Early the next morning, they checked out of the hotel, said their goodbyes to Jerry Yang and the others, brushed aside the attempts to make them stay longer, and left Silicon Valley for Los Angeles.
“Home is still the most comfortable place.” John Leighton said it with genuine feeling, sprawled across the sofa in his Los Angeles apartment.
“Boy, you are getting lazier by the day.”
“How could that be, Zach?
My career has barely started.
There will be plenty of busy periods ahead.
But look at what just happened.
Yahoo’s financing is done.
Don’t you think we’ve earned a little rest?”
“From what I observed, Jerry Yang and his team were the ones doing the work.
You offered some suggestions and then watched from the side.” Zach looked at the young man with the effortless expression and found himself feeling a quiet sympathy for Jerry Yang and everyone still in that garage.
“Alright, Boy.
You’ve been in Silicon Valley for weeks.
Don’t you think this apartment needs cleaning?”
“Why hasn’t my wealthy life arrived yet?
A butler and a maid would solve this entire problem instantly.”
Zach looked at him and found it genuinely difficult to reconcile the person in front of him with the major shareholder of a four hundred million dollar company.
The entire next day was consumed by cleaning.
Clothes that had been sitting long enough to be approaching mold were dealt with.
A supermarket run replenished everything that had run out or gone bad.
…
That evening, after John Leighton cooked dinner, both of them ended up sprawled on the sofa in comfortable silence.
“John.
Eating like this every day, I think I am going to develop a serious problem with my waistline.”
“Is that right?
Starting tomorrow I cook for one.
You can go back to hamburgers and cola.”
“Absolutely not.
How could I let someone as young as John face the health consequences of eating alone?
I’ll stay and help.
For your sake.”
John Leighton had noticed recently that Zach was getting progressively more playful, particularly when John Leighton occasionally let slip some phrase or joke from a later era, which Zach would absorb unconsciously and start using himself without realising it.
“Alright, Zach.
Go wash the dishes.”
This was the arrangement they had settled into.
Whoever cooked, the other one cleaned up.
It had become a rule without anyone formally declaring it.
…
John Leighton was lying on his back when a tall figure passed quickly across the open doorway of the apartment opposite.
He thought he had imagined it, but then a loud slam echoed from down the hall.
“Zach.
We finally have company up here on the twelfth floor.
Did you hear that?
Someone just moved in next door.”
Previously, the two of them had been the only residents on the entire floor, which meant neither of them had ever bothered closing their apartment doors. You are reading on NovelPing, the official source.
“New neighbors.
That’s completely normal, Boy.
Nothing strange about it.”
“Do you think we should go introduce ourselves?
We’re going to be on the same floor from now on.”
“I’d leave it for now.
A door slam like that usually means the person isn’t in the best mood.
Wait for another occasion.”
“Fair enough.
Though I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of a woman just now.”
Zach stared at him.
John Leighton had gone from discussing a courtesy visit to speculation about gender in approximately four seconds.
“Boy, instead of gossiping, why don’t you think about what you’re actually going to do with yourself?
You cannot just sit in this apartment indefinitely.”
…
He had a point.
The last stretch of idle time in Los Angeles had lasted over a month, and Yahoo’s development was going to take considerably longer than that.
Sitting at home every day was not a sustainable situation.
John Leighton fell quiet, genuinely thinking it through.
He came up empty.
“John.
What about going back to school?” Zach offered carefully.
“No.
School is too slow.
And honestly, do you think I need to sit in a classroom to learn anything?”
“School isn’t only about learning, John.
You don’t have a single friend your own age right now.
That’s not a sustainable situation either.
School would give you that.”
Zach knew perfectly well that John Leighton’s knowledge far exceeded anything a high school curriculum could offer.
But a person needed more than knowledge.
“The thought of spending my days with teenagers is more exhausting than anything I did in Silicon Valley.”
Between his previous life and this one, John Leighton was operating on the accumulated experience of four or five decades.
The idea of navigating the social landscape of a high school felt genuinely painful.
Zach looked at him, considered the maturity that was simply present in everything John Leighton said and did, and quietly abandoned the school idea.
…
“Zach, we talked about setting up an investment company and an offshore holding structure.
Why don’t we start looking into that properly?
Even if the funds aren’t in place yet, understanding the process beforehand means we move faster when the time comes.
Come with me so I can learn as we go.”
“Boy.
Look around you.
This is Los Angeles.
The financial services industry here is among the most developed in the world.
You find the right service firms and they handle everything.
There is no preliminary legwork required.
You show up, state your requirements, and you come back to sign the documents.”
John Leighton paused.
He had been thinking about it the way things worked in his previous life, where navigating bureaucracy required significant advance preparation.
He had not fully adjusted to how differently the American service industry operated.
Zach was right.
…
“Alright.
Then we have some genuine free time on our hands.
Zach, what do you think about travelling?
We’ve been so focused on everything that we haven’t actually seen the country.
Miami and its beaches.
Manhattan and Wall Street in New York.
Las Vegas.
Yellowstone, where they say a volcanic eruption could theoretically cause a global catastrophe.”
“What about Los Angeles?
This is the entertainment capital of the world.”
“Zach, we live here.
We can see Los Angeles any time.
That doesn’t count as travelling.”
Zach shrugged in the way that meant he had no strong objection and would go along with whatever was decided.
…
After tidying up for the night, Zach went back to his room and John Leighton took some food out to the small balcony and looked at the Los Angeles night spread out below him.
He thought to himself that returning from the intensity of Silicon Valley, the money and the technology and the negotiations, to this quiet apartment on the edge of a slum was genuinely not bad.
A peaceful life.
Sleeping until he woke naturally.
Waiting for Yahoo to grow.
There were worse fates.
He was still in the middle of that thought when the door to the balcony of the adjacent apartment creaked open.
John Leighton moved his chair.
He had been facing away from the neighbouring balcony, and he turned it around.
A girl stepped out.
Model’s figure, silk nightgown, a glass of red wine held loosely in one hand.
She leaned against the railing with the ease of someone very accustomed to her own space and looked out at the city below.
She was turned sideways and he couldn’t see her face.
Golden curly hair caught the light from the street below.
Whether the new neighbour was genuinely beautiful or simply striking from behind was impossible to determine from this angle.
He thought about it for approximately two seconds.
“Hi.
You must be the new neighbour.
My name is Saint John Leighton.
I’m your neighbour on the other side of this wall.”