king sessions.
The lab was where Bugsy and I did our best work. During our freshman year, we'd heard an engineer from Denmark talk about the potential of wind power and I had become obsessed with creating a turbine that could be used in smaller areas than the traditional wind farms required. We spent years mapping out potential designs and then testing them in various yards around the MIT campus, but what we accumulated was failed project after failed project. Nothing had panned out—until we were seniors.
One afternoon, we were in the sustainable energy engineering lab when Bugsy and I finally hit upon an idea that seemed like it could work for the individual consumer. It was an individual turbine that generated more than enough power for one home, and allowed for the excess power to be transferred to a holding station where it could be redistributed to those without turbine power. The design was small and sleek, which brought down the cost of manufacturing it, and the cost of installing the turbine would be recouped through the sale of energy back to the grid, and the overall cost of energy for the consumer would be dramatically lowered. It took us another year to perfect the design and test it, and by then we were both being courted by MIT to pursue Master's degrees.
Bugsy turned down MIT's funding offer in order to start Agape Resources. His father gave him a small portion of the start-up money, and Bugsy had hustled in his usual way to come up with the rest. We discussed asking my father to invest, but both of us had decided that this would be an absolute last resort. Bugsy understood that my father was a hardline oilman who was not going to take kindly to his son developing the technology to cut into his profits. He had also witnessed the results of my father's violent temper, but we had an unspoken agreement never to discuss this aspect of my family.
When I approached my father about starting my own business, he told me in no uncertain terms that I could either pursue a master's or step into a position at Wallace Oil: those were my only two options. So, I'd started down the road to the Master's degree, but a year into it, I'd realized that all the theoretical knowledge I was amassing wasn't anywhere near as interesting as working with my best friend to try and make our dream a reality. In the middle of the spring semester, I quit school and took an entry-level job in R&D at my father's company. It had been the kind of job that kept me busy enough, but not so busy that I couldn't spend part of my work day consulting with Bugsy on turbine designs and possible investment avenues. For the past four years, I'd split my time between the bogus job at Wallace Oil and my project with Bugsy. Now that I found myself without a job and exiled from my family, I was unsure what the next step was going to be.
"It was cold. They're both cold, and I'm just a tool in their game," I replied. "The question is, what am I going to do now? I've got few assets and no place to live, and I'm definitely not going to marry that girl. I don't care if she's queen of the universe with the face of an angel and the body of a porn star."
"Hmmm, you sure you don't want to reconsider? Well, you're welcome to stay with me as long as you need to," Bugsy said as he motioned me over toward a display he'd had set up in one corner of the office. Agape Resources' offices were, in reality, a space that had once been leased by the Church of the Divine, a fly-by-night religious ministry that had moved out quickly, leaving the office space full of church-related materials that Bugsy had incorporated into the office layout. Bugsy hadn't bothered to remodel. Instead, he'd set up his desk on the platform where the preacher had given his Sunday sermons and put my desk at the bottom of the steps, making me the single member of the co-worker congregation. I hadn't even gotten a desk chair; instead, I sat on a wooden pew, which, in all honesty, made for the perfect place to stretch out and think when things got stressful.
"I was thinking maybe we could move up the northern Indiana project, and I could go on the road," I suggested as Bugsy handed me a stack of printouts that he'd dug out of the bottom of a pile of papers. He wasn't neat, but there was a definite order to his disorganization.
"Take a look at that report," he said as if he hadn't heard me. "It talks about the potential for individual power generation. Harvard did the study."
"Did you hear me?" I asked as I sat down on a step and began reading the introduction to the study. Irritated, I muttered, "I already saw that one. In fact, I was the one who gave it to you, Bugs."
"Yeah, yeah, I heard you," he muttered as he tapped the keyboard and then printed something out. He walked over to the printer, pulled out the sheets of paper, and then walked over to me where he sat down and handed me the sheets. "Here's your car rental, a room at the local Amish B&B, and a list of contacts for Corner Grove. Why don't you hold off on leaving for a few days and we'll celebrate your independence?"
"What the hell?" I said as I took the papers. "When did you do this?"
"Eh, I've been working on the Indiana project for a while now," he said. "Piece by piece, my friend, that's how you eat the whole elephant."
"Are you on drugs?" I asked looking up at him on his platform.
"No, but that could be arranged. Interested?" he asked. When I shook my head, he continued, "C'mon, Wallace, we need to cut loose and have some fun! Besides, I've already arranged a night of pure debauchery for us."
"What the hell, Bugs?"
"I'm always three steps ahead of you when it comes to planning," he said grinning mischievously. "We'll head out to the clubs and throw a blowout bash to end all parties. We'll get the usual suspects to pony up and foot the bill, and then we'll rake in some cash to fund the next phase of Agape's development."
"Are you serious?" I asked.
"As a heart attack, my friend," he grinned. "I'm serious, Adam. We can fund this thing fully if we play our cards right. We'll get some investments and we'll plough them back into the business and fund your trip. Plus, we'll have some fun doing it. Don't tell me you've forgotten how to have fun!"
"What do you think?" I shot back defensively.
"Now that's the spirit!" Bugsy said as he cheerfully punched my shoulder. He turned serious for a moment and said, "You know you're going to have to live on a budget while you're selling the project, don't you? Can you do that?"
"You're an asshole, you know that?" I said shaking my head. "I practically live like a monk."
"Uh huh, a monk who wears Prada and Ferragamo," he said with a knowing look. "Look, all I'm saying is that you need to keep the expenses to the absolute minimum on this trip, but you need to make it look like we have all the money in the world. We need to land the contract and get the turbines into production with the money we have right now. We can't afford any additional expenses because my dad's investment money runs out at the end of the summer. I want to put as much as possible in savings so we don't have to cut corners on the design elements."
"I get it, I get it," I said waving him off without looking up from the report I was reading. Bugsy had always respected the fact that I remembered more of the technical details than he did, and that my methods of researching and designing the turbines had been what had gotten us to this point. He was the public face of Agape Resources, but he never failed to acknowledge that we were equal partners in the business. I muttered as I read, "Besides, I'll only need to be down there for two days—three at the most.
"I hope that's all the time you'll need. What do you think?" he asked after I'd quickly skimmed the report.
"I think we'd better get moving on our plan or else these engineers are going to beat us to the punch," I said seriously. "They've got a lot more funding behind them and since they're being touted by Harvard and its alumni, they'll get more publicity. However, I'm not convinced that their turbine can beat ours."
"Well, there's that good news," Bugsy said with a grim smile as he ran a hand through his tousled, blond curls. Over the past few months, he'd morphed his look from modern old-school gangster to hygienic surfer dude. It wasn't the first time Bugsy had changed his look, but I knew this look wouldn't last long because it didn't offer the seriousness he was going to need as he negotiated contracts.
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I, on the other hand, had a look that hadn't changed much since the fourth grade. Tall and lanky with dark eyes, thick eyebrows, and full lips, I'd occasionally let my curly black mop of hair grow only to head into the barber and request that he hack it back into a more tamed look. But no matter what I did with it, my hair always looked slightly wild, making me always appear to be more serious than I actually was. I attributed part of this to the fact that next to Bugsy, everyone looked serious."
"So, let's get this party started, shall we?" Bugsy said as he began tapping the screen on his phone. He scrolled through his contacts and zeroed in on the gang he wanted to fund tonight's action.