Page 2 of Joey

It’s not a quality I can cultivate or get better at, either. It’s just something intrinsic. Something inside him that makes people want to look at him, and react to him, and do something different.

Anyway.

There are empty bottles of whiskey and beer everywhere in the penthouse. Clothes strewn about. Random shoes, and ties, and t-shirts too.

It was a good party.

But it’s always a good party.

I’ve known Wald and Huck since college. We all rushed the same fraternity together. Got accepted, got in trouble, mostly graduated—Huck had to do an extra semester online to finally get his diploma, but he majored in philosophy so that thing barely mattered.

And then we just took off. We did that whole Europe backpacking hostel-staying thing for almost two years. We got jobs in Thailand as drug lord wannabes—I stop to chuckle at that. It was a pretty fuckin’ fun three years in Thailand. Then we hit up Australia for a while and became surfers. After that we did Asia. Singapore, and Taipei, and Seoul. Then we did Shanghai, and Hong Kong, and finally, we ended up in Tokyo.

And over the course of that whole adventure we somehow became business partners. Like… real businesspeople. Wald has kind of a nerdy side. His real name is Waldo, so there’s really no other way for that guy to turn out. And unlike Huck, he took college seriously and majored in computer engineering with a specialization in cryptography.

But Huck is one of those people persons. Just a likable guy who can sell pretty much anything to anyone. So that’s his job now.

Me? I’m just the money. I have so much fuckin’ money it’s sick. That could be why we were so successful out of the gate. I mean it certainly helped to have limitless funding for the launch.

But Wald came up with this idea to offer specialty encryption for banks and shit. Dude just sat down one day at his laptop and banged out some code. Didn’t come up for air for eight months while we were in Hong Kong. He lived off milk tea and pineapple bread.

He was so into this new idea Huck and I kinda forgot about him for a while. Just did our Hong Kong thing. Which was mostly just fucking, and drinking, and clubs.

Then one morning Huck and I came home and found Wald in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee wearing a gray business suit. To this day I don’t even know where he got that suit. And he said, “Brush your teeth. I got us a meeting.”

So we did. And we went to this meeting. Turns out it was at a bank. And on the way over there Wald told Huck what to say. We got a new thing that will help them, blah, blah, blah.

And this whole ride over I was thinking, Yeah, no one in their right mind is investing in our product. My hair was too long, Huck hadn’t shaved in like three weeks, and unlike Wald, we were both wearing shorts and t-shirts because we didn’t have suits. Hell, I didn’t even know what the product was.

I don’t think Wald cared though. This obsession with his new cryptography program kinda cancelled out all his well-practiced social norms training. Huck was waxing poetically about something, as usual, and I stopped giving out fucks over a decade earlier.

So I was pretty sure this new business adventure of Wald’s was going nowhere.

Turns out I was wrong. A year later we were in Tokyo and my family money wasn’t even funding us anymore.

I remember thinking… Huh. I never saw this coming. And for a moment I thought… maybe I do matter? Maybe I can change the world?

But it wasn’t me who made the business. It was Wald. And it wasn’t me who sold the idea. That was Huck.

So no. Nothing had changed.

The day I graduated college Johnny called me up and said, “Go away. Go far, far away. Anywhere you want. Do anything you want. Just stay away from me, and this city, and the Bossy Building. Oh, and one more thing. Don’t come back.”

By this time in our lives Johnny had been an uptight asshole for several years. I mean, for sure you do not fuck with my brother. Ever. He will smack your face with a baseball bat if you look at him wrong. But this… directive was a little over the top.

Don’t come back?

Fine, asshole. I won’t.

Except once a year for that charity auction.

It hits me now that the annual bachelor auction was probably just me trying to piss off Johnny.

It never worked though. He never even called me up when I was home for those few days a year. Didn’t return my calls either.

I figured I’d be a fuckup forever. That was just my lot in life. A pretty simple life of drinking, drugs, parties, and travel. My two best friends coming along for the ride was just a bonus.

And here I am. Still doing the whole party thing, but it’s different now. A weekend thing, mostly. This is the first real party we’ve had in a long time and I think the only reason Huck and Wald set it up was because after I came home from the Bossy Building last week I was in a funk.