“We’re getting sued and someone wants to buy us,” said Donny.
“Hunh?” said Amy. “What? Who’s suing us? And why? We really haven’t done anything yet.”
“Just like you to ask for bad news first,” said Donny. “You’re like my mother.” He withdrew his feet down to the floor in disgust. He seemed to prefer the desk as barrier to footstool.
Amy steeled. She wasn’t going to fall for that one. She told herself to let it fly past her like water off a duck’s bill, or back, or ass, whatever the saying was. Fucking Donny. Snot-nosed motherfucker.
“Tell me,” said Amy.
“HiveFam filed suit in Santa Clara County Court.”
HiveFam was an industry incubator. Adnan and Donny attended meetings there, sometimes lectures.
“For what?”
“The misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations, breach of the duty of loyalty, and injunctive relief.”
“Oh, man,” said Amy, shaking her head. She didn’t know what most of it meant, but it sounded daunting.
Donny took a deep breath.
She was waiting for him to blame her. She was waiting for it to all be her fault.
“This is great news, Amy,” said Donny. “They are taking us seriously. They seriously see us as competition.”
He reached across the desk and took a long sip of her coffee.
“I’m not following you, Donny. We don’t have money; we don’t have money to fight back.”
“Our will to fight is stronger. Nobody has stronger will than Team i.e.”
i.e. was a playground of freaks and geeks. Mollycoddled West Coast pseudo–Ivy Leaguers. Cardinal wussies. Almost all of them were still on the campus meal plan. It wasn’t like that when she went to Cal. They’d rolled their own burritos.
“It’s a David-and-Goliath thing, they’ll look like giants picking on midgets or, even better, little babies. Everyone loves an underdog. That be us. I already spoke to our lawyers. They think we’ll prevail in court and they’re ready for blood.”
Amy relaxed back in her chair, relieved-ish, on the cusp of breathing regularly. “So, they are taking us on pro bono?”
“No way,” said Donny. “They still cost eight hundred dollars an hour.”
“Donny,” said Amy.
“I know, that’s also the problem we’re going to face with Google.”
“Google?”
“They want to buy us.”
Donny was making her dizzy. He was also bringing back her headache. Amy rested her head in her hands. It weighed so much! They should subtract its weight when weighing you at the doctor’s.
Looking down at the floor, she said, “Why? Why would anyone want to buy us? We haven’t done anything yet.”
“You haven’t done anything yet. I created Furrier.com and Summer Fur. I sort of leaked the news to a hungry Googler I know who recently bailed out at Facebook.”
“Furrier.com is a goddamn nightmare,” said Amy. “It was like being on acid without knowing it.”
“Language, Amy,” said Donny. He began to spin around in his chair, 180s. “I’ve tweaked it,” he said. “Or I’m going to. By the end of the day today or tomorrow, The Furrier and Summer Fur both will be in a whole other multiverse.”
He did a 360.
Whee, thought Amy. She thought it loudly and her cerebellum began to burn. Why was he allowed to curse and she wasn’t? Amy was so tired. She reached one hand out in front of her and took a sip of her now-cold Donny-cootie-infected coffee. It felt good slipping down her dry, dry throat.
“That’s what I need you for. Stay put. Stay here. Don’t go anywhere. As soon as I figure it out, you’re going to try it on. Immediately. You are Subject X. Plus, you’re my inspiration. And you make me feel comfy.”
“Comfy? That’s my job? Ugh, Donny,” said Amy. “You make me feel like a prisoner.”
“Yes,” said Donny. “Effectively, from now on in, you are. And if I go out, you stay and wait, or you’re coming, too. Wherever I go, you’re coming with me. Except the bathroom.”
“Runaway Bunny?” asked Amy. “What, I’m supposed to chase after you?”
“That’s right,” said Donny. He did another full 360 and back again. When he turned once more to face Amy head-on it was clear from his expression that he was now completely and officially unreachable.
She got up and left his office.
* * *
They spent the night together in one of the Dallas Museum Tower’s model apartments, in a king-size bed with Frette linens, very modern, pale lilac sheets, a soft gray duvet and a mile of silver and purple pillows. Cindy had ordered them herself. She’d seen them in a magazine and it was a look she liked.
The boys were spoiled and the second marriage was bad. Poor Phillip. He had wanted her since high school. High school! Which was a long time ago now—twenty-four years and counting. For some reason this night, unlike all the other nights of all the other years, Cindy had been powerless to say no to him. How could she say no to someone who’d loved her practically her entire life? Especially when she felt so relentlessly unlovable, her latest “relationship” (euphemism) like all the others, having just fizzled out?
Cindy and Phillip had been friends since the ninth grade. There was history there. He remembered her at her finest hour, when her strawberry-blond hair hung down her back to her waist, when she’d made all A’s, when she’d scored a full ride to Rice, even though her daddy had died junior year of a surprise heart attack and her mother was aching to move back home to Durham. Cindy was a cheerleader. Student body VP. Homecoming queen. Nothing nor nobody was going to stop her from realizing her dreams. Her daddy would have wanted it that way, and when she thought about him hard enough she could feel his presence, reassuring, like an arm around her shoulders. Back then, Cindy could have had anyone. Back then, she had not picked Phillip.
When she initially returned to Dallas, marriage kaput, with Lily, her reluctant teenage daughter, in tow—at first to live with her ex-mother-in-law Rose, because, guess what, busted broke with nowhere to go, Rose, guilt-ridden over the human dung pile she’d given birth to, was the only port in the storm—Cindy had pretty much started dating right away. Her marriage had been so over for so long, her husband totally and resolutely gone, like, vanished! and with him the marital assets, plus money they didn’t have and somehow she owed; she’d been ready to move on.
A bunch of Cindy’s old girlfriends, as an act of sisterhood, a few divorced, too, a few wishing that they were and beginning to plan their own next moves, had gathered what they could of the old gang together at Five Sixty, the Wolfgang Puck place in the Reunion Tower, to middle-age-man-shop. Lois Benedictus thought it might be fun. “A Reunion at Reunion Tower,” she wrote, and since this was on a group chat, and she’d used the dancing girl emoji a whole bunch of times, plus that glass of red wine
Come With Me Page 17