Sinclair Circuitry was still mostly the warehouse in Granson, North Carolina that it had started out as. The sturdy building held the assembly line where the workers of the firm put together the microchips that Sinclair sold. But the years and the profits had justified a corporate headquarters being added to what was once Sinclair’s only property, as well as expanded parking that cordoned the dual buildings like an oasis in a desert.
The tower was ten stories tall, unpretentious but appealing, with floor-to-ceiling windows on every floor looking out at the surrounding woods and the nearby town of Granson where the workforce lived.
James J. Caruso was Head of Production, the man who put the finishing touches on every design and made sure it came off the assembly line exactly as he had envisioned it. He was a handsome man with a face suited to frowning, a strong brow under a thick head of hair.
He drove a Jaguar. It didn’t get him where he was going much better than his old Honda Accord, but as the Old Man had insisted when presenting him with the unorthodox bonus, people expected a certain amount of luxury from their superiors. No one really liked a politician who flew business class. So long as a leader did right by them, they allowed him a few crown jewels.
There was other Jaguars in the reserved parking spaces up close to the tower. And Cadillacs and Lincolns and Continentals and Mercedes-Benz. One heavily restored Thunderbird saved from a junkyard. There were people who made a great deal of money working at Sinclair Circuitry.
But Caruso was a bit prouder of the less ostentatious cars driven by the warehouse workers. No clunkers, no rust stains, nothing on the verge of falling apart. The cars were modest, but they were newish and well cared for, the vehicles of people with good jobs and money enough that they didn’t have to choose between a doctor’s visit and eating out.
There weren’t many towns like Granson left. Company towns, where everyone either worked for Sinclair Circuitry or took the money of its employees. Most of those jobs had fled overseas. Not in Granson. The Old Man appreciated having a community, not just a building and some tract houses.
It made Caruso admire him, appreciate having him for a mentor. Look forward to taking over the whole shebang and keep it running the way he’d been taught to. Sinclair was getting too old to make the changes his company would need over the next few decades. Caruso wanted to step into the ring and go punch for punch with whatever challenges Sinclair Circuitry faced.
But his first attempt to do so had been a dismal failure.
Caruso tried not to think about it as he got out of his car. He tried to wear a neutral expression as he walked into the tower, but at thirty-two he was still young enough to have his emotions written all over his face when his plans twisted on him.
First, there’d been the loan. Sinclair Circuity was merging—more like being absorbed—by Athens Computing, who saw their low-cost RAM as the perfect thing to furnish their laptops and game systems with in a market devastated by the demands of AI and data centers. The Old Man was going along with it; Caruso wanted to be ready in case it fell through. Feeling out some bankers for an influx of cash to keep the lights on if Athens backed out had been his way of coping. The ‘no’ he got was resounding and final.
Then there was his personal life; wasn’t that always the way?
He swept into the tower, straightening out of a slouch to better drape his gray silk suit around himself. “You’ve got to look the part you want to be treated like,” the Old Man had told him, one early summer day much like today. “Virile, aggressive, like you belong wherever you’ve gotten to. If they ever feel like you’re just another slob with a bigger bank account than them, you see how far they follow you.”
“Good morning, Mr. Caruso,” his secretary said as he emerged from the elevator, with a slinking smile that seemed like it was only for him.
She was one hell of a blonde. Young enough to be carrying schoolbooks with her everywhere she went, bright enough to juggle both her classes and his workload. Seemingly the very morning after Caruso had hugged his wife goodbye, Leni had started making sure she always had a smile for him, always was posed to best show off her considerable assets when his eyes wandered to her.
Which was often, with her like a statue sculpted right outside his door, visible through the one-way glass that let him see the work floor as well as the bustling world of nature outside his corner office.
It wasn’t that he was tempted, exactly. It was that he hated having an excuse to keep picking at the scab of his marriage. Shouldn’t he resign himself to it being over, when Kate kept proving she wasn’t suitable to be his wife? And since it was over, wasn’t he a fool not to take what Leni was offering?
He wasn’t the one who had wrecked the marriage, after all. He’d stayed sober, stayed faithful, provided Kate everything she needed to be a good wife if she had only…
But Caruso didn’t like thinking that way. Didn’t like the feeling of talking himself into having an affair. So he forced a cordial smile and gave it to the dirty blonde before walking by her, deriving no satisfaction at all from upholding his wedding vows.
Caruso’s office was spartan but robust—he’d invested in an expensive chair and good furniture, what little he used to furnish the place. He found the baseball diamond of empty space, with all its peace and quiet, to be more luxurious than a king’s court.
Today, though, he found his desk occupied by the Old Man himself, Jacob Sinclair. Sinclair looked at him with eyeglasses thick enough to blot out the wrinkles underneath, making him look like a raccoon. Part of his face flush, part of it drooping as though there was too much tiredness in him to stay locked up inside his head.
Maybe he should be paying more attention to Leni. She’d probably tried to warn him that Sinclair had dropped in.
“If you like this office, you should see the one on the top floor,” Caruso said with some edge in his voice. “I hear it’s a humdinger.”
Sinclair picked himself up from Caruso’s leatherbound chair. “If I weren’t about to retire, I’d steal this, you know. How’d you find one so comfortable? You can’t have paid more than I did…”
Caruso went to his espresso machine; one of his few concessions to the C-suite lifestyle. “I do my research. You can’t just trust that the most expensive product is the best. Look at us. There are people charging three times what we do for our chips…”
“Because it costs them three times what it costs us to make them.” Sinclair chuckled. “You really have got that assembly line working like a finely oiled machine. I don’t think God could make that floor any cheaper.”
“Sure He could. Anyone can. Just replace our qualified employees with a bunch of immigrants who don’t know shit from Shinola, so the government gives us a fat check for being so antiracist. Fire half the management team and put in DEI hires so that Wall Street values our stock higher. Maybe raise the prices on the soda machines so that a can of pop costs a dollar instead of twenty-five cents. Hell, get rid of the refrigerators in the break rooms so that they have to buy something from the vending machines…”
Sinclair held up pacifying hands. “Alright, alright, I get your point. But Athens isn’t going to do any of that.”
“Not while you’re here,” Caruso said, putting his frustration into the workings of the espresso machine. “When you’re gone and all I am is a regional manager, this place can change very fast. I’ve seen it happen.”
“Yes, I know. ‘Enshittification.’ But Athens doesn’t want that, my boy. They want us to keep doing what we’re doing. That’s why you’ll still have full control of the fiefdom. It’s just that now we’ll making our chips for Athens instead of the open market.”
Instead of answering, Caruso went about filling a cup with espresso. He could see it now: another company eaten up by the crap that ruined every start-up. Human Resources. Meetings that could’ve been e-mails. A bloated bureaucracy more concerned with justifying their own paychecks than in serving the customer, much less the employee. He’d be damned if he saw Sinclair Circuity—the beating heart of his town—turn into something with no more dignity than a fucking MacDonald’s.
Sinclair stepped in beside him and got his own cup for the espresso machine. “I know you’re disappointed not to be taking the reins, but the market’s volatile. This company needs insulation. Athens will give us the heft we need not to be overturned, no matter how bad the storm gets.”
“You say that, but at the end of the day, I’d rather be sailing through a storm than safe because I stayed on dry land.”
Sinclair grunted and picked his way along the blue carpet. “I appreciate your zeal for risk. But we have two thousand employees to think about. And I think they’d all rather have a steady paycheck—”
Caruso interrupted him. “There won’t be a steady anything if they gut this place and move our brand name to Sri Lanka because it’ll save a dime on every dollar!”
Sinclair held up a hand. It was an old argument between them and they were both sick of it. Caruso could admit that. It wasn’t his company; he’d just bled for it.
Caruso sipped his espresso. Sinclair did too.
“Damn fine stuff you make up here,” the Old Man said.
“I don’t have a lot of essentials, but the things I do need, I have to have perfect.”
“A bit bitter, though.”
“I like it that way.”
Sinclair grew a rueful smile. “Then I won’t hear any complaints about this. Demi Moore will be coming around later today to get a feel for the place.”
Caruso began to pace. Demi Moore. VP of Manufacturing at Athens. She’d be his new boss, along with the entire Athens C-suite. But she’d be his immediate superior.
He ran his tongue over his teeth, wondering how Sinclair squared the idea of Caruso running the Granson plant as his own fiefdom with some businesswoman looking over his shoulder.
“I’m told she’s very hands-off,” Sinclair continued. “In fact, she’ll probably want to take a page or two out of your book. Athens has other manufacturing plants, you know.”
“Yeah. There are nine circles of Hell,” Caruso said with a sip at his espresso.
Sinclair rolled his eyes. “If I were your age and a woman with as much woman to her as Demi Moore were coming by to see me… well, in this day and age, perhaps it’s better I’m my age and you’re yours.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That maybe you should quit worrying about your employees’ well-being so much and focus on your own personal life a little. And that darling secretary of yours.”
“She’s a child.”
“Oh, I know we don’t hire those around here. Only consenting adults.” Sinclair raised the espresso cup to Caruso. “I’ll bring this back later. You need to get ready.”
“Think I have time to run to the store and pick up some cologne?”
Sinclair arched an eyebrow at Caruso’s sarcasm, but he was already on the way out. The door too modern to creak its hinges, but making a swoosh as the pressurized seal was broken and it flowed temporarily out of the alignment it was built for.
Caruso finished his espresso, giving himself over to a bad mood he could safely ruminate in here in his private domain. Only Leni grabbed his door before it could swing shut and poked her head into his office.
“Mr. Caruso, you have a phone call.”
“Who is it?” Caruso asked, inwardly souring: why couldn’t she just let the door close and then page him on his intercom? Why did someone have to call when he had a nice bit of bitterness to be vented? And why did the blonde have to be so beautiful, even when she was bothering him?
“It’s your wife, sir. Her flight’s about to land and she wants to know if you’ll pick them up at the airport?”
“Them?”