But for Desmond it was impossible. Throughout his entire life he’d always been at the mercy of someone, or something, else. The fire. Orville. Silicon Valley. And now he wanted independence. Freedom. That meant money, and once he had it he believed he could sort his life out. Then he could answer Peyton’s questions, which haunted him more and more.
With each month, he saw the prospect of financial freedom slipping away. Four more companies he owned options in folded. SciNet’s rate of growth slowed. The initial rush was over; those storage closets full of old equipment had been cleaned out, and now the users were spending less per month. Management came up with several ideas: expanding to Europe and using the platform to help industrial companies buy and sell equipment. Both presented new challenges.
Then, in the summer of ’98, everything changed. A company Desmond owned options in went public. He only held 13,400 options, but they were worth $21 at the IPO price—which meant all told, they were worth a quarter of a million dollars.
He checked the stock price about a thousand times the day it debuted, fearing the worst—a crash or some freak accident. But just the opposite happened: the stock soared. By the end of the first day of trading, his options were worth $38.23 each. $512,282. The sum was nearly unimaginable to him. A fortune. Freedom.
He raced to Wallace’s office. The attorney connected him with an investment bank that would help him unload the options, ensuring the profits were taxed at long-term capital gains rates.
“Are you sure you want to sell all of it, Desmond?”
“I’m sure.”
Desmond had come up with a rubric for deciding whether to keep or sell a stock: if he was willing to buy the stock at its current price, he would keep it. Otherwise, he would sell. He wanted the cash.
The transaction went through the next day, netting him just over four hundred thousand dollars after taxes and fees.
He again sat in Wallace’s office.
“I need you to draw up some other agreements. Personal contracts.”
He told the man exactly what he wanted.
“She’ll have to sign them, Desmond.”
“I know. It won’t be a problem.”
“You’re a brilliant young man, but I think you’ve got a lot to learn about women.”
Desmond’s will was the easiest part. In classic Orville Hughes fashion, it read:
To Peyton Adelaide Shaw, I leave everything.
The other forms were a series of assignment agreements that gave Peyton ownership of half of all the options and securities he owned.
That night they celebrated the IPO with a dinner out. After dessert, Desmond showed her the will, which, to his surprise, sort of freaked her out.
“I just want you to be taken care of,” he said. “What if I fell over dead? Got hit by a car?”
“Don’t say that, Desmond.”
“It’s true. You’re all I’ve got, Peyton. You’re the only person in my life I’m really close to.”
“Really close to? Is that how you’d describe us?” She chugged the rest of her wine.
This conversation hadn’t gone the way he’d planned. He had thought she’d be relieved.
At her apartment, he showed her the assignment agreements that gave her half of all his stock and options.
“It’s what’s fair,” he said. “You saved me, Peyton—when I wanted to put it all in xTV. You introduced me to the first people I bought options from. You’ve been the only constant in my life since I’ve been in California. You practically supported me after xTV, kept me from starving. You’ve been my partner in this whole thing, and you should have half.”
She exploded. “Your partner? Is that what we are? Business associates? Is that all this is?”
“No, Peyton—”
“Then what are we?”
“What do you want from me?”
“You know exactly what I want.”
He did know. It wasn’t stock options or any written agreement. It was three words he couldn’t seem to say. After a few months she had stopped saying them, but he could tell when she wanted to. That hurt him too.
“Will you please sign them?” he said.
“Get out.”
“Peyton.”
“You heard me. And take all your… legal documents with you.”
Peyton didn’t return his calls or emails for two weeks. They were the longest weeks of Desmond’s life.
He also had problems at work. SciNet was nearly out of money. They arrived at a seemingly counterintuitive solution: go public. The IPO, if successful, would raise over fifty million dollars for the company. It would also make Desmond rich.
He watched in wonder as the finance department dressed up the books. Management asked him for endless reports, cutting and shuffling the data for the road show. There were all sorts of disclosures and disclaimers in the prospectus, verbiage about the risks to their business and things outside their control. But those dense sections weren’t what investors saw. They stared at the graphs on the projection screen that showed rapid growth and read the parts that described a company with massive profit potential.
SciNet entered its quiet period and waited. Every person in the company was on edge. To Desmond it felt like being trapped in a submarine at war, knowing there were mines floating everywhere in the water around them, the entire crew holding its breath, waiting to see if they would hit one and sink or if they would make it out, to freedom, as heroes.
Every day, Desmond wrote another email to Peyton.
When she didn’t reply, he camped out at her front door. He was nervous that the neighbors would call the police, but they must have had some sense of what was going on. They looked at him with sympathy as they passed. One guy said, “Good luck, buddy.”
When Peyton opened the door that morning, she tried to slam it in his face, but he held it open.
“Please, just talk to me.”
“You talk, I’ll listen.”
She stood in the living room, hands on her hips.
“I want you to try to imagine things from my perspective.”
She was a statue.