Chapter 46: First Acquisition

Phil Rothman and I spent the day going over the information we had on four companies that Kim Stanley suggested we look at as acquisitions. We went through their websites and hence their product offerings together, and then the D&B and other information we could get on them, all of it online.

Jean, our joint AA now, brought us lunch and made sure we had drinks, napkins, and other comfort items for our desktop meal. She’d also drop off some information about one of the companies. She was thorough, and I even wondered how she got some of the confidential financials.

After she left us alone again, Phil said to me, “She’s in love with you, it appears.”

I just nodded that I was aware of that fact. As an afterthought, I added, “She’s been in love with you since you two met.”

“And I was too dumb to do anything about it. Besides, my wife would have had my head on a platter. I’m beyond that now. My concerns have gotten very personal and very close. Please excuse me if I seem self-centered at times.”

“Phil, don’t sweat it. You’re doing amazingly well for someone knowing what’s coming in the next few months.”

“I found a book entitled ‘Final Exit’. It’s a ‘how to’ guide for painless suicide. I had my wife read it, too. When things get a little bit worse, I’ll say goodbye to my friends and colleagues, and then you won’t see me anymore.”

“A bit extreme?”

“Not really. ALS is a horrible way to die. Eventually, you’re a vegetable with people doing things to keep you alive because we’re on autopilot. The world does not understand the concept of euthanasia. You’re inside but can’t communicate outward, and gradually and very slowly the rest of your body dies until you’re just alive in your brain suffering the remaining pain and you’re having trouble breathing. I’d probably scream continuously at that point but I wouldn’t have the ability. If somebody helps be die, they are put in jail for murder instead of given an award as a good Samaritan. No, self-deliverance is the way to go. I have several techniques that I’m lining up to try in case the first one doesn’t work. I don’t want to have things be messy for them, in any case. No gun shots, for instance.”

“Your family?”

“They’ve agreed to be away and we will have had our teary goodbyes before they leave. They understand my resolve on this. I figure in about three or four months, so you might put that in your timetable. The meds are extending things, but they don’t stop the progression, only slow it some and mitigate the symptoms. I’m starting to feel some of the pain, too.”

Phil now used a walker to get around. Everyone in the company knew that he was dying in a terrible way. He was driven to work, and seemed to hobble around with the small device. He also had a wheelchair at work that he’d started using around the office. His trips to the other offices or upstairs had stopped. He seemed to have to force his speech patterns occasionally. His limbs and shoulders displayed noticeable twitches now and then. The disease was winning the battle his body was fighting.

Phil had become a good friend and mentor to me. I still wasn’t sure that I deserved or had all the abilities to take over his business, but I was sure trying to please the nice man.

We’d found ten staff members that wanted to relocate to Sarasota and remain with the company. Their relocation was in process. That would bring the contingent in that city up into the teens.

Alice O’Rourke had found us office space in a building just off Interstate 75, so it was a fast commute from almost any direction. The quarters were nice and bright, even the interior offices overlooked a sunny atrium in the core of the building. Alice has set aside a nice corner office for me, so I had a view towards the east out one window and a view of the atrium out the other. I showed Phil pictures and a video of the site, and he approved.

Phil broke off our meeting early so he could ride home. He was fatigued and getting spastic as some of his meds wore off. Jean and I helped him out when his wife came with the car. I suggested to her that she might want to get a van with wheelchair access. She nodded grimly at me – a nice woman taxed to her limits with her husband’s terrible disease.

I made a call to Ralph Jenkins, the man in charge of Jenkin’s Networking in Durham, North Carolina. Jean was beside me to take notes and slip me a note if she saw something I was missing. After introducing myself and my affiliation, I bluntly asked whether he was interested in selling his company.

Jenkin’s response was, “How much?”

I knew we could put a deal together. After some talk, I booked an appointment to visit him the following week for a partial day. His response was, “Bring your checkbook.” He sounded almost eager to sell.

I had been of a mind to ingest the four companies that Kim suggested pretty much all at once, but she steered me well clear of that idea. She told me, “One at a time and small bites. Absorb and integrate, and then move on to the next.”

Ralph Jenkin’s business, stamped with his own name, was almost twice the size of Cyber Solutions, but one reason was that they also did a lot of wiring and cabling that CS didn’t do. His father had been an electrician and did a lot of the wiring for new buildings. When he retired, he passed that part of things on to his son, and sold off the rest. I was not interested in that part of the business either. It was easily separated out and sold separately.

Jenkin’s and I had a deal by the end of the day we spent together. I needed to do due diligence, but we had the fundamentals ironed out. He’d handle selling off the wiring part of his business since he knew the local competitors that might like to add on.

I flew back to SRQ that afternoon. I spent an hour with Kim outlining what we’d agreed. She was pleased, and pledged some of her own people to do the due diligence part of the purchase. We made a to-do list regarding the takeover, and suddenly I had my first major acquisition underway.

Seeing Jenkin’s and negotiating had been a huge stretch for me. Recall, that I went into tech because I wouldn’t have to deal with people, with confrontations, with arguments or deals, or with office politics. I’d confronted all of those and more in the course of the deal. I got a big boost in my self-confidence and wanted to do it again, but I knew I also had to work to integrate JN into CS – our abbreviations for Jenkin’s Networking into Cyber Solutions.

Kim and I made love. Maybe it was my reward, but she told me she’d found the man she knew I was: strong, able to deal and cope, and a powerhouse at negotiations.

I went back to my own house, and ended the evening with my wife and fiancée. We were loving and snuggly. I felt like a king.

I spent Friday at the Sarasota office. It seemed I was talking to Jean up in Atlanta every hour. I decided that I wanted some kind of video link that was always open with her. She liked that idea, and didn’t think it would be invasive. She took on setting that up, too.

We had a smaller party than a few weeks earlier the next night. I think there were about thirty-two people present. O.M.G., thirty-two! Ross and Cory barbecued. I had a nice talk with Elynn about evaluating a business. That was her specialty for my dad’s company.

Of course, I was distracted mightily because Elynn was nearly topless. Well, she was and wasn’t. She wore her bikini bottoms and a small leather vest but it was unbuttoned and the sides constantly swung open to reveal one or the other of her sexy knockers. The vest was an alluring addition to her wardrobe. I loved her breasts. I could stare at them for hours. They were more fun, however, to play with orally and by touch.

We progressed down that avenue eventually, and she was my first partner of the evening.

After dinner, Elynn suggested that the two of us swim. The standing ‘rule’ of the house was that swimming had to be naked – day or night. The exception was when workers were present or else somebody not in our group of sexual misfits.

Elynn and I went into the pool together, and I even used the stairs rather than careening out of control in a cannonball near the deep end. In the pool, we just started to make out and that led me to pick up her lithe but top-heavy body, set her on the edge of the pool, and to start to plunge my tongue into her velvet tunnel as I sucked up all her flavor molecules.

Elynn said very encouraging things. My favorites from her boiled down to a couple of imperatives: “Eat me” and “Fuck me”. I did both, verifying the details with her as I went along with questions: “Like this?” “Am I in the right place?” “Oh, you like that?”

Our nude bodies plunged into each other with abandon. She was without doubt the highlight of my day. Our kisses sizzled and crackled in the moist night air.

“In me,” she commanded. “In me, now!”

Standing in the shallows, I plunged into her with every millimeter I could deliver. Every bit was given with love. I felt her warmth surround me all over as her legs and arms pulled me ever deeper into her body, into her soul, and into her spirit. We were the epitome of love. We were love personified. There was no separation, we were one.

Somehow, we spent the whole evening together. Once was not enough for us.

Later, Crystal and Carol joined us in bed and we slumbered together.

I hadn’t been away from home on a weekend for ages, and certainly not since I’d fallen in love with Crystal and then Carol, and then the others. For the first time, I wasn’t ‘home’ and it was Saturday.

I was in the office – in Atlanta – finishing up a six-day work week, and I had plans to work on Sunday. Two of my staff had just left our meeting, and I had another meeting in an hour or so. It was fundamentally a regular business day even though it was Saturday.

I went down the hall to the Command Center, and watched as some of the staff monitored network traffic for our various clients. This was a far cry from hanging out in my one-man office in the Sarasota Business Center. I must have lost track of time. Jean found me and we walked back to my office together. She could tell that I was distracted.

Sunday, I’d drive up to Durham. Monday was the official passing of the baton from Jenkin’s to me. I’d have six other senior staff with me. We were changing the name of our new subsidiary, too. They were being absorbed into Cyber Solutions, so everyone would need to get used to the new name, new management, and even our culture. How could I help make fifty people feel better about what was about to happen in their lives?