“Yeah, I know.” I can’t help the way it comes out. “Gee, I wonder how that happened.”
He happened. Took it and threw it into the mud, and then stepped on it. Just because.
His expression, as he turns around, is closed off. But I can’t help wondering if I’m imagining the regret I see, just before his face shutters.
“When Dell first came to me bitching about what your dad did with the will and the business…I sort of realized that I’ve never had a purpose in life. It was kind of a shitty thing to realize, honestly. That I don’t matter. That I’ve never done anything even remotely valuable. And here Dell had this ready-made thing in his lap. All he had to do wastrya little. Give a little bit of a shit. It was something todo, you know?”
He shakes his head and shrugs. “Once I realized how much I hated living in Manhattan and how much I hated the corporate bro atmosphere of big finance and just quit the whole scene, I had nothing. I wasn’t about to come home and live with Mom and Dad again. But I saw no reason to buy a house anywhere because I had nowhere I belonged. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can fly into any one of a dozen cities around the world and I’ll know people. I can crash parties on every populated continent on the globe, and shit, I even know someone at a research station in Antarctica. But…down deep? Nowhere was home. I literally was just renting or borrowing condos and going to parties and…” He stares into his coffee. Seems embarrassed. “Honestly, a lot of it was just chasing hookups, if you want the honest truth.”
“And that led you to buying half of my company…how?”
He laughed. “It didn’t. I’m sure you’re well aware that I have a, um, let’s just say generous trust fund. Comically so. Plus living expenses provided by my parents that they’ve just never bothered to pull back. So I honestly don’t ever have to work. I could live in ridiculous luxury forever and never lift a finger. But I was bored. And I had all this money and nothing to do with it. I mean, I’ve done all the things. Skydiving. Scuba diving. Sailing. Private jets to private beaches in Tahiti with, like, squadrons of models hanging around in a whole lot of not much. Fast cars. Old cars. New cars. I even bought a fuckin’ yacht once, but then I realized you need a whole crew and a captain and the whole nine yards and that just seemed like way more work than I’d expected, so I sold it.”
“Poor you,” I quipped, deadpan.
“Right? Poor me. Talk about first-world problems. This was a one percent of one percent kind of problem. But I was just fucking bored out of my mind. So one day about a year and a half out of Wharton, I was hanging out with some guys from school, the business-y sort of guys with stock portfolios—your kinda guys, actually.” He smirks, and I glare, but it feels kind of cursory, at this point. “And they were talking about this company they’d bought stock in. Sounded cool. I think they make, like, I dunno—some part for Wi-Fi routers, I think. It was a new company that had just done their IPO. So on a whim, I looked into it. Like, I Googled them. Called their receptionist and asked a few questions. Asked my friends for some information. Their IPO had done really well, so I was like, fuck it, let’s do this adult business thing, and I bought stock. Alotof stock. Not quite a controlling interest, but close.”
“What was the company?”
“Albion Networking Systems.”
I’ve heard of them—they’ve been making the rounds trying to sell us some kind of whole smart home system. “You invested in Albion?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs.
“How involved are you?”
“Not very. They have their own thing going. I know they’ve been looking at getting into the whole smart home arena, but I guess they haven’t had much success yet. And this was a few years ago. I’ve done a lot of other deals since. VC and angel investing, mostly.”
“Albion sends us marketing materials every once in a while, and one of their reps comes by every quarter. But most contractors aren’t really interested in new technology unless it cuts their overhead down or drives their profit margins up. Smart home systems is more overhead and you’re not guaranteed a return on it.”
“That’s what they’re up against. But I guess the people who know this sort of thing are all saying at some point in the not-so-distant future, all homes are going to be connected, what we call smart, and the builders who get in on it now are the ones who are going to set the standard when it starts to really pick up.”
I’m a little floored, right now. Because he’s right. It’s something I’ve thought about myself. I just could never get it front of Dad in a way that stood a chance—he just wanted to build houses. He was a traditionalist. But…now I’m in charge. Mostly.
The other person with controlling decision power is…Thai.
And he’s talking about something that’s been a secret desire of mine for a long time.
He notices I’ve gone quiet. “Did I just step in something smelly?”
I shake my head. “No, not…not really.”
“Then what?”
I sigh, clutching my mug with both hands; I’m on the other side of the island from him, yet it feels like he’s filling the kitchen, too close to me, too much, too in my space. “It’s just something I’ve thought about.”
“What is?”
“What Albion has been trying to sell us on. Dad always just shut it down cold, but I’ve been thinking for a while that it might be smart to start incorporating that as an option in new builds. Smart switches, bulbs, thermostats, stuff like that.”
He leans over the island. “Now, I haven’t looked at their package, but I can tell you it’s way more comprehensive than that. It’s built-in Wi-Fi, a central hub controlling the entire house, like…Tony Stark kinda shit. Voice-controlled house. Like, you just say ‘turn on the kitchen lights,’ or turn on the oven to four-fifty, or turn the air conditioning to sixty-eight.’ It’s not just a house with lights and a thermostat on some goofy app on your phone. It’s a truly connected, next-generation house. Built-in, from scratch. They’ve even got AI that will learn your preferences and adjust things automatically.”
I can’t help but be intrigued. “Really? I’m…that’s…wow.”
“It’s seriously next-level shit, Delia. And what I learned when I was buying them was that when you buy in, it gets cheaper. If you’re building, like, sixty new homes, the parts and labor is cheaper because it’s in bulk and it’s going in as a new build rather than trying to retrofit one existing structure. The more you buy in, the cheaper it is, so it’s really geared for builders with big numbers. Again, this was a few years ago, so my information is probably a little out of date. I’m sure they’ve upped their game since I invested.”
I finish my coffee and pour more—offer him some. “Well that’s cool, but don’t think I haven’t noticed that you never answered my original question.”
