Poor Darren Brown

25 years old

Darren Brown opened the last box and took out its contents, organizing his stuff around his-brand new corner office. It was located on one of the top floors of Brown Inc. building and faced west. His father let him choose it and, even if most people would have opted for a room on the east side, to enjoy the morning natural light, Darren hadn’t: there was no point when he rarely got up before noon.

He placed the last item, a small cactus, on the side of the computer’s screen. He’d been keeping a succulent nearby each of his computers ever since his mom got him one, after his father bought him his first pc, when he had still been in elementary school. She used to say that cacti absorbed the radiations and, even after she had abandoned him so many years before, Darren still kept succulents.

Darren’s new boss or rather the employee his father paid to babysit him, knocked on the door and entered the room with a fake smile plastered on his face, welcoming him and explaining what his job was: nothing too complicated, he had just to approve and sign the main projects and then attend and “organize” public events and fund raisers for the company. Mostly he was going to represent the company’s public image. Darren only pretended to listen, not even in a very convincing way. He wasn’t surprised that his father hadn’t bothered coming in person to welcome his only son in the family business; the old bat rarely left his office, located on the very top floor of the building and furnished like a real home. It wasn’t uncommon that he worked so late at night, he ended up just sleeping there, too, which had also been one of the many reasons his wife ran away, when Darren had been fifteen. She couldn’t take it anymore, to always come second and to be left alone in their silent penthouse. Her husband even deprived her of their only son’s presence, sending him to the same boarding school he and generations of Browns had attended before.

If the old man had even a pool table in his giant office, his son had furnished his own in a much more spartan style: he just added a personal mini bar fridge, to keep his booze and used a nail the prior occuper planted on a wall, to hang a a picture of his drinking buddies and that was the only one in the office. Unlike his father, Darren had no interest in spending there more time than what had been strictly necessay or required by contract. He had a brand-new, sexy wife, waiting for him at home.

Coralyn had been Darren’s more or less serious girlfriend during all the four university years. While he struggled to pass business school, she had majored successfully in communication or something like that, Darren wasn’t sure; he only had noticed that the most of her professors had been men.

Cora was blond, beautiful and came from a rich family, her parents hadn’t wanted her to work and Darren’s father pressured him to get married, in order to appear as a respectable, serious man and get into the family business. It had been a perfect match.

Even though Darren had to admit that his life had then been easy and well-heeled, free of distresses of any kind or particular responsibilities, at times, when he was too drunk or not drunk enough, he still wondered how it would have been, if he had been free to follow his own inclinations. Both in middle and high school he had enjoyed working in the school’s paper, writing pretty argute articles about the social hierarchy in that environment. He had been good enough that an impressed teacher personally reached out to the kid’s parents, sending them their son’s pieces and mentioning a bright future as a writer. That had been the first time Darren had seen his father truly furious: he told him that he wouldn’t have standed the presence of a blockhead-journalist under his roof: journalists were the scum who tried to put Brown’s Inc. in a bad light because of their supposed lack of interest in using sustainable resources and other idioticities alike. Young Darren wisely decided not to highlight the fact that, technically, he hadn’t been living under his father’s roof, yet he had felt ashamed and disappointed enough to leave the paper and never write anything again.

So, Darren waited patiently for his boss, Mr. Stovinsky or something like that to be done talking, nodding now and then when it seemed appropriate, then shook his head when he asked if there were any questions. The young man knew that no matter what he did or didn’t do, nobody could fire the president’s son and his father would not tollerate such a humiliation.

He offered the employee a careless smile, then stood and opened the door for him, forcing the man to leave quickly. Before Darren closed the door again, he sent an appreciative look to the secretary. She must have been a few years older than him and she smiled back, with her seductive, fiery red lips to match her hair. Working there became a much more interesting prospective.

Once Darren found himself alone again, he went to the mini bar, fixed himself a drink and, after going back to the desk, he opened his Netflix account, putting his feet on the table.

Just before resuming an episod of House of Cards. Darren checked his phone. His wife sent him a message, telling him she was done with the gym and she was heading to the spa with the girls, to get their nails done. She’d be back around seven P.M., the chef made seabass for dinner. He counted the hours he would have to spend at work before leaving, without giving the impression of having done nothing. A few more, then he could go home, screwing Cora.

Halfway through the episode, the door opened again, without any knocking and two men around Darren’s age entered like it was their own place. Alexander Harrington III, the tall, pleasant-looking eldest son of a prestigious, international company CEO and his first wife, a Broadway actress, positioned his butt directly on Darren’s desk, half on a pile of supposedly important documents and greated him with a “Yo, bro!” While Kai Casterville-Song moved to the window, studing the view of New York’s other skyscrapers, before nodding his approval. Kai’s mother’s side of the family was half Japanese and his father was the founder of a trade company that cured the diffusion of Asian products in the U.S.. The Asian influence was evident in both Kai’s jet-black hair and almond-shaped blue eyes and his graceful manners; he spoke many languages and was the most fascinating of the three friends. While Alex came from a similar family situation as Darren’s and was involved in the PR of his father’s company, organizing expensive parties and eccentric events all the time, Kai had always been a little rebellious and, while still working as well in the family business, there were times that he’d still disappear for weeks, leaving for a solo adventure, surfing in Hawaii, exploring some cave, or climbing a mountain. Once he even retired in a monastry in Tibet without telling anyone. Though his parents never supported any of his initiatives, they aslo desisted in trying to stop him, as it was pointless. Darren envied both Kai’s free spirit and Alexander’s complete carelessness and lack of any inhibition: he was the kind of person who truly doesn’t give a damn about what anyone might think of him.

Darren paused the episode and fixed his buddies a drink; Alex insisted they’d go for a real drink, made by a really hot bartender and Darren’s eyes fell on the clock once more, though the hand had only moved halfway through the dial since the last time he checked the time. Surprising even himself, he turned down the invitation: his father wanted him present at some meeting in the morning and he really didn’t want to be told off by the old bat for leaving early on his first day.

Also Coralyn was waiting for him at home, something he was looking forward to, he admitted with a smirk, she’d been taking yoga classes, lateley and became more flexible too.

Both the other men laughed and bumped their fists with Darrens; Alex added some crude comment, causing more hilarity. He also added to bring her to his next party at the inauguration of a new artist’s gallery in SoHo, or some shit he’d been oranizing: there were going to be lots of drinks and even a few famous models; Darren should have brought his new wifey, though. It was the right occasion to show her off in front of their other fellows.

Kai extended the invitation to spend the rest of the week at his house in Cabo: the weather was going to be perfect for surfing.

Darren considered that, even if there was some company meeting scheduled for the weekend, technically, it was out of his office hours and his father could easily afford for Stovinsky working overtime, so he similed and accepted both proposals. Maybe “working” there wasn’t going to be bad, after all; not if he could only took part to the entertaining events and let his father’s minions handle the rest. He wouldn’t have to ever worry about his carreer and he could enjoy whatever he wanted that money could buy.

Darren Brown thought that his life couldn’t have been more perfect.