THE SECRET LIFE OF LILITH III
By Colette Dumas
Last we left off, my boss, Charles Koch had sent me to a Wichita Thunder Game—I took my best friend Nina, the Thunder won their opener in a shootout, which is a big deal in hockey and sitting behind me was the man I’ve been fantasizing about ever since. And now the boss is walking toward my office, no doubt to see if going to my first hockey game stimulated my cognitive abilities in some new way and of course, I can’t explain that it did, because the only thing my 180 IQ points can focus on is the guy, older, handsome, powerful shoulders that I want to sink my hands into, before running my nails down his back when he’s on top of me.
“Lilith are you there?”
This jolted me back to the moment. “Yes Mr. Koch, I was just contemplating an alternative horizontal reality.”
“You’re perspiring.”
“Sorry Mr. Koch, it was a very intense internal dialogue.”
The boss sat down in one of the two chairs in front of my desk and crossed his legs. “I heard that it was a heck of game the other night—did you enjoy it?”
I nodded and smiled like an idiot, schoolgirl who is dying to tell her mom and dad about a boy. “It was an incredibly stimulating experience, I’m definitely going to their next home game!”
Charles nodded his approval. “I thought you might enjoy it, frankly I didn’t think you would become a fan so quickly, but since you have, please feel free to use our box at the arena.”
I shook my head. “Actually, I was wondering if I could sit in the same seats for their next game…”
He made the gesture that he makes with his right hand. It’s a slight half wave—clockwise, that means it’s a done deal. “Done deal Lilith, we keep those tickets all year round, for folks who like to be close to the action…Lilith, I’ve always found new experiences to be a great source of inspiration, especially with respect to growing Koch Industries, I want you to take a moment and think, think about hockey and tell me how it makes us a billion dollars.”
Oh f##k is what I thought to myself, but of course I couldn’t utter this out loud to Charles Koch, my boss, engineering genius and world’s wealthiest man, nope, that was not going to do…And then the power of Charles possessed me. By possessed, I’m talking about the kind of thing they say happened in Salem—I just started speaking words, with NO idea where they were coming from.
“We’re going to show Elon Musk how people who know how to build things build a hyperloop! They’re going to use vacuums and magnets with cylindrical shaped pods, we’re going to use highly insulated liquid nitrogen tubes and a transport vehicle shaped like a puck. They’ll never get the Department of Transportation to give them routes, without spending years in community meetings and studies, we’re going to build our hyperloop right on top of our already existing thirty-six-thousand miles of pipeline…”
Charles doesn’t do long meetings, basically you have a paragraph of spoken language to get the most advanced concepts known to man across to him.
“I like it Lilith,” he said standing up out of the chair. “Get research and development going on it by the end of the week.”
“Yes, Mr. Koch.” I exhaled for a few seconds as he turned and walked out of my office. I have absolutely NO idea how I’m going to explain this to the folks in R and D, I’m sure the chemistry guys will figure out how to keep the liquid nitrogen from rapidly vaporizing—when this happens an incredible amount of energy is released do to a liquid to gas expansion ratio of 1:694 at 20 C. I’ll definitely need to design some kind of pressure relief valve just in case…What am I going to wear to the Thunder game this week? I can’t accidentally, yet intentionally run into Mr. Maybe Right wearing the same outfit that I wore at the opener.
Okay, the phone is ringing; we’re going to have to do the real-time to past tense back to real-time maneuver.
“Hey Nina, what’s going on?”
“The usual, just trying to establish a baseline on DNA repair characteristics, which seem to have no correlation from one species to another.”
“Well at least you know that DNA has the ability to repair itself—didn’t know that a few years ago.”
“That’s true…You ever look at the genome of the bowhead whale?”
“Not recently.” I said this sarcastically, but Nina missed it.
“They weigh a hundred tons and live to be two-hundred-years-old, you’d think with that much physical mass they’d be much more prone to cell mutation…”
“Nina, not to interrupt you, but besides my normally incredible work load, I inadvertently told my boss that I knew how to build a hyperloop better than Elon Musk.”
“You what? Are you crazy? What the f##k were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t, I was thinking about the guy from the hockey game and the boss walked in and asked me for the next billion dollar idea.”
“And you came up with going into competition with Elon Musk, the guy who is doing space better than NASA, that guy?”
“I know…Hey are you into the new Vera Bradley look?”
“I hate to admit it, but I like the whole reimagined inside out evolution thing they’ve got going on. I just don’t know if bags are back this year.”
“I don’t even care, I want the cross body in buffalo check.”
“That’s totally your look. Pick me up after work?”
“Yep.”
“What are you going to wear to your gig tonight?”
I had forgotten all about the gig. “Oh wow, I forgot about the gig!”
“You’re playing with Goat Rodeo, nobody forgets that, what’s wrong with you?”
“It’s this guy, he’s short circuited my brain. Listen, I’m going to finish up my work, pick you up, buy that bag and then we’ll go to my place and you can help me pick out what I’m going to wear tonight.”
“Okay, see you in a bit.”
I hung up the phone and glanced down at my Clare V- Simple Tote, which I bought from KCM, it’s my go to, go to work bag. I wanted to laugh out loud, Kasey, of KCM is the type of girl that would rather be gored by a bull than carry Vera Bradley, but that’s the great thing about living a multiplicity of lives, as I do—I need a look for every occasion. By the way, girls stop me all of the time and ask me where I bought the Tote from, you can get it at www.kcmboutique.com
Until next time, shop well my friends, shop well.
