After On

by Rob Reid

  “Think of the Turing project as a backup plan,” Kuba suggested. “Our company idea seems great. But it’s still new to us. We may like it less, later. And who knows? Our host might talk us out of it tonight.”

  “Speaking of which,” Mitchell said, pausing them outside the restaurant door, “you’ll want to brace yourself before meeting him.” Because the guy was a total dick. In fact, Mitchell had bitterly resisted this dinner, but Mom insisted, saying he needed some male mentoring. You have to pick your battles as the kid in a two-person family, so Mitchell caved. And who knew—maybe the guy had grown up a bit? An odd thing to think, in that Mitchell was younger by at least ten years. But when they had last crossed paths, he wasn’t the one with maturity issues! He scored Kuba’s dinner invite to make the best of a lousy situation. Like, maybe they’d get some startup advice?

  “What’s his name again?” Kuba asked. “Pugfish?”

  Mitchell laughed. “Close. It’s Pugwash. And that’s actually his last name, but it’s what everyone calls him. His brothers. His teachers. Even his mom!” Mitchell said this like it was some kind of indictment (which it was, when you think of it). “And be warned: he can be a bit harsh.”

  “So can Bill Gates, from what I hear. But if we want our startup to win, we need to be challenged. Not coddled. Because there’s no participation trophies in entrepreneurship. Right?”

  Mitchell grinned and nodded. Although Kuba had gone almost fully native since coming to America, he disdained the national fetish for lavishing honors on any athletic attempt, however dismal. “Also, he could teach us a thing or two. Like, we don’t know crap about venture capitalism.”

  “That sounds like an ideology,” Kuba coached. “The term is ‘VC.’ ”

  “Case in point,” Mitchell conceded. “And I guess we could talk to him about the Turing thing, too?”

  “Sure. And he may know something about that. I mean, he works for Google. And for all we know, Google has already attained consciousness.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “I suppose. But probably not yet true.”

  Mitchell was reaching for the door when it flew open, propelled from within. Then, “Oh my God, it’s The Twiiiii­iiiii­ns!” This concussion grenade of delight came from Ellie Jansen. Though not at all hard on the eyes, Ellie wasn’t the school’s most beautiful girl. Certain guys in their class maintained hotness rankings with the diligence of presidential pollsters, and their consensus put her just shy of top quintile (an awful abuse of terminology, which had infested class diction ever since SAT prep became an obsession). Mitchell largely ignored all that, having been raised by a single mom he idolized, to look beyond surfaces. In Ellie’s case, her allure was multiplied by a joyous charisma, which was way more attractive than mere looks. Also enticing to the discerning few (though intimidating to the many) was a raw intelligence that was right up there with Kuba’s. All told, God, chromosomes, or some other ethereal force had dealt Ellie one hell of a hand. She shared her great fortune by irradiating the world with waves of infectious delight—ones whose recipients were bashfully convinced they had personally triggered by way of some deep, inner awesomeness that Ellie alone could detect.

  For a moment, all was a flurry of greetings and hugs. Ellie’s parents stood back, smiling indulgently at the familiar outpouring, as did her much-older sisters, who were visiting from DC (twins, graded top percentile by discerning louts in their own Staples High School days). Then, “You must be Kuba,” an older sister said. The Jansens knew Mitchell fairly well but had only heard of Kuba and had wanted to meet him since Ellie coined “The Twins” nickname in honor of their being the oddest duo in town.

  Kuba nodded and shook sœur Jansen’s hand most formally, then retreated to his default mode when overloaded with attention and talked about schoolwork. “Mitchell may have a new creative writing project,” he reported to Ellie, who was also in that class, and in fact sat next to Mitchell in it. “Connected to the Turing Test.”

  For all the other Jansens knew, he might as well have said “connected to ,” but Ellie immediately got it. “Coooool,” she approved. “You have to tell me more tomorrow.” Then she twirled adorably while waving farewell, and said, “I love The Twiiiii­iiiii­ns!” And with that, the Jansens were gone.

  “God, I hate that bitch,” Kuba said after they entered the foyer. Playful irony, clearly—a mode Kuba entered so rarely, it stood out like a signal flare. Mitchell had long suspected a big unrequited crush here. Kuba thought the sexiest part of the female body was the brain, after all. And Ellie was a Madame Curie–grade supermodel in that department.

  For his own part, Mitchell knew Ellie so well, they were practically related. Just holding her hand would feel like incest! So even if he could, he wouldn’t go there. Nope. Would not go there. Not a chance! Never ever!! Not even interested!!!

  He rehearsed this incontestable fact again and again as they passed through the foyer and into the dining room.

  Like a charmed wind hurling vital provisions onto a castaway’s beach, fate landed a copy of this in a conference room in which I served a recent sentence to traffic school. As reading was a scorned pastime among my fellow inmates, I laid easy claim to the volume—a mental sop for a mind numbed by the day’s prattle.

  I was soon swept up by this tale of an intrepid entrepreneur’s rise to the heights of the glamorous but cutthroat world of donut retail. I meanwhile enjoyed no small surge of civic pride, Dunkin’ Donuts having sprung from the loins of my own native Boston. The narrative is sprinkled with little-known truths about this breakfast staple. For instance, did you know that the modern word “donut” descends from “doughnut,” which itself traces lineage to archaic “dough knot”? Nor did I, sir. Nor did I.

  Short on complex formulae and your lengthier words, this is ideal reading for events at which attention must be feigned. But be advised that this could impair the absorption of important points and lessons from without. I myself learned this the hard way when I caused a minor accident upon leaving the traffic school’s driveway by failing to signal, neglecting a major leitmotif from the day’s curriculum. My instructor—who had resented my divided attention throughout the day—savored the irony.

  High-end Connecticut restaurants that don’t go full Yankee often ape Europe, and the Tavèrne Guesthouse et Supper Club took this to almost sarcastic extremes. From the Amélie impersonator hired to record the after-hours phone message, to the coarse husks of purple soap stacked like kindling in the washrooms, to the duvet-swaddled sleeping podiums in its pricey chambres, to the countless accents the chefs shat all over its menus, it was to St. Tropez what Astroturf is to an Augusta National fairway. It was also booked solid nightly, while triumphantly sustaining Midtown prices almost fifty miles northeast of Central Park.

  Mitchell was glad he’d upped his game by going with black sneakers and skipping the jeans. But while he and Kuba were unmistakably preppy and local in their corduroys and sweaters, he felt like a lowly upstate intruder as a natty maître d’ gave them an arctic once-over. After verifying they were the plus-twos of a paying guest, he passed them off to Brigette (“a Prada-clad hottie with a newscaster’s reserve and a lap dancer’s body,” as Pugwash would later observe articulately, yet ickily). As she deftly threaded them through aloof huddles of murmuring diners, he planted his feet like a nervous tightrope walker for fear of nudging a table and toppling a fortune’s worth of Bordeaux and Baccarat. Kuba looked more awkward still amidst all this opulence, so Mitchell gave him an encouraging nod. They seemed to be the only blazerless males above the age of three in the entire Guesthouse et Supper Club—until they rounded a corner into the back dining room, where Cousin Pugwash lolled regally atop a claw-footed wainscot chair. The man was dressed like a proper slob.

  This is not to say his clothes weren’t fancy, because they certainly were. But hand-stitched Kyoto denim trousers are still blue jeans, museum quality Air Jordan IIs are still sneakers, and even a Burberry button-down can look l
ike a pajama top if it’s full-cut, untucked, and fluttering like a jib. Three years after their last encounter, the guy still looked as…Pushwash-y as ever to Mitchell. Only what has he done with his hair? Waged some kind of jihad against it, it seemed, and not a triumphant one! Pugwash had evoked the bowl-cut guy from the Three Stooges since childhood. It seemed that heroic shearing campaigns and schmears of high-end product were now being enlisted to change this. But alas, no dice. Whether due to gravity, quantum effects, or powerful sinews deep in its follicles, Pugwash’s hair retained its essential heft, shape, and opacity. Yes, it was visibly warped and dinged from the brutal attempts to tame it. But that only underscored its raw durability—like scuffs and nicks on a Sherman tank, say. Pugwash must have hated his fucking hair. And the feeling was surely mutual.

  Brigette retracted a chair for Mitchell while nimbly passing bulky menus both to him and to Kuba. “Monsieur Pugwash?” she said. “Vos invités sont arrivés.”

  Pugwash glanced up from what could have been the world’s most densely buttoned…calculator? “Oh, thanks,” he said. “Mais bon, merci.” He returned his gaze to his…what was that thing? It was too small, and had way too many buttons, to be a cellphone. Yet it was much too big to be a pager.

  Brigette turned to Mitchell and Kuba. “I ope zat you enjoy your dee-nair,” she said sweetly, and Mitchell added a meltingly cute accent to her boundless docket of assets.

  Pugwash glared. “Ne pas de anglais, s’il te plaît.”

  Brigette iced over, then turned back to Mitchell. “J’espère que vous apprécierez votre dîner avec ce bâtard pompeux.” As Pugwash nodded absently, Mitchell’s B-minus French inferred that his cousin had commanded the Help to address the table strictly en français. As Brigette swished off, a faint floral essence that seemed to suffuse the restaurant vanished with her.

  “Can’t understand a word that bitch says in English,” Pugwash explained after an awkward interval of thumbing silently at his button-y thing. “Good thing I’m trilingual.” More thumbing, then “Fluently.”

  Mitchell let this go by, then hazarded, “Nice place you picked.”

  Pugwash snorted. “They’re trying so hard to be Atherton it’s embarrassing.”

  Mitchell nodded, while wondering exactly who was mimicking Atherton so disgracefully. Brigette and the maître d’? The Tavèrne Guesthouse et Supper Club? The entire town of Westport? All of Connecticut, or even the whole of New England? And who, or what, was “Atherton”? Whatever its identity, it was surely a California person, place, or thing—as Pugwash’s disdain for the East Coast would verge on racism were easterliness an ethnicity. This was absurd, as his ancestral roots ran as deeply here as Mitchell’s own (by definition).

  “And you must be Cuba,” Pugwash continued.

  “Actually, it’s Kuba,” Kuba said, reaching out to shake hands. “Rhymes with scuba?” His right forearm hovered awkwardly above the table. “Or…tuba?”

  Pugwash wasn’t deliberately ignoring Kuba’s gesture; he just kind of…missed it, as his attention snapped back to his fascinating plastic chunk. Kuba, who was clumsy enough with social signals in his native Poland, was hopeless with them here, and his arm just hovered and hovered.

  “Cuba’s a weird name,” Pugwash said, not looking up. “I’ll just call you Fidel, OK?”

  “I wouldn’t like that.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Pugwash muttered, reacting to some development on his thumb toy.

  “Precisely. He’s a Communist Party leader. I dislike those people. Very much.” Kuba finally returned his hand to his lap.

  Mitchell tried to catch his eye, hoping a goofy grimace would convey that Pugwash was just being Pugwash. But Kuba suddenly looked like a starved cobra spying a chubby field mouse in the center of a bull’s-eye pattern that Nature had mysteriously etched in the ground. He pointed at the odd plastic device. “Is that an 850?” he asked quietly.

  Pugwash glanced up. “Don’t rub it in. My boss has an 857, but he’s too cheap to buy one for his top guy.” He turned to Mitchell. “Fidel knows his gadgets. This here’s a BellSouth pager.”

  He slid it over to Kuba, who hefted it reverently. Much like street drugs in pre-Internet times, this thing was known to its isolated pockets of users by regional dialectic names. Some called it the 850, others a BellSouth pager, others a DATATAC in honor of the 1G backbone it ran on, and still others a RIM 2-Way Pager. Few called it by the name the world would soon settle upon—the BlackBerry. With no camera or phone, a teeny monochrome screen, and the merest trickle of wireless data, it was a LoFi preview of the quite-near future, and the boys were entranced.

  “This keyboard rocks,” Pugwash said, starting a brief demo. “It’s because it’s tactile, see?” He thumbed the words HOWDY FUCKTARDS into the teeny buttons, almost as fast as a person could say them. Eyes widened. Like a Congo explorer showing off a flashlight to pelt-clad natives, Pugwash went on to access a live Knicks score, dial up a review of tonight’s restaurant, check his email, and pull down directions to Times Square. “No doubt about it! The mobile Web’s gonna be huuuuuge,” he concluded, then turned his full attention to a wine list as thick as a phone book.

  Kuba silently parsed all this for perhaps a minute, slowly rocking his head with barely perceptible nods. Then he thrust an index finger between Pugwash and the Amarone page and declared, “Mobile, yes. But Web? No. Mobile will not be about webpages. Not mainly, anyway.”

  At this, Mitchell smiled to himself. He could almost see a down-arrow levitating above Kuba’s head, in the airspace where cartoon mice get floating lightbulbs when they hit upon a new way to assassinate the cat. Last year in Business Communications, Kuba convinced himself that every PowerPoint slide, ever, should end with a downward arrow pointing to a hard fact it had proven beyond refute. His in-class notes had been littered with down-arrows ever since, as this simple glyph now symbolized everything rational and authentic to him. Sometimes he’d even scribble a down-arrow onto scrap paper and hold it up at key moments in conversation with friends or baffled strangers. Mitchell and Ellie had a down-arrow T-shirt printed up as a gag birthday gift for him, and the ever-tone-deaf Pole wore it proudly several times before realizing that the school thought he was trying to draw attention to his dick.

  “Mobile won’t be about webpages?” Pugwash snapped. “Bullshit! The mobile Web’ll be 22 percent of Internet usage within eight years!” He stated this like an ayatollah quoting the Supreme Leader. And bothersome though he was, a Google man with a BellSouth pager surely had good data.

  But Kuba stood by his vision. “Mobile computing, yes,” he said, entering one of the passing squalls of charisma that occasionally possessed him when he reached a big aha! conclusion. “But not mobile webpages! Think of your Knicks score. Check that from a desktop browser, and you’ll get a quarter megabyte of graphics, scripts, and UI.” Seizing the BellSouth 850 BlackBerry 2-Way DATATAC RIM Pager, he waved it like a eureka-crowing scientist. “But on this? Not even a kilobyte! Yet that tiny droplet of data does the job! Because it fits the form factor. And it looks fine in the device’s simple presentation format. And that will continue to be true. Even after mobile webpages feature color. Even after they feature images! Mobile data and experiences will always be easiest to parse in simple, constrained, customized formats.”

  Pugwash looked like a football coach randomly scouting some hick-town JV squad whose kicker just hauled off and made an eighty-yard field goal. “Interesting,” he confessed. “Interesting.” And he was quite right. A high school kid predicting the rise of the App Economy a half decade before the birth of the iPhone was very interesting indeed. And for all his faults, Pugwash was no fool (far from it). He could also be very perceptive. But as it happened, he wasn’t batting a thousand in the tech-foresight department that night. Indeed, he’d soon make an epoch-defining boo-boo that would notionally cost those present about a hundred billion dollars. But first, they had to order.

  This took time, as the fluent trilinguist�
�s English embargo forced them to make wild guesses about several key nouns on the menu, and also to mime frequently. When the dust settled, something red and extravagant was decanting for Pugwash, and they were facing down appetizers that smelled strongly of low tide. Throughout all this, Pugwash’s stock rose steadily as he recounted the many laddish pranks he and Google’s founders, Larry and Sergey, were forever playing on one another. Kuba was particularly enraptured. Sergey was an anti-commie, Einstein-smart, code-slinging Slavic entrepreneur, which made him God to Kuba. And the fact that God had him on speed dial made Pugwash a prophet.

  Steeling himself for a heap of raw beef he’d thought would be steak, Kuba eventually fixed Pugwash with a meaningful gaze. “You know,” he said. “Your cousin and I are thinking of starting a company ourselves.”

  “No shit,” Pugwash said neutrally, digging into some whitefish that would pair dismally with his ’86 Margaux (but then who the hell knew “Branzino” was anything other than a cut of prime rib?).

  “Yes. We’re calling it ‘CentroStat’ for now.”

  Pugwash snorted. “What is it, a thermostat? That’s a really cool idea. If it’s, like, 1926.” This was a bit of a thigh-slapper in retrospect. But to be fair, back then even Sergey couldn’t have guessed that their company would one day pay billions for a blingy thermostat maker called Nest. “So what’s it do?”

  Kuba glanced meaningfully at Mitchell. Your ball. Mitchell, after all, was CEO, and light-years removed from even charting on the autism spectrum.

  “OK,” Mitchell began. “What would you say that high school kids—and probably even college kids—think about more than anything else?”

  Pugwash considered this, took a slug of Margaux, then considered it some more. More Margaux, then, “Cunts?” For all his faults, it was actually way out of character for Pugwash to be this crass. But it was sincerely his best guess, and in vino veritas.