“Really? Erica gave me the impression that was already done, and you were perfecting it,” Sheila said quietly, in an even tone, but Tony froze.
“Eh. We—my group—is. I think the engineers might have a prototype Leonardo that does a couple of tests. I honestly don’t know for sure.”
“Well, I’m certainly familiar with CEOs making extravagant promises about their products. I always try to listen to their pitches with a certain amount of skepticism,” Sheila said. “I don’t expect you to blab about all the technical details. I’m sure Erica wouldn’t approve.”
“Nope. She likes to keep discussion of details to a minimum. She focuses on the big picture.” She was notably closed-mouthed with her own employees, who were then, in turn, oddly reticent with each other. It was unlike any other place Tony had worked. The typical biotech company environment was rife with gossip, speculation, all kinds of talk. But people had to work across groups and develop approaches that included everyone’s input, and that wasn’t done at GHS.
“Erica is always telling us we’re going to change the world,” Tony said, thinking that was a positive thing to say.
“She’s told me the same thing,” Sheila said and laughed. “I imagine that’s what she says to everyone. When she talked about how Leonardo will revolutionize medical testing, I believed her.”
“That’s exactly why I wanted to work at GHS. I want to be part of that revolution.”
“That’s wonderful. Well. Here’s to changing the world.” Sheila fixed her gaze on Tony, who grinned back.
* * *
In her minimally decorated living room, Sheila knelt before her altar and lit a candle and a stick of light incense. She mirrored the beatific smile of the Buddha back to her statue of him. He was center stage on the altar, surrounded by the candle, a large quartz crystal, the incense stand, and the singing bowl. Sheila touched her Buddha and then her statue of Qin Yin, the goddess of wisdom and compassion. She rang the bowl three times. She routinely followed these steps to prepare herself for meditation.
She thought of Tony and what she wished for her and for them together, if that might be their fate. It was too soon to know. That Sheila was attracted to Tony’s essence, to herself, was clear. She wanted to know all the answers to her questions immediately, but that wasn’t the Buddhist way. She was taught to wait and be open, to be quiet and ready to receive. Her meditation practice helped her be patient, which wasn’t her natural inclination.
Sheila took off her shoes, tucked her legs under her on the cushion, and, in the standard lotus pose, opened her palms upon her knees and breathed evenly. She sounded the singing bowl three times. She let the image of Tony’s face fill her inner eye, then banished it. She set her timer for thirty minutes and began.
Her first meditation teacher had taught her to count to clear her mind. As long as she was counting, the unwanted thoughts came and went, if they came at all. She concentrated on her breathing and counting. The timer chimed gently, and Sheila opened her eyes. She was peaceful, her mind cleansed. She slept that night as she usually did, deeply, and woke the next morning full of gratitude.
* * *
“I have some news,” Roy said a few weeks later. He stood at Sheila’s doorway, leaning against the frame and looking as though he were about to burst.
“Well, come in, sit down, and tell me about it.” Sheila thought again how young her father seemed. It was a good thing, she supposed, in balance. She didn’t want him to be old before his time. His enthusiasm could shoot off in all sorts of directions, just like a teenager’s. It was endearing, if exhausting. What now? What had captured his attention?
He folded himself into one of the armchairs facing Sheila’s desk and crossed his leg, his foot bouncing up and down. He smirked for what seemed an overly long interval.
“What?” Sheila asked. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“Erica asked me to join the GHS board of directors. She’s had a recent resignation.”
“Why did she pick you?” Sheila was truly curious. Roy wasn’t an obvious choice, other than he was a long-time Silicon Valley personage and knew a lot about the investment business. Just not a lot about GHS’s business.
“Why not?” He appeared stung that Sheila would question this choice. She didn’t mean it as a negative. Why was he being defensive?
“I didn’t mean anything bad, Pops. I’m only curious. Did she say?”
“Nope. Only that she thought I’d be a good fit. That’s flattering, considering the other members. Those guys are really solid. All of them. I’m in good company.”
Roy was excited, and Sheila kept her thoughts to herself. Yes, the GHS board was solid all right—a solid slate of rich old white guys, all of them likely gaga over Erica and her shiny black hair and practiced sales spiel. Sheila didn’t like to be cynical, but she was realistic. Buddhist practice thoroughly encouraged one to keep one’s eyes open and assess the truth of people’s words and then their actions.
It wasn’t that Sheila disbelieved Erica. If she had, she wouldn’t have recommended that they fund her. She only sensed an air of manipulation in the way she populated her company’s board. Let’s face it. An attractive young woman would be like catnip to men of a certain age. They might say, and it would be true, that Erica was intelligent and altruistic, and they were sure her company would be successful. But that didn’t negate the almost-primal, unspoken sexual vibe she gave off that drew them in every bit as much as her abilities as a start-up CEO.
“Well, congratulations on your appointment. I’m sure it will be an…experience.” Sheila stood up and hugged her dad. His momentary air of pique subsided, and he hugged her back.
“You’re the best, little girl. You know it, right?” He didn’t often say that to her after she’d turned twenty-one, but it was one of his old endearments, and it melted her.
“You’re the best too, Daddy-o,” she said.
He gave her the thumbs-up and exited her office, still grinning.
Sheila opened her calendar and looked up the date of her lunch with Tony. It had been exactly two weeks. She’d heard nothing from Tony since, and that bothered her. She wanted to know if Tony had ended that day feeling as optimistic and exhilarated as she had, but she didn’t want to be pushy with someone who appeared to be reticent. On the other hand, if she didn’t make a move, who would? She vacillated between email or phone call. Sheila liked email for its efficiency and clarity, but some situations called for phone contact. She called Tony and left a low-key message. She’ll know I’m interested if I bother to call.
* * *
Tony listened to Sheila’s voice mail with a mixture of delight and alarm. She’d assumed their lunch was either a one-time or a friendly thing, not a date. She didn’t want to get in touch with Sheila because she thought she’d come off as nerdy and awkward and unattractive. Sheila was impossibly smooth and sophisticated, and their proximity and interaction during lunch had merely highlighted the contrast between them. Lunch, Tony concluded, had been a dead end. But here was Sheila calling her—friendly and noncommittal, but still calling. What did it mean?
When it came to possibly romantic situations, Tony considered herself as abysmally nonromantic as anyone could be. She had been with women in college, but they weren’t hard to snag. Then came grad school and then her first job and her second job, and Tony homed in on study and then on work. Her college hookups seemed insignificant, and she was uninterested to replicating those scenarios by going to bars and trying to meet women. She had ignored her loneliness and told herself she didn’t have time to date. Truthfully, it had seemed intimidating and exhausting.
Tony replayed the voice mail and listened closely. Sheila’s voice was marvelous. Low-pitched, not sexy per se, but not brisk or businesslike either, it was smooth and easy-going. She asked after Tony’s health in a generic way and reiterated her enjoyment of their lunch date. She’d said the same thing when she dropped Tony off at GHS campus. This phone call appeared to be an
invitation to call her that Sheila didn’t express explicitly.
Tony’s lab timer went off, interrupting her thought flow and making her jump. She slammed the “off” button in irritation, then high-tailed it down the hall to the laboratory. Timing was crucial. Incubation couldn’t be overlong, or it would screw with the result. Anything could screw with the results, which was both the problem and the beauty of lab testing. With her coat on and her concentration focused, Tony stopped the reaction in her ninety-six well plates with a multichannel pipettor that allowed her to shoot the quenching reagent into all of the plate’s wells in twelve swift movements. As always, she hoped the little tweaks to the reagent volumes would finally, at last, yield the right outcome. Abe would want to hear from her as soon as it was done. She threw the plate into the reader and waited anxiously for the results. She’d have to return to her conundrum with Sheila later.
Later turned out to be on the train ride home at seven thirty that night. Abe had had her repeat the assay with a new twist so he would have something to say first thing in the morning, after he met with Erica. Tony wasn’t invited to Abe’s meetings with Erica, and she wasn’t certain if that was a good or a bad thing. It would make her feel more important if she was asked to sit in, but then again, sometimes Abe came back to the lab after a meeting with Erica looking a bit shell-shocked. From what little he shared with her, Tony knew he was under intense pressure. Time was not their friend, he said. This wasn’t an unfamiliar situation for Tony. Abe told her all the functional assay groups were under orders to get their protocols perfected so engineering could design the robotics. He was too polite to speak negatively about Erica, but Tony inferred from the directions Abe gave her that Erica wanted better and faster from them. This was predictable: higher-ups didn’t understand how long it took to troubleshoot and perfect assays. There weren’t any shortcuts. An assay development took as long as it took, and that was always longer than you wanted it to.
Sheila. Tony wanted to not be ambivalent about Sheila. She’d wanted to talk to her the morning they met at Coupa Café, though she wasn’t entirely clear why. She never walked up to someone. She was a strictly “I’ll talk to you if you talk to me first” kind of girl. Sure, Sheila was attractive in an objective way. Her dark-red hair, her clear, pale complexion, her easy conversation were appealing. It was gratifying that Sheila had asked her to go out to lunch and Tony had agreed without quite knowing how it happened. It all seemed to fall under the category of too good to be true. Tony’s self-esteem needed some work for sure.
Tony tapped the phone message, and Sheila picked up on the second ring.
“Hi there.” Sheila’s voice came through the phone bright and eager. “I’m thrilled you called me back.”
“I wanted to,” Tony said, and cut herself off before she could say “because it was the polite thing to do.”
“I was wondering if you wanted to see more of Palo Alto, other than the Research Park area and the streets between GHS and Cal Train station.” At lunch, Tony had mentioned her lack of familiarity with anything in Palo Alto but her company’s campus and that one visit to Coupa Café. That Sheila had remembered her saying that blew Tony away. If nothing else, Sheila’s attention to detail was admirable, and her attention in general was hugely flattering.
Tony’s idea of what businesspeople were like was undergoing revision. She assumed someone like Sheila would be, if not exactly cold, then not super touchy-feely in an emotional way. Also, without any basis for her opinion, she envisioned Sheila as sexually assertive. While Sheila wasn’t effusive or overtly sexual, she was amiable and projected an air of kindness and generosity, which was sexy without being sexy. Tony shivered and forced her attention back to what Sheila had just asked her.
“Oh. Yeah, sure. I guess so.” Not a very enthusiastic response, but Tony was off balance again.
“Great. How do you feel about bike riding? Palo Alto is as flat as a pancake, so it’s not hard to bike. We can take it easy.”
Tony wasn’t adept at bicycle riding, though she’d done a few rides in San Francisco in Golden Gate Park. She didn’t want to expose her lack of experience to Sheila but…
“I don’t have a bike.”
“We’ll rent you one, no sweat. Then we’ll have lunch at the end, I promise.”
“Um.” Tony was annoyed at her wishy-washiness. She needed to stop being such a wimp. This was how people dated. It wasn’t complicated like science was complicated.
“Come on. It’ll be fun. I swear.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Terrific. Next Saturday. Can you handle nine in the morning?”
Tony thought swiftly. She’d have to catch an eight am train, but it was doable.
“Yep. That’s fine.”
“Great. Text me about twenty minutes before the train will arrive, and I’ll pick you up at the transit depot.”
“Okay. Will do. Well. Bye.”
“See ya soon.”
Tony held her phone in her hand, more elated than nervous, but nervous was still there. Grow up. Sheila liked her and wanted to spend time with her. There was no downside to this and a considerable number of upsides.
* * *
Before she could enjoy her date with Sheila, however, Tony was due to have Friday-night dinner with her dad.
She walked up the stairs to her family home, a modest brick house in the Richmond district, on a numbered street midway between Golden Gate Park and the Presidio.
She walked in the front door, shouting “Hello.” Her dad came downstairs and hugged her.
“Hi, honey. I’m happy to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too, Dad.”
He brewed tea for them. Tony had become a coffee person over the years, save for visits with her dad.
“How’s work?” he asked.
“Oh, good, busy. Erica always wants results yesterday. How about you?”
“Still the same. Fine.” He never said anything different. He was a mid-level mechanical engineer in a huge construction company.
Tony wasn’t sure if Joe would admit it if things weren’t fine. Joe would never say anything negative about anything. It wasn’t his nature, which was part of the reason for their screwed-up family. He detested conflict and refused to participate in it ever. Period. Tony wanted him to have shut down his family passive-aggressively insulting her mom and her mom always saying critical things about Tony. But he’d done neither.
“I’ve met someone,” Tony said abruptly. “She’s in one of the companies that invested in GHS. She’s a VC.”
Joe raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really? How did that happen?”
Tony told him the story, and he listened without comment, as he usually did. He was a terrific listener, but he didn’t often offer fatherly feedback. Tony loved that he was nonjudgmental about everything, including her, but still she sometimes wished he’d express an opinion or two.
He nodded with a vague smile. Tony waited, but she couldn’t contain herself any longer.
“She comes from money, I think. But she’s not, like, obvious about it.” Tony hoped that would be a mark in Sheila’s favor. His expression didn’t change, and he didn’t speak.
“Come on, Dad. Say something.”
He took a sip from his teacup and looked at the ceiling. “What if the company doesn’t work out? What happens then?”
“Dad, that’s not going to happen. Why would you even think that?” This wasn’t at all the response she’d expected.
“Well. Sometimes things don’t. I read all the time about start-ups that go under. If she loses money on the deal, that could cause problems for the two of you, honey.”
“We’ve just barely started dating. Sheesh. I really like her though. I can’t imagine anything could go wrong.” Thanks to her dad, though, Tony was suddenly apprehensive. She was taken aback that when Joe finally offered an opinion, it was negative.
“Besides, things are going fine,” she said. “Venture-capital people take calculated
risks. That’s what they do. Sheila told me they believe they can make a lot of money.”
“Just because they believe something doesn’t make it true,” Joe said and stood up. “I’m going to start dinner.” At dinner, they stuck to small talk about the neighborhood and their family.
When Tony took the bus home, though, she had something new to worry about: her father’s somewhat cryptic warning about Sheila and GHS.
* * *
“We want a twenty-one speed,” Sheila informed the clerk at the bicycle store firmly. “Peugeot or Specialized. And not a girl’s bike.”
When the man left to go look for a bicycle to meet Sheila’s specifications, she turned to Tony and grinned. “I don’t know why bike manufacturers persist with this nonsense of making men’s and women’s bikes, but they do. Even though no woman has ridden a bike in a skirt for a hundred years.”
Tony, almost paralyzed with nerves both from being on a date with Sheila and anticipating this bike ride, could only nod and try to look cool.
It was another few minutes while Sheila supervised the adjustment of the bike seat to Tony’s height. Tony, who was self-conscious about her short legs, found the attention excruciating, but watching Sheila in action directing the bike-store clerk was fun. Sheila’s bicycle shorts revealed muscular thighs and calves. Tony was wearing a basic pair of shorts, which was all she had. She wasn’t going to invest in any fancy equipment until she was sure she liked this new pastime and that she and Sheila were embarked upon a relationship and that it would be a regular thing. All of this was purely speculation.
At last they were ready. Sheila had insisted on paying for everything, including a new water bottle. Tony made a mild protest at the beginning but gave in as Sheila pointed out this was all her idea and for Tony to please allow her. Her certainty was sure sexy, and Tony suspected that control was her natural mode. Sheila was so unfailingly pleasant that her assertiveness wasn’t hard to take, and Tony wasn’t disposed to put up a fight anyhow. She had other things to worry about, such as keeping up with Sheila once they set off on their ride.
Trade Secrets Page 5