Books : The CEO : Excerpts

You head to your desk to sift through your messages. So many people have called to wish you the best, half of whom, you suspect, are hoping to be included in your newfound fortune.

Your cousin Pete, who used to own a chop shop in Milwaukee, wants you to come visit after all these years. Todd Toomie from UVA wants you to be the godfather to his unborn son. You guess he forgot that he tried to sleep with your wife six years ago. The pastor from your childhood town's parish wants your input on a bake sale to raise money for a new altar. You guess he forgot why you left the church in the first place.

Tyree Stubbs called you as well. Tyree plays basketball for the Los Angeles Terminators. He's the most dominating power forward under six feet in the history of the NBA and has led his team to three consecutive championships. Tyree also moonlights as a major rap star in the off-season and goes by the alias Three Point. His first album, "In Da Paint," was an enormous crossover hit, appealing to all races and both sexes. He is a notorious playboy and consummate bachelor, claiming to have had sex with fifteen thousand women and counting. Tyree wears Silk Armor exclusively, and you've created the "Stubby" line for Fleece, which is popular among inner-city youth. You met Tyree at the Seventh on Sixth Fashion Show and hit it off immediately. Ever since then, every time you get a call from him, it's either about an exclusive party, seats on the floor at a Knicks game, or backstage passes for bands and rappers of which you've never heard, but for whom your teenage daughter, Apple, goes crazy.

The last message is so out of the blue that you feel a hot rush of blood fill your face.

Go to page 149.

You and Aaron Rampstein met in 1968 late one night in the textile studios of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. You were trying to finish a mock-up of a hunting sweater that was completely waterproof, and Aaron was building military fatigues that were lightweight but could withstand postnuclear radiation. Both of your projects were due the next morning.

At one point you grew frustrated when you couldn't apply the green dye to the sweater because it was waterproof, and you started cutting up the whole thing.

Aaron came to your aid and said in a very calm voice, "Chill, man. Don't throw the weed out with the bong water. Patience, above all else, is the designer's tool."

He was right. After you both shared a joint, he even offered to help you work on your project. Aaron pointed out that you have to dye the fabric before applying the polymer cross-stitch. Regaining your composure, you worked right till dawn and the sweater looked great. It was raining outside, and Aaron put on the sweater to try it out. Standing in the rain for fifteen minutes, he came back in soaked to the bone everywhere but where the sweater covered him.

You got an A. Aaron got an F for not getting his project in before the semester ended -- because he was helping you. Over some beers you both laughed about the grades, and Aaron told you that he couldn't "give a shit" about grades or fashion or anything. "Anyway," he confessed with a mixture of anticipation and dread, "I just got drafted, so I guess the F doesn't matter anyway. I'm going down to Biloxi for basic training next week."

You wrote letters, but after a time he stopped responding. You figured he was too busy getting shot at to write to you. Or, more likely, he'd been killed. You often thought of him as you moved ahead with your life. You worked for the next ten years dividing your time dabbling in the downtown art scene and rubbing elbows with the marketing mavens of Madison Avenue. You worked your way up the ladder as a competent designer of outdoor wear, all the while keeping the swatch of dyed fabric that Aaron had helped you create that late night in the studio.

In 1982 you founded Fleece Industries -- the "Home of the Outdoorsman." In all your early speeches to employees and in any interviews in the smaller fashion trade magazines, you made a point of mentioning Aaron and how fortunate you were to meet him that fateful night, and how sad it was to lose a "friend" and "real American hero" in Vietnam. But as your team of textile engineers worked off the swatch to create the ultimate in protective fashion, getting closer and closer to perfecting its reliability against water, wind, fire, and bullets, the less and less you would mention Aaron's name. Finally, when you broke through with Silk Armor in 1999, you secretly hoped that Aaron had indeed perished in some rice paddy in Asia.

But the dead don't make phone calls. Aaron Rampstein is back, and you know that after all these years, he's not calling to congratulate you.

Do you put Aaron out of your mind and return Stubby's call?
Whatever Rampstein wants, it can wait another thirty years. Go to page 36.

Or do you return Rampstein's call? After all, you do owe
him something for your good fortune. Go to page 156.