He had a point. Suddenly, I felt very tired. I got in the car when he opened the door. As he started it I said, 'Nice car. Is it yours?'
'Of course. Whose did you think it was?'
'When you drove me back to the hotel before, I guess I somehow assumed it belonged to James.'
'Why should I drive his car when I can afford my own? With Tartan stock doing so well I've made a ton of money on my options. You will too. Didn't James talk to you about stock options?'
'He mentioned them.' It hadn't occurred to me that working for James might actually make me rich. Or that all the young men who worked for him were rolling in money. But it made sense. I looked at Stan with new eyes. 'Why are you living in his house, then?'
'It's a nice place to live. Better than an apartment. Cheaper, too, since I don't pay rent. But I could afford to pay rent if I wanted. Or even buy a house.'
Stupid question. My suspicions about Stan and James must be correct.
'Did James invite you to the team-building exercise over the weekend?' Stan asked.
'He mentioned it and said I was invited. I'm going to talk to him tomorrow to get more details about my job, but perhaps you can tell me what that's all about. Team-building. It sounds like spring football practice.'
'It's definitely along the same lines. James believes in teamwork. We all have to trust each other, work together, fit together like cogs so that the company runs like a well-oiled machine. That sort of thing. We climb cliffs and belay each other with ropes. Stuff like that. You're an outdoor person, anyway, so you'll enjoy it.'
Chapter 33 CLIFFHANGER
So my first official duties with Tartan Enterprises consisted of running off into the wilderness with Stan and some of the other men who worked for James. James didn't come with us. I guess he was too old and too smart to participate.
Actually, Pinnacles National Monument isn't wilderness, exactly, but it does have a lot of jagged rocks. And we were supposed to climb some of them to prove we could trust each other. The only rock climbing I had done had been on a wall in a gym with a very secure rope holding me, but I figured if the others could do it I could.
A dozen of us had carpooled to Pinnacles in three vans from San Francisco on Friday evening. Before that I had spent two days at home, gathering some essentials together to be shipped to San Francisco. James had said I could use his guest bedroom for a couple of weeks until I got my feet on the ground. He mentioned that several of his employees might need roommates and that I could probably share an apartment with one of them. I hoped they weren't all gay.
I had spoken briefly to my father to try to make peace with him. I think he believed me when I said I hadn't tried to get Elma to switch her proxy, but it was obvious he couldn't understand why I was going to work for James. I told him that when I learned enough I might work for him. And perhaps I would.
I had said goodbye to Emerge and to Esther. I had explained to Esther why I was moving to San Francisco- perhaps over-explained because I didn't want to hurt her. She had accepted my explanations and said I should do what was best for me. Not to worry about her. She would be fine. She cried a little.
But I had realized for some time that I could never marry her and this was a convenient time to break off the relationship. It wasn't fair to her if I continued to use her for my own selfish purposes. She deserved a chance at happiness.
The Tartan crew camped out in tents and sleeping bags and awoke early Saturday morning to bracing temperatures and hot chocolate. After we had eaten pancakes cooked over Coleman stoves and buried in maple syrup the world didn't look bad at all. Stan, who was apparently our leader, started giving directions. He split us up into pairs.
My partner was Jed, who had been in the same van with me. I had seen him once in the casino, working as a croupier at the craps table. I wasn't sure I wanted to trust my life to him just because he knew all the bets you can make with a pair of dice, but when he stripped down to a T-shirt I saw that he was quite muscular and my confidence in him grew.
Jed had been here before and he picked a relatively easy climb for us to start on.
'Since you're new at this it will give you a chance to get your feet wet,' he said. 'First, I'll belay you from the top while you make the climb and then we'll reverse positions. We'll have a chance to build up confidence in each other so we can go on to something tougher.'
'I guess you never know when you might have to climb up the side of a building in the business world,' I said. 'Is that part of being a corporate raider?'
Jed smiled and said, 'Listen, Karl, I don't agree with everything that I have to do, either, but you learn to roll with it. Especially when the stock is going up. James gets a bug in his ear about team-building about every six months. So just relax and enjoy it. Let me show you how to tie a bowline.'
We had a rope that I wrapped around my waist. I felt like a sailor as I put a loop in the rope, took the end and passed it through, then around the rope and back through the loop again. A bowline wasn't hard to tie, but once tied it didn't come undone. My confidence grew another notch.
Fortunately, the rock we were climbing had a walking path up the back of it. Only one side was steep. I watched a couple of the other guys climb the route first. I noticed where they placed their hands and feet and how they used their centers of gravity to bind them to the rock rather than tear them away from it.
I didn't have any special climbing shoes. I wore my running shoes, but we weren't supposed to tackle anything difficult enough to require advanced equipment.
When it was our turn, Jed walked up to the top and lowered one end of the rope to me. I tied the bowline securely around my waist and called up to him, 'Belay on.'
Jed pulled the rope taut from above and I gingerly started looking and feeling for the footholds and handholds the others had used.
I slipped when I was just a few feet above the ground, but Jed held me easily before I had fallen six inches. Knowing that I was safe made me bolder and soon I was using cracks for footholds that I wouldn't have trusted with my weight before.
I received some coaching from several others and after 20 strenuous minutes I climbed over the last pitch and onto the relatively flat surface at the top, fifty feet above the ground.
Jed sat there with his feet firmly braced against a large rock, hauling in the rope, which went around his body.
'Good job,' he said. 'Now you can belay me. Remember, if I fall you hold my weight with the hand gripping the end of the rope that has gone around your body. That gives you a mechanical advantage and all the work is done by your legs, which contain your strongest muscles.'
'Sounds logical to me,' I said. 'If you're willing to trust me I'm willing to trust myself.'
I sat where Jed had sat, with my legs firmly braced and the rope around me. He pulled on it a few times until I became confident that I could hold his weight. Then he walked down to the bottom and made the climb while I belayed him. He did it without falling, for which I was thankful.
Later in the morning we made another climb, somewhat tougher than the first one. I slipped once, but Jed held me and I made it to the top with muscles straining.
The picnic-style lunch wasn't bad. It turned out that several of the guys were pretty good cooks and they whipped up potato salad and sandwiches. The banter was what you would expect from young men, ribald jokes, talk about sex. I got the impression that most of them were straight, sexually speaking. It shouldn't be too bad rooming with one of them. They joked about James, too, but they all seemed to respect his business acumen.
I had about decided that I should fit into this group without much of a problem. After lunch we did two more climbs, with about the same difficulty level as the second one we had done in the morning. We were resting in the shade and watching others climb when Stan appeared.
'Karl,' he said, heartily, slapping me on the back, 'I hear you're a natural rock climber, a regular mountain goat.'
'Not quite,' I said. 'I think I'm a bit too big to make this a career. The more compact guys seem to have an advantage.'
