Client Operations Director Aloysius Wade opened the unmarked door to the company’s inner sanctum. The result of opening the door always took him by surprise. The outside of the door was plain, but surprisingly imposing at the end of a short, bare hallway. There was no secretary. Wade smiled to himself. Most people did not know that the tradition of having a secretary was an American invention of the early 20th century. Inside, the office of company CEO Erik Hansen was surprisingly sumptuous. Luscious maroon carpet harvested from dozens of Berbers covered the bare floor upon which Wade’s loafers tread lightly. Every inch of wall space was occupied by tall shelves of books ranging from All The President’s Men to The Tipping Point to The Prince, an Italian Renaissance-era treatise on how to effectively rule a dictatorship.

The room was dominated by a massive teak desk handcrafted from the wreck of a nineteenth-century clipper ship, the HMS Indomitable. CEO Hansen, a slim, spare man with the salty, patrician air of a yacht captain, surveyed his company from behind this desk as the captain of the Indomitable might once have surveyed the open sea. He was wearing his typical office attire, a Brooks Brothers navy blue blazer, tailored button-down Oxford shirt, and jeans. His gray hair always looked windblown despite careful styling. He smiled an easy smile, his shockingly warm yet sometimes icy blue eyes greeting his trusted friend. “Come on in, Wade.”

I hope I’ve gotten that out of my system now.

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