The Balance Thing

by Margaret Dumas

  I’d been so busy being embarrassed about my connection with Vladima over the past eighteen months that I’d never really paid much attention to her. Now that I’d just read her life story, I had to admit there was something endearing about the old girl. She’d been through a lot in her three-hundred-year life, and her lipstick was still perfect. You had to give it to her for that, if for nothing else.

  And as the monitor of Josh’s psyche over the past few years, she showed he’d come a long way, baby, himself. As far as I knew he hadn’t had a serious relationship since the fiancée from hell had broken his heart, but I’d heard that he did go out on the occasional date, so that was something. He was perfectly acceptable company these days. Good company, in fact.

  And, unlike all my other bosses, he hadn’t fired me yet.

  Twenty

  Okay, now dig, really DIG!”

  Vida was yelling at me again. Apparently my upper-body strength was a disappointment to her. Which was only fair—my first taste of surfing was proving a disappointment to me.

  I’d gotten fairly jazzed about the whole thing after Vida had made me watch a double feature of Blue Crush and Step into Liquid. I’d had expectations of a visceral thrill and a rush of excitement and everything else that had been advertised.

  Instead I was crammed into a humiliating rented (don’t even think about that aspect of it) wet suit, working like a madwoman just to get far enough out to turn around and surf back in. I also noticed that the beach at Pillar Point, while it had the advantage of being only about half an hour south of the city, didn’t exactly feature the crystal blue waters of those tropical beaches in the movies.

  I was belly-down on the board, using my already-aching arms to paddle my way out past the breakers, and apparently not digging deep enough.

  I’d been at it for quite some time.

  “Come on, dude!” another surfer called in encouragement. There were maybe five of them, all safely out where they should be, sitting up on their boards, dangling their legs in the water, observing my lack of progress. They’d already paddled out to the line-up. Friends of Vida’s, applauding my minuscule efforts and shouting out advice.

  Nice guys. I hated them.

  I took a moment to catch my breath, tried not to think of the black-suited surfers as a passing shark would (“seals on crackers—yum!”), and I dug.

  This time I made it. Out past the breakers—“mushy” today, thank God—and to the smoothly swelling surface where we’d wait for the perfect wave.

  And wait.

  “What do you do while you’re waiting?” I finally asked Vida.

  “If I were by myself, I’d be trying to work out this bug that’s been driving me crazy,” she said. The software Vida was coding was nearing its ship date, and that always made her a little work-obsessed. This had been her only free morning in a week. I was so jealous.

  “Or if I were just here with Tim, we’d be talking about code and bugs and office politics.” She nodded in the direction of the other surfers, bobbing in a line and waiting for a wave. Tim, I knew, was someone Vida worked with as well as surfed with. He may have been the one who’d called me “dude.”

  “But since it’s you and me, I thought I’d ask how the I’m-never-going-to-think-about-Sir-Charles-again plan is going.”

  I suppose I’d walked right into that. “I’m never going to think about Sir Charles again,” I told her. “Max has a lunatic theory that I’ve decided to accept, so I’ve relegated the whole episode to the status of learning experience.”

  “What exactly did you learn?”

  I made a face. “Well, among other things, the corollary to my need to be conked over the head when someone likes me is a need to be conked over the head when someone doesn’t.”

  “That’s useful. I mean, you’ve always been oblivious, but now you know you’re oblivious, so that’s got to be a step in the right direction.”

  “And apparently I sublimate my need for productive employment with elaborate sexual fantasies.”

  “Okay, that one’s weird. Is that Max’s theory?”

  I took my eyes off the water long enough to glance at her. “He’s probably right. And speaking of Max, have you two made up?”

  She laughed. “I came clean about the vicar yesterday. Max pretended to be totally outraged that I’d let him grovel for so long, but I took him out for sushi and he got over it.”

  “Thank God I don’t have to keep secrets anymore.” I watched as two of the surfers at the other end of the line both went for the same wave and both caught it. It didn’t look that hard, really. And it did seem like they were having fun.

  “He says Phillip’s coming over in a month or so.” Vida mentioned this very casually.

  “Are you okay with that?”

  She shrugged. “I’m over it. I mean, we really did have fun together, and I still think he’s a great guy, so I wouldn’t want to let one little thing—”

  “Like his preference for hairy chests?” I suggested.

  “One little thing,” she insisted, “keep us from being friends. I mean, I did say I’d teach him to surf.”

  “Oh, I get it. I’m just your surfing-student guinea pig. Great.”

  “You’re my proof of concept. And you’d better get ready because it’s your turn next.”

  Vida had made me practice my pop-up technique on the beach before hitting the water, so in theory I knew I was supposed to turn myself to catch the wave while on my belly, then grip the sides of the board and raise my chest, then hop into a crouch—left foot forward—still holding onto the board, then stand. And surf.

  What I didn’t have a clear understanding of was when, exactly, I was supposed to execute the three major moves in relation to when the wave would be passing under my board. Or, as events unfolded, over my board.

  It was probably only seconds later that I came up for air, and by that time the board—strapped to my ankle for just such contingencies—had dragged me close enough to the shore that I could stand while I sputtered and gasped and verified that I was still alive.

  “Dude!” one of the surfers called to me gleefully. “You got worked!”

  If “worked” meant being tossed to the bottom of the sea, getting a mouthful of sand and ocean, and knowing with complete certainty that I was about to die, he was right.

  I heard a sharp whistle and turned to look back to the line, where Vida was applauding madly. “Way to go, Becks!”

  Apparently, not being killed outright was cause for celebration. And once I realized I hadn’t died, I got a burst of exhilaration that forced a joyful scream out of me.

  I did it twice more, but my arms rebelled at the suggestion of a fourth trip out past the breakers. It really was amazing, once the phrase “dashed upon the rocks” stopped playing in my head. I actually even managed to stand up with the last wave. At which point I realized I had no idea what to do next, and I was instantly pitched back into the waves. Still, for about ten glorious seconds, I was a surfer.

  When we finally called it quits, I had my last nasty shock of the day. The changing-in-the-parking-lot aspect of surfing was another thing Vida hadn’t fully disclosed. I’d always seen half-naked surfers at the beach and assumed they were exhibitionists. It had never occurred to me that they had nowhere else to go.

  Vida had this whole dance routine in which she held a towel in her teeth to slip out of the top part of the suit, then deftly placed it under her arms while she shimmied the rest of the way out. I was doubtful I’d be able to carry it off so gracefully.

  I unzipped the top of the wet suit and shook out my wet hair. When I looked over at Vida, she was staring at me with a funny expression.

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “You won’t like it.”

  “What, I’m too fat for this outfit?”

  “No, actually, you look damn good in it.” Vida grinned. “In fact, you look a little like Vladima.”

  I glanced down at my neoprene-clad body. “Maybe
with six-inch heels and some serious implants. What?”

  She was still grinning. “Just be glad Josh isn’t here to see you in that or there would be a whole new plotline. ‘Vladima, the Surfing Vampire.’”

  “Very funny.”

  Twenty-one

  I was late for my meeting with Josh. We were “doing lunch” because Josh had said that’s how CEOs and their marketing execs communicate. He’d had his people (well, Alice, the woman who came in three times a week to restock supplies and keep the office running) call my people (actually, my answering machine) to set it up. I think Josh was finding our new relationship just the slightest bit amusing.

  He looked at his watch significantly as I spied him at the bar at Bizou, one of those expense-account places popular with the digerati.

  I’d dashed home from Pacifica to shower and put on one of the outfits I’d bought in London. It was a sleek gray pantsuit—very hip, according to Max. “Sorry I’m late.” I pointed to his drink. “Are we having a boozy power lunch today?”

  “It’s club soda. Do you want something to drink?”

  The bartender was hovering. “Iced tea,” I told him.

  I was suddenly nervous and I didn’t know why. Josh and I had a lot to go over—ideas about publicity, possibilities for a print media campaign, coverage in some of the “What’s Hot on the Web” columns in the magazines where I still had contacts—so why did it suddenly seem awkward?

  Josh cleared his throat. “What kept you?”

  “What—? Oh.” I took the glass of tea from the bartender and squeezed the lemon wedge. “I was surfing.”

  The eyebrows went up. “You surf?”

  “As of today, I’m officially a surfer chick. Although for some reason they kept calling me ‘dude,’ which I hadn’t realized was gender unspecific—Are you all right?” Josh looked a little weird.

  “I’m just surprised. I didn’t know you surfed.”

  I grimaced. “It was more like clinging to the board and getting pounded,” I admitted. “Today was my first day. Vida finally talked me into it. It was pretty amazing, really. The worst thing was the rental wet suit.” I shook my head. “Never again.”

  “Wet suit?”

  “I think I’ll have to get my own if I go out again. Oh! Vida said the funniest thing. She said I looked like Vladima. You know, in the wet suit. I told her I’d need some—Josh?”

  He’d choked on his club soda. “I’m fine,” he said in a strangled sort of voice. “Let’s get our table.”

  MAYBE I WAS A LITTLE RUSTY because I never used to get the jitters before a pitch, but for some reason I suddenly had butterflies.

  The good news was, I needn’t have worried. Josh was great. He was interested in everything and enthusiastic about a lot of it, asked the right, smart questions and focused on what was important. He was a dream boss.

  And it felt so good to be useful. Like the first time you walk again after you’ve been in a cast.

  We talked through ideas for optimizing viewer feedback on the Web site and building a Vladima virtual community, including a chat room and occasional “live” Internet appearances (whatever that might mean for a fictitious undead character). Josh seemed impressed that I had contacts in the press and could pretty much guarantee Vladima some exposure in the mainstream media, but he wanted to be cautious that we didn’t alienate our current fringe fans when we went wide.

  The only real hurdle I’d anticipated was persuading Josh to start releasing Vladima as a comic book again.

  “You mean instead of the Web animation?”

  I shook my head. “In addition to it.” Before he could object to the increased workload, I made my arguments. “It gives us a whole different distribution channel. There are additional events and cross-promotional opportunities—”

  “I get that,” Josh said. “And I’d like to go back to doing a book.” He seemed to be weighing something in his mind. “There’s a comic book convention in a couple of months in Vegas that would be a perfect place to launch it.”

  “I know.” I also knew we had only a few weeks to register if we decided to go.

  “But,” Josh continued, “more work means more staff, and we’re maxed out already.”

  Which brought us to the interesting question of how he could afford the staff he already had. Including me.

  “Josh,” I said seriously. “We have to talk about money.”

  He looked wary, but I had to go on. In order to do this job properly, I needed to know where things stood financially.

  “How are you keeping Vladima afloat? Because I can boost your current pitiful revenue”—I won’t even mention how laughable it was—“but I need to have a target. What’s your burn rate? How far are you from any sort of profitability? And how have you been covering your expenses up until now?”

  He was definitely looking cautious, which confirmed one of my darker suspicions. I had a horrible theory about where the money was coming from, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know if it was true.

  Here’s what I did know: Despite the initial Internet hoopla, there still wasn’t a lot of profit to be made from Web sites that provided content rather than commerce.

  When the Web was shiny and new and there were fortunes to be made, everyone from highbrow magazines to online game developers thought they’d make millions from people subscribing to their sites. But after the bubble burst, as far as my research could tell, the only content providers who were making any real kind of a profit were, well, pornographers.

  Of course there were a few exceptions. Research sites for lawyers, doctors, and other specialized groups could charge monthly rates. And there were child-friendly sites where, for a monthly fee, parents could know their kids wouldn’t be redirected to anyplace inappropriate for them.

  But by far the biggest slice of the subscription-site pie was adult content. Naked people. Doing all sorts of things. And as much as I didn’t want to know, I had a hideous suspicion that something like that might be going on in the mystery office over Josh’s studio, and that he might (yuck) have an interest in it.

  I mean, how the hell else could he sustain the financial drain of the minions? Not to mention the studio itself. And he already had all the infrastructure in place for Vladima, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to use the same servers and equipment to host any number of lurid sites. Profitable lurid sites.

  It was a question that there was no delicate way of phrasing, and Josh was waiting, so I spit it out.

  “Josh, are you running a porn site?”

  “Am I what?” He nearly knocked over his water glass.

  “Josh, you can tell me if you’re running adult Web sites or…something. I mean there’s nothing illegal about it. I just figured—”

  “You just figured?” He stared at me. “There are a million ways to make money in this world and you assume I’m running a porn site?”

  “Josh,” I shushed him. People from other tables were starting to glance our way. “Look at the facts. I don’t see you working at anything other than Vladima—which we know isn’t bringing in enough to cover the electricity bill, let alone the whole operation—and I know your startup tanked, so you can’t be living off that, and I don’t think you’ve got some enormous trust fund…” I stared at him. “Do you have a trust fund?”

  He was still staring. “A trust fund or a porn site. Great choices.”

  “Okay then, you tell me. How have you been paying all the salaries, including mine? And why don’t you want to tell me about it? How can you afford all the equipment? How have you been leasing the studio? And what the hell goes on in the office upstairs?”

  He gave me a last hard look and seemed to make up his mind about something. “I don’t lease the studio. I own it.” He signaled the waiter for the check.

  “What?”

  “What, exactly, do you think you know about me?”

  I was stumped. “Just what you’ve told me.” I realized that might not be true. “And what other people
have told me. I mean, I know your fiancée left you because your company went under, and…” Just what other personal information did I have about Josh? Not much.

  He looked at me with the same expression Miss Jolly had worn when I’d washed out of the fifth-grade spelling bee in only the second round. Profound disappointment.

  “My company didn’t go under.”

  “What?”

  “I admit it lost a lot of its value—”

  “Right. It tanked.” It had happened to a lot of people. Most of the people I knew, in fact.

  He sighed. “But it netted me roughly eighteen million dollars when I sold it to UniSoft.”

  I blinked about a hundred times in the next split second. “You made eighteen million dollars?” I blinked some more. “Net?”

  He gave me an look that said “duh.”

  “And everybody knows this but me?”

  He shrugged. “I doubt many of the minions stop to think about where their paychecks are coming from. But a sharp business mind like yours—I assumed you’d done some research before you got involved with Vladima.”

  I shook my head. I think I was still a little shocked because I heard this muffled buzzing sound while he spoke. “I never researched you. I didn’t think…I mean I never thought…”

  “You mean you never took me seriously.”

  I winced. But it was true. Josh—Vladima—had just been a mortifying way to make my mortgage payments while I waited for my next real job. I’d never done any research in the beginning, and when I’d started looking into things lately, I’d let my assumptions about Josh stand instead of going out and finding concrete facts. Good Lord, I’d never even Googled Josh.

  I couldn’t seem to get past one-word questions. “You…? UniSoft…? Eighteen…?”

  He took pity on me. “It’s okay, Becks. I wouldn’t expect anyone to assume that I’d be crazy enough to fund the whole Vladima thing out of my own pocket for all this time.”