Free The Underwriting by Michelle Miller

asked.
    â€œGamefication,” Nick explained. “It’s big in Silicon Valley right now. Basically, turning regular tasks, like taking taxis or grocery shopping or walking through your office, into games where you collect points.” He checked his phone. “I just got two points for that one.” He lifted the device to show Todd his score. “People love it!”
    â€œWhat happens if you’re bad at math?” Tara asked.
    Nick smirked. “We don’t really have that problem here.”
    Tara gave Todd a
did-he-seriously-just-say-that
look as they followed Nick to the conference room, and Todd lifted his eyebrows in agreement, holding the door open for her to proceed. She could smell Todd’s aftershave as she passed and felt her skin prickle. What was it about aftershave? She turned to look at him, but he was winking at Julie. Tara rolled her eyes.
    Todd’s version of Nick’s gamefication was, evidently, flirting; both of them seemed like grown-up children.
    The hallway was a round glass tube that stretched down a pier, like the inside of an aquarium, flanked by the Bay Bridge to the right and Alcatraz to the left as it funneled into a glass bubble that constituted the conference room.
    â€œAre these by George E?” Beau piped up from the back of the group, pointing to graffiti-style mermen that looked like painted photographs on the glass. Beau was twenty-six, but he seemed older because he was old-school, the preppy product of the Upper East Side. He wore pink chinos and a white polo shirt with his monogram on the collar. His skin was tan from winter weekends in Palm Beach and his brow was eerily smooth, like it had never had a cause to furrow.
    â€œHow’d you know?” Nick asked suspiciously.
    â€œI have one of his early pieces,” Beau explained casually, as if it weren’t odd that someone his age would collect million-dollar art. “I’m on the Young Fellow board of the Frick and people started talking about him a couple years ago so I figured I’d get in the mix, even though the stuff is totally pervy.”
    â€œI’m sorry?” Nick seemed offended by the remark.
    â€œDude: Mermen? There’s some Freudian shit going on in that, don’t you think?” Beau was cool, unintimidated. He was confident, but without the inflated ego, and Tara got the feeling he might end up being her favorite person on the team.
    â€œHe’s one of Phil Dalton’s favorites,” Nick said, his voice infused with condescension. “Actually, Phil invested in him as a human capital deal. That’s the new trend in art, you know. Successful venture capitalists like Phil give guys like George E seed funding in exchange for equity in their future work, and then help promote them by securing commissions like these mermen. Phil’s like a modern Medici, and Hook’s like the new Sistine Chapel.”
    Yikes,
Tara mouthed to Beau, who grinned in agreement. Computer nerds determining the future of art didn’t feel good for anyone.
    They entered the conference room, where a glass table sat in the center of the glass-encaged room.
    â€œThis is the fishbowl,” Nick explained. “Josh designed it.” He glanced behind them, and Tara turned back to look in the direction from which they’d come. The main Hook building stood tall at the shore, and six stories of employees were gathered at the windows looking down on them.
    â€œWe have a very open culture here,” Nick went on. “We built this conference room so that everyone in the company could see what meetings are going on, but they’d be blocked from public view.”
    â€œThat must make visitors nervous,” Todd said.
    â€œIt does.”
    Josh Hart walked through the door, followed by an attractive Asian woman in a tight pencil skirt and patent pumps. Josh looked at the foursome and his face twitched before he walked to the far side of the