Sometimes you ask and you ask and you ask for a sign, for just a little hint this way or that, for a bolt flashing down from the sky, lighting the way in front of you, and you get nothing, not a blink, not even a firefly.
And sometimes, you get a goddamn burning bush.
Better yet, Charlie thought to himself as he stepped through the oversize double doors that led into a living room surrounded by plate glass windows looking out on a balcony big enough to sport what appeared to be an actual apple orchard—not potted plants, not some terraced bullshit with vines poking through latticework from IKEA or Pottery Barn, but a real live orchard, apples and all—forget the burning bush, why not a SoHo loft filled to the brim with European runway models.
Then again, to call this place a “loft” was a truly unimaginative use of the English language. If he couldn’t feel Voorhees a step behind him, practically pushing him through the threshold and down the short steps that led to the carpeted main level, Charlie would have thought he’d passed out in the short cab ride over from the Flatiron District, and had entered some sort of fugue state. Places like this weren’t supposed to exist, outside of the tabloids. Everything around him was just so damn glossy.
From those ridiculous windows to the furniture, all of it modern, curved, undulating, beneath recessed lighting beaming down from a ceiling that had to be twenty feet above his head. And the people, my god, the people. There had to be a hundred people in the place, and yet it wasn’t crowded, it was social. It was SoHo, the way SoHo was supposed to be when you read about it in a travel guide or watched it on Bravo; everyone was too tall and too thin and decked out in hip clothes that didn’t need designer labels to show that they came from boutiques where you drank champagne while you shopped.
“Now this is a party,” Charlie said as Voorhees moved next to him, taking it all in.
“It certainly is.”
Charlie could tell that Voorhees was holding himself back; to be fair, Voorhees was always holding himself back. He was smart like that. Even though he was only five years older than Charlie, he was already a real businessman, a gifted speaker and salesman. Roger Ver had introduced Voorhees to him; shortly after wiring that business-saving six-figure investment, Ver had told him that he had a perfect guy for Charlie to hire. Charlie had first responded—“I’m not going to hire some random guy from New Hampshire!”—but the minute they’d met at a tech event in New York, Charlie had been sold. Voorhees understood the macroissues, he was one of the smartest economic theorists Charlie had ever met and was as eloquent as he was tough, when professionally necessary.
Voorhees was never going to see the world the way Charlie saw the world, which was probably a good thing. He didn’t come from where Charlie came from, which was a lot farther than New Hampshire. Somebody had to keep them tethered to reality. Because at the moment, Charlie was lifting off, and damn it felt good.
“Our hosts,” Voorhees said, pointing through the crowd.
And there they were again, like something out of Greek mythology. One was over by the fully staffed bar, talking to a guy with a goatee and dreadlocks, and a few feet away, Tyler, or maybe it was Cameron, who the hell could tell, was sitting on one of the leather banquettes, next to a brunette in a silvery cocktail dress that started halfway up her thighs and ended well before it should have. The woman’s skin was so pale and shiny and porcelain she couldn’t possibly be real, she had to be some sort of marionette that had escaped its strings.
But then Cameron, or Tyler, or Cameron, was waving Charlie over and saying something in the woman’s ear, and she was smiling, actually smiling, and patting the banquette next to her. She was real, and she seemed to want to talk to Charlie.
He started across the carpet, doing his best not to run into any of the obstacles that seemed to suddenly be appearing out of nowhere. A huge, plastic chair shaped like an open palm, fingers reaching out at him, trying to grab him. A pair of waitresses, in what looked to be black-and-white French maid outfits, pendant curves billowing up out of leather bustiers, threatening to smother Charlie as he moved. A B-list cable television star, offering up a funny-looking cigarette, beckoning him to stop, to pause, to slow.
Truth be told, Charlie was already way too drunk. Not buzzed, he’d passed buzzed hours ago, somewhere between the short walk from the BitInstant offices, where he and the twins had met earlier that afternoon, for a second time, pregaming in a group circle with NEFT vodka shots, to Tyler and Cameron’s still-under-construction headquarters, where the twins had offered up a guided tour. Though it was still a hard-hat site, an open jungle gym of Sheetrock, wooden beams, and plaster dust, the scale of the place was hard to ignore. Five thousand square feet looked like the Taj Mahal to Charlie, who had grown up in rooms where he could usually touch two walls at the same time. No doubt Winklevoss Capital was supposed to make an impression. Say what you wanted about the twins, but above all else, Tyler and Cameron made an impression.
“Charlie,” whichever twin was on the banquette said, reaching to a sleek, Nordic-designed table and retrieving two champagne glasses, “meet Anya. She’s from Bulgaria. And she wants to hear all about Bitcoin.”
Charlie stuttered out some sort of hello, then took a deep sip of the champagne.
“It’s the future of money,” he finally managed, and the girl laughed. Then she launched into a story about the last time she was in Paris, for fashion week, and wanted this pair of shoes, but all she’d had was Bulgarian cash, and anyway, who wanted to calculate the exchange rate between a lev and a euro, and was Charlie going to do something about that? And then she laughed again, and Charlie realized this woman was actually interested in him.
“This is incredible,” Charlie said, realizing a second too late that the words weren’t just in his head. The twin laughed.
“No, this is a Saturday night. The really good parties are all midweek. But I think we can salvage something. It’s not even eleven yet, and we’ve got a couple more stops to make.”
He reached back to the elegant table and grabbed a bottle of Dom Perignon, then leaned toward Charlie’s glass, topping it off, doing the same for the Bulgarian beauty between them.
“Buckle up, guys. The night’s just getting started.”
Three hours later, Charlie was steadying himself against the back wall of a speakeasy in the East Village, focusing on the shot glass full of rum that had somehow found its way into his other hand. Next to him, Cameron—now he was sure it was Cameron, because that had to be Tyler over by the jukebox, talking to a phenomenal-looking blonde whom Charlie was pretty sure was either Tyler’s current girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, or soon to be girlfriend—was telling a story about the Olympic Village in Beijing, something that had to do with a South American rowing team, a Russian boxer, and a bout of food poisoning—but Charlie was having a hell of a time keeping everything clear. Not only because the shot was at least his third since they’d found their way into the hidden bar, through a door at the back of a loading dock, but also because the Bulgarian model was still with him, just a few feet away, dancing with two of her friends who had been with her in Paris that time she couldn’t get those goddamn shoes. And every now and then, when she wasn’t pressing her body up against one of her friends, she was smiling at Charlie.
Voorhees was never going to believe that things were going as well as they were. Voorhees had tapped out an hour earlier, cornering Charlie on his way out, telling him not to make any decisions until they were back at the office on Monday. Charlie knew that Voorhees had some reservations about taking the twins’ money. He was impressed by them, and much preferred them to the Silicon Valley establishment, but they still weren’t Bitcoiners, at least not yet. It was one thing to teach them about Bitcoin and encourage them to invest in the ecosystem, but it was an entirely different thing to get into bed with them by taking their money.
Ver, on the other hand, was much more adamant. Since Azar had first advanced the idea of the Winklevoss twins getting involved, Ver had voiced his reservations: he had told Charlie that the Winklevoss twins didn’t share the same vision that he, Charlie, and Voorhees did for BitInstant. As Ver put it—these were guys who loved to sue people who didn’t see eye to eye with them. Plus, BitInstant didn’t need their money, business was doing great, they didn’t need any more cooks in the kitchen.
A recent Skype call with Ver over the twins had actually gotten heated, the first real disagreement Charlie had ever had with his initial investor. Ver had argued that dealing with the twins could only complicate things for them. But Charlie had dug in his heels. He agreed with Azar on this issue, that the Winklevoss twins were just the kind of jet fuel that BitInstant, and also Bitcoin, needed right now. Ultimately it was Charlie’s company, and Ver had no choice but to concede.
Charlie believed that Ver was reflexively against the Winklevoss twins because of where they came from, what they represented, or what he thought they represented—the Establishment. But Charlie had now actually met them in person and spent time with them—unlike Ver, whose only impression of them came from a movie. Despite what they looked like, underneath they were fiery and determined. What else had driven them to the Olympics, to all of their accomplishments? Regardless of how they might have appeared, they had something to prove. To themselves, and to the world.
Ver was unbending in his views, almost combative toward anyone or anything that was in conflict with them. Erik Voorhees might have some offbeat opinions, but Ver’s strain of libertarianism was on another level. Charlie thought it came from a good place—Ver truly believed that free markets would bring the highest standard of living and the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people—but it made him, and to a lesser extent Voorhees, see governments, states, borders, and regulation as something to fight. And as far as Ver was concerned, the Winklevoss twins, celluloid “Men of Harvard,” were the Establishment’s wet dream.
Charlie wasn’t an ideologue. He was just trying to scratch his way out of his mom’s basement. He respected Ver’s and Voorhees’s minds, but he believed ideology was something you had time for after you’d made it, not before.
He smiled back at the Bulgarian model. Shit, she had to be half a foot taller than him, and she had that skin, and that majestic, wavy, jet-black hair, and that silvery dress, hugging the angles of her body like the skintight scales of some sort of magical fish, and … damn, he was drunk, really, really, really drunk.
And suddenly he was on the move, right past Cameron (or Tyler?) and then past Tyler (or was that Cameron?), and then down a long, narrow hallway that led to a wooden door with a picture of a sombrero. He’d almost made it past the urinals to the stall when he vomited, right on his sneakers.
When he finally got control of himself, recovered enough to make it to the pair of metal sinks across from the urinals, he realized he was grinning. Drunk as he was, he was happier than he’d ever been. Voorhees could have all the reservations he wanted, and Ver could flat-out disagree, but Charlie knew that his decision was already made.
He ducked his face under the faucet and let the cold water put life back into his cheeks. He’d just thrown up on his shoes, but he wasn’t going to let that slow him down.