Chocolate Umbrella

Chapter 12 - Chocolate Umbrella

CHAPTER 12

June 2006

Emile could not believe such a reputable airline could mess up so badly.  He only wanted to fly home from Las Vegas, which should have been a few hours of flight.  But a few mechanical problems in the aircraft followed by a few human errors in the airline crew, he found himself still sitting inside an aircraft on the runway, waiting to take off from Chicago O’Hara airport, ten hours after he left Las Vegas.

Lately, he had been traveling far more than usual.  Just couple of weeks ago, he presented his latest innovations in JavaOne, a very popular tech conference in San Francisco.  Early last week, he met with one of the world most prestigious entertainment companies in Florida, helping the sales team to close the deal.   Just before the weekend, he went to Silicon Valley and met with a couple other clients with Pierre.  And yesterday, he finished another mobile technology conference in Las Vegas.  

Yesterday seemed so long ago.  He was supposed to be home now!  "Oh please!  Just fix all the problems and take off, stupid aircraft!"  He had stuck in this seat, all buckled up, on this runway for more than an hour now.  He was very frustrated by this adventure he had in the last ten hours. He started off in Las Vegas, supposed to take a connecting flight in Denver, but ended up in San Francisco.  The crew then told him that he needed to catch a connecting flight in Los Angeles and then after a couple hours of waiting in the airport, he was told to go to Chicago.  Although the crew did handle it professionally throughout the fiasco, it was still very frustrating.  He needed something to distract him.  He looked around and everyone sitting around was reading something. Some were reading a book, some were reading a stack of paper, probably some sort of office document, and some were reading the newspaper distributed by the airline crew earlier. But he did not have anything to read. He could not even boot up his laptop as the plane was about to take off. He looked at the airline magazine which was neatly placed in the seat pocket in front of him.  He did not want to read it anymore. He could almost recite the whole thing, after reading the different copies, but the same issue on the last three aircrafts he flew on.  

He closed his eyes.  Perhaps he could catch some rest.  But he could not.  Something was bugging him since he left the office a few days ago.  It was the fund raising effort.  In the beginning of the process, he was always informed about the progress. He was asked to revise the presentations numerous times based on the feedback from the prospective investors. He was totally aware of what was going on until last few weeks. Ryan and Marcus were hiding something from him and that, he was sure.  Just days before he left for this trip to Las Vegas, Ryan and Marcus had been meeting with Jim, the Chief Financial Officer, very frequently.  But Emile was not offered any update or progress of the effort.  And when he asked about the progress, they looked very uncomfortable with his inquiry as if they did not want to tell him anything.  He tried to convince himself that the meetings they had with Jim might just be number discussions, in which they needed the Chief Financial Officer rather than the Chief Technical Officer.  But he was not convinced.  His instinct was telling him something was suspicious.  As Alena described it, a storm was forming and he better put on his rain coat.  Well heck, he had no rain coat to fend it if it were to come.

He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes.  He no longer had any energy to play these mind games with them.  He had two very young kids and a dying father.  His dying father! He had not seen him for a few days now and he missed him very much. Business travels never bothered him before. But as Mark's life was coming to the end, he wished he could be in town a lot more often.  Dr. Chan had already suggested that he should be admitted into Palliative Care and all treatment was ceased.  How much more time would he still have with him?  This thought almost suffocated Emile right there.  He desperately needed something to take his mind off all these problems.  He pulled out his cell phone and played a few games that his team was working on for the clients.