‘It might. Or it might be a stake in something bigger. Board seats. Speaking gigs. Our own VC fund. It’s up to us,’ Trent stretched out his arms. ‘But before we leave here, we need a live prototype, a company structure, an operations plan, and a detailed picture of what our chopper looks like.’
‘Sounds good.’ Gavin tilted his head and drained his beer. ‘What are you going to call the company?’
‘I’ve got a couple of ideas, but right now I’m liking The Changing Room of Life.’ Trent beamed.
Below them traffic lights changed to green, releasing a fresh swarm of motorcycles’ revving. Shanti nodded slowly and finished her beer. Gavin passed his empty can from hand to hand.
‘Either of you got a better idea?’ Trent folded his arms.
‘Shelf Life,’ Gavin said quietly without looking up.
‘What?’ asked Trent, unfolding his arms.
‘Say that again,’ commanded Shanti.
Gavin cleared his throat and stood a little taller. ‘Shelf Life.’
‘That’s sooo good, Gav,’ Shanti’s eyes widened. ‘That’s perfect.’
Gavin felt a little tingle and tried not to smile. Just like Tony Montana had told him during countless stoned repeat viewings with his flatmates: First you get the money, then you get the girls. Tony had also told him something about power, but Gavin couldn’t quite remember.
‘I love it, Gav,’ said Trent, slapping him on the back. ‘Shelf Life. That’s fucking genius.’
Gavin stared out at the chopper and allowed himself a little smile. Through the shimmering haze of the tropical air he imagined the rotors slowly turning to life and the pilot leaning out the window giving him the thumbs up.
To compile is to be glorious
‘Sales assistant in ladies’ footwear.’
‘So. Very. Creepy,’ Shanti shook her head slowly.
‘Only if you don’t like ladies’ feet,’ Gavin said with a grin.
‘I like it. Write it up,’ said Trent, pointing at the whiteboard. The lounge room of the third floor apartment had been converted into a basic office. The fan blades did lazy circuits overhead while a motorbike droned past in the street downstairs. ‘Okay, what’s on the shortlist so far?’
‘We’ve got barista, DJ, personal trainer, yacht broker, zookeeper, sports reporter, photographer’s assistant, surf guide, nightclub door bitch, food reviewer, videogame designer, lifeguard and, thanks to Creepy McCreepface over here, ladies footwear sales assistant,’ said Shanti, giving the whiteboard marker a little sniff.
‘That stuff’ll kill you,’ said Gavin, stretching back in his office chair.
‘We’ve been in this office since the middle of the afternoon. It’s now almost three. I need something to keep me going,’ said Shanti.
‘Okay, are we happy with that inventory for launch?’ Trent walked a small circle in front of the whiteboard. ‘This is all white-bread middle-class M-rated fantasy stuff. Do we need more cool? More edgy? More dangerous?’
‘We do, but it will come from the users. They’ll see our list and say “my life is more interesting than that stuff”, which will encourage them to register, which will boost our inventory,’ said Gavin. ‘Classic user-generated acquisition strategy.’
‘Nice. Are we just listing them by job title? I thought the point of ShelfLife was that people get to rent the whole life, not just the job?’ Shanti replaced the marker cap. ‘So they get to experience the whole box and dice. The home life, the friends, the neighbours, the kids –’
‘The wives and girlfriends,’ said Gavin with a little too much excitement.
‘The husbands and boyfriends?’ Shanti countered with a raised eyebrow.
‘That was my original idea, yes. There should be scope for full immersion, but I don’t want to make it mandatory, otherwise it’ll just scare too many people off.’
‘But the titillation is important. The sense of possibility. It’s how we sell SUVs in the suburbs. You buy one knowing that you’ll probably never take it off road, but you love the fact that if you wanted to, you totally could. So let’s set up the database tables to accommodate the social aspects and the home life as well.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Shanti tapped her chin with the marker. ‘We’re trying to get the prototype live in thirty days, remember?’
‘I’m not saying it’s easy, but from a user’s perspective we need to be more granular in the way we present it,’ said Gavin. ‘Split it out by pre-requisites. That’ll reduce your incomplete rate.’
‘How so?’ asked Trent.
‘The Host Lives where the professional component has no pre-qualifications go in their own category. This is stuff you can do with almost no training or knowledge. Like a valet.’
‘Last I heard, you need a driver’s licence to drive a car,’ Shanti folded her arms.
‘Yeah, well, fair enough, maybe that’s a bad example,’ Gavin rubbed his chin. ‘Look at Door Bitch, Barista, Photographer’s Assistant, and maybe the Food Reviewer. A bit of pre-reading and a cheat sheet written by the original life owner and I reckon most people could muddle through for a week without causing any major problems. Right?’
Trent nodded and Shanti blinked slowly.
‘So put them in the walk-ins category, no prior experience needed. Then you’ve got things like Lifeguard, Fitness Instructor, Valet, thank you Shanti, and the Yacht Broker who all probably need some basic certification. Or Marty on the surfboat, there’s a decent level of surfing ability needed there. Put those lives in a separate category and flag the professional pre-requisites up front so customers know what to expect before they browse. Much higher conversion rate.’
‘Not the Yacht Broker,’ said Trent, perched on the edge of a desk. ‘My buddy from college moved to Florida and started dealing in yachts with nothing more than his high-school diploma. He actually suffers from sea-sickness. Now he’s clearing a couple hundred grand in commissions per season.’
‘Would he be interested in ShelfLife?’ asked Shanti.
‘He can’t wait for us to go live. He’s so bored of showing old rich dudes around Beneteaus but the money’s too good so he can’t quit,’ said Trent, pushing himself off the desk and heading down the corridor towards the bedrooms. ‘This is good stuff. You guys keep going, I need to pack.’
Shanti wandered over to the whiteboard to examine the list.
‘Pack? Where’s he going now?’ asked Gavin in a low voice. ‘We’re starting to slip behind schedule, aren’t we?’
‘I think he’s meeting some investors in Hong Kong at some big pitch fest,’ said Shanti without turning from the board. ‘Do we really need these sub-categories? Feels too complex to me.’
‘Complex for us, but simple for the user. You want to make sure that every life the site serves them is one they can rent. That’s the secret to reducing abandonment rates. You don’t do this stuff at Opod?’
‘Not really. That platform is very data-driven. Has to be because there’s so much of it. But you’re looking at the user first and then making the data fit.’ She turned to face him. ‘It’s clever.’
Gavin put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. ‘You just have to remember that these users are just humans. We all are.’
‘I find humans frustrating. They don’t follow patterns. They’re unreliable.’ She gave him a smile. ‘You can’t know for sure exactly what they’re thinking.’
Gavin returned the smile. He wondered if this was an invitation to let her know exactly what he was thinking.
‘Okay gang, I’m on the 5am to HK so I’m heading to the airport. Can I also task you to work up some options for handling the workplace associates, the people who have to carry the renter on the job for the week? Maybe revenue sharing, or credits towards a rental of their own?’ Trent barely slowed as he trundled his cabin bag through the office. ‘Our landlord promised to come by today to fix the shower head. His name is Mr Trung, lovely guy. See you in about twenty-four hours.’
Trent’s lu
ggage clacked down the three flights of stairs. Gavin sighed.
‘I’m glad he finally left,’ Shanti stretched her arms above her head. ‘He gets so focused he assumes everybody else is just as happy to pull an all-nighter.’
‘I’m kind of used to it. We do them all the time in advertising. But they’re usually not productive like this,’ Gavin motioned around the office. Every wall was covered in post-its and tearsheets, the by-product of a couple of weeks spent thinking and dreaming and arguing. Whenever Trent had described what he imagined ShelfLife could do, Gavin set about breaking it down into a series of human behaviours and reactions, while Shanti compiled the code to mechanise it. The beautiful yet fragile idea Trent had revealed to them in Texas just a few weeks earlier was finding form in lines of code. ‘I think this is starting to look like it might work.’
‘I think I need a break,’ Shanti walked past Gavin, running a slender finger along his bicep as she went. ‘Do you?’
She had told herself it was part pity-fuck, part stress release, but she harboured the suspicion she’d invited Gavin into her bed that morning because she liked him. She acknowledged she would be breaking her own code of conduct by sleeping with a colleague, then immediately found a loophole by telling herself this wasn’t a real company. Ergo, Gavin was not a real colleague.
Still relishing the pleasure of her release and the deliciousness of their shared secret, Shanti suffered mental-replay interruptus later that afternoon when an email arrived from Opod. All development was being sent offshore. The belongings on her desk were currently being boxed. The ‘Scandefuckers’ had fired her while she was on leave. She retreated to her bedroom to make some phonecalls to Opod’s HR department, but they had all been let go as well. The receptionist was new and refused to put the call through to anyone in senior management. Shanti took a deep breath, went back to her desk and distracted herself from Gavin’s puppy-dog eyes by working furiously through the afternoon.
***
‘Does this qualify as a date?’ Gavin grinned as they sat down at a plastic table in the middle of the street, surrounded by food carts. Strings of tiny lights swung gently in the warm breeze as waiters took orders with a nod and yelled them to the outdoor cooks. Shanti smiled but didn’t answer. She waved a waiter over and ordered for both of them.
‘That’s amazing, how you’re picking up the language so quickly,’ said Gavin.
‘What’s amazing is how Westerners only ever speak English,’ she shot back with a little more venom than intended. The barb struck.
‘I was just trying to be nice,’ said Gavin. ‘After last night, I thought – ’
‘Whatever you’re thinking, Gavin,’ she held her palm upright, ‘I need you to unthink it, okay?’
‘Unthink it? I can still feel it, Shanti. Are you just wiping me away?’
‘I’m not wiping anything Gavin. I like you and I really liked last night. But things have changed for me. I need to get serious about ShelfLife.’
‘Me too, I really – ’
‘Gavin,’ she held up an index finger. ‘Just listen, OK? I’m not really on sabbatical from Opod. They forced me to take the leave I’d accumulated so they could get it off their books. Turns out they wanted it off their books so they could fire me. While I was on leave.’
‘Fucking bastards.’
‘I appreciate the sympathy but still no talking for you, okay?’ she paused, partly to dare him to fill the silence. ‘Now that I don’t have a job, I’ve got no way of keeping my uncle off my back. I need money for my rent, my board, my university tuition, my boarding school fees and for god knows what the fuck else he’s quietly been adding to the bill all these years.’
Gavin’s mouth opened a little, but he quickly closed it.
‘Years ago, my dad lost all his money back in India and so his brother stepped in to pay for my education. My dad says it will be this big giant shame on our family if I don’t pay my uncle back. And I kind of see his point,’ Shanti slumped a little. ‘So I have to get this site launched and cash in on all this VC money Trent keeps talking about, or…’
‘Or what?’ said Gavin, before covering his mouth with his hand.
Shanti waved his hand away with a faint smile. ‘I go back to Munich and work for my uncle’s restaurant full-time.’
‘What, like a waitress?’
‘And book-keeper, receptionist, coder of his shitty website, basically everything. So if this thing here doesn’t work, I’m screwed.’
‘I’m not on sabbatical either,’ Gavin leaned across to place his hand on hers. ‘I told my bosses to go fuck themselves and I quit.’
‘When did you do that?’ Shanti shook her head in disbelief.
‘Pretty much straight after your first email asking me to come join you guys,’ Gavin gave her hand a little squeeze. ‘So this is all I’ve got, too. We’re in this together, all the way.’
‘Oh, Gavin,’ Shanti withdrew her hand. ‘Not all the way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If we’re really going to build this site and get investors on board, I need to focus. You need to focus.’
‘I’m focussing. I’m focused,’ Gavin stared at her and pointed at his own eyes. ‘Look: focus.’
‘Not on me. On the work,’ she brushed her hair back. ‘So you and me, if we’re working together, we can’t be together, even for fun. I’ve been to this movie before. Not a great ending.’
‘If that’s the way you want it,’ he withdrew his hands to his lap.
‘I’m sorry, Gavin, really. It’s just the timing. If it was any other –’
Their food landed inelegantly on the table, in a flurry of plates, cutlery and barked Vietnamese.
‘Not that hungry, actually.’ Gavin threw a crumpled wad of dong onto the plastic table, gathered himself up and ambled into the night. The flipside of his boyish charm was his occasional childishness. They did not appear to be sold separately.
***
For the first time in a long time, Shanti felt like crying. She sat alone in the office, staring at the whiteboards and post-its that lined the walls. All these fragments and acronyms, arrows and Venn diagrams that were waiting to be captured, wrestled into code and loaded onto a server, then pressed into service on a million laptops and smartphones in the hopes of turning dreams into cash. Right now, the whole thing looked so fragile that a stiff breeze could reduce it to confetti. Shanti felt the panic starting to rise and in response, she unleashed a torrent of tears, sweat and code that lasted through the night. Every time she paused, her mind wandered back to Gavin. To prevent the wandering, she leant more forcefully into the work. By the time she finished, fingers aching and shoulders perma-hunched, the ShelfLife site was a functioning prototype, ready for an upload of test data and its first round of de-bugging. She drew the blinds against the morning sun and fell into bed.
***
‘Have you heard from him? Is he here?’
‘Slow down, Trent. I just woke up, you just got in – very obviously – and I don’t know what the hell you’re saying.’
‘What I’m saying is that I left you two alone for a little over twenty-four hours with instructions to write some code, design some pages and not spend any money. Instead, I come back to find he’s missing, you’ve passed out and I have a voicemail from the Vietnamese Ministry of Home Affairs asking me to confirm Gavin’s passport details. In person.’
‘Oh shit.’
‘Oh shit is right. Now, let’s try this again: do you know where he is?’
‘I have no idea, sorry.’
‘When’s the last time you saw him?’
‘What time is it now?’ she rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.
‘Jesus, what have you two been doing?’
‘I’ve been working, Trent. Okay?’ Shanti snapped back. ‘I was coding till about eight this morning, then I passed out. Do you think Gavin is in serious trouble?’
‘It’s entirely possible. Get dressed. We may have some
bargaining to do.’
The office of the Vietnamese Ministry for Home Affairs was winding up for the afternoon and they wandered its halls for several minutes before being directed to the third level. At the end of a dim corridor they found a drab olive door marked with Vietnamese script in flaking black paint. A printout of the English translation was sticky-taped to the door: Threats and Incidental Actions.
The small man in a military uniform behind the large desk did not react when the door swung open. It was difficult to tell if he was awake behind his thick, tinted glasses. Three black plastic chairs ranged against the opposite wall just below a framed print of the president.
‘Appointment?’ asked the man behind the desk without warning.
‘Yes I do,’ said Trent.
‘Your appointment letter?’
‘I’m here about a passport verification. For Gavin Higgs,’ Trent held his phone up while pointing at it. ‘I have a message.’
‘You have a problem.’ The man spoke English as if he were reading from a textbook: precise, but without emotion. Trent couldn’t tell if it was a question, so he hedged his answer.
‘I’m hoping you can help me.’
‘Yes. You will need help.’
‘That’s great.’ Trent went for the presumptive close. ‘I really appreciate it, Mr…?’
‘General.’
‘Mr General,’ Trent said as he walked forward, extending his hand and unfurling a broad smile. This was a deal he wanted to close.
‘Not Mister. General. General Trung. Take a seat, please.’
‘General Trung? Then perhaps you know Mr Trung of Golden Star Electronics? In Quan Three? He’s our landlord.’
‘It is not important what your landlord is called. What is important is the damage caused by your associate Mr Higgs. Very big problem. Please, your seat.’
‘I’m sure it was an accident,’ Trent began, electing to play for the draw and lowering himself into the chair. ‘And I am very sorry for whatever damages may have been caused.’
‘Many motorcycles damaged. People threatened. Women insulted. Your associate did not control himself. Big problem.’
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