The cafeteria had run out of black cherry Greek yogurt again, so Josh Peterson had to settle for strawberry. His sweet tooth preferred the strawberry, but overall, he liked the round flavor of the black cherry. It was something like a morning ritual, to run by the cafeteria on the way to his office. He would pick up a yogurt, cafe americano, and spoon, and enjoy them as he read through the morning's emails at his desk.

It was Monday, and his boss, Pete Sanford, was already in and had already sent Josh several tasks to work on this morning. Josh sighed, wanting to catch up on his Fantasy Football team instead. But he put those thoughts aside for now, and worked on calculating the risk and amortization schedules for the deals Pete had requested. In fairness, he didn't do any of the calculation or schedule planning. Mainly this task involved looking up data about the company they were providing funding to, and entering that data into a computer program. The program did all the actual calculating and scheduling. Once the computer did this, Josh had to review it, and format it to present at the Wednesday weekly deal review meeting.

The next task involved tracking the ongoing risk for two other deals that were already approved and in progress. This meant making sure that the company they were funding was still working and on track. If things were going off the rails, it would create risk. In the most extreme cases, they would pull their funding and charge the customer for any financial losses.

Josh had been working for Delta Fund for almost a year now as an Assistant Finance Manager. After graduating from University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business with a degree in finance, he joined Delta Fund mainly because his father had set it up for him. Ralph Peterson, Josh's father, had been with Delta Fund essentially since the beginning, in the early 1990's, when military and defense contracting was expanding with the Gulf War.

Ralph's friend and confidant, William Williams (usually called Bill by his friends), had sniffed out an opportunity after talking with another colleague who owned a company that was a defense vendor for the U.S. Army. The problem was that the Army, and the U.S. government, in general, were very slow to pay vendors. Because defense and military vendors were often working with the latest, most innovative technologies, and required highly skilled and therefore highly paid employees, many smaller defense vendors were stretched thin. William (Bill) had the idea that if he could convince some of his wealthier contacts to put up funding, he could pay the vendors sooner than the government could. Of course, he would pay them a percentage less than 100, and then he would get paid by the government. The difference, after his own costs, would be the profit for him, and his financiers. It was slow at first, because it required substantial financing, hundreds of millions of dollars, and there was relatively high risk that these companies might not deliver. And if they didn't deliver, the government certainly wasn't going to pay them, and Delta might be left holding the bag, so to speak.

Eventually, Delta Fund discovered that the key to success was to vet their customers well, and the track their progress diligently. They also discovered a variety of pay-out schedules that helped limit their risk over time. They contracted to have special software developed that would automate most of these tasks, and then trained their finance managers on how to apply the software, other tools, and techniques. In addition, Delta Fund often required customers to contract project managers directly from Delta Fund in order to assure the veracity of the information about the company and their progress. These "inside men" required a special kind of personality, since they were often viewed as "the enemy" by customers. So, they had to cultivate a sense of trust and humility, and endear themselves to their host company. They also had to be staunch and uninfluenced by their host company. There had been a few occasions where the inside men became something like double agents, and provided false information on behalf of their host company, in return for a percentage of the take. Eventually these fraudsters were found out, and appropriate punishment and penalties (both professional and legal) were extracted.

As lunch time rolled around, Josh looked at his phone. He had two text messages from Kyle, his not-so-mild-mannered, and better looking best friend. Kyle was checking in to see if they were still on for happy hour later.

Kyle: "Hey J - still on for Davis @ 4:30?"

Kyle: "I'm buying this time, asshole"

Josh stared at the messages for a moment. He was a little fuzzy about Kyle's intentions. He honestly hadn't remembered setting up this time to meet. And he wasn't sure why he was being called an asshole, at least not in this context. He had a vague sense of how their weekend went. He had met Kyle for dinner and drinks on Friday. After several gin martini's, they caught an Uber, but Josh was feeling blurry on where they went. Suddenly he had a flash of Kyle singing Bonnie Raitt's "I can't make you love me". It was actually a pretty good version, although Kyle's stage antics were exaggerated and a bit overly dramatic as he performed the song to Kyle and the two cute blondes they had met there.

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Josh then remembered he did a complete botch job of Marvin Gaye's "Let's get it on". Josh was a terrible singer, and an even worse performer. He was pretty sure Kyle got the whole thing on video, as the memories became clearer. He could almost remember the Uber ride later that night, with him and Amy ... or was it Amanda? He seems to recall maybe it was her birthday, and she and her sister ... Jesse or Jessica? ... were out to celebrate. It was starting to get a little clearer, as he could see and hear Amanda and Jesse performing a duet of Salt 'N' Peppa's "Whatta Man". And they were pretty good, strutting the stage with their hip hugging skirts. Josh doesn't exactly remember Kyle ordering a round of Jägermeister for them and the girls... and most things after the Jägermeister are also blurry or just absent from his memory. He has a slight image of coffee and waffles, but he isn't sure if that wasn't from a dream.

He does remember waking up on Saturday, in an unfamiliar bed, and with a terrible taste in his mouth. Next to him was an attractive blonde, still sound asleep. Most of his clothes were in various contortions surrounding the bed. On the night stand, next to his nearly dead phone, was a half glass of red wine. The room smelled like lavender or some kind of flower that at least made him think it might be lavender, though he really wasn't an expert on fragrances and just assumed most flowery scents were lavender.

After assembling his outfit and stealing her phone charger to get a few extra percentage on his phone, he went to the bathroom to clean up his face and hair. When he returned, the girl was sitting up in bed, looking at her own phone. Probably surfing Snapchat, or Instagram, or whatever. She looked up and gave a brief smile. He grinned a little nervously and said "Hi... uh... good morning."

"Good morning!", she exclaimed. He stammered something about having to get home to do some... thing? It sounded a little rushed, maybe even fabricated. "That's ok" she said. He looked around the room, eyed his phone for a minute, then extracted the power cord and handed it to her. "Here... I think this is yours. I borrowed it for a few minutes."

"No problem," she said. As he stood there continuing to look a little nervous, she said "Would you like my number?".

"Uhm... I don't kn... I mean. Uhm. Yeah. Sure. That would be great."

He unlocked his phone and started to add her as a contact... he was drawing a blank on her name.

"Here, hand it to me and I'll type it in," she told him.

"Ok". He handed her his phone. She typed in her details and gave it back to him. He stared at it for a moment. "Amanda", he thought to himself.

"Well, uh.... Amanda, it's been fun. Maybe I'll call you sometime?".

"Sure. Any time."

"Uh... well, ok". He grabbed his jacket, and fumbled with his phone for a moment. He ordered an Uber, and it was just a minute away. He scrambled out the door and onto the street outside Amanda's apartment. A light mist was coming down. His Ukrainian driver, Nazar, pulled up in a decent looking Hyundai Elantra hatchback. The driver parked the car, got out to greet Josh and open his door. Josh was a little surprised by this, as most Uber drivers preferred to just stay in the car. As Nazar opened the door he said, "Uber for Josh", except to Josh it sounded a little more like "Yuber for Yosh". Josh smiled and got into the car. The car looked new, and still had a bit of that new car smell to it. Josh was pretty sure it wasn't lavender.

"Horn Point, eh?" Nazar said to Josh as they were on their way. "Yeah, just moved in about a year ago. I have a nice view of the bay. It's pretty sweet.". "Nice, nice".

Nazar’s car had a small carrier in the backseat, which included some water bottles. Nazar told Josh, "Please, help yourself to some water."

"Thank you", Josh replied. He opened a bottle and swallowed nearly half of it all at once. He looked around the car and noticed how clean it was. "This is a nice car."

"Oh yes, it is very nice... and very new. I just bought maybe two months ago."

"That's great, " replied Josh.

"Yes. I save a long time for new car, you know. And I want to buy, maybe Honda or Toyota Camry. But you know, those are most stolen cars in all of Maryland? I don't want my car stolen. So, I buy Hyundai, cause nobody want to steal a Hyundai. Ha!"

"I did not know that," said Josh as he could feel his temples start to pulse. He sucked down the rest of the water. "Hey, do you mind if I have another bottle of water? I'm feeling a bit dehydrated."

"Sure, no problem. Water is for customer. So yeah. Rough night?"

Josh grabbed another bottle of water. He ignored Nazar's question, and just said "Thanks", as they pulled up in front of Josh's apartment building.

The Horn Point Lofts were fairly new. They caused some grief when erected. Some thought they were a bit gaudy for the austere neighborhood, while others thought they simply obstructed an otherwise decent view of the river and bay. Josh mostly liked that they were new, clean, well appointed, and that they were generally held in high esteem by his father, who was friends with the developer.

As he made his way up the elevator and to his personal loft, the pulsing in his temples increased, and his gut was feeling wretched as well. The previous night was still foggy. He dove into his bed after remembering this time to plug in his phone, and slept for several hours.

—

Josh stared at his phone:

Kyle: "I'm buying this time, asshole"

Then he remembered that he had funded the entire evening for himself, Kyle, and their two blonde companions on Friday. And he remembers making some kind of remark about Kyle's slow income, designed to better himself and degrade Kyle in front of the women.

Josh typed back: "Sure, if you can afford it. I ain't a cheap date."

Kyle replied: "LOL. See you later."

Josh: "Definitely"