Offerings Read online

  The stock closed today at under a dollar. They’d made such a large bet on Ascalon they had little to fall back on beyond what Kate could earn.

  Kate took another look at the Leger. In the morning, she’d make some calls to find out whether they could sell it to give themselves some breathing room.

  THREE

  Two days later, Kate was in Colorado.

  Chris Franklin, from his seat at the head of the table, spoke first. “Let me get right to the point,” he said, with a soft inflection. “We’ve talked to three sets of bankers this week and every one of them told us to stick to our knitting and to ride out the storm. They said the capital markets haven’t recovered to the point where they’re ready for someone as small as Majik. So, tell us something we haven’t already heard.”

  Chris was a compact man, tightly coiled. Dusty blond hair curled away from his face. The way he kept moving from side to side suggested he’d prefer to be on the plant floor or in the design room or on the back of a horse. Kate guessed he might be somewhere in his mid-forties.

  “There’s a large dollop of truth in what you just said, Chris, but look at the other side of the coin,” Kate said. Hedging her answer only would have assured defeat. “At the rate you’re burning through cash, Majik will trip its bank covenants by June and you’ll be bone-dry by July or August. Unless you’ve got a few million dollars sitting around, you don’t have the luxury of waiting for even a partial recovery of the market.”

  Thrust and parry. It was Chris’s turn to react. Kate saw no reason to rush him. Her associate began rummaging through his book bag, to bring out the slick books she’d prepared. Kate raised her hand two inches off the table to hold him back.

  “Why June?” Chris asked, leaning forward. The man seated to his right, short, square-faced, beady-eyed and balding, looked confused. To his left, Beth Parker underlined the word June on the pad in front of her.

  Kate spun her laptop around. She invited Chris to scroll through her numbers. He moved to the center of the table, pulled it toward him, and looked over the top of his rimless glasses. Beth stood over his shoulder.

  “It’s not just the cash burn. You’ve also got to factor into your thinking how your competitors have positioned themselves. Greatgames, Sony and Microsoft all have licenses with Disney or other major studios to exploit their characters. Wowaction just got a tie into Paramount for its summer films. I’m not telling you something you don’t already know, but there was a fire at the Kiyobe plant outside Seoul two weeks ago. It’s prioritizing shipments of its chips according to order size. Yours won’t be big enough to get their attention.”

  The way everyone on Majik’s side of the table was leaning in Kate’s direction emboldened her to go a bit farther. “You need this cash to get the chips that’ll enable you to get your games on Wal-Mart’s shelves before Thanksgiving. Without that, you’re dead. You’re trying to focus on the equity markets, but the harsh reality is that in this lending environment, once you miss your sales targets your banks will abandon you.”

  There were a few more slides on her deck, but Kate had scored all the points she needed.

  Chris’s cell phone vibrated on the table where he’d set it. He apologized and said he hoped the interruption would be brief. Beth took the spot at the table where Chris had been sitting. She asked if she could email Kate’s slides to herself.

  Kate took a small sip of water, fished her BlackBerry out of her bag, and moved to the other side of the room. She inched toward a painting behind Chris’s desk.

  The painting was an oil on canvas of an Alpine scene sitting in a frame that had obviously been hand-carved. The corners and the middle of each side had a shell imprint surrounded by vines and flowers. She reached toward the lower right corner and touched the words Gustave Courbet. Her eyes followed a series of tiny brushstrokes across the middle of the picture.

  “Kate,” Chris said after she had been standing near the painting for a couple of minutes. “Please clarify this for me.” She went to the side of his chair and began explaining how she’d crunched the numbers. Beth walked to the credenza, filled her coffee cup, turned directly toward Kate, and spoke before Chris had a chance to do so.

  “If we have so little margin for error, I’m surprised you even bothered making the trip out here. You must see some potential or you wouldn’t have wasted your time. So tell me, what probability of success do you ascribe to the offering?”

  Kate wasn’t surprised the women in the room seemed to be the only ones on their toes. Beth probably spent as much time keeping her kids’ heads on straight as she did for the men in this room. “Sixty-forty. Seventy-thirty if we’re lucky. The market’s got a long way to go, but it’s inching back. Families who’ve pinched pennies for the past couple of Christmases want to get their kids something new and different this year. There’s a lot of pent-up demand out there right now. The answer to your question depends in part on how much you believe in what you’ve got in the pipeline.”

  “How big a raise can we pull off?” Beth asked, moving to Kate’s side as she spoke.

  “Assuming the bleeding stops by Memorial Day, three-fifty, minimum. Closer to four if your Christmas orders beat my projections by more than five percent.”

  Chris spoke up. “How much of our stock can the insiders sell?” At bottom, that was what all these presentations were about.

  Kate pushed back. “I haven’t fully worked through the numbers.”

  Chris reached into the pocket of his shirt. He retrieved his phone and touched the screen to bring up a spreadsheet. “How much? Ballpark.”

  Bankers use various metaphors to describe the point in the meeting when the principals ask how much they can put into their pockets. Her mentor at Greene, an M&A guru named Andrew Butler, called it the sexual side of capitalism. He said the image that always came to him at that instant was of Richard Burton dangling diamonds off his fingers before he placed them around Elizabeth Taylor’s neck. And now it was Kate Brewster’s turn to begin the seduction.

  “Thirty million, easy.”

  FOUR

  Kate went straight from the meeting to the Denver airport for the redeye back to New York. Peter and Mack were in the kitchen when she walked in a little after eight. They were debating whether Mack should tuck in the shirt of his uniform before leaving for his Little League game.

  Kate knelt down and put her arms around Mack. “Everything okay with you, big guy?”

  The buttons on his uniform were all out of whack. He’d put the wrong button into the top hole and now he had more holes left to fill than buttons to fill them. Kate started both fixing and tucking in Mack’s shirt. He’d just brushed his teeth. His breath smelled of mint.

  Kate lingered for a moment and then told Mack to look in her bag. Chris Franklin had given her two of Majik’s games. “Let me know how you like them this weekend and we’ll send him a thank you note.” She smoothed Mack’s hair, kissed him on both cheeks, and gave him a strong squeeze. He wriggled out of her arms. Kate thought he looked tired, but at least his eyes had gotten a bit of their sparkle back.

  She walked to where Peter was standing in front of the stove. They kissed on the lips, but just barely. He tasted of grapefruit juice.

  “Anything to report on the white knight front?” she asked. The expression on Peter’s face suggested she didn’t want to hear his answer. “I’m so sorry this trip took me away just when you needed me. I’m here now, though, for the next two days. I’m yours.”

  Peter took a step away. “It’s been hell, Kate. Just hell. Every waking minute I’m either trying to convince some employee or customer not to bolt or begging for some private equity fund to take a look at me. The only thing I’ve got going for me at the moment is that none of my competitors are hiring or have any capacity, so I haven’t fallen through the ice just yet.”

  “Want me to do some modeling?”

  “I don’t know what good that will do. The perception that Ascalon is about to shutter its doors has overtaken the reality of what we still have to offer.”

  “I’ll model lingerie if it will at least put a smile on your face.” Kate laughed. She took a step toward Peter but then stopped when his expression didn’t change a bit.

  “I didn’t think things could have gotten worse, but of course they did. Let me show you something,” Peter said. He walked across the kitchen to the nook where they kept the phone and a Gien bowl they used as their message board. It was the bottom of a soup tureen, actually, that Kate and Peter had found in St. Remy the year before Sarah was born. The lid was so badly chipped they paid only a few Euros, but Kate loved the way the vines of Algerian Ivy wrapped their way through pink and yellow camellias and the hummingbirds having their way with them. For years, they’d used the bowl to hold the mail and notes to each other as they rushed past each other on their way up their corporate ladders. At one time they put in small bits of endearment, little notes with nothing but a scribbled heart, but that was so long ago.

  Peter put both hands on the marble countertop. He seemed to be searching for the right words. Kate was reluctant to prod him.

  “The blood in the water attracted the sharks, as it always does. There are rumors floating around that you torpedoed a deal with Jack Carpenter last fall that valued Ascalon at over four hundred million dollars because you were talking to Ed Roth and wanted to take the deal to Drake so it could earn the commission.” He sounded more resigned to the legal theatrics on the horizon than accusatory.

  “That’s absurd.”

  “We’ve learned in the past three days, Kate, that absurd carries the day. The two of us have lost over twenty million on paper since Tuesday and that’s without this self-dealing coming out.”

  “Self-dealing?” Kate froze.

  “Our shareholders were given a death sentence this week. Even if we don’t end up selling to the Chinese, they’re not going to get more than a buck or two a share. They’re going to look for somebody to blame for the money they lost. That means they’re looking for a way to sue you and Greene and Drake. And of course then they’ll say I was in on it with you to drag me into the mess.”

  “Who told you this?”

  Peter took Andrew Butler’s business card out of the bowl. He held it in Kate’s direction. After Greene Houseman took Ascalon public it put Andrew on the board to watch its investment. It could hardly put Kate in that spot while she was sleeping with the president. She recognized Andrew’s handwriting on the back of the card.

  Jack Carpenter testified in a deposition last week; he first approached Kate about the bid in November. Is that true? If so, I should have been told. The Board should have been told. If Kate sat on this information so she could take that deal with her to Drake, there will be hell to pay.

  “This is bullshit.”

  “Bullshit or the gospel, it’s ours now, Kate.”

  Kate was less than five feet from Peter but he might as well have already moved to China.

  “Peter, we can’t let this nonsense distract us,” she said. If there is any hope that someone else will be interested you’ve got to get Ascalon back on its feet. I’ve got to stay focused on keeping Steve Reed from cutting me out of inheriting Ed’s position at Drake or I’ll be scraping around for a job. You said you haven’t yet fallen through the ice, but we’re both about to. And we’ll take Sarah and Mack and this house and that debt weighing us down with us.”

  “Mack!” Peter shouted.

  Kate gripped the edge of the counter. “Don’t use the children as an excuse not to deal with this. Come on, Peter, we need to be there for each other on this. Completely.”

  “His game starts in half an hour. Two minutes, Mack.”

  “But I just made it to the sixth level,” Mack called from the family room.

  “Crash and burn, fella. We’ve got to blow outta here.” He lowered his voice. “Crash and burn, kid. Welcome to my world.”

  Mack walked back into the kitchen. “Mom, are you coming to my game?

  “Of course, sweetie, but I’m going to take a shower first. I’ve been on an airplane all night. I’ll meet you there. You two run along.”

  Even a few minutes of solitude would have been a gift. Kate was grateful when Peter scooped up Mack and took him out the back door without saying anything more about Ascalon.

  Kate reread the note, turned it over, and ran her finger over the raised letters of Andrew’s name. She then read it a third time.

  She waited until Peter’s car was out of the driveway before tearing Andrew’s business card to shreds.

  FIVE

  They made love that night. At least in the literal sense of the phrase. Kate played the aggressor, but all the tastes and smells and sounds of their first months were wasted on a man able only to think about Ascalon’s troubles.

  Peter rolled off her and said, “Well, Kate. You now know how it feels to have sex with a man who lost virtually everything he had in less than three months.”

  Kate lifted her head. “Peter, stop. You’re the same man I fell in love with years ago. The same great father to Sarah and Mack. We’ll get ourselves out of the hole we’re in. It may take some time, but we’ll be fine.” She was running out of ways to say the same thing over and over.

  Peter shifted up onto his pillows. He put his hands behind his head. “I wish I could believe what you just said, but this feels so different. Look where I was a few weeks ago. And now you’re making lists of everything we won’t be able to afford and I’m listening to Chinese on Rosetta Stone.” He broke off his words. Kate didn’t want to hear another explanation of failure. She put her head on his chest and ran her right index finger over the bit of hair around his belly button.

  In their early time together that gesture would have led to more. Peter would have returned the favor by running his finger across the top of her behind. She might have lowered her head or he might have pulled her on top of him; the details didn’t matter. Even after Sarah, after Mack. But Peter was right. This felt different. He kept his hands where they were, as though among the things he’d lost was the right to ask for more.

  Kate rolled to her side of the bed. She switched on her light to its lowest setting, opened the top drawer of her nightstand, and fished through a wad of books and papers, hand cream and nail files, aspirin tins, rubber bands and Valentine’s Day cards until she dug out a small, cream-colored Cranes envelope. She took out the card and ran her finger around the coral border. She reached over the edge of the bed and put on the top of her pajamas, snowmen, sleds and flannel, even this close to Memorial Day. Kate didn’t like to feel cold. But she left the buttons open.

  “Do you remember this?” she asked. Desire overwhelms me. Peter sent Kate the note to celebrate their first month together. Kate’s friend Alexis, a business school classmate, had introduced the two of them. She’d thought dinner with her cute computer engineer of a cousin might be a good break from six days a week and twelve hours a day of Kate plowing through spreadsheets for Citicorp, especially since Kate had been living in New York for eleven months and hadn’t gone on one date, much less slept with a man. “This is who you are, Peter. All the crap you’re going through isn’t going to change the way I feel about the guy who wrote me this note.”

  “I paid two dollars for that card and another twenty-six cents for the stamp. I’m not sure I could afford that today.”

  Kate spun around so she was facing Peter. “Don’t fall into the trap of measuring your self-worth by your net worth. I’ve seen way too many guys on the street think their bank balance is the only thing that matters in their lives. You’re making yourself crazy. Trust me on this, Peter, all this nonsense about the patent threat and your having to unload Ascalon will pass.”

  “If we’re around long enough to be vindicated.” He stopped, inhaled, then touched her cheek with the back of his right hand. “Listen, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I wish I could get all this stuff out of my head even for a minute. Maybe changing the subject will help. Tell me about Colorado.”

  Kate buttoned the middle button of her pajama top. She pulled the sheet over her hips. She didn’t feel like talking about Majik half-naked.

  “There’s probably nothing there, but in a way, the meeting was quite cool.”

  “Cool? Does that mean you got the gig?”

  “We don’t know yet. But what was odd was that the guy who owns the company has this very old and possibly very valuable painting in his office. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was doing there or if it’s genuine. Gustave Courbet. Have you ever heard of him?”

  Peter said of course. “Did you ask what it was doing there?”

  “Hardly. I’d just met these people. And the meeting was all about our dog and pony show. The whole run-up to the meeting and all the travel was a real pain, but the time we spent in the room actually was kind of fun. I got to run the whole thing.” Kate moved closer to Peter. “And when they got to the point where they asked about hard numbers it was like a movie. I actually imagined myself as Lauren Bacall in some slinky white dress leaning over to whisper in Humphrey Bogart’s ear, telling this guy he could pocket thirty million.”

  “Nice number.”

  “He certainly loved it. I could see the color rise in his cheeks.”

  “You bankers love that shit.”

  “I wouldn’t call it shit. I’d call it seduction. Getting his attention was almost as much fun as getting yours.”

  Kate slid her hand beneath the sheet covering Peter’s legs. She moved in further to kiss him and when he opened his mouth touched his tongue with the end of hers. He moved his right hand from behind his head and opened her button.

  Kate wriggled out of her pajama top and smiled at the possibility that there was hope for the old boy yet.