; I complied. Asher was sitting in his chair, leaning back with his hands behind his head and his feet up on his desk. I couldn't help but laugh.
“Hard at work or hardly working?” I asked with a cheeky grin.
“Hey, I'm not a machine,” he replied, “even though I'm not far off from one! I've gotta kick back sometime, you know.”
“I see this. The man isn’t quite the myth the buzz around town makes you out to be, huh?” I chuckled. “I'm just kidding.”
“I know, I know. Come on in, have a seat.”
I walked in and took a seat across from him, staring over his huge desk at him for a few moments before speaking. The subtle light of his office only enhanced how attractive he was. I was finding it hard to keep my eyes off of him.
“So, your friend in Paris is ready to have a chat with us, right?”
“She is. She's waiting for us right now, actually.”
“Well, then, let's not keep her waiting any longer, shall we? Let me fire up the projector and the quadrophonic sound system. You brought your notebook, right?” he said, eyeing the carrying case I had placed in my lap. “Just hook it up to these cables, and we can get things rolling.”
We proceeded to make the call and chatted with Alicia for nearly an hour, taking notes as she responded to our questions. At the end of the call, Asher asked her for her address.
“I'm going to arrange a little something to be sent to you as a thank you gift for everything you've helped us with,” he said.
“Thanks so much! That’s very kind of you,” Alicia replied after giving him her address. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Sinclair, and it was great to catch up with you, Lilah,” she said to me. “Call me soon. You still need to come visit!”
“I will do that. Thanks again for your help, Ali. Bye,” I said, and then we cut off the call.
“Well, well, well,” Asher gushed. “That was some excellent insight into the market there. I think we've got a lot we can work with—although plenty of research is still going to have to be done to really get into the meat and bones of this. Still, we've got plenty of time to work on it. I'm hoping you'll be able to do as stellar a job on this project as you managed to do on the last one.”
“I'm hoping so, too.”
“All right, well, let's type up all the info we got from your very helpful friend. I'll create a Google Doc so that we can both edit it in real time from anywhere. We can add whatever other pointers we pick up from our research and keep fleshing it out over the next couple of days.”
“I don't know about you, since you’ve apparently been here most of the day, but I've still got plenty of energy left. I feel up to doing a little research right now, actually.”
He smiled. “Wow. Someone who can match me step for step in the race, huh? Sure, if you're inspired, I am, too. Let's get on this then.”
We got stuck in and researched the markets on our respective computers for the next couple of hours. Eventually, we were both running low on energy. Asher was the first to call it quits.
“Well, that's about it for my evening, I think,” he commented. “We've got a ton of data now.”
I stood and stretched.
“That was a productive session,” I said. “I'm already getting some pretty solid ideas on what I can do with this.”
“Excellent! But for now, let's forget about it for a while. I mean, it's already after 9:00 on a Saturday evening, and here we are sitting in the office we already spend most of our time at during the week. Jeez, I haven't even eaten dinner yet.”
“You know,” I said, not sure why I was suggesting this, but it just seemed right at the time, “I've got a ridiculous amount of Indian food left over from lunch at my place. Some friends came around to eat, but we ended up doing more talking than eating. We could head there, heat it up in the microwave, and maybe watch a movie to wind down from all this work if you’re up for it.”
“That sounds great. I'm starving. I could eat right now!”
I laughed. “I guess it works out then. I’m ready when you are.”
“Great. I'll just shut down everything here, and I'll meet you at your place.”
I asked if he remembered my address, which he did, and then I headed out of Asher’s office with a goofy smile on my face that I hoped he hadn’t seen.
***