If the Big Blue Monster was going to devour those Yahoo! screamers, then that obscure piece of software code was exciting. It was a pawn in the chess game of the future Internet. A meek, little pawn, but strategically necessary. People who saw the future coming could build a company on that piece of code.
Then, the Blue Monster or its Screamer victims could legally buy that company. They would make it part of their game.
They did that, too, because they had to. Twenty million dollars on the table. Not a great big deal during a massive hostile stock battle worth $47.5 billion. Twenty million was a line item for Microsoft and Yahoo! But, it was sheer bonanza for the bright Seattle twenty-somethings who had monetized that piece of code. Payday, brother. Success!
Gavin had never explained that business deal to his father. His father didn’t want to know about tech magic. His father was a real-estate guy, an old-school city booster, who hated and feared the eerie geeks in their hacker dens. Or rather, he’d hated and feared them until Gavin’s magic jackpot had rained a heap of fairy-tale money on the family’s real-estate crisis. Then, his father started demanding more of it. And quickly.
Eventually, the Microsoft-Yahoo deal fell apart. Nobody ever used the code that had been snapped up for twenty million. Every geek in the start-up company just pocketed that cash and vanished. Like extras, lavishly hired for some unproduced movie, they were less than ghosts.
As for Gavin’s other daring tech ventures, those three companies were ghosts. Three doomed Seattle start-ups that had quickly swirled into a death spiral. Falling, splashing and drowning in the “deadpool.” Fail early, fail often. Fail, and die. And vanish.
The deadpool was the sewer of startups. The busted flush. Every VC guy knew all about that harsh reality. To lose three poker hands and gain one big pot, that was doing great, in venture capital. He was doing great.
So, Gavin Tremaine, dashing, young high-tech entrepreneur, was still ahead of the game. People claimed he had the golden touch. Especially in the dark and melancholy years since the dot-com bust. He was the golden boy. But...
But, he was an accountant. So, he could do the math. In the past ten years, the entire Seattle venture-capital community, all those brainiacs eagerly inventing progress, had supplied an eight percent return on investment.
Hackers didn’t much bother to think about that stuff. It took an accountant to figure that out. A high-tech accountant was the guy who could peel away the big excitement and look hard at the cold numbers underneath. It took an accountant to see that reality. It took a patriot to understand how sad and bad it truly was.
Over there in Seattle, nine time zones away, there was Gavin’s beloved home, a world-class city with a supreme reputation for technical genius. Those geniuses, the highest-flying of the high-tech flyers — and they couldn’t edge out a fast-food chain.
An eight percent return on investment. Eight lousy dollars of profit for every hundred dollars put in. That was a horrifying business situation. A seven percent return on investment was the minimum required to be in any kind of business at all. The futuristic high-tech scene in Seattle was living off its past reputation. It was starving.
They still went through the glossy high-tech motions in Seattle. Of course they did that, they had to, it was who they were. It was who he was.
Then, the Italians had flown him over here to tell them all about that. Tonight. Yes, tonight. That was his responsibility, what he had to face, tonight. Nobody knew it but him, but that was what he had to face.
Gavin knew how to make money. He had done that. But was that a man’s work in the world, was that the future? You call that treadmill, the future? What a fraud, what a fairy-tale! Not one of those efforts had improved a thing! Nobody was any better off for any of it! No one could claim that “the future” was sparkly, better, new and improved — least of all, Seattle.
The whole State of Washington was going broke!
Tonight, this very night, he was supposed to lecture a crowd of deeply interested Italians about these marvels. Yes, him. He had to stand up in the full glare of the stage lights, talk to them about “the future,” and lie. Of course, he knew what he was going to say. He would explain Sarbanes-Oxley accounting to them. A legal piece of American accounting code, more complicated than a broken cellphone.
Sarbanes-Oxley was the bane of every inventor’s existence. Sarbanes-Oxley was the stake through the heart of the dot-com dream. Gavin felt an honest need to explain Sarbanes-Oxley, because there were maybe ten accountants in the USA who fully understood it, and five of them had clients in prison.
Gavin’s head was aching. He suddenly realized that he had lost his way. No, truly, he had lost it. Right here and now. He had literally lost his way in the world, because, while he was darkly brooding, confusedly, in a panic, about his sorry family troubles, and his city’s failing fortunes, and his ruined industry, and his own hypocrisy, he had forgotten to look at his map.
He’d been absently walking at random, bitterly muttering, drifting along, putting one foot in front of the other, on a stony, crooked road. And now, he was lost in Capri.
That lack of conscious choice had led him downhill. Downhill was always the easiest way for a man to randomly ramble.
Now, he couldn’t go one more step.
His road ahead had ended. Bang. The pavement stopped, with one fatal, wicked twist, at an ornate, rusty, iron gate.
This gate at the end of the road was festooned like a wedding bouquet with hand-wrought iron flowers. A hundred ornate, metallic blossoms, lilies and poppies, all miraculously banged out of cold, forged iron. Gorgeous, voluptuous, sculptural flowers of iron. Cruel, solid, wrought-iron flowers fit to break a man’s skull.
Behind this stern iron gate, strictly forbidden to him, lay a green and luscious ornamental garden. Gavin had never seen, or even imagined, such an alluring, twisted, Arcadian grove. This blooming vision of an unearthly paradise was not so much a landscape as a feverscape. Gardens so luxuriant, so warm and weird, were not supposed to exist in the world.
Any garden like this should have been world-famous. Likely it had been world-famous — once upon a time. A hundred long years ago, maybe. Maybe it was still famous. Maybe, eager cub reporters from modern, glossy garden magazines came rushing up to sneak pictures of this fabulous, ancient garden.
Then, the owner simply shot them and buried them on the grounds.
So much for the outside world. So much for reality. So much for all space and time.
Presumably, this amazing garden at the end of the road had some owner. It just had to. What the hell kind of decadent Roman Emperor, or massive corporation, or evil oil-fueled Third World government, could ever own a fabulous garden like this one?
Gavin placed both his living hands on the tall gate’s cold, rusty iron. He shook the gate till its hinges squeaked in reproach. Yes, he was wide awake. Yes, this was no dream.
Gavin was startled from his dark mood by sheer wonderment. He was in a state of wonder. About himself.
He had just learned something new about himself. This vista before him was proof of something vital and important. It proved to him that he knew nothing. He was a hick.
That truth was simple: he was an ignoramus, a punk-ass kid. The world held things undreamt of in his philosophy.
Gavin had seen some exotic private properties. He’d been to the home of Bill Gates. Twice. But no naïve hayseed geek like Gavin Tremaine had ever visited the likes of this place. This locale was alien. Not ‘old-fashioned,’ not ‘futuristic’, but a completely different, mythological, order of being. Olympian, transcendent, a place outside every category that Gavin had in his block-shaped head.
A distant movement flickered, beyond the dark topiary spires. Here came the owner of the garden. Oh yes. Here he came, transcendent, superb. Gavin’s heart thumped in panic. The garden’s owner was departing his sacred groves, leaving his hidden enclave, his cave, his mansion, his bunker, whatever that weird structure was, way beyond those scar
let blossoming trees and clumps of spiny thorns.
The owner approached the iron gate.
The owner was riding in a car. This ultra-tiny, European smart-car had all the solemn, sober trim of a state limousine. The tiny car was of a snaky slate-green color, with tinted windows, a colorful official flag perched and waving on its miniature hood.
This shrunken car drew to a gentle stop. There he sat — the boss of Arcadia. This unearthly gentleman crouched in a tiny bucket seat beside his uniformed chauffeur.
The supremo was a bald, goaty-looking character, chock full of bristling dignity. He was a supremely ugly little geezer, with a high-collared jacket, a pointy red chin-beard, and tinted designer spectacles. He looked like the dictator of an asteroid.
There was no way to avoid encountering this guy. No place to hide from him. Running away uphill was not an option.
The lordling’s chauffeur, who might have been a revived mummy, climbed from the driver’s seat. With agonizing dignity, he pulled a thick iron key from a watch-pocket chain, and he unlocked the gate. Then, he climbed back inside the tiny car. The car oozed forth like a snail.
This formal ritual was like a sacrament. The mummy chauffeur got out again. He closed and locked the gate behind the tiny car. He ignored Gavin completely, although Gavin, who was trapped within the narrow stone road, was close enough to touch him.
Gavin and the garden’s pocket-dictator sized one another up. Gavin thought for one dizzy moment that the guy was going to offer him a friendly lift into town.
That act was not possible. There was no room for Gavin inside the tiny car. Gavin would have to be strapped to the roof like a freshly-shot American moose.
The owner had huge, slanted, yellow eyes, behind his tinted windows, and his dime-sized smoked spectacles. A clear disdain radiated from this hairy old gentleman. A heavy, deeply-felt regret, a morose sorrow that he had to share his lovely world with hopeless creatures like Gavin Tremaine.
The tiny car motored up the narrow road, electric and as quiet as an eel. Gavin was left standing there. At the end of the road. All alone.
Gavin shifted his laptop bag from his right shoulder to his left shoulder. He turned on his heel, and he marched uphill.
So, he was a hick. Fine. He could accept that reality. His despair was absurd. Fine. To be young and stupid was the beginning of wisdom. Fine. He was also totally lost on the island of Capri. Stupid hick naïve guys could get lost on tiny islands.
His last precious hours, here on Capri, were to be wasted on evasions and lies, on high-tech investor hokum, when there were so many different things that he could have said, that he should have said, that he could have done.
Things to be said — and not to some crowd of idiots. Things to be said to her. That’s right. Said to her.
Because she would understand him. She did understand him, even when he was in trouble. He knew it, he had seen that in her eyes. They had a bond.
Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he saw her. She was radiant in his mind’s eye. Her sweet little face, that sharp chin, that forehead, all that glorious hair. He knew her face like he knew his own hands.
He stopped under a stone wall topped with broken glass.
Oh my God. No. Why? What was this all about? How had this happened to him? He was falling for her. The world was so full of women and he had to fall for her!
“Smart cookie,” he had thought. That was not the feeling that burned in him now. Not his cool, wise-assessment judgement smart cookie, there could be some trouble here, better watch out, boy, but his bleeding and needy assessment, delicious cookie, sweet cookie! Can’t I have one bite? I’m starving to death!
Why had he ever left her? Why had her left her, abandoned her to walk alone, when there were so few ticking hours left for him in Capri? Once he left this island, he would never see her again.
He was shambling suddenly. He was stumbling uphill at a run.
Chapter Twelve: Forever Right Now
It was high time for the big Brazilian official to deliver her speech, all about the future preparations for the Rio Olympics. Farfalla had to translate that speech, from Portuguese to English. A difficult feat.
Instead of performing this honest work, though, Farfalla was lounging in the glorious sunshine outside the empty convent church, while Babi Gervasi smoked cigarettes.
Not one single event at the Futurist Congress had started on time. Least of all some big Brazilian speech about the future of Brazil, because Brazil was the country of the future, and always would be.
“That is such a pretty dress that you have,” Babi allowed, tapping ashes, as she suavely nodded at the babbling passers-by. Conference bigwigs were like a herd of sheep for Babi. “That outfit suits you. Nice cut, strong tropical colors. Is it Brazilian?”
“Babi, I am Brazilian.”
Babi tapped her cigarette once more. “Sure you are, Farfalla, be Brazilian. Vai, avanti.”
“I made this dress myself!”
Babi nodded. “Did you? I would never have guessed!”
“Well, I had it copied in a Milanese sweatshop by a bunch of Chinese tailors. But, it’s mine now. This is a Futurist dress by Giacomo Balla from 1914. I found it in a museum.”
“Oh, yes, yes, that’s so perfect. I love all those Futurist boys. Especially the ones who died young. It’s great that you have a strong personal style. Too many Milanese girls, they think they have style, but they’ll wear any rag that Gucci dumps in the Rinascente.”
Farfalla was touched to get this morale-boosting vote of confidence. “You’re right about that, Babi. I think just the same thing!”
Babi casually dug into her beaded purse. She passed over a thick, unmarked envelope.
“Now I’m really having a good time,” said Farfalla, deftly slipping the booty into her bag.
“Farfalla, you deserve it. My dear friend, Eleonora, she likes you. She said you were the perfect house-guest. A ‘very happy, healthy, free-spirited girl,’ she said.
Farfalla was stunned. “Happy, healthy, free-spirited?” This was the last description she would ever have given about herself. She’d scarcely said a word to her hostess Eleonora, because the washed-up TV presenter was constantly moaning and whining about all her dark, imaginary troubles.”Eleonora said that about me?”
“Eleonora understands these things! My poor, darling Eleonora, she wasn’t always like you see her today... Once she was such a wild, clever, pretty girl, with her whole future ahead of her. Eleonora was such fun! You wouldn’t believe all the dirty mischief we got into.”
“Babi, listen to me. You know your way around here... and I need some advice. If you were looking for a statue in Capri — just a little bronze statue, about a hundred years old — how would you find something like that?”
Babi did not even blink at the question. “You’re smuggling antiques? Yeah, I used to do that, too.”
“Well, never mind. First, I have to find this statue of Cupid. I don’t know why, exactly, but I have this rich client who cares a lot about Cupid, and well...”
“Antiques can bring a lot of money in a hurry. That’s a very modern scene, antiques. Do you like gay guys?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, some people would tell you to query all the museums. Check out the old auction-catalogs. Forget that. You’ll have to root out the gay mafia’s antique closet. It’s a lost world in there.”
“I can do that! My geek hacker guys in Ivrea are practically gay guys, they’re just kind of different! How do I start?”
“Well,” Babi allowed, “Maybe I could ask around for you, a little bit, but first... Listen, I may be having some trouble with my final speaker. Do you think it would be a problem if I rescheduled your boyfriend for that slot, instead?”
“Well,” said Farfalla, at once, “Gavin might be unhappy about that, but I’m sure he would do his best. He cares about us, he listens. He wants to help.”
“That would be so good. Our American superstar author had security trou
ble in Rome. They found something bad in his carry-on bags, and he lost his mind about that. I can’t say that I blame him. These days, the jet-set people get treated worse than the gypsies.”
“Your star author can’t make it here to Capri? That’s too bad!” said Farfalla. “All the geeks worship his business best-sellers! I see his books in airports all the time, he’s just like ‘Harry Potter.’”
Babi sighed. “It’s a dark fate! Every time I run an event like this, I always get a couple of blind pigs! There’s that superstar Yankee prima donna in Rome with his stupid tube of hair gel. Then, there’s that cokehead that your boyfriend threw off the yacht!”
“What?”
Babi tramped her cigarette butt. “I hope you didn’t take that incident too seriously.”
Farfalla laughed. “What is there to be serious about? That rumor is ridiculous! Are you joking?”
Babi raised her brows. “The LOXY boys said that she scolded him — about you. So, your boyfriend just grabbed that blogger gossip-girl and he threw her overboard. Pitched her right into the ocean.” Babi snapped her fingers. “I’d be flattered, myself! It’s been ages since a man did that for me.”
“What on earth are you talking about, Babi? Gavin never does things like that! What a sick, evil fantasy! It’s that Brixie creature from Los Angeles, I bet. It is? I knew it! She’s on drugs! She’s skin and bones! Anyone who takes one look at that crazy broomstick can tell that she’s a stick of dynamite! I hate her.”
“Did you read her blog today? You’re in Brixie’s blog. There are pictures of you, with your boyfriend. Together.”
“Paparazzi pictures on some stupid blog? I could care less!”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Babi nodded. “Nobody believes what they see on the Internet.”
The conference crowd was shuffling into the venue. Farfalla joined them, and climbed into her glass translator’s booth. She shared it with Adriana, a Capri housewife, whose mother had been Portuguese.
Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) Page 14