Embrace in Motion

by Karin Kallmaker

  Sarah nodded. Her confidentiality agreement with CompuSoft was iron-clad.

  "So why don't we talk about the current status of copyrighting and patenting software. General terms."

  "Sure," Sarah said. She launched into a synopsis of her current understanding of the increasing difficulty of patenting software. She finished with, "Even if we can convince the patent office that our product is unique right down to what it produces, they still have the option not to review the application. If they do decide to review it, they can turn it down up until three years later. So I think it's worthwhile to apply for a patent, but we should copyright every word of the code and protect ourselves with the usual trade and service marks for the product."

  "I'm learning more every minute," Richard said. "We never bothered to do anything about MagicBullet and no one ever infringed on it."

  Sarah swallowed her last bite of the sandwich. "Well, the most likely explanation for that is who would want to infringe on it? You made a sensible, inexpensive product almost every PC user has and there's no room for profit to anyone else. I mean, you still sell it for what... eight bucks? Who would want to cut in on that? You saturated your market in just a few months because you made it available online. I'm guessing that what you're working on now is something a great deal more complicated and expensive. So there will be people who would like to come out with their own discounted version of your software. They'll plan their own release at just the right time... after you spend the money educating the users about why they need it. Then they'll compete based on price and clean up."

  Richard wrinkled his nose. "I know people do business that way. Still disappointing, but there we are. Okay, you've convinced me we do need an attorney for this process. Why would I need you as opposed to these —" he waved his hand at a stack of resumes on his desk — "eminently qualified people? Well, some of them are qualified. Or so I've been told." For a moment he looked as if he'd been caught saving too much.

  "I've been through the whole process, from start to finish. I was assistant on the patent process for CompuSoft's DOS add-on operating system, and I've been the lead or solo attorney for the last three years for a number of their home entertainment products."

  "Including virtual reality, multimedia and video synthesis?"

  Sarah nodded. "I can also offer you my expertise at inside security. As you get closer to a final product you'll need to tighten up control on the programmers."

  "They'll love that," Richard said.

  "I've been the heavy before," Sarah said with a shrug. "I've learned to live without the love of programmers, but I usually manage to win their respect."

  "When could you start?"

  The question caught Sarah off guard. "Are you offering me the position?"

  "I don't like to beat around the bush. I follow my intuition and my intuition says you'll work out fine. Everyone will like working with you, including the... marketing person. I'd introduce you but she's on a business trip."

  "We would need to talk about salary before I'd commit myself."

  Richard smiled. "Of course. Well, as I said, the salary is negotiable. We can also sweeten the pot with stock that could be worth something some day. No guarantees."

  Sarah chuckled because he so obviously meant her to, but she could sense that the future of the company was no laughing matter to him. "You've been very honest with me. It's bad negotiating tactics, did you know that? At least that's what I learned in law school."

  "I'm not sure I subscribe to that theory."

  "Well, if I'm going to work for you, I should probably adopt some of your methods," Sarah said, trying to hide a smile that kept threatening what should be a serious moment in the interview. "I'm moving here for personal reasons and I have no other sure leads. And I'm beginning to think that maybe I wouldn't mind a change of working environment."

  "You can wear jeans. Not that your suit doesn't... ah ... suit you." Richard gestured at his faded T-shirt. "We're pretty casual. Except when we've got outside meetings."

  "I'm used to a lot of latitude in schedule, a private office and something with a Pentium chip in it. But I rarely need secretarial services — I can't think unless I type it."

  "The office and hardware is a given. Melody can handle almost anything if you ask nicely. And I'm a real believer in treating people like grown-ups. You know what you need to do. How and when you do it is your business unless it becomes my business. If you know what I mean."

  "When can I start?" This time there was no stopping her smile. It felt right.

  Richard guffawed. "We haven't talked about money." He offered a sum higher than in the ad and added a hundred shares of stock annually.

  Sarah found herself nodding and just like that they struck their deal. She was a little amazed at how easy it was and hoped she didn't get home and have a major attack of the regrets.

  They continued talking as they finished the Fritos, then he led her back to the general office area and gave her a hearty handshake and his best wishes for a safe journey home. "If you need a few extra days to get settled before you report, just give me a call. Moving is not an easy business."

  "I'll be sure to let you know if that's the case. And I'm looking forward to working with you."

  For a moment, Richard looked slightly guilty about something, but his expression resumed its usual benign charm. "The feeling is mutual," he said, then waved cheerily as she walked to her rental car.

  She was on the highway headed for San Francisco before the enormity of what she'd just done sank in. She found herself grinning from ear to ear. She switched on the radio and when Patti Labelle's "New Attitude" came on she turned it up loud enough to drown out her own off-key singing. She crested a steep hill and suddenly the panorama of San Francisco spread out before her. The sky was brilliantly blue. The hills were dusty gold. The Golden Gate Bridge winked orange and the deep green bay was studded with gleaming sailboats that scudded across whitecaps.

  She would grow to love this place, and she was sure her job would be interesting and rewarding. Though her heart still fluttered over the precipitousness of her decision to move with Melissa, the panic — hammering her in the middle of the night — was more than manageable.

  She had hit the bulls-eye.

  "You hired her? Did you even look at the other resumes?"

  Richard's silence told Leslie the answer. He looked distinctly guilty.

  "I can't believe this," Leslie said heatedly. "Are you ever going to grow up? You can't just hire someone because you had a feeling she'd work out. You didn't even check her references."

  "You'll like her," he said.

  "That's not the point," she snapped, sure she would hate this Sarah person on sight. "We need someone to do a bang-up job for us —"

  "She'll do that too." He was starting to look faintly amused.

  "Richard, you drive me crazy sometimes." It didn't help that Melody had already babbled about the wonder woman they'd hired. Something about her being an athlete, as if that was some sort of credential for being a lawyer.

  "Only sometimes?"

  "Stop trying to make me laugh. Just because you're the genius behind all of us probably becoming millionaires doesn't give you license to ignore the best advice you can get. Especially mine."

  The ever-present smile left his eyes. "Les, you could have had this chair as easily as me. And you know it."

  Leslie made a face at her shoes. "How did we get into this, Richie? We don't know what we're doing."

  "That's never stopped us before," he reminded her. "Okay, so the organic fruit farm didn't make it. But we had a hell of a lot of fun even if we didn't get rich."

  "Getting rich wasn't the point."

  "It still isn't. I mean, yes, we've thought of a software concept and so far have picked the right people to help us get it on the market. So what if our original idea was to make an educational tool before we realized Disney or Amblin would kill for it?"

  "I still don't know how we got here. Ar
guing about a stupid lawyer, for God's sake."

  "You're the one arguing—" He cut off Leslie's angry splutter with a raised hand. "Okay, I ignored your advice and picked someone because of a feeling. It's the same feeling I had when we hired Gene to manage the programmers. And was I right?"

  "You were right," Leslie admitted, sullenly. She realized she sounded like Matt.

  "And Melody? I said she would learn to type, but smarts mattered more."

  "You were right again. You're always right, Richard. When do I get to be right?" She rolled her eyes. "Forget I said that. You always manage to make me revert to Leslie-the-seventeen-year-old. You haven't changed a bit."

  "It wouldn't hurt you to get in touch with the seventeen-year-old you used to be."

  "Blah, blah, blah," Leslie said. "Go beat your tom-tom in the woods, Iron Man."

  He frowned. "Be serious, Les. At this point in both our lives we need to be real about what we want."

  "I want Matt to grow up in a safer world where he can blossom into a happy and genuine human being."

  "What do you want?"

  "I just said it. I'm a mom, now and forever."

  "That's not particularly healthy—"

  "Richard, how come we're not talking about your decision to flout my advice? Why are we talking about me?"

  The twinkle came back to his eyes. "You have changed, Les. Ten years ago you'd have chased every red herring I threw at you."

  She slapped him on the arm, just hard enough for him to know she sort of meant it. "Bastard."

  "Hey, I just wanted to make sure we understood each other... about how we feel. And why we're here."

  "I'm still pissed at you."

  "Okay." He shrugged. "I deserve it. But I think you'll like her. She's a morning person," he added, the gleam in his eye turning wicked.

  "Oh, terrific. That's terrific," Leslie said. "I'm going to come to work and find memos on my desk, aren't I? Let me say one thing, Richard Deacon. I'll get even with you."

  "I think you always have," he said. His phone buzzed and he waved his cheery good-bye as she stalked out.

  Anybody else would have fired her for that tantrum, and she knew it. But she wasn't exactly an employee. She had lost the toss on who would be the president versus vice president. Then Richard had wanted to go best out of three. And he'd won again. Best of five and three beers later — still Richard. He really hadn't wanted to be in charge but fate was fate, they'd decided. Most of the time he wasn't the boss — he was too busy reviewing programming to worry about the details of running the rest of the company.

  Why, oh why hadn't she just buckled down and hired the attorney herself? As she walked by what would be Sarah MacNeil's office, she saw that Melody had already cleaned the desk vacated over two years ago by their last shipping manager. Online delivery of software had eliminated the need, but as was their philosophy, they hadn't eliminated any personnel except by attrition. A new computer had been set up, and Melody had put a MagicWorks mug next to the phone. Leslie sighed loudly and realized that she sounded just like Matt.

  5

  Your embraces alone, give fife to my heart. (Unknown)

  "What on earth is that?" Melissa pointed at the tall, thin, leather pouch Sarah had pulled from the back of the bedroom closet.

  "My longbow," Sarah said, feeling shy. She was uneasily aware that she hadn't ever talked to Melissa about what archery had meant to her, and what she'd achieved when she'd been actively shooting. She put her reluctance down to not wanting to parade her accomplishments in front of someone so desperately seeking her own glories. She didn't want any element of competitiveness in their relationship. "I'll show you."

  She unzipped the pouch and drew out the five-foot, seven-inch bow, exactly one inch shorter than she was. She quickly strung it and realized that it wasn't as easy as it had been five years ago. Not enough practice. And too much sitting in an office. She nocked a phantom arrow onto the taut string and drew the string back. Her fingers screamed at the lack of tabs to protect them from almost fifty pounds of draw weight, but she drew fully.

  "Sight." She drew down on an orange in her favorite Cezanne print. "Focus." Her fingers released the string gratefully and the thrum filled her ears like a love song. "Fly." With an arrow at this range, the orange would have become a neat hole with an arrow sunk to its fletchings. This bow was capable of almost twice the distance of a standard competition bow.

  "You don't do those war games in the woods, do you?"

  Sarah flushed. "Of course not. It's not something to play with. This bow can be deadly from four hundred feet. At close range it will do more damage than a rifle."

  "Eewww." Melissa's delicate nose wrinkled. "It's too violent for me."

  Violent? Sarah had never found the magic of the bow in her hands violent. Of course her forebears had gone to war with bows and had killed other men. Grannie MacNeil had hunted with her bow in the Cascades. Sarah's favorite Christmas dinner memory was replete with wild goose. Her father had been proud of his mother's prowess at both hunting and cooking, but Sarah remembered that her own mother had been fastidiously repelled.

  When Sarah had first shown interest in archery, her mother had said it wasn't ladylike. By then her parents were divorced and her father sent Sarah off to Grannie MacNeil's every summer where she'd learned to pickle cucumbers, can peaches, pluck chickens and draw a bow. Grannie said she'd teach Sarah to hunt but made it plain that if she shot anything she'd have to do the rendering and cleaning herself. Her city-bred twelve-year-old stomach hadn't been up to the idea, so her practice had always been target shooting. She'd been proud of the calluses on her fingertips, but her mother had been appalled come the fall.

  Those calluses had almost gone away.

  "Are you going to stand there all day?"

  Sarah turned to Melissa, wanting to explain about Grannie MacNeil and the years she'd spent perfecting her stance, learning to sense the wind against her face, handling pressure and ignoring judges and crowds. But Melissa was already pulling open another box.

  "Do you think I should clean this out a little before I pack it," she said, holding up a thick sheaf of papers. "Come look. These are my first photos."

  Sarah slipped Grannie MacNeil's bow back into its pouch and set it carefully next to the boxes containing her past.

  "I wish the apartment had more storage," Melissa said.

  "There's space," Sarah said. "We'll just have to be judicious about what we keep in the apartment, and put the rest in storage." Accepting the job at MagicWorks had left her with the weekend to find a place for them to live. The rent had been far more than she had expected — almost as much as she'd have paid for one of the hillside apartments near Pike's Market with a heart stopping view of the Sound. She had lucked out finding something that was near the Castro district — Melissa's only stipulation. It had two bedrooms and a large, airy living room looking down on the Castro Theater several blocks down the hill.

  Beyond the neon theater sign the Financial District rose into view, with black, brown, gray and white skyscrapers reaching for a sky that had been powder blue when she'd last seen it. The view had been a necessity for her own sanity—she couldn't go from Mt. Snoqualmie to someone else's wall. She expected that eventually she'd sell the house and buy something in the Bay Area, but she wanted to get to know the area before making a decision that big.

  In the meantime, Debra, who reminded Sarah daily that she really wasn't speaking to her, said she wanted to rent Sarah's house. She had phrased it more like, "I'd love to live there until you come to your senses." Debra had an aversion to owning things and she liked to move around for the excitement of discovering new places to eat and shop and meet women. Sarah had pointed out that Debra was aiding and abetting what she herself called "foolishness beyond belief and had received only a hurt sniff in response.

  "Well, one thing's for sure. We can store our winter boots," Melissa said. "I was dreading getting mine out. It never rains in California."

/>   "That's Southern California," Sarah said. "I asked a couple of people at work who lived in San Francisco. We can expect fog and cold rain for weeks on end. Apparently, however, just as we reach the edge of despair, the sun will come out and it'll be seventy degrees for a couple of days, then winter again."

  "Sounds heavenly," Melissa said. "I hadn't realized how much I was dreading winter. I spent last winter in Minnesota and let me tell you, never again. Never again. I would walk around pinched and blue with scarves and vests and sweaters three inches thick while the natives would just be buttoning their top button."

  Sarah laughed. "I've heard you have to live there a few years for the antifreeze supplements to work."

  Melissa blinked at her, then smiled. "I can never tell when you're teasing me."

  "That's not what you said last night."

  Melissa giggled. "Are you going to stand there all day, or are you going to get something packed? I mean, if you're not going to be useful, the least you could do is come over here and kiss me."

  Sarah shook her head. "The last kiss cost us most of the morning. We've got to be done by next Wednesday and you know it, missy."

  "I can't believe that by next Sunday we'll be in San Francisco. I've always wanted to live there." Melissa looked up with what seemed like stars in her eyes.

  Sarah looked across the valley at the mist-wreathed mountain. "I can't believe it either," Sarah said, not meaning to sound so wistful.

  Melissa emptied her lap of photographs and joined Sarah at the window. "I know you'll be homesick, but I'll try to make it up to you." She feathered a kiss across Sarah's shoulder.

  A flicker of pleasure warmed the suddenly cold pit of Sarah's stomach. Panic attacks, that's what they were, but they went away when she reminded herself of what she'd gained. She slipped her arm around Melissa and let the heat of her body chase away the rest of the fear.

  "You really didn't have to come in today," Leslie heard Richard say.