Nathan is nine. His grandmother makes excellent meatballs using
an age-old family recipe. Together, Nathan and grandma decide to
can the meatballs and sell them to their neighbors on the north
side of town—just in time for the holidays as a turkey side
dish.
Things went great until Nathan's friend from school, Nicole,
also started selling meatballs with help from her grandma. What are
the chances? Fortunately, Nicole targeted sales on her side of town
(the south side), so that the two meatball-preneurs didn't
directly butt heads.
Wanting to keep things that way, Nathan asked Nicole to make the
arrangement official by forming a "strategic
partnership"—the gist of it being that Nicole keep her
meatballs out of the north side and Nathan keep his out of the
south. Nathan even offered to compensate Nicole for any lost
business she suffered from the arrangement, and to keep up
appearances, Nathan would arrange a few sham transactions to make
it look as though each
