The Glitch_A Novel

by Elisabeth Cohen

  He smiled. “Bandshell. Couple blocks. Big yellow house right by the river.”

  I blinked, startled. “I think I remember that house. I had a friend who lived next door.”

  “No kidding. They had a neighbor…what was the name? Nice kid…Real bad what happened to him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where’d you live?”

  I described how to walk to my house from the courthouse in the center of town, down the gridded streets, past the shoe store we went to, with “Bootery” written in script along its brick wall, the turnoff to the ice cream parlor or the windy path along the river.

  “Your family still there?”

  I shook my head. “My dad passed away last year. You from Wisconsin?”

  He was. I already knew that.

  “You know, they have fancy food here in San Francisco, but in Wisconsin they have good food.” A little bit of a sop, but true. A basket of cheese curds and a nice cold New Glarus Spotted Cow actually would have been very tasty and comforting just then.

  It helped, I think. I was through in half an hour. Not bad.

  * * *

  —

  Sven, my first real boyfriend, once described me as wholesome. Being from Wisconsin, I guess. Working hard. Having a sturdy, symmetrical appearance. A center part in my hair. A willingness to eat pizza (then).

  Sven was also my boss, but that was how it worked at startups. There was no time for extracurricular social life; you had to make do with the people at work. We were so busy we barely had time to talk, let alone to make out while waiting for databases to rebuild. After we broke up he got extremely rich and now lives somewhere remote and self-sustaining to prepare for peak oil. I learned a lot from the relationship:

  1. Peak oil is going to be a big problem.

  2. Better to go public too soon than too late (with your IPOs and your relationships).

  3. Don’t read his email.

  After that, I mostly kept my head down and worked. I couldn’t say I was lonely, because there were always people around, like the programmer at the next desk. Once he gave me a pierogi. But I was still looking for something more.

  I didn’t necessarily think I’d find it—there weren’t many people who matched my drive to excel. But meanwhile I had my career to focus on. I had a workplace that fed me nutritiously and handed over new power cords anytime I reached into my bag and couldn’t find mine. Work also equipped me with a fleece hat and a coffee mug, printed with soon-outdated versions of our company’s logo. Work was satisfying, it was frustrating, it was at times enraging, it occupied the full range of emotional possibilities, and it took everything. Sometimes I dreamed of going on vacation, backpacking through Thailand or fly-fishing in hip boots in a cold glacial stream, but no matter how scenic it was, or how much fun an activity was supposed to be, I always felt, away from work, like I was missing out.

  Rafe didn’t seem like the type of person who would be my boyfriend, which was part of why I liked him. I thought of him as someone I’d remember fondly from a different future.

  On one of our early dates Rafe and I went for a walk and got ice cream. It was a nice night, and we walked around in the dusk, cyclists tooting past us, not heading anywhere in particular. I enjoyed it, and I think he did too—he kept reaching over and squeezing my hand. Afterward we strolled to the Caltrain station. I kissed him goodbye and went around the other side to head back to the office. He looked confused. “Enjoy your night!” I called from the opposite platform. He looked startled. My train pulled away, and I watched him standing there licking his ice cream.

  The next day he called to find out what had come up. Nothing, I said, I just had some work to do.

  On a date a few weeks later we went to a screening of Dog Day Afternoon in Palo Alto. During the movie I got a few texts from work and answered them by leaning over with my head between my knees, my phone underneath the seat. After that I couldn’t concentrate on the hostage situation in the bank anymore and decided to go back to the office.

  Rafe followed me out of the theater and seemed annoyed.

  He thought we should watch the rest of the movie and either go back to one of our apartments together (his vote) or, failing that, say goodnight and each go home. I thought this was an intrusive request, and illogical: What made that option superior—why did it matter where I went? “Net-net,” I said, “it shakes out the same way: we’re not together, but in my preferred option I have better internet and a larger monitor. Why should the time we spend together have to fall at the end of the day?”

  “It’s the difference between lunch and dinner,” he said. “Lunch is a break. Dinner is intimate. You can let down your guard.”

  “I don’t usually eat dinner.”

  “Don’t you want to spend time with your boyfriend?”

  I blushed; I hadn’t referred to him as my boyfriend, and I wouldn’t have done it yet. The thrill of the acknowledgment was dampened by the sense that the privilege might be taken away before I could use it. I looked at my watch miserably. “I gave you two hours,” I said. It came out like a whine, but also pleadingly. “We can look up how it ends.”

  “I’ve already seen it twice,” he said equably. “It’s OK.” He hugged me.

  “It’s been nice, and I hope we’ll stay in touch,” I said, attempting to break up with him—out of duty and decency, not because I wanted to.

  He looked surprised. “You don’t even want to try?”

  I felt like Rafe had lots of options, but when you’re the kind of person I am, with jagged edges, a specific sort of puzzle piece, you click when you can. So I tried. I looked for out-of-the-box solutions. “I could get up earlier to work,” I suggested.

  “We could eat later,” he offered, meeting me halfway. “Like, at midnight. Or never.” This amused me.

  And so I tried, with all the effort and dedication I brought to everything. And I thought he’d try that hard too. It was so good I didn’t want to see any problems. Very quickly we started talking about the future, with an implied sense that we would be together. We were inquiring about each other’s tastes and hopes and desires—once, exhilaratingly and riskily, the possibility of a baby—after the fact, the same way you’d discuss the thickness of the ice while strolling across a frozen pond. We were already, in a way, far out from shore.

  “What’s your dream?” he said. “What do you want to do?”

  “What do I want to do?” I was surprised he didn’t know. “This, exactly this, all the time.” I gestured around. We were not actually standing on a frozen pond, we were eating sandwiches he’d brought over at lunchtime, and we were sitting on a low wall in the atrium of my office building, enjoying one of the many pleasant days the Peninsula is known for. “I want to do my part to turn Gorvis into a household word and a billion-dollar industry and an unstoppable force in communications. What about you?”

  He laughed. “Right, me too.” It was sunny out and he looked sunny, eating a prosciutto sandwich, the sun on his face.

  “Really? You want to join Gorvis?”

  “Well, let’s see.” He chewed. It was taking him a long time to think of his goal. I thought of mine every morning when I first woke up. But I loved him and I waited. “OK, this is a good one: I’d like to win my club squash championship this year.” A crinkled smile and squint, letting me in on a secret: “I think I’ve got it in the bag.”

  And I thought, perfect, he’s hungry to win, but later, after we’d been married for a few years, I realized it was about the wrong thing.

  Part 3

  NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

  Chapter 8

  “3:00 A.M. IS ME TIME”

  As told to C-Suite by Shelley Stone, CEO of Conch, Inc.

  (This interview has been edited and condensed.)

  What’s your daily routine?

  I get up around 3:30. That’s my me time. I’m on the treadmill—it’s so relaxing. I love having the chance to just browse the papers—local, international—whi
le pounding out a couple of leisurely seven-minute miles and checking the forecast, catching up on shows on Netflix, doing a little spreadsheet crunching, mapping out next quarter’s acquisitions. Sometimes I read classic literature. We can learn so much from the classics. It’s not just about breadth; it’s about depth. Also, it’s such a great time to answer email while doing some high-intensity interval training. I also sip my coffee mindfully while meditating on the tree outside my window, just riding the moment in all its fullness, being open to the gifts of the present with an open heart, and also getting on top of my inbox and gaining global context I can leverage later across all our operations.

  I do a couple of phone calls with Europe after I start the shower, while I’m waiting for the water to get hot. We have a big house and a lot of bathrooms—we’re really blessed, but even a clear win comes with some cons, though often those don’t shake out till late in the game, but anyway, we have this large house, perfect for holding charity events or hosting parties with all our friends, but the downside of the incredible amount of pipeage is that it takes a long time to get hot water to all of the bathrooms. So I punch out a couple calls on the bathroom landline while I’m waiting for the water to heat.

  I’m always asking myself, how can I fit in a little more work? What else can go, so there’s more time to work? Just because it’s 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. our time doesn’t mean things aren’t really rocking in the Malay production facility, so I like to check in with some of our vendors and retailers. Making that time count allows me to squeeze in a shower, because it’s important to take time for yourself. While I’m in the shower I brainstorm solutions to work problems. Then I get out. I have towels I get from a special place in London, extra soaky. I have a system for drying myself in a quarter of the time. Ping me for details.

  Wow, so you get up at 3:30 every morning?

  It’s true, you have to be disciplined to lead this kind of life. Discipline is so important. I’m a grateful hostage to my routines and my checklists. But the truth is, and I’m just going to give it to you straight, that when anxiety is ripping your insides to pieces, it is actually a lot easier to get out of bed than to lie there wanting to die. I can’t sleep—it’s not that I don’t want to. But I need the time, so it all works out. Anxiety has replaced caffeine for me, not to mention a stimulant I was introduced to at TED Ulan Bator. Cut that last part, I’m just kidding.

  So you’re not just an executive, you’re also the mother of young kids. Tell me about balancing that. Is morning when you spend time with your kids?

  Absolutely. Sleep is key to kids’ brain development, and there’s lots of new research about that, but even though I always tell the kids that they can sleep till 6:30 they take after me and they’re up in the 5s, so we get a lot of great quality time together then.

  In our house piano practice is the first thing we do, and while it was hard to get a teacher to come to the house that early to work with them, the payoff in their skill development has been huge. Blazer’s only a year old, but he gets a lot out of it. And it’s a luxury, I know, but we have two pianos so when he’s a little older they’ll be able to practice in parallel. After piano is breakfast, which is usually a hot bowl of ancient/heritage grains and a gummy vitamin, and our maid speaks Mandarin to them—we aren’t tutoring them like some of those Type A parent-loons you meet in the Bay Area, it’s just for fun and auditory exposure so they’ll have perfect tones.

  I take my daughter to school myself. People are always surprised by this, that I do that. You know, some things are important and those are the things I make time for. I can’t drive the car myself, of course, because I have calls or I’m on my laptop, but I put my daughter in the car with me and I nudge her with my shoe when she gets loud. Sometimes she goes through my briefcase and plays on my extra phone. And sometimes I can’t do it—you can’t do it all, I’m telling you, pick and choose, divide and conquer, that’s how you win the long game—and then the driver takes her, or the nanny or whoever.

  Obviously we are extremely blessed to have live-in help, and every day I appreciate my good fortune. In a position like mine you need that kind of coverage, because there are mornings—not many, but once in a while—when neither my husband, Rafael, nor I can take the kids. Not very often, only a couple of times a month. Maybe ten.

  What’s your secret to balancing it all?

  If I had to laser in on my most key pieces of advice, I would say surround yourself with good help, pick a good spouse (which is basically the same thing), offload everything that isn’t core, and don’t lose minutes. I read once that time management is impossible—what you are managing is not time, which ticks on with or without you in its own inexorable current, but yourself. I manage myself, my actions, my thoughts, my goals, my calories ingested and expended, mood, work deliverables, and long-range planning with an intensity and accountability that I know most people could not handle, and which I would never subject one of my subordinates to because it’s too much to ask, but if you want to know how I’ve gotten to where I am, that is how.

  What advice would you give to a working parent?

  We have this thing in our house called Question Time. We borrowed it from Parliament. Instead of having the kids ask us questions all day, which is disruptive and throws us off our game, we have them save up for Question Time. And then Rafe and I get out our iPads and the kids ask all their questions and we can provide real-time answers with factual citations and multimedia/interactive supplementation.

  And if my daughter comes up to us at other times while we’re on our laptops—during the time when our commitments are to our companies—then we just say, gently, sweetie, it’s not Question Time now. And if she fusses about that I tell her to Voice Record it and ping me the MP3 and I’ll add it to the queue for later. Or else she goes and asks Jacqui, our housekeeper, who tells her that bad fairies will bite her for asking, which usually satisfies her. Jacqui also provides multicultural exposure so critical in a globalized world.

  How do you foster your children’s passion for STEM?

  Great topic! It’s important to start early. I believe pre-K kids are at an age when they’re naturally interested in so much, including fundamental tech and business principles. To stoke that early interest, I’ve set up a program for my daughter where she comes to work with me one day per month. She learns from our top people, and that way she’ll have a jump on knowing if her inclination is to pursue law, engineering, software development, or finance (I’m not gung-ho on marketing for her). It’s totally laid back. My hope is she has fun and doesn’t even realize she’s learning about stuff like the difference between seed funding and a Series C round. It’s a promising model, and I’ve been trying to brand it with an acronym because I find that adds a lot of legitimacy and power to a program. I’m thinking of ODETTE (Offering Daughter Education and Training in Technical Excellence), after the princess in Swan Lake who turns into a swan, except here I’m trying to turn my princess into a vice president of systems development.

  You were struck by lightning as a teenager. How has that affected your approach to life and business?

  It was obviously something that made a…you don’t sail through something like that, I don’t care how focused you are. It’s the thing that…well, I wouldn’t wish it on you, but it made me who I am; does that make sense? That bolt of lightning gave me this energy and focus, indirectly, which I use every day. It’s…you know, I just don’t feel like talking more about it today. Let’s get back to work, that’s what everyone says I say all the time.

  Chapter 9

  “Now, Nova,” I said, in the car on the way into Conch. It was our special day, official acronym TBD, when I bring her into my office. We both look forward to it all month. Actually, I’m not sure if Nova does—she doesn’t yet have the kind of memory that attaches labels to experiences, or knows what to expect, and she is surprised, each morning at breakfast, to hear whether it’s a weekday or the weekend. She doesn’t believe us, that there’s
a pattern. And to be honest I sometimes dread her visits to Conch. But I do think it’s a good concept. When I came up with the idea it seemed innovative and like a natural fit for the kind of person I am, someone who seamlessly weaves a rich family life around a big job. Also, Rafe had been badgering me to spend more one-on-one time with Nova, so I’ve been bringing her in with me one morning a month. I’m not sure if it’s accomplishing anything, but it’s early yet, and that’s not a reason to abandon the project: the execution of a new initiative is often a struggle.

  “I’m going to whisper a special word to you,” I said, leaning toward her booster seat. We were in the backseat of the car together, wedged in with Melissa. “This special word is like a password leading to all kinds of secret information.”

  “I know it already,” Nova yelled. She took out a plastic horse and turned it over, inspecting it from all sides. Nova is allowed to bring a small toy with her to Conch to keep the experience fun and light. Today she was carrying a little suitcase of plastic horses. Bottom line, this is fine, but I feel like overall since we launched this program a few months ago Conch employees have learned more about horses than she has learned about their jobs.

  “Listen, darling, I don’t think you do. The word is ‘data.’ ”

  “It’s ‘please,’ ” Nova shrieked. “The magic word. I know that.”

  Melissa, sitting beside us in the backseat, gazed expressionlessly out the window at a shopping center, even though it was just like virtually every other shopping center between home and work: hot yoga, nail place, dry cleaners. The driver sped up aggressively to make it through a yellow light.

  “Well, this might mean more to you someday than it does today, but my magic word is: ‘data.’ Sing it with me: data! For example, the number of horses you have. That would be data. If you had ten horses, say.”