“Do you mind going to the Stanford campus? We can warm up a bit riding on the flats before we try a little hill climb up to the Dish. Then I want to show you the El Palo Alto.”
Tony winced at the word hill, but she didn’t want to admit any misgivings. At least not yet.
It turned out to not be too difficult once they got going. Unlike San Francisco’s intimidating hills, Palo Alto’s flat, wide streets let Tony get into a pedaling rhythm as she followed Sheila. The view from behind was quite nice. As promised, she set a moderate pace, and Tony began to relax and actually enjoy herself.
They stopped at a traffic light and pulled off to the side to drink water. The day was warming up, though it wasn’t unpleasantly hot and wouldn’t be, Sheila promised.
“I always check the weather before a ride. The climb up to the Dish is short.”
Tony admired how Sheila’s cheeks turned pink from exertion.
They rode to the entrance of the Dish.
“We can’t go in, unfortunately. The trails don’t allow bicycles. Only hiking.”
“What is this thing?” Tony asked. “I can see it from GHS and always wondered what it was.”
“It’s a radio telescope. It tracks satellites. I don’t actually know that much about it.”
“How far have we ridden?” Tony asked.
“Oh, around three miles.”
“Three miles!” Tony was astounded. She was mildly out of breath but not nearly as exhausted as she’d thought she’d be.
“Oh, sure. Bicycles are the most efficient form of transportation on the planet.” Sheila grinned and took another pull on her water bottle. “Ready?”
They took off, and then they were at the El Palo Alto Park looking up at an immense redwood tree.
“What do you think?” Sheila asked brightly.
“I love it. I can’t see the top of the tree,” Tony said, and she meant it. More than anything else, she essentially liked how happy this outing seemed to make Sheila.
“How are you feeling? This wasn’t too much for you, is it? We’ll have to ride back downtown, of course.”
“Oh, no. I’m good. I’m sweaty and might be sore tomorrow, but…”
Sheila put a smooth palm against Tony’s back under her tee shirt, which had come untucked, rested it there for a moment, and then withdrew it.
“Yep. You’re warm,” Sheila said matter-of-factly, her face still. But Sheila’s touch gave Tony a huge rush of arousal that came and went so quickly she barely had time to register it, but it was unmistakable.
“A bit, but I’m okay.” Tony managed to keep her voice even. Their eyes met briefly.
At the restaurant Sheila chose, they ordered some cold drinks.
“Well, what did you think?” Sheila asked.
“About what?”
“About the bike ride, silly. What did you think I meant?” Sheila’s dark eyes glittered in amusement.
“Nothing. I liked it very much.”
“You had no trouble keeping up.”
“Nope. Surprisingly enough.”
“Next time, we’ll try riding a little farther.” Sheila paused and sipped her iced coffee. “How’s our investment doing?”
“Our what?” Tony was confused.
Sheila laughed. “GHS. That place where you work. You know, the one I just sunk thirty million into a couple weeks ago.”
Tony loved the way Sheila could just toss of that unbelievable figure so casually, but maybe her question wasn’t as casual as it seemed.
“Okay, I guess. My perspective is pretty narrow. You ought to ask Erica.”
“I will. I’m meeting with her next week, but I want to know what you think.”
Tony sat back, drinking her tea as she bought herself some time to think. She was wondering about her NDA and how that applied to this situation. This was someone who had a genuine interest and was connected to GHS, even if she wasn’t exactly part of it.
“Well. We’re making progress with the immunoassay. I think we finally found the right balance with the reagents so we have accurate results on the small sample size.”
“Excellent.” Sheila beamed. “I think I get what you’re talking about, but, mostly, if you’re pleased, then I’m pleased.”
“Quite a few other types of tests are in development, and I don’t have anything to do with those. Also, there’s Leonardo, and I don’t know how that’s going. I only know my tiny corner of the big picture.”
“I understand. I’ll hear the full story from Erica. You ready to go back to the bike store?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
After they returned the rental bike, Sheila drove Tony back to the transit center, and they sat in the car talking until it was time for Tony’s train back to San Francisco.
“I hope you know how much I like you,” Sheila said, her voice pitched low and gentle.
“Yes. I like you too.” Tony’s words sounded strangled. She thought she knew what was about to happen, and she equally wanted and feared it.
“Good then. Well, we ought to have lunch again soon.”
“Yes. I’d like that.”
Sheila looked at her, her expression a question mark.
Oh. She wants me to pick a time. Tony made a show of looking at her phone calendar. “Any day that works for you. I have to be cognizant of what I plan to do in the lab and schedule my lunch around it.”
It was more that she had to structure her day around a lunch break that wouldn’t disrupt any assays.
Sheila had pulled out her phone and was scrutinizing it as well. She looked up and directly at Tony.
“I see. How about Wednesday?” Sheila asked as she typed. “I’m free at noon and nothing till two.”
“Sure. I’ll plan on that.” Tony was happy her voice wasn’t shaking.
“I look forward to it,” Sheila said as she put away her phone.
“Me too. My train leaves in a few minutes. I better go.”
“Yes. I suppose you should. I had a great time. I’ll see you Wednesday.” With that, Sheila leaned toward her and kissed her gently on the mouth. Again, like Sheila’s hand on her back during their bike ride, it was over so fast, Tony was unable to react, but she was frozen in place.
Sheila leaned back and grinned. “Don’t miss your train.”
“No. Thanks. Bye.” Tony scrambled out of the car and forced herself to walk away slowly.
Chapter Four
It was both good and bad that the train ride between Palo Alto and San Francisco took an hour. Tony often used the time to think about work and whatever her current plans were. She could be on her phone, reading news or playing some stupid game to pass the time, and she did those things some of the time, but she’d read that people needed to take breaks from electronics, and she forced herself to stay off her phone for at least half of her commute, if not longer.
On this train ride, she wasn’t even tempted to start a game of Angry Birds. She sat, gazing out the window, her mind filled with Sheila. Sheila cycling ahead of her during their bike ride, Sheila gesturing at the redwood tree, ordering coffee. Sheila sitting in the driver’s seat of her electric car, smiling confidently.
It was time to accept that this extraordinary woman was interested in her. Tony wanted to deny it, push it away and ignore it, but that wasn’t possible. It was real, and it was amazing and transcendent and exhilarating. Tony just hoped she’d be up to what she considered the challenge of forging a serious romantic connection with Sheila. She still wasn’t positive that was what Sheila was after, but there was a good chance it was.
She’d never been in a relationship where she’d have to be honest and talk about her feelings and be vulnerable. It wasn’t that she didn’t want one, but she wasn’t sure she was capable of being in a serious romantic partnership, if that was what this was turning into. She hoped it was, but things weren’t clear. This could be something much less consequential, which would be okay, she supposed, but to her astonishment, she wanted it to be way more th
an merely a friendly hookup.
Tony had no idea what was going to happen and no way to predict how she’d behave or react to anything. For the first time in her life, she decided, she was going to have to be okay with that type of uncertainty and try not to overthink things too much. Right. She was the queen of overthinking.
* * *
Sheila hoped she hadn’t scared Tony too much. The girl was like a shy forest critter who might bolt at any moment, even though she took such pains to appear otherwise, and that, in itself, was attractive. Sheila wasn’t unused to taking charge. She enjoyed it, but she worried that she came off as over-confident. It wasn’t as much cockiness but that she was comfortable with whatever transpired. That was the Buddhist way.
She figured a fast, not overly sexual kiss was the way to go the first time. Better kisses would come once Tony had settled down somewhat, and it looked like she would in time. If she was going to split, she would, Sheila reasoned. She’d say “no” to lunch and to anything else. Tony surely wasn’t someone who would go along simply because it was another person’s idea.
Before lunch with Tony, however, was a meeting with Erica. Roy had his own thing with the board, but Sheila wanted to be more involved in guiding Erica’s decisions. In her experience, the young CEOs she worked with might initially resist her counsel, but they came around in time. The goal, after all, was to succeed and make money for everyone. The company founders with sense realized that Sheila, even at her relatively young age, had seen a lot and knew what would work and what wouldn’t and had their best interests in mind, as well as her own. She struck a delicate balance between being too hands-on and not hands-on enough. It was all in the manner one employed when dispensing advice. Sheila liked to use examples of other companies and frame her advice as experiential or as “best practice.” She tried to not be authoritarian, which tended to not work anyhow. People would just tune out.
Erica was late again, which could be a pattern. Once having secured monetary help, some people used time as a power play, as a way to assert their egos. Your time is not as important as my time. Requesting that Erica show up at her office could be interpreted as a power move, but Sheila was ready to address that possibility up front.
The assistant buzzed that Erica had arrived. Okay. Twenty minutes is right on the edge of unacceptable.
Sheila stood up, moved from behind her desk, and opened the door to her assistant Lily’s polite knock.
“Erica. Good to see you. You want a coffee or tea or—?”
“Nothing. Thanks.” Erica looked unfrazzled, but her clipped tone indicated she wasn’t happy with being summoned.
“Very good. Thank you, Lily. Please have a seat.” She indicated the couch at right angles to her desk. She took an armchair, leaving the coffee table between them.
“I’m grateful you were willing to come over here to meet,” Sheila said. “Normally, I would come to you, but I understand your concerns with security and wanted to be sensitive.”
“Thank you for your concern, but I’m perfectly fine with meeting you at Global. My office is secure enough.”
Ah-hah. That was clear. Erica wished to maintain control subtly by setting their meeting on her turf.
“Why did you want to meet today?” Erica asked.
Sheila heard the low-level pique in Erica’s tone, but she was savvy enough to not be openly hostile.
“I wanted to discuss with you the variety of assistance Pacific Partners can offer you now that we are officially in business.”
Erica didn’t respond and crossed her legs and her arms. Uh-oh. Defensive posture. Sheila had become adept at reading body language. It revealed a lot. Because of her Buddhist training, Sheila was irked but able to remain calm and non-confrontational.
She clasped her hands on her knee and took a short breath. “We like to ensure we do everything possible to help our partners achieve success. PP tends to invest in companies who are entering periods of growth. That can be challenging, as you will need more staff, possible website building, and other marketing tools. We have in-house consultants for all of those areas and can put them in play for your benefit.”
Erica’s expression didn’t change from the superficially neutral one she wore. “I appreciate your offer, but we’re fine.”
She was polite enough, but it was a curious response. Why reject an offer of free help? In Sheila’s experience, young companies welcomed the sort of structural help that they needn’t pay for.
“If you’re concerned about confidentiality, they’ll work with that.”
“No. I’ve got all the people necessary at the moment. If I need anyone else, though, I’ll be sure to call you. Thanks for the offer.”
“Certainly. It’s always there.” Of course, Sheila wouldn’t tell her that the consultants she deployed often accrued some fascinating inside information. Employees, even discreet ones, would often let information slip. Erica could possibly know this already, or she could truly be well supplied with consultants already, or she merely didn’t want anyone around her company who wasn’t under her thumb.
“Is there anything else?” Erica asked. “If not, I’m busy, as you might imagine.”
“No. Nothing else. I appreciate you taking the time to make the trek over from Paly.” Pacific Partners’ office was located in Menlo Park, the next town over from Palo Alto and the home of most of the VC firms in the Valley. There were others in San Francisco, but the VC companies tended to cluster close to where the action was, i.e. Silicon Valley and mostly in Research Park. Again, the idea that proximity to success would breed success was a sort of goofy idea, but who really knew?
They shook hands cordially enough, and Erica left. Sheila sat thinking about that encounter and decided that results over the next few months would tell the story. She would, of course, get reports on board meetings from Roy. Tony might tell her what she knew, but Tony was privy only to a tiny slice of the GHS business. Sheila liked lots of information. It was as crucial as money, perhaps more so.
Sheila switched her thinking of Erica off and onto lunch with Tony. That was more pleasurable than speculating about Erica and her somewhat pathological secrecy. Sheila was willing to let Erica’s refusal of help go and see how matters progressed. That was how Buddhism counseled her to proceed, and this approach hadn’t failed her yet. She was able to tell when to jump into some situations and when to sit back and wait.
* * *
“You’re leaving?” Tony asked Abe, stunned. “Why?”
“I got a better offer,” he said, but he wouldn’t look at her. That was a bad sign. “I couldn’t pass it up.”
“Where?”
“UC Santa Cruz. I decided to go back to academia. I’ll get my own lab, teach undergrads, do a little research on the side.”
“They pay more than GHS?” This didn’t seem plausible.
“Nope. But it’s closer to home and less stress.” He was older than she, and Tony could sort of understand where he was coming from, but he wasn’t that much older, and he’d seemed as gung-ho about the project as she was.
“What about your stock options?” This was a prime topic of conversation among the GHS staff. It was their incentive, aside from altruism and intellectual challenge, for working as hard as they did. If the company succeeded and went public or was sold, they would reap the benefits immediately, or they could hang on and exercise their options in the future for more money.
“What about them? I have to surrender them. I’m not vested yet.”
“You do? That sucks.”
Abe shrugged. “Can’t be helped. You know, Tony, honestly, I shouldn’t tell you this, but you deserve to know. Erica invited me to resign or she was going to fire me.”
“What? Why?”
“She doesn’t think I’m working hard enough or getting the results she wants or getting them fast enough. She’s a major slave driver. I guess because she drives herself hard, she thinks the rest of us are superhuman too.”
“Doesn’t s
he know research like this takes a long time? Did you tell her?”
“I tried to, but she didn’t want to hear it. She said the other functional assay groups are farther along, though I’m not sure I believe that. I don’t see that they can work any faster than we can. She told me the engineering group needs a bunch of assays so they can work up a new prototype Leonardo device that she can use demonstrate to investors and other people when she makes sales pitches. I said I thought one assay would be enough for testing the Leonardo, and she looked at me like I was spouting heresy.”
“Yikes.” This was troubling news. It meant Erica wasn’t being realistic about her expectations. Tony thought she and Abe were proceeding at a proper pace, maybe a little bit slow, but it was difficult and painstaking to modify established clinical assays to conform to Erica’s requirements for two drops of blood. Surely, she understood that fact, but maybe she didn’t. She was not, as Tony had heard, an actual trained science type. She’d dropped out of Stanford to found her company when she was a junior. She hadn’t finished her degree. The talk was she wanted to fast-track her entrepreneurial dreams. Neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates was a college grad, so evidently Erica figured it wasn’t a requirement.
“Well, best wishes to you, and good luck.” She hugged him.
“Thanks. You too. You’re going to need it.”
Instead of going over to her dad’s house on Friday, she called him. She was still at work at six in the evening. That meant she wouldn’t be back to the City until after seven, and she wouldn’t make it out to her family house in the Richmond District until almost eight.
“I’m working late because I’m trying to finish what my boss left for me and give the results to Erica. You know, the CEO I told you about is waiting for results.”
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