When Aria returned a half-hour later, her make-up was freshly painted on, with no trace of the crying fiasco on her face.
“Thank you so much and I am so sorry!” she exclaimed.
She should be. It was the worst half hour of my goddamn life.
“Don’t worry about it! But if you really feel that bad, you can make it up to me by telling me what’s bothering you.”
I wasn’t sure I cared for the answer, but that seemed like the right thing to say.
She scrunched her nose like she wasn’t sure it was a good idea but eventually said: “My request for a loan got turned down. My mother recently had heart surgery and without insurance she owes the hospital 60,000 dollars. She can’t apply for a loan herself because my family is still recovering from a bankruptcy.”
Well that was easy enough. I could take care of that right away. I didn’t want to make it so easy though.
“Who was the loan officer you spoke to?”
“Wilson. I don’t know his full name.”
“I will talk to him.” I chose my words very carefully, making sure not to make any promises I couldn’t keep. Or didn’t want to keep, more like.
Her face visibly changed colors and her eyes widened. “You can do that?”
“What did I say about owning the company?”
She jumped and for a second it looked like she was going to hug me but changed her mind.
“Oh my god, thank you so so much! You can get him to approve the loan!”
“That’s not what I said.” I spoke slowly. “I said I would talk to him.”
Her face fell. “Oh, of course – I am sorry I didn’t mean to-”
“It’s okay. Try to cheer up. I’m sure we can work something out.”
I walked back to my desk and called the loan office. “Wilson, please.”
“Mr. Sinclair! To what do I owe the pleasure?” The guy sounded absolutely thrilled to be getting a call from the CEO of the company. This could be so very easy if I wanted it to be. But a very different idea was forming in my head altogether. I would rather this be fun than easy.
“Why did you turn down Aria Roberts’ loan request?”
There was a short pause. “I’m sorry, sir, it’s classified-”
“Do you like your job, Wilson?” I spat. “Do you enjoy having somewhere to go to every day and getting a nice fat paycheck at the end of the month?”
“Yes, of course! I am sorry, sir. The situation was completely out of my hand. As you know, we run all loan requests through a software that processes applications and calculates risks. Aria Roberts’ risk was almost a 100 percent. She has no savings, spends all her money from the job paying for college and even though her credit is pretty good for her age, she simply does not have any assets or any kind of solid foundation. Not 60,000 worth anyway.”
“I see.”
“However,” he said a little too quickly, “ultimately I call the shots, and I can change the shots I called if you want.”
Is that what I wanted? No. I wanted this to be fun. This was going to be too much fun. Aria Roberts had no idea how much fun we were going to have together.
“What I need you to do is to send Aria an email letting her know you heard from me today, and that you explained to me why her loan could not go through. Make it very clear that I tried to get you to change your mind, but the system simply did not allow for it, so you were personally writing to apologize to her for the inconvenience. Copy me in the email.”
“But, sir-“
“You said you liked your job. Is that right?”
“Of course. Would you like me to add anything to the email?”