoken a few days ago, Jaya had seemed particularly distracted, as if she was eager to get back to something else. Could she be seeing someone? She could, of course, and she had every right to. Keith had been dating freely—though only for casual recreation—for years now. What he and Jaya had had together was irretrievably gone, and he did want her to be happy. Still, the thought of another man being with her was difficult to stomach, and somehow felt like a final failure of the life they’d shared.

Now, sitting in the reception area of Machtel Industries, the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, Keith glanced at his watch and noted there were still ten minutes before his meeting with the CEO, Jeff Erstine. It was Keith’s policy to be early for meetings like this, a regular check-in to stay abreast of his client’s needs; it signaled he knew the CEO’s time was more important than his. Humility was rare in investment banking and it went a long way with these entrepreneurial guys. His phone buzzed and his sister’s name flashed on the screen. As the sibling who’d stayed near their hometown, it fell to her to check up on their parents. He was grateful for this and sent her extravagant birthday gifts and money whenever she even hinted at a need. But he had to bolster himself for her phone calls, which inevitably detailed their mother’s crippling arthritis and father’s descent into frailty. He muted his phone and slipped it into his pocket.

“Be right back,” Keith told the receptionist, then showed himself to the restroom. He knew his way around this office, built three years earlier from the proceeds of the secondary offering he’d led. It was his first huge fee for the firm, eighty million dollars. He’d celebrated by buying a box of authentic Cubans for Jeff and the Porsche for himself. As Keith walked down the corridor, he saw, through the ten-foot glass walls of a conference room, a group of suited Asian men packing up their things. He slowed his pace and looked more closely, spotting what he thought was a familiar face. In the bathroom, a quick check on his phone confirmed who he’d recognized: John Cho, scion of Korean semiconductor maker HyunCom.