The Glitch_A Novel

by Elisabeth Cohen

  “Thirty-two,” Nova said.

  “So if you had ten horses,” I began. This was the rather clever explanation I had devised while flossing.

  “I have thirty-two,” Nova explained. “I used to have thirty-five but some got put in the trash on the plane.”

  “Great!” I said. “Using the data you’ve given me, I know, without even having been there, that it was three horses that got put in the trash on the plane.”

  Melissa, beside us in the backseat, turned to me with an alarmed expression and made rapid, neck-cutting gestures.

  “I want it back,” Nova wailed. “Daisy, where did you go? Why are you missing me? Why did Daddy throw out the cup?”

  “Well, you see, that’s a different sort of problem, but for now, let’s talk about data. All this information, it’s data. And we can use it to…” A sort of inner silence settled in me. I felt a deep calm, devoid of the slightest idea of how to finish the sentence. What could we use any of it for?

  “Do you understand this?” Melissa asked Nova.

  “Yes,” Nova said. “Daisy is gone.”

  “Do ask questions!” I encouraged.

  “Data means numbers, right?” Melissa prompted. She looked at me for confirmation.

  “Not necessarily,” I said. The look in her eyes made me relent. “Oh, all right.”

  “A number, like two,” Melissa said to Nova, holding up her fingers. “Or three. A number is…not a letter.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. Melissa tightened her jaw. Much as I like Melissa, and I’m enormously enthusiastic about the job she does with my children, I don’t like her that much in this career-preparation context. She could blend in with the employees at Conch: she’s fit, she’s outdoorsy, she wears fleece, but she has a totally different mind-set. I’m not sure she’s worked in an office, and she doesn’t seem to value the skills that would make someone successful there. This is tricky territory, because how can I tell her I’d be disappointed if Nova became a nanny? And yet she must know that I feel that way, even though I would hardly admit it to myself, because if I didn’t, why would I bring Nova to Conch when there is clearly so much potential for embarrassment? I want Nova to know that she can do anything, that’s the best way to put it, although truthfully I do not want her to do anything, I want her to do certain things, and I’m tipping the scales to create those outcomes. Melissa’s disapproval annoyed me. I quashed that thought: it’s a partnership.

  My own private objectives for Nova that morning were for her to greet people politely, shake hands, and initiate a conversation. Also, ask one good question. Some cretinous reporter once implied that I make Nova follow me around and wear a tiny business suit. That is preposterous. This is California; ninety-nine percent of the people I work with are not wearing suits. My only rule is no leggings.

  “Nova,” I pleaded, “I think you’re really going to enjoy this.” Nova continued inspecting her horse and ignored me. I once spent half a shuttle flight YouTubing “absence seizures” to make sure Nova wasn’t having them, because so often when I ask her a question she doesn’t answer. But I think she’s just a person of very particular and intense passions; this can be good if channeled productively.

  “Aren’t you looking forward to being at Conch today?” I asked. Her last visit was a tough morning, but that may have been because she was getting strep.

  Nova didn’t answer.

  “It’s OK if you’re not,” Melissa said.

  “Isn’t it great for us to spend time together?” I pressed.

  “I can’t argue with that,” Melissa said, evenly, though there was a tinge of argument in the way she said it. Nova looked interested, picking up on this conflict. My driver made the sharp left toward Conch and we all squashed together.

  To be clear, I’m not doing this because I’m an overinvolved tiger parent pushing my child to excel. On the contrary. It’s the opposite. I’ve faced a lot of professional challenges along the way, and I want it to be easier for her.

  I had assumed my children would be prodigies. But Nova made even being a baby seem difficult. When I look back on her infancy I remember Melissa, fresh from the agency and a stranger to us, always wearing a pair of jeans the style of which you don’t see anymore, and didn’t see much then either, pacing the hall. She was trying to get Nova to eat. Nova wouldn’t eat anything. She’d scream with hunger, but when we offered her the bottle she would twist her head away and scream louder. The idea that we were poking this thing at her, when she was hungry, enraged her. We tried different bottles and nipples of every brand, shape, material, and hole size, and I do mean every, and she didn’t like any of them.

  It was disheartening, because it seemed like eating should be part of her operating system. She was completely impossible to reason with. I remember watching Melissa jiggling Nova, jiggling the bottle, and making a shushing-clucking sound. I called from upstairs, “Is it working?” My voice lacked confidence, and there was too long a pause before Melissa answered.

  “She’s tough,” Melissa had said flatly, the frustration buried but not hidden in her voice, and it startled me to hear her say it, because it hadn’t occurred to me there was so much variability in babies, that you could get one who just might not get it. It was sobering to think that even the most experienced and highly rated nanny could be outfoxed.

  Nova did catch on, luckily, just when it seemed like it would be too late, when they were starting to talk about a tube down her nose. (I want you to take the lead on this, I said to Melissa one night, and I didn’t say, because this project is making me cry. But despite my clear instructions, the pediatrician’s office kept calling my phone.)

  That’s always how it’s been with Nova; waiting for her to get it, bargaining, hoping, accepting the failure of it, and giving up, before it finally happens. I looked over at her. The sunlight through the car window lit up the side of her face and pooled in her lap, where she was sorting the horses that were rearing up from the ones that were standing flat. Her ear peeked out through her combed hair, pink around its edge.

  “You could ride horses in your office,” Nova suggested.

  “I like that wild thinking,” I said. I tousled her hair. “Remind me to hold on to that one for Wild Ideas Wednesday.” That’s the time I block out weekly when my team and I try to outdo each other in generating wild and crazy ideas. Nothing is too crazy if it helps us improve Conch, or leads to novel solutions for business or product challenges, though we generally select only a tiny fraction of our ideas to execute.

  I know some people take longer than others, but I think she’s going to need a little extra time, maybe quite a lot. I put a lot of energy into developing people. And that’s why I implemented this program, and why I want to start her early; so she’ll have all the time she needs.

  * * *

  —

  Every day I feel such pride and purpose as I walk into Conch. If I’m not at work, I’m thinking about work, so it’s satisfying when my mind and surroundings sync. From the moment the lobby doors part obligingly at my approach, till I get back in the car at the end of the day, I rarely think of anything besides Conch. I treasure this gift of focus and these daily twelve to twenty hours of alpha-brainwaves and caramelized, concentrated workflow pleasure.

  I stepped into the lobby, Nova and Melissa trailing behind. Overhead was a high ceiling. Gray filtered light streamed down to the concrete floor, where a piece of smooth sculptural art lay, extruded like a giant piece of pasta. I approached the guard cheerfully. “How was your weekend?”

  He had close-cropped hair and wore a jacket and tie, making him by far the most formally dressed person in the building. He sat in a chair that spun. All morning long, stuck in the middle of the tide of incomers, he rotated it, a half turn one way, and then back. He used to be in the navy.

  “Good, good,” he said. “Too short, like always. You?”

  “Fantastic, thanks!”

  “Thanks, Shell, for the card you sent. Meant a lot t
o me.”

  “How is your mother?” I said.

  “She’s doing better. She’s out of the ICU and back in a regular room.”

  “Good to hear,” I said. I was glad to hear. I try to spend ten minutes a day writing personal notes to employees about their life events and milestones—it’s just a little effort from me but it means a lot to them.

  “I was just sending somebody up to see you.” He gestured to a woman who was leaning over the counter, filling out the parking registration log. He handed her a badge from a little plastic basket on the desk, of the type my mom used to store onions in her pantry. “She says she’s from the Silly Valley blog.”

  “Oh, hi!” I said, suddenly remembering that I had agreed to be interviewed today. I sighed inwardly because although I love to work, this was not the work I love. Also, a reporter plus Nova is a lot to manage.

  The reporter was slighter and less bloggerish than I had expected. She had long hair and a pretty but complicated face. She was wearing a fitted white suit and a turquoise necklace. I hoped her outfit signaled an interest in style, not ambition.

  She introduced herself, and I activated the mnemonic I use for locking in strangers’ names.

  “Of course!” I said. “Hi, Cass. Glad to see you.” I grasped her hand, employed high-voltage eye contact (if I have a guilty pleasure, it is eye contact), and gave her a handshake of about seven and a half on a ten-point scale, where ten would be the handshake equivalent of eating an ortolan songbird, bones and all.

  She gave me a pleasant but assessing look and said, “Thanks for meeting me so early.”

  She turned past me. “Hi,” she said, in the kind of voice people who don’t have kids think will engage children. Nova withdrew against Melissa.

  “This is early for you?” I said, also pleasantly, with a tone suggesting that it was interesting to get other people’s perspectives and I valued diversity in all forms, even the slugabed lazy kind. Then I smiled strongly, so she would like me.

  My Q score, which measures likability, tops out in the single digits. My assistant once told me that, according to Q score, I am slightly less likable than Count Chocula. (“But I like you,” she added sweetly, and for that I send her a bundt cake every Christmas.) Why am I not more likable? This has been a source of stress and sadness to me each time the quarterly reports arrive, to the point where I don’t want to open the envelopes (and for reasons of vanity I can’t bear to have my assistant open them for me). I like myself. I would rather spend a day with me, doing exciting, important, and innovative work, than be with other people, who in my observation spend a lot of time eating slowly at restaurants, dillydallying at the front of the line at coffee shops, and dragging their suitcases slowly through the center of airport concourses. I don’t think I’m more judgmental than other people, who often strike me as very judgmental within a narrow and arbitrary resonance band, while not really achieving anything of moment themselves. And I don’t think I’m less kind than other people, when you net it out—I always do small things like writing thank-you notes and holding the elevator door open for people on crutches.

  Still, a more likable CEO might help Conch at the margins, and I felt I had in me the potential, even the obligation, to become an averagely likable person.

  “Cass,” I said, “so, this is Melissa, and this is my daughter, Nova, who is joining us today as she often does, just so we can spend extra time together. You don’t have to wait here for our publicist. I’ll take you up myself. It’s no problem!”

  The guard, Tony, and I smiled at each other, because this was one less thing for him to do. He stood up and, as I went to scan in, came to stand beside the inner door, which was always locked. He held its silver handle at the ready. Other people open this door themselves, but, you know, for me, special service. This is OK, I think.

  I aligned my feet with the blue footprints outlined on the floor and leaned forward toward the iris scanner’s round black eye. It felt a little like leaning in to kiss a robot. I tensed my core muscles. I use this dead time to practice kegels.

  The shutter clicked, the door hissed, and Tony tried the door, which did not open. “Nope,” he said.

  “Ah!” I said apologetically, as if it were my own skill deficit. We act like we’re really high security at Conch. We are moderate security. Some of it is just window dressing.

  “She’s been like this all day,” he said, tapping the scanner. “Mondays, am I right?”

  I happen to love Mondays—they are my most productive day and my favorite (thank God it’s Monday, I always think when I wake up). It’s not that I dread the weekends per se; I love them differently, like a second child. On Saturday mornings, I feel, despite my efforts, a little down at the prospect of temporarily unplugging, and though I never really do, entirely, there’s something depressing about pinging out emails and knowing it could be an hour or more before anyone replies. The workweek at Conch is a joy, so it’s a nice feeling to have as much of it as possible still to come. I shook my head at Tony, leaned in again, and this time the bell chimed its familiar descending major third, and the door almost jumped open before he could pull on it.

  “Perfect. On the money. Have a good one, Shelley,” he said.

  I beckoned Cass to go ahead. As he does every day, Tony blew me a kiss as I slipped through, into the inner recesses of Conch.

  * * *

  —

  “So give me the rundown for the three people out there who don’t know about Conch,” Cass said with a barky laugh as we walked together. I pretended this was funny, but actually there are tons of people who have never heard of Conch, and that is sad.

  “So, Conch—quick introduction: here’s mine.” I flicked it out from behind my ear. “See it? The Conch snaps into place in the little hollow on the back side of the user’s earlobe, and it clings there in the little chasm between the back of the ear and the ridge of the skull, counterbalanced by the flesh at the hinge of the jaw. It’s like a reverse earbud. It’s a strategic location nobody else has leveraged. I could talk all day about what makes the location so ideal, as I said on an investor call just the other day. It’s out of sight, so it’s not obvious you are wearing it, which a lot of our users like. Sound is transmitted right into the ear. And the Conch can measure air temperature, location via GPS coordinates, skin surface temperature, and, because it is sitting right atop the carotid artery, heart rate, from which, using other contextual clues, it infers stress levels. It combines all this data into rich situational awareness it can translate into actionable info provided right at the moment when you need it.”

  “Amazing!” Cass said. Nova and Melissa hung back.

  “We also use behaviometric analysis—which means studying what users actually do and then bringing it to them when they’d like to do it. There are different patterns and strengths of vibration for different functions, and increasingly we can communicate more and more just through tactile patterns—some users hardly use the phone app at all, they can get so much richness from touch. Up this way,” I said. “What do you think of our offices?”

  “So modern!” Cass exclaimed.

  “Design matters a lot, I think. Communication, collaboration, transparency…those are our values, and our building materials…” I gestured, trying to think of a word to say next. Nothing arrived. I looked at Cass to see if she was writing this down.

  Our offices are expansive and open, free of artificial boundaries, like walls, which constrain innovation. The ceiling is industrial; the furnishings are corporate IKEA. Bright bursts of color add wallops of fun and whimsy. In the center of the lobby is a curved staircase, which I ascended, past glowing ovoid pendant lights, pickled light wood, and windows framed in stainless steel, toward a big glass-fronted refrigerator containing no sodas, only juice: healthier!

  “It chuffs me when people line the bottles up neatly,” I remarked to Cass. That was a positive spin on the way they looked today: shitty! I walked through several departments and said hello to
as many people as I could. That’s part of my role—being present and public and cheerleading. Seeing and being seen. Setting the tone. Steering the ship. “Good morning!” I said. “Greg! Abby! McQ! You’re the new intern, right? You’re working with Jess? Great to have you aboard. Todd, what happened to your arm? Sorry to hear that.” I pressed my Conch in a follow-up notation. I was moseying through—not a hall, there are no halls at Conch, halls are too medieval, too bidirectional, too limiting—but a big open space traversed by long ribbons of desk. The gray carpet was interspersed with occasional darker gray squares, as if somebody digitized the coffee spills at very low resolution. I went the long way, so I could say hi to the maximal number of employees, and pat several of the large, romping dogs. I led Cass through marketing, customer service, and mobile development, detoured around our pesky legal department, and then went through hardware engineering, and finally to my desk.

  My assistant, Willow, came sprinting toward my workstation to greet us. Willow grew up in some sort of commune in Nevada, and that experience has given her a passion for capitalism. She is careful and good at catching problems. Jane, my previous assistant, was even better, but Jane only lasted sixteen months. Her name might have been Joanne.

  “Good morning, Shelley,” Willow said. She always says it in the same intonation, which is boring to me, and I hear it coming before she says it, but routine can also be a time-saver. She took my bag. “How was your morning? Did the call with the vendor happen?”

  “It happened,” I said. “It was fine. They’re a mess.”

  Willow’s expression suggested that she was sympathetic and also flattered to be given a confidential detail she could leverage in the employee cafeteria.

  “Do you want me to read off your schedule?”