The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale | Page 2

of, ah, a lot greater significance than just candy."
Monique paused and looked at Stan brightly, waiting for him to go on. Across the table, the three Credit Suisse First Boston underwriters, Emilio Toad, Harry Hornpecker, and Moby Pfister sat stone-faced and unreacting in their gray double-breasted suits.
Stan tried to remember the gumballs.com business plan. "They have hard shells," he said. "People, ah, they want challenge... the hardness, the gumminess..."
Monique broke in smoothly. Monique, all seven post-gender-reassignment-surgery feet of her; Monique, always dressed to the nines and tens; Monique was a Valley legend for her instincts, her suavity, her rapacious, exemplary greed. Stan had sold Monique on the idea of gumballs.com, and she had invested -- found him the right contacts, the right team - and here they were at the Big Day, the Exit Strategy.
"Stan!" she cried joyously, fixing him with a penetrating stare. "Don't be shy! Tell them about how gumballs are sex! Tell them about our top-gun semiotics professors, tell them about gumballs as a cultural trope! You see," she said, swooping onto Hornpecker, Pfister & Toad, "you can't think of this as a candy thing, a food & bev thing, a consumer cyclic thing; no way, Jos?! Think Pokemon. Think World Wide Wrestling. Think Star Wars!"
"Could we get back to the numbers," said Emilio Toad in a voice that sounded like a cat being liquefied in an industrial-strength mixer. The gray faces of Harry Hornpecker and Moby Pfister twitched in relief.
* * *
Later, after the deals were signed and the faxes were faxed, Monique and Stan took a taxi to a cigarillo bar to celebrate.
"What, like, is up with you today?" said Monique, crouched somewhat uncomfortably in the taxicab, her knees almost touching her chin, but exuding her usual sense of style and unflappability.
"Um... just IPO jitters?" said Stan hopefully.
"Cut the crap," said Monique.
"I had a dream about Sheila," Stan blurted out.
"Oh goddess," said Monique. "Not this again."
"It seemed so real," Stan said. "She said I had to rescue her from the Ant King."
"Well, you're not my only weirdo CEO," Monique said, giving him a manly, sidearm hug, "but I think you're the weirdest."
* * *
The next morning, nursing a cognac hangover and a throat raw from cigarillo smoke, Stan stood bewildered in front of a two-story building in downtown Palo Alto. It looked a lot like where he worked. There on the signboard were the other companies in his building: Leng Hong Trading; Trusty & Spark, patent attorneys; the Bagel Binge, marketing department; MicroChip Times, editorial. But no gumballs.com, Inc.
"I thought you might be here, sir," said Pringles, his secretary, appearing at his elbow.
"Huh? Pringles!" said Stan. The day before, Pringles had been dressed in a black T-shirt reading "Your Television Is Already Dead" and twelve earrings, but now she was in a smart ochre business suit, carried a mahogany-colored briefcase, and wore pearls.
"We've moved, sir," she said, leading the way to the limousine.
On the highway to Santa Clara, something occurred to Stan. "Pringles?" he said.
"Yes, sir?"
"You didn't use to call me sir - you used to call me Stan."
"Yes, sir, but we've gone public now. SEC regulations."
"You're kidding," said Stan.
Pringles stared out the window.
* * *
The Gumballs.com Building was thirty stories of mirrored glass windows with its own exit off Highway 101. A forty-foot cutout of the corporate animated character, Mr. Gumball, towered over Stan, exuding yellow hysteria. Pringles escorted Stan to his office suite on the thirtieth, after giving him a building pass.
"Wow," said Stan, looking at Pringles across his enormous glass desktop. "Nice work, Pringles."
"Thank you, sir."
"So what's my schedule for today?"
"Nothing lined up, sir."
"Nothing?"
"No, sir."
"Oh. Could I look at the numbers?"
"I'll order them from Accounting, sir."
"Can't I just ask Bill?"
"Sir, Bill is the CFO of a public company now. He doesn't have time to look at the numbers."
"Oh. Shouldn't I have a staff meeting with the department heads or whatever?"
"Vic is doing that, sir."
"Vic? Who's Vic?"
"Vic is our Executive Vice President for Operations, sir."
"He is?"
"Yes, sir."
Stan looked at his desk. There were gold pens, a golden tape dispenser, a framed picture of Sheila and a glass jar full of yellow gumballs. They were the last of the Sheila gumballs.
"Pringles?" Stan said.
"Yes, sir?"
"I don't have a computer."
"That's right, sir."
There was a pause.
"Anything else, sir?"
"Um, yeah. Pringles, what do you suggest I do today?"
Pringles turned and walked across the expanse of marble floor to a teak closet with a brass doorknob. She opened it and returned with a leather golfing bag, which she leaned against the glass desk.
"Pringles, I don't golf," said Stan.
"You need to learn, sir," said Pringles, and left.
Stan took a gumball from the glass jar and looked at it. He thought about biting into it, chewing it, blowing a bubble. Or at least sucking on it. I really should try one