by Jason Letts
Taking another healthy sip, I had a good guess that Andrew would avoid asking me any questions and I’d spend the entire hour sitting there on stage listening to the other presenters as though I were a member of the audience.
When the time came I left the restaurant and made my way back to the convention center, which was packed with people. Evidently there were some big game demonstrations going on, because the crowd looked especially young. Nearing thirty and watching some of these kids try to slide down the convention center’s stairway banister, I got the urge to ask where their parents were.
The first person I saw when I reached the backstage area was Andrew, who had a cheerful expression on his face that instantly drooped into a scowl when he recognized me. He turned his head as if bowing to the realization that there was no other option but to say something to me.
“Remember what I said. No trouble,” he said under his breath. It dawned on me how soon this person would be out of my life forever and how much I would cherish that feeling.
“As bad as that email was, you’ve been worse. Find another line of work where you don’t need to deal directly with people. I’ve never seen someone claim to be a master at something they’re so bad at.”
Andrew rolled his eyes and walked away. My comment had been almost cruelly harsh, but it was what I felt, and speaking my mind to him filled me with a liberating rush. There were some perfunctory greetings between myself and the others in our group. Despite many of the friendly conversations we’d had at the introductory meeting, the relationships already felt stale and obsolete. We were strangers again forced to talk to each other because of proximity.
Except for Seth, who surprisingly went out of his way to approach me in the backstage area, this time blowing right past Darla, dressed all in pink to match her pin, and the scornful look on her face. I almost wanted to tell her tough break, better luck next time.
“Hey, there you are. I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, looking a little discomposed in a suit with no tie. But it was something about his eyebrows that conveyed a sense of worry. I wondered if he thought he’d left something in the room or that I might get pregnant.
“It would’ve been easier if you had a phone,” I joked, surprisingly comfortable when I should’ve been a bundle of nerves. Seth grinned sheepishly.
“I guess so, but listen…”
The sound of loud clapping cut him off as Andrew beat his hands together to draw everyone’s attention.
“Let’s huddle up for a pre-game pep talk. Bring it in, bring it in,” he repeated until we’d all hunched over and put our hands on each other’s shoulders. “No pressure, but there’s a packed crowd out there dying to hear what you have to say. The most important piece of advice I can give you is to just be yourselves. Don’t feel the need to be funny, witty, or anything if it doesn’t come naturally. Without exception your individual presentations were all excellent, and this is just icing on the cake for them. I’ll be firing off some questions and we’ll see what we can learn from each other. OK? Go get ’em!”
There was more clapping at the conclusion, though no one had half of Andrew’s enthusiasm. He ducked around the curtain and called us to join him moments later. There was just enough time standing around for me to wonder why he would say my speech was excellent when he obviously felt the opposite, and I decided he didn’t care to be accurate when he was trying to exude positivity.
The next thing I knew I was clustered in the rest of our group as we herded on stage toward a semicircle of chairs. Andrew stood behind the chair at one end, Darla right next to him, Seth toward the middle, and somehow I was left with the chair at the far other end. I noticed microphones hanging over our heads while the audience was applauding. Without any kind of gesture, I took my seat.
“I hope everyone is set for a wide-ranging discussion, no holds barred, anything goes,” Andrew said, reading every word from some index cards in his hand. “And I’d like to start with a question for Sarah. What do you anticipate for Moore’s Law relative to the advances in nanotechnology?”
I smiled at the sound of my name but inwardly froze up at having a question thrown at me right off the bat. I surmised that Andrew was trying to embarrass me by asking a tough question I might fumble over. I’d prove him right if I didn’t come up with something fast. Luckily, I knew something about this.
“I’m glad you asked that, Andrew, because Moore’s Law has been a real object of fascination for me. Whether things like processing speed and memory will continue to improve at the exponential rate we’re familiar with is something I can’t bet against after so many others have done so previously and failed, but I do think we can see rapid advances laterally and not just linearly. For example, how come our cars don’t have computing power and dashboards as advanced as our cell phones? Smart homes and the Internet of Things are just the beginning.”
Andrew gave a begrudging nod as Seth spoke up.
“For me, it’s surprising that we often have the expectation that technology will evolve to be faster and smaller all the time. We’re social animals, and the direction of our growth has been and will continue to be in the direction of linking us together. MySpace, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, cryptocurrency, this is the line the future is drawn on. Not flying cars and robotic humanoids.”
I watched Darla roll her eyes as Seth gave what I thought was an intriguing comment.
“Let’s move on to another topic,” Andrew said, not a trace of a smile on his lips. “Concerns about privacy all over the world has rocked the tech community, but there’ve been very different approaches. How would you compare beliefs about privacy between Americans and Europeans? Sarah, why don’t you start us off?”
My mouth hung open a little, wondering how long Andrew was going to try to drill me in front of all of these people.
“I just came back from Amsterdam and…” Darla said, but Andrew held up a finger to her.
“If you don’t mind I’d love to hear what Sarah has to say about this,” he said to her, and Darla glared at his finger like she was about to bite it off.
“How do you weigh concepts like our first amendment protections with strong feelings in Europe about what’s commonly known as the right to be forgotten? They’re almost antonyms when you think about it. Most Americans would have a hard time understanding that my rights can stop you from saying things about me unless they are erroneously disparaging to the point of being libel,” I said, feeling on much shakier ground than the previous question.
Andrew fumed even more overtly, but this time he managed to retain a semblance of propriety and ask a question to someone else. This one did actually provoke a discussion among several panel members, and things suddenly seemed to continue more as one would expect of a panel.
The only person who still seemed put out was Darla, who hadn’t been explicitly asked a question and appeared ready to burst for being silent so long. Worse, every few minutes it seemed she cast a withering look in my direction that I tried to pretend not to notice. But the time ticked away and the end of the panel was in sight.
“Another question for our most provocative panelist,” Andrew began with a worrying look at me. “This should be an easy one on your home turf. You’ve said that women are likely to continue to face discrimination and harassment in the tech world. Taking that into account, would you also say that women should know what they’re subjecting themselves to going in and bear some of the responsibility if it does occur?”
Somehow Andrew was asking me the easiest question in the world, but I found myself fumbling over it in my head, making it more complex than it was. By the time I realized I was overthinking it I knew I had to open my mouth and answer with something.
“If you’re asking me if harassment should be considered an occupational hazard and they should share the blame, my answer is no. But sometimes there can be a degree of surprise and shock from the media in particular that doesn’t seem to fit. Many of us hear about situations li
ke this on nearly a daily basis, so when one case jumps into the public view and there’s this sudden surge of outrage, welcome to the lives we’re living every day,” I said.
Andrew narrowed his eyes at me, a sly smirk dawning on his face.
“So you’re saying that victims shouldn’t have their stories reach the public because it happens so often?”
“No, I’m not saying that,” I said, flushing.
“But you just said…”
The nerves that exploded in my stomach seemed like they would eat me alive from the inside out. What exactly had I said? I couldn’t have said anything too bad, could I? Out of nowhere, Seth came to my defense.
“I think what she means is that there should already be so much awareness of the problem that a very visible occurrence doesn’t lead to the usual cycle where everyone gets upset about it then forgets about it.”
I nodded vigorously, ready to grab hold of any lifeline available to me. There were fewer than ten minutes left in the panel segment, but the clock had frozen solid. I hoped Andrew would be satisfied that he’d gotten to me and move on, but I wasn’t nearly so lucky.
“I’m not sure that’s what she meant,” Andrew began, but his words were trampled over by a voice to his right.
“Seth, you don’t really believe she had that in mind,” Darla said indignantly. “You’re just bailing her out because you slept together.”
It felt like the wind got knocked out of me. I was staring ahead at people, shapes, lights, but none of it made sense. Was this a dream?
“Excuse me?” I asked, trying to shrug it off and communicate with a tilt of the head that Darla was raving.
“Oh please,” she went on. “I saw you walk past my door one after the other just minutes apart before eight am. Nobody here is stupid. But to be honest it’s not your permissiveness that bothers me. It’s how you act like you’re the sole self-righteous standard-bearer of the women’s movement. I’m not surprised you think it’s hopeless and women will only ever be treated as sex objects. That’s because you have no personality, no interests, no hobbies, no reason for anyone to want anything to do with you other than have sex.”
I nodded, angry now and ready to hit back. That was too rich coming from her.
“That’s hysterical. Are you jealous now that you blew him off in the middle of your time together for a random phone call? I guess not enough people called you while the vibrate function was on for you to get through the night without being bitter about missing out.
“But I can see how invested you are in improving the plight of women, especially since without it your gender-war profiteering company would be out of business.The joke is that you’re even here on a panel about tech in the first place. You’re not a tech company. You’re an apparel brand that tries to syphon money out of women. They’re looking for empowerment and you give them t-shirts, pins, and mugs,” I said.
Darla looked like she was going to get out of her seat and rush at me. I don’t know if she still looked like me, because the way she was contorting her face was terrifying in a way I’d never imagined I could produce.
“You mean why are you here,” she shot back. “Every single one of us has started our own company except for you. You’re just a middle manager with virtually no experience, no relevant education, and no understanding of what it’s like to risk everything just to try to make it on your own. Keep cashing a man’s checks while telling yourself you’re a leader in the women’s movement, because that makes sense.”
I clenched my jaw, stumped by her last retort which had somehow hit too close to the bone. There was some truth in it, and in the moment I’d contemplated that I’d lost the argument. I had mentally flinched.
“I’ve made the business I work for what it is today,” I said even though the ground continued to slip away. “And I’ve been an incredible help to others, like Seth’s.”
I’d hoped to reclaim some dignity, but Darla’s laugh was too genuine for it to work.
“Oh yes, your idea for him to move to New York, right? What a stroke of genius. Wow, how do you come up with these brilliant prescriptions. Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave knowing that a luminary like you has eclipsed him,” she said.
Once again she’d hit me harder than I hit her, and I racked my brains for something more to throw at her and was coming up with nothing. I was angry at Darla, the pleased look on Andrew’s face, and all of the people who were quietly watching me get humiliated. I wanted to shout at Darla that she was stupid and wrong, but that wasn’t going to work.
“What do you think about all this, Seth?” Andrew asked with an almost perverse calmness. Seth had a solemn look on his face as he sat between us. He looked like he’d been dragged through the mud just by being present and associated with this.
“Maybe he got confused about which one he was sleeping with,” said the old man out of nowhere, ushering in a deafening roar of laughter from the crowd that was more than I could bear. There were supposed to be a few minutes of discussion left, but I’d had enough. Getting up from my seat as the laughter continued to assault my eardrums, I unceremoniously exited stage left. The last thing I saw before I turned away was Andrew’s satisfied expression.
CHAPTER 6
I was so anxious to get back to New York I would’ve hitchhiked if there had been a good opportunity. But instead I marched straight back to my hotel and asked the concierge in as measured a tone as I could muster if he could find me a flight back immediately.
My phone buzzed for the sixth time, this time with a call from Keenan, but I fully shut it off. There was no way I could even say a word to him about what I’d done while I was here, on stage or in bed. The previous five were calls and messages from numbers I didn’t recognize, which was unsettling how a bunch of people had managed to come by my phone number so quickly in the aftermath of the panel.
There was no other way to say it. I was afraid of what was happening right now on the Internet as the reaction to the panel spun and spun. Somehow my speech hadn’t gone viral, but the bare-knuckled brawl I’d just had with Darla was inflammatory in a personal and vindictive way that people online literally eat for breakfast. The potential for unintended consequences was massive.
The concierge politely informed me that there was a red-eye that night I could take, which would save me a measly eight hours of being in Austin while costing me the price of a second plane ticket and an unused night in the hotel room. The practical thing to do would’ve been to just hide out in my room and escape in the morning, but I handed over a credit card and bought the earlier flight even though I didn’t have the money for it.
Once in my room with the door closed, I vowed not to open it again until I was going to leave six hours later. Packing my bag took all of fifteen minutes, I ordered up a Caesar salad, and turned on the television in a blatant attempt to fast forward my life until I was out of town. My phone remained on the desk. Even though it was completely off, I considered taking the battery out so that it would be even more off.
Four hours passed until there was a knock at the door, immediately raising my suspicions that some reporter or someone had figured out where I was and wanted to pour salt in the wound. I peeked through the door to see Seth standing on the other side looking a little unkempt. I wondered if he was drunk and had shown up for a repeat of the previous night. That was the last thing I needed.
“What is it?” I asked when I pulled the door open about a foot. He pursed his lips and gave me a repentant look that dispelled my thought that he’d been drinking.
“Look, can we talk for a minute? I just wanted to say I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to tell you about Darla before. I had no idea she was right down the hall until I passed her. What happened at the panel, I never in a million years wanted you to have to go through that. I hate to admit this but I think I’ve learned my lesson about how useful a cell phone is.”
I shuddered, wondering if I could really stomach a conversation about this. It didn’t
matter much anyway. In my mind I was already flying back home.
“I don’t think it would’ve made much of a difference if you had told me. What was I going to do, skip the panel? There’s no way I would’ve guessed she’d fly off her rocker like that, or that Andrew would tee her up like he did,” I said.
I opened the door, which allowed the light from the hall to shine across the dim room onto my luggage by the bed. Seth grimaced.
“I’m pretty familiar with the flight schedule. I had a feeling you’d be leaving soon. Woulda come sooner but I had a few people I needed to meet with out here,” he said, still standing in the hall.
I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head. Managing to stay off my phone was one thing, but with him here my will power broke down.
“What did they have to say about what happened? Am I crazy, stupid, or both?”
Seth lowered his eyes to the floor and set his jaw.
“That’s really why I’m here. I know this is goodbye, but I needed to tell you not to let Darla’s comments get to you. Manager or not, you’re tech, and your ideas held their own. Some people will only remember the drama, but they’re just the ones who aren’t perceptive enough to accomplish anything.”
He said all the right things that would’ve normally lifted me out of any funk, but there wasn’t anything right now that could get rid of this feeling of being pulverized, especially not this late with a long, sleepless flight ahead. I tried to produce a smile but it was like my face refused to cooperate.
“I know you mean it,” I said. “You’re a lot different than I thought you were. I hope when the world comes to East Wanatchee it doesn’t change you much.”
Seth nodded slightly and then glanced down the hall even though I hadn’t heard any sign of footsteps or a jiggle of a doorknob. It was just the sense that it was time to go calling him. He gave me one last look before taking his sunglasses out of his back pocket, twirling them around his finger, and striding off out of sight.