Free Monkey Business by John Rolfe, Peter Troob Page B

project increased. Bubbles was about to burst, calling down to either Rolfe or Slick with demands for
     changes to the book at least twice an hour. On the day prior to the book’s initial rollout,Bubbles had planned to travel to Chicago to work on another engagement. Rolfe and Slick were looking forward to his departure
     because, although they knew that he was never more than a phone call away, they believed that the logistics of his calling
     to demand more changes to the book would at least slow down the rate of calls they had, to that point, been receiving. At
     the very least, they figured that they would be spared the annoyance of his calls while he was in the air. What they didn’t
     know was that Bubbles was about to both cement his reputation as a dickweed and teach them the futility of ever believing
     that they could escape their masters’ clutches, all with one phone call. Rolfe was the lucky recipient of Bubbles’s initial
     affections.
    Slick and I had been going nuts for the entire week trying to get Kinetic II into shape. We were down to the short strokes.
     Bubbles had departed New York on a 3:30 P.M . flight headed for Chicago. I was sitting at my desk fifteen minutes later, at 3:45, when the phone rang. Heather, one of
     our BAs, picked it up.
    “Rolfe, you’ve got Bill DeBenedetti on the phone. He says it’s urgent.”
    My peace was shattered.
    I yelled to Slick, “Slick, get in here, Bubbles is on the phone.”
    Slick came running in from his office. I picked up the phone.
    “Bill, hi, it’s John. I’ve got Perentazzi in here. I’m gonna put you on the box.” I flipped the speakerphone on. “OK, Bill,
     you’re on the box. What’s up?”

    “Hi, guys, sorry if the connection’s bad. I’m calling from the plane. Look, I’ve got lots of changes to the book. You two
     are gonna have to get these processed as quickly as possible. We’ve got to get these books into production. Our meeting’s
     at nine tomorrow morning.”
    “OK, Bill, go ahead. We’ve got a draft of the book here. Why don’t you start going through the changes one by one.”
    “All right. Most of the changes are to section two. I want to change the structure of this section around. Page forty-six
     should now become the new page forty-three…the old page forty-three should now become the new page forty-one…you need to change
     the heading on the old page forty-one to read ‘Strong Operating Leverage Will Contribute to Outstanding Investment Returns,’
     then bold it and double underline it and then make that page the new page forty-four. Box page fifty in a bold box and shade
     the right column that says ‘Returns.’ Oh, yeah, back on page thirty-eight, double underline the IRR percentage and make the
     chart blue and green, not blue and red. Change the chart on page forty to a more neutral color like yellow. You guys should
     know better than to put a chart in red. Red means losses—c’mon guys, get with the program. And…” Bubbles continued to rail
     off changes during a two-minute rapid-fire monologue.
    I scribbled down the desired changes furiously while Slick reordered pages in a whirlwind of paper. Bubbles finished his directives
     and the phone went silent momentarily.
    “You got all that?” he asked.
    “Bill, maybe you could run through those one moretime to make sure that we’ve got everything right. We don’t want to fuck this up.”
    “Goddamn it, I don’t have time for this. I’ll do it once more, but you’d better listen carefully. I’ve got other things that
     I need to be doing.”
    Bubbles ran through the changes again. I checked his second run-through against my notes and everything was checking out fine.
     My anxiety moderated slightly. I muted the speakerphone and turned to Slick.
    “I think we’re OK. Everything he just read back matches what I’ve got written down here.”
    Slick looked at me blankly. “What the fuck are you talking about, Rolfe? I’ve been rearranging