Michael's calm

Garbed in a spotless white robe, Michael stands with his head hunched over like a hook, his eyes concentrated on Today´s newspapers. They travel across the words rather quickly until they get to the last letter.

Almost immediately, he closes the pages and snickers when the amusing headline catches his eyes again.

Who would have known that the seemingly unruffled red head had so much energy locked up within?

Interesting.

As is his ritual, he abandons the papers on the marbled desk and moves towards the door secluding his workspace. Just at the door, he stops and feels around his robe. Ay! His hands come up empty and he scoffs.

Bathrobes do not have pockets. If there are robes out there with one, that is highly wrong. He turns back to see the device lying on the white sheets.

He looks at the door and back again with his forehead creased. He doesn't need the device, does he?

In his workspace, he scans the white sticker notes pasted on the big blackboard on the wall and gives an encompassing look at the pristine environment, compared to the bedroom beside it.

Lazily, he slides into the only chair in the small room - and makes a phone call.

"Blue…" He pauses after he and the sultry voice speak at the same time. "Yes. Good morning to you." He stretches and partially stifles a yawn with his hand.

"Report."

An hour later, he ends the call and studies the new notes he has added to his portfolio.

Remnants of sleep still remain in his eyes and he sticks to blaming his assistant's serene voice for that.

Yawning again, the next thing in his routine is to spend an hour in the gym. Being a man who brushes his teeth every day at the same time, is under the sheets too at the same exact time; this scheduled hour is not skippable.

In the gym, he oohs, ahhs, hmphs and harrumphs his muscles out before a mirror, yet still managing to train his eyes on his face.

His noises gets louder. Abruptly, he stops and drops the dumbbell, looking so dissatisfied.

At that moment, he makes the decision of visiting a spa before his next schedule at 2 pm. Luckily, today's routine can allow for excesses.

Summer will end in a matter of week. This is what he ponders as he steps out of his billion dollar mansion by eleven am. The air smells less sweeter and the heat scalds less.

The staffs in the spa greet Michael too warmly on his arrival and the prettiest women rush to attend to him in a flurry of blood-lipped courtesies and sticky smiles.

Heaven, at least.

After what can be deemed as the coziest session ever had yet, he emerges looking sharper. His hair trimmed on the sides and his signature wavy hair made more prominent by skilled hands. The line cutting across his left eyebrow is cleaner as well and his facial hair is now better to look at.

There is a strut to his walk, his shoulder squared and his head held high as always.

The devilishly handsome man.

He sees it in the awe of the ladies, the turn of heads in recognition and revels in the admiration. Well-fed.

A driver picks him up from there and transports him to the venue of his meeting with Sanders.

Another pretty lady is there for him as an usher which lifts the corner of his lips in an arrogant smirk. This is nothing. Just one of the blessings that this path of life had given him – countless pretty things to look at.

He meets his assistant talking to a ratchet -looking man and her features tenses as she sees him. Odd.

"Sir," Blue gushes as if she has just run a race.

"Yes," he answers his assistant and gives her a once-over. She opens her mouth and closes it.

"Is there a problem?" He prompts with a raised eyebrow.

"Ah… Not really. It's just that…" She trails off and throws a cautious glance to the huge brown door before her.

"David Sanders is not here yet."

Oh. And there is this other thing, he despises lateness.

A calm, perfunctory smile from him eases Blue Alton a little. "I am a bit ahead of time, though. He still has all the time to show up and I am sure he will be here before we know it." Michael purposely meets the stare at of the ratchet who bows quickly in greeting.

"Hmm." It's all he can do at the moment as he makes for the door. He better be right .

The space he walks into is a conference room. It has a clean scent. A sense of dejavu stirs at the back of his mind.The room is just as he remembers.

A projector on the far opposite of where he stands. Two brown ornate vases of unidentifiable plants by the opposite corners of the room, bright squared overhead white lights and the soft whirrs of A.C. Black, swiveling chairs; and a long brown table, with black squares cut across it.

All these, yet so dull like a rehabilitation space.

What happened to an office?

Am I that much of a threat?

Forty minutes later and Sanders shows up damn well late, and much to Michael's chagrin. If this isn't Michael at the receiving end of the bargain, there would have been an instant reschedule.

You are lucky.

"Michael Gild!" David greets in a familiar booming voice that raises goosebumps.

"David Sanders." He takes the palm offered to him. It feels smooth but damp so he resists from shaking it with much energy. Gross.

"My pleasure to have you here," David says and just as he thinks that the handshake will never end, David releases his grip. Thank goodness.

"It is a pleasure to be here too."

What becomes even more shocking is when Sanders does not apologize for his lateness.

Before Michael decides on what to do, David rings a bell.

"Are the documents with you?" Michael resigns to ask.

"Of course. Why would we be here then?" Sanders´ voice still booms. There must be a speaker lodged in his voice box.

A knock is heard and the ratchet guy from earlier comes in bearing a suitcase. He props it on the table and leaves without a word.

David slides the suitcase towards him without crosschecking.

Imprudence.

He takes it, pops the confidential tag open and inhales the whiff of freshly printed paper.

"Perfect," he comments after going through it carefully.

Michael drafts a mental note to thank Simeon Walton for his magnanimous gesture to him and to thank Anderson for connecting him to the man in the first place.

"Thank you."

David, in this case has just been an easy means of transportation of the crucial files as circumstances pitifully allowed and is only handing it to him in person to honour his high status. He can feel David´s curious eyes on him though. Probably trying to guess what papers he could be looking at.

"Have all your shares been accumulated?" David inquires, a sly look in his big eyes.

Yes. These are the last batches, thanks to Simeon. But, he answers curtly, "quite."

It is no information that David has had his shares long prepared for the journey ahead. However, Michael dares not view him as a contender.

Not in the least. The man whose suit is barely holding him together just does not have what it takes and seems not have learnt his lesson yet.

"Melanie and Loreen are vying for your throne," David clucks like he too does not have his eyes on it.

"So, I heard." He had gotten an edge over Loreen the day before. Melanie James is distant from him, tucked in New York.

Fortunately for her.

"Those women think that they stand a chance," David continues.

Michael focuses.

"Their place is in the kitchen."

A pause. David is that kind of man. "Is that where your wife is?"

"That is her place."

Poor woman. It is a pity that he has no time to play defense, still silently mourning a non-existent apology for lateness.

"We will see about it." Those women could win, but not when he still exists.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't feel like you're going to burst that suit," Michael says.

"What?"

His teeth flash in a bright, quick smile and Michael gets to his feet. "I have other things to attend to. Permit me to take my leave. Nice doing business with you, David Sanders."

David nods wryly. "Black man power to you." He feigns innocence as Michael grits his teeth.

Not too smoothly, he manages to get on his feet and only then does he reply, "Nice doing business with you, Michael Gild."

Uncomfortably, Michael registers the sound echo and bounce off the walls. If he punches this hippo, people might hear easily.

He is in high and low spirits as he exits the building with Blue. But what he does not expect is the paparazzi flocked outside. That he is here is privy information. Who had given his location away?

In question, he turns to Blue. She manages a nervous but sympathetic smile and looks away. His jaw tenses and releases. There is nothing that can be done anyway but to face the onslaught of questions.

"There is a glitch in line two," Alfred, the manager of his telecommunications branch reports less than two minutes from his settlement in his office.

"For how long?"

"Ten minutes now."

Michael winces. Time costs money.

"Have you alerted the diagnostics team?"

"Yes. I have. But the baby is proving to be a hard nut to pull out." Both chuckle at the joke and they converse a bit after that.

"Keep me pasted," Michael dismisses him eventually.

While he starts the computer, his mind strays to the account on renovative ideas for his newest petroleum refinery in Texas.

It strays to the deal he has to strike before weekend and wanders somewhere else the next second.

"Slow down," he chides himself quietly and promptly gets to work.