Jennifer’s eyes peeked open just in time to see Michael walk out of the bedroom. She turned over in the bed. The sun reflected off Michael’s mirrored sunglasses as he sped through rural Florida, past herds of cattle and tall reeds of grass sticking out of swampland. He stayed home Saturday night to escort his daughter trick-or-treating; today he would trek three hours to give a presentation to lots of people who wanted to hear from him about highly technical real estate transactions and their paper trail. The Sheraton Sand Key resort in Clearwater nestled against a white sand beach, on a strip of land in the Gulf of Mexico. From the top floors you could see deep-blue water on either side. Once Michael arrived, he found a quiet spot in the lobby and opened his laptop, reviewing the presentation one last time. The PowerPoint slides roughly tracked the guide he posted a couple of weeks earlier. A separate file included notes for what to say while each slide was on the screen. For a while Michael toyed with asking Neil Garfield to read the script, so he could stay out of the limelight.
