Max examines his shoes and the lines of his Armani suit. Ceebee is wearing a navy blue suit with a knee length skirt. She’s holding Max’s laptop in her right hand and her phone in the other. Dani fidgets in his brand new suit that Ceebee picked out and Max made him buy. The elevator zooms to the twenty-first floor. 'Last Christmas I gave you my heart, the very next day.’

The doors open revealing a chaotic scene of young office workers scrambling from cubicle to cubicle. A girl with pixie cut hair tilts her head from behind the front desk.

'Hello, I'm Max Zanetti—CEO of Digital Enterprises.’

'Good morning Mister Zanetti.' The receptionist makes eye contact with Ceebee and Dani. 'Tony is ready for you—he's in the boardroom. Would you like me to show you where it is?'

'It's OK,' Max says, 'I know where to go.'

'Would you like coffee, Mister Zanetti?'

'Coffee would be great.'

Ceebee, Dani and Max enter the door marked “Boardroom”.

Max’s team is efficient and precise. Dani calmly works Max's laptop and Ceebee plugs a cable into the wall projector.

Robert Stormy, current Chairman of Harmless Analogue Products, is silver haired, white-bearded and immaculately groomed in a charcoal suit tailored to allow for his extra weight. He’s in the centre seat of the thin, oval, ten-person table. Opposite Bob is Anthony Da Brisi, current CEO of HAP, a company he founded twelve years ago that sells real-time news feeds to about four thousand customers.

Tony’s business could be extremely profitable if Max can remove the unnecessary costs.

A dark suit to the right of Bob Stormy says, 'Item three, “Proposed Takeover by Digital Enterprise Services of Harmless Analogue Products”.'

Click—nothing. Bob looks at Tony. The projector fails to light up. Max knows what’s wrong but the boardroom drama is unfolding quickly.

'It's OK,' says Bob, 'there always seem to be a lot of technology hiccups here for a technology company.' Everyone laughs, a little withheld. 'Let's grab some lunch, and we can do the presentation after that.'

Max, Dani and Ceebee catch each other's eyes.

'Sounds good to me.' Max reclines in his high backed boardroom chair and smiles as everyone files out, leaving him with Bob. Max watches as the chairman calmly looks through the neat stack of manila folders in front of him. 'Are you grabbing a bite, Bob?'

'I'm not that hungry, Max. I just hate watching people squirm when the tech fucks up, which it always seems to—at least when I'm around.'

Max gets up and presses a couple of buttons on his laptop and the projector. The blank screen flicks into full colour and on it, in clear text, is:

DIGITAL ENTERPRISES LIMITED

ON-MARKET TAKEOVER

HARMLESS ANALOGUE PRODUCTS

'They missed the mode switch.' Max is standing in front of his laptop, where Dani was sitting. He makes a quick edit to one of the slides while Bob watches on.

'But you didn't.' Bob takes a sandwich out of his brown leather briefcase and carefully unfolds it from neat, grease-resistant paper wrapping. He places one of the two halves of the sandwich on top of the paper and takes a bite of the other.

'I do a lot of presentations.' Max sits down, now diagonally opposite the chairman. 'Would you like me to take you through it?'

Bob stares at Max. He finishes chewing his mouthful. 'I've been through it, it's good.'

So he read the board report. Max is at his best when forced to think on his feet.

'So, why should we sell?' Bob’s pacing his meal. Max reckons he has a bit over half a sandwich to go.

'HAP's only problem is profitability.' It’s Max’s turn to watch Bob. The chairman remains poker-faced. 'Its revenue is good, but the costs are too high, which means its profitability is lower than it should be.'

'I can read a set of financials.' Bob takes another bite of his sandwich, chewing deliberately.

'Well,' Max chooses his words. 'Basically, your company is fat and lazy, and it should be a money-making machine.'

Max clicks a button on the computer. The slide on the wall changes to “HAP - PROFIT AND LOSS 1995–1999”.

‘If you look over the past five years, HAP hasn't grown its customer base much, but it has increased its cost of servicing its revenue—the company has gotten fat and lazy—it's not looking for new customers and the money made on the existing customer is...'

'Go on.’

Max points to the boardroom's door. 'Your existing profit is feeding all the people outside that door.'

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

There’s a knock. Max and Bob look towards it and Ceebee pokes her head inside. Max stares at her and twitches his left cheek minutely. Ceebee smiles and disappears.

Bob turns back to him. 'So why would you buy it?'

Max has thought of nothing else since he first saw HAP's financials a few months ago. 'Well, we won't need much of the existing management team, except maybe for Steve—your financial controller.'

Bob nods slightly.

'And we definitely don't want any of the sales and marketing team. They clearly don't know what they’re doing.'

Bob smiles faintly. 'So let's say…’ He rubs his hands together over his meticulously placed sandwich paper, no crumbs, no trace that he’d eaten anything. 'Let's say, our shareholders agree with you. How could you get them to back you?'

Max opens his palms. Time to go all in. 'We make an offer of two dollars a share for a complete takeover of HAP, you negotiate us to two-fifty, and we put it to the shareholders. We need 95% shareholder support. Your current share price is $1.68, ours is around $8. We’ll offer you one of our shares for every three of yours. That’ll value your stock at $2.50 plus per share. I think the market will like it.'

'What if your share price falls?'

Max again chooses his words. 'Then Bob, we're all fucked.'

Bob finishes his sandwich, folds the paper it came in, and puts it back in his briefcase. The boardroom door bursts open.

'I hope we didn't miss anything important,' says Tony De Brisi. He has a bit of green lettuce on his bright white shirt collar.

'Nothing important,' says Bob.

Tony takes his seat opposite Bob. Max moves back to his original position, allowing Dani to sit in his chair with the laptop. Ceebee sits next to him.

'OK,' says Bob, 'Max was just about to tell us why we should sell our company to them.'

Dani Goh hands Max a cigarette as the lift opens at the bottom floor and says, 'I think that went well.’

They slip out a side door into a laneway. Max feels a vibration in his pants pocket. He pulls out his Nokia and takes the call and beckons Dani to follow.

'I'm so sorry, Max,' says Ceebee on the other end of the phone call. 'I didn't mean to. We all got drunk, and next thing—'

'Next thing, you're sucking some dude's cock from tech-support of the company we’re just about to take over!’ Max presses his lips to his cigarette and takes a deep breath. He exhales a cloud of smoke that quickly disappears. ‘What the fuck were you thinking?

'I'm sorry—what do you want me to do?' Ceebee sounds distressed.

'Do what you want, Ceebs. I can't talk about it now. Meet me at Churlows at five.'

‘Okay. I'm really sorry.'

'Yeah, yeah, I'll see you then.'

Max and Dani head towards the esplanade, butting out their cigarettes in a grotty silver ashtray stuck to the wall near the entrance of the laneway.

'Fuck, it's getting hard to smoke anywhere anymore.'

A ball of flame bursts from the pylon outside Churlows as it does every thirty minutes. Pedestrians stop to watch as a loud SHOOSH ushers in another fireball that disappears into the sky. Max can feel the heat and he loves watching the people mesmerised by the magic of science and engineering. He works his way past the hypnotised crowd and enters the outside seating area of Churlows restaurant via the Yarra river entrance, avoiding the main casino. He takes a seat and checks his phone, it’s 4.15 pm.

'Max!' Sebastian Finlayson, co-owner of Churlows, raises his hands in the air and smiles broadly, bottle already in hand for his regular.

'Hi Seb,' Max says, 'how's business?'

'Busy!' Seb pours Max a glass of red wine. 'Try this,' he says, 'it's a New Zealand Pinot. I reckon you'll like it—I love it!'

Max takes a sip from the wide bowled glass. It’s cool and tastes sweet, like berries. 'Yeah, great.'

Seb takes out his cigarettes and passes one to Max. 'Are you here for dinner?’ he lights Max's smoke and then his.

'I am, but I’m meeting someone first.’ Max takes a drag.

'Hot date?' Seb smiles, inhales, and then blows his smoke into the sky. A fireball bursts out of the pylons in front of the restaurant. The heat of the flame seems too warm to be safe.

'Not really.' Max laughs, and changes the subject. 'Are you hanging onto those Digi shares?'

'Sure am. I doubled down. I plan to retire on your skills, Maxee!'

Ceebee enters by the door from the casino entrance, balancing his laptop case and a sizable brown handbag. She looks like a puppy who just got caught doing something wrong. Max stands up to greet her. She puts the laptop and her bag on the spare seat and steps forward into his outstretched arms.

'I'm sorry.' she says again. Max can feel her face against his chest.

'I know. Are you hungry?’

'A little.'

'Pasta?'

‘Mmmm.' Ceebee relaxes into Max’s body and they breathe synchronously.

'OK, Seb, two of the usual and a bottle of that wine, please.'

'OK, coming up, boss.' Seb winks at Max.

Another ten-metre fireball bursts from the large pylon in front of the restaurant. Max releases Ceebee gently as Seb's eyes light up when a group of six or so young after-workers walk into the restaurant via the main casino entrance and head straight towards Max.

Is that…?

'Hey, Ceebs!' The girl from HAP reception leads a group of shy, geeky-looking young adults across the restaurant. Ceebee drops the hangdog look and bounces back to her usual bubbly self.

'Hey Kyles, how are you?' Ceebee seems to know the HAP girl better than he thought.

'Hi, Mister Zanetti,' Kylie reminds Max of a small version of Britney Spears in her new video.

'Hello.' Max reaches out his hand. She places hers firmly into his; they’re small and soft. 'Please, call me Max.'

After a couple of minutes of introductions Max instructs Seb to feed everyone whatever they want and keep the drinks flowing. Ceebee and Kylie are deep in conversation. A muscular blonde guy with a small mole on his right cheek is familiar. He introduces himself as Lee. Fuck you!

'Maxee,' Ceebee says.

Max is putting together who is who in this zoo. The pretty boy with the Michael Hutchence hair is getting his dick blown by Ceebee, that’s Lee; the tall goofy guy is doing something with Kylie, but surely she could do better, she’s clearly the boss here; and the other two look like they’re lost.

'We're all going clubbing later, and we wanted to know if you want to come?'

Max stares at Ceebee. 'Maybe.' He has no intention of doing anything with any of these people. He isn’t sure if he’s angry that Ceebee is fucking Lee or that Lee is so young and good looking. He forces himself to sound interested. 'Where are you going?’

'Hmm, probably Lasers.' The girls laugh at that, as if it’s part of an in-joke.

'OK. I'll see how I feel later.' Another fireball lights up the sky. Max lights a cigarette, and his phone vibrates in his pocket.

It's a text message from Victoria: "At the casino - what are you up to"