So, I tolerated her horrendous singing while I raced up the highway.
Each and every song that came on was louder than the last. “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells” filled my car, and I could feel my body aching with the need for silence. I continued sipping my coffee and tried to take my mind off things, but the moment I heard a familiar song strike itself up on the radio, I turned it off.
I was not about to listen to that woman try to belt out the diva tunes of “O Holy Night.”
“Hey, what was that for?” she asked.
“Silence,” I said.
“Come on,” she said. “Just because you don’t celebrate Christmas doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“You can put it on hold for nine hours.”
“You’re a Grinch,” she said, pouting.
I laughed. It’s not like she was the first person to ever call me that, but she was the first person to do it in the voice of a toddler. It was like she was trying to get me to change my mind. Like jutting out that bottom lip of hers and furrowing her brow would somehow sway me.
But she had another thing coming, because if she thought I hated the holidays, she was really going to go batty when I told her I didn’t like children.
“Well, since you won’t let me listen to music, I guess we just have to talk,” she said.
“Or we could ride in silence,” I said.
“Not a chance,” she said. “So, what’s this fun business of yours?”
I tried to stay silent on the matter, but I could feel her growing need to press.
“Do you run a store?” she asked.
“No.”
“A website?” she asked.
“Of sorts.”
“Oh, what does this mysterious website do?”
I clenched my jaw and bit my tongue. She was like a pesky three-year old with an incessant amount of questions. If I simply ignored her, I knew she’d shut up and go away.
At least, I think three-year-olds were the ones with incessant questions. Maybe it was four-year-olds.
“Does it sell stuff?” she asked.
“Sort of.”
“Does it sell high-end stuff?” she asked.
“No.”
“Does it sell people?” she asked.
“Are you serious?”
“I’ve got the next—oh, wow, we’re really flying—seven hours to piss you off.”
And there it was. Her entertainment for this trip. Pissing me the fuck off.
“I run Murphy Incorporated,” I said.
But the blank look on her face told me she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I had to admit, it was kind of nice.
For a woman who wouldn’t keep her mouth shut.
“It’s a website that allowed entrepreneurs and business owners to reach out to people in other marketplaces. It allows for the negotiating, trading, and settling of investments. It also has a forum for new entrepreneurs to ask questions and for seasoned business people in that field to answer. It also houses a docu-series where affluent people in the business world give lectures and record them so others can learn.”
“So, like, people from one country can go on this site and hook up with someone from the U.S.?” she asked.
“It’s not a dating site. No one’s hooking up. Legitimate business relationships and transactions are happening. I’ve made the idea of the business dinner electronic.”
“What’s a business dinner?” she asked.
“It’s where two individuals who have personal interests in a common business venture sit down, eat, talk, and eventually invest in one another,” I said.
“Oh, so, that’s just all online now?” she asked.
“Yes, but that’s not the only facet of the business. What it did was it opened up the marketplace for investors from the States to interact with investors and entrepreneurs who needed investors in places like the China and Taiwan.”
“So, people from here are investing in the Chinese marketplace or whatever?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
“Sounds simple enough,” she said.
“Of course, you would think that.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It sounds simple because it was easy for you to wrap your head around, but it’s not,” I said. “It requires a great deal of electronic infrastructure, translators, people working all over the world at all hours of the day to make sure this site stays running, secure, live, and legitimate. It takes a great deal of manpower to earn the world’s trust in what I’m doing.”
“Okay, maybe it’s not so simple,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“For what? I wasn’t paying you a compliment.”
“When you tell me something is complicated, but you revel in the fact that I could do it anyway, it’s a great compliment.”
“Reveling?” she asked. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“The sparkle in your eye says so, yes.”
I turned my gaze to look at her, and I couldn’t help but grin at the shock on her face. Another thing that made me a powerful businessman was my ability to read people. She was easy. She wore her emotions on the sleeves of her bright coat. But I was used to reading sharks in a tank that were swirling around blood. If I wasn’t good at reading people, I would’ve been swept under with the current years ago.
“Whatever,” she said.
And when she sat back and silenced her questions, I took the victory and kept on driving.
But the victory was short-lived, which shouldn’t have surprised me a bit.
“My mom
