by Teddy Wayne
I removed my arm from under her head without waking her, which was difficult because her head seemed so soft to me, even the small bump centered on the back under her hair, and I exited to the living room window and looked at the yellow streetlights on the snow and dialed my cellular.
My father answered at his store. I asked how Zahira looked.
“Not good,” he said. “Although that is temporary. But this disease will still make it difficult.”
“It will make what difficult?”
“Finding her a husband,” he said.
It was a mistake to call him. “I cannot believe that is what concerns you,” I said.
“Her health concerns me as well. But this presents an additional problem.”
“If a man is foolish enough not to be interested in her because of this, then he does not merit her anyway.”
“Is that all you called to say?” he asked. “That I’m an old man who doesn’t understand how the modern world works? I’m merely looking out for her.”
“That isn’t looking out for her.” The few lights of the buildings in the neighborhood produced yellow constellations against the black sky. “And she doesn’t need you to do so.”
“Then I should let her go where she pleases, and maybe next time she will end up in the burn unit as well?”
“Unless you quarantine her in a room, there are too many dangers in the world to defend her against,” I said. “And even if you quarantine her, there are still some dangers you cannot prevent.”
He didn’t say anything. “Is the hospital room comfortable for her?” I asked.
“It has been updated since I was last here, but it still has a certain smell I dislike,” he said. “And the doctors speak to me as if I am a child.”
“That must be very frustrating for you,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“She tells me the doctors are informing her well, and that she is doing her own research.”
“Yes,” he said again.
“Is she explaining the concepts to you?”
“And to Haami,” he said. “Which is even more difficult.”
I almost laughed, but I interrupted myself. “It is unfortunate the doctors there do not possess the communication skills she has,” I said.
“Yes,” he said for a third time.
The door to Rebecca’s room was still closed.
I said, “I am in a relationship here with a Jewish female.”
He was mute for such a long time that I thought we might be disconnected. Finally he said, “It is not my preference. But I cannot quarantine you in a room.”
Then he added one word: “Either.”
That word was an important one. And when I heard it, I knew what I had to do the next day.
There was some noise, and he said he had a customer. I said, “I have one question.” It was difficult for me to ask, but I forced myself to state it as if it were a strategy question in a business conference: “Do you remember the Beatles song mother often used to sing to me when I went to sleep?”
I heard him ask the customer to wait. My eyes became fatigued, and the lights of the buildings across the street spread out like gold dust.
Then he said, “I do not remember it, but I know the title was a female’s name.” The customer yelled at him, and we disconnected.
I put down my cellular. I still couldn’t remember the song.
My eyes refocused and the yellow lights outside sharpened into small squares and one room powered off its lights while another one near it simultaneously powered on.
This line entered my brain:
Her hair of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering, in the sun.
And the metaphor of floating sky suddenly made me access a brief memory of my mother singing that part of the song “Julia” to me while sitting on the side of my bed. That was all I could recall. Then I lost the memory of the sound and image. But at least I had it for a few moments, and I remembered that the Beatles also sang about blended emotions, and the pressure bottlenecked behind my eyes again, and I told myself to be strong and to repress it, but then I considered that maybe it was in fact stronger to allow it to happen, so I let myself release, and for several minutes I could not control it, which typically panics me but now it didn’t because it wasn’t exclusively sad, it was also blended, and Rebecca entered the living room and petted my back in a circular pattern with her hand and we stood there mutely for several minutes until I stabilized, and she kept her hand on my back and we returned to her bed and remained mute, which I valued.
bluff = display confidence when your holdings are valueless to leverage the ignorance of the other party
card shark = a card player who bluffs and succeeds
JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: DECEMBER 31
The day of my meeting with Mr. Schrub I let Kapitoil run on autopilot. The scrolling white numbers on the black monitor blurred like a snowstorm the entire morning.
In the afternoon I walked all the way uptown through the snow to Mr. Schrub’s apartment. My external concentration was so low that a garbage truck almost crashed into me on Broadway. It was almost amusing to me how you can be so focused on macro concerns, but it requires only a micro event like that to impact everything.
When I arrived at Mr. Schrub’s apartment, I had to check in as before. The receptionist called upstairs and then told me that Mr. Schrub was coming downstairs. I waited 20 minutes, however, and each minute I grew more panicked. But I reminded myself that this was possibly part of his negotiation strategy.
Finally Mr. Schrub arrived with his briefcase. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. “I’ve been cooped up all day.”
We crossed the street to Central Park without talking. As we passed a white horse with black markings attached to a carriage, Mr. Schrub asked, “Feel like a carriage ride? I’m always up for one, but Helena says it’s cruel to the animals.”
I consented, and he arranged a ride with the driver, an Indian man with glasses that were highly concave.
We covered ourselves with blankets and the horse pulled us into the park, away from all the dirty snow where people had walked and onto a clean interior path. Our breath made small clouds in front of our faces like exhaust from a car.
Mr. Schrub put his briefcase on his lap over the blanket and opened it. “I’ve got the contract ready. You can sign now, but we’ll wait until you have a lawyer cosign it so you can be sure you understand all its terms. I think you’ll find it very generous.”
He handed me the stack of papers. In bolded font was the price for the program. It was even higher than what he said at the fund-raiser. Something happens when you see a number attached to a currency symbol, instead of just thinking about it. It becomes more real. Sometimes I enjoy examining my bank account for that reason: Unless I observe evidence, I still don’t believe someone is paying me for what I would also do for free.
There was a division in the path, and Mr. Schrub asked the driver to turn left, but because it was windy and we were behind him and the horse made so much noise, Mr. Schrub had to yell at him three times before he finally heard, and the horse angled northwest. Its body was perspiring even though the temperature was below freezing.
Mr. Schrub added, “And we’ll give you a team of programmers to direct. Any resource you want, you’ll get. We’re going to groom you for a leadership position.”
I considered my options:
1. This was of course what I wanted most of all when I arrived here in October;
A. and in some ways it was what I still wanted;
B. and as a leader at Schrub I could make some enhancements in business practices;
2. but Kapitoil would still operate and exploit problems elsewhere;
A. and as Mr. Schrub said about himself, I would change slightly daily in ways I wouldn’t notice;
B. and one day I would be a different person and no longer Karim-esque;
i. and possibly being Karim-esque, although it is not confident or experienced or
a strong negotiator or many other factors that make a skilled businessman, is still a positive class of being;
ii. and is in fact superior to being Schrub-esque;
1. and I knew that if I signed the contract and told my father what I had done, he would be disappointed.
I folded the contract in half.
“I cannot sign this,” I said.
“Is it a money issue?” he asked. “We can get more.”
I shook my head. “I will be publishing my paper.”
“What if we confidentially provided the code to a few select partners in the sectors you’re interested in, and continued running Kapitoil?”
I had already evaluated this idea. “The code must be on the open market for the best people to utilize it. And there may be applications we have not thought of. The only way to know is if it is available to everyone,” I said. “I have made my decision.”
He exhaled with force through his nostrils. His muteness made me nervous, as it always did.
Then he said, “Kapitoil was fully funded by the company and written on company time. We could take you to court and easily block you from disclosing it to others, and my programmers could get access to the code or write a version of it on their own. You wouldn’t come away with a cent. We’re offering you a lot of money to avoid that.”
Although the horse accelerated on an empty path and the wind sliced my cheeks, my body heated up under the blanket. I couldn’t believe I was so foolish that I hadn’t asked Cynthia about this. I hadn’t 100% created the program on company time as he stated, but they had funded me. He had the best lawyers in the country, and the solitary one I knew was Cynthia.
Mr. Schrub was correct: Possibly I wasn’t man enough to be in business.
And I could make my family secure for years, not months, if I merely signed the contract.
He was the more skilled player. He knew how to leverage the rules of the game.
The horse slowed down and stopped as a large cluster of Asian tourists crossed the path in front of us. I looked down the side of the carriage as we waited. A small piece of bread sat on top of the snow like a topping on a cake with icing, and dozens of ants were aggregating around it. It again wasn’t the correct subject to be thinking about at the time, but it made me happy that such a small piece of food was sufficient for so many ants.
The other incorrect subject to be thinking about was Mr. Schrub’s comment that his programmers could innovate their own version of Kapitoil. It was a complex and beautiful program, and although Schrub has the cream of the cream programmers, I don’t believe anyone else could write a parallel program, even launching from the proposal I presented to Mr. Ray, and it angered me that he thought other people could.
But maybe he didn’t truly think his employees could rewrite Kapitoil. Schrub had continued to offer me more and more money to have access to the code. They had probably attempted to create their own version and failed, and they knew that their only opportunity was to buy the program from me.
Then I thought of Rebecca’s advice from our poker game and had an idea. And it was as if I were observing the entire galaxy of stars while I was simultaneously struck by lightning.
I retrieved my voice recorder and accessed the saved recordings folder and selected a short file and pressed play.
Mr. Schrub’s voice came on: “Well, in better news, I have a proposal for you. My business people emailed it over this morning…I don’t fully understand it, but apparently they want you to de-encrypt Kapitoil and allow our programmers access to the code, so they can make modifications to the algorithms, too. You’ll still be the point man on all this, and you’ll get a corresponding bump in salary…As far as I can tell, it’s a win-win for everyone.”
I pressed the stop button. The skin around Mr. Schrub’s eyes trisected.
I said, “That is proof you tried to mislead me about the original contract.” Then I bluffed. “I can sue you for that. My lawyer has a copy of this recording, and because I did not in fact create Kapitoil on company time but on my own time, and it is copyrighted in my name, she says that the rights are mine. You will have a few more months to use the program until the paper is published and before the algorithmic signal loses its power.” I added something that I didn’t believe, but maybe Mr. Schrub would: “And if you take us to court, the concept of the program will be revealed to the public immediately and someone else will gain enough information to create a similar program and Kapitoil will be valueless for the futures market, and you will not come away with a cent.”
Then I was mute, and for once I could tell he was the nervous negotiator. He rotated his head and observed the snowy trees that looked like cauliflowers. “I’d like you to turn off the recorder for a moment,” he said.
I powered it off and showed him.
He watched the Asian tourists, who were stopping to take photographs and still blocking our progress. He quietly said, “Do you know what a cipher is?”
I said, “It is a jargon term for an algorithm that encrypts or decrypts.”
“No,” he said, even though my statement was true. “A cipher is a zero. A nothing. It doesn’t exist.” Finally he turned his head to me, and his face was slightly red from the wind, although his voice still remained quiet. “You, Karim—you are a cipher. You are a nothing. A nobody. You don’t exist. You don’t make a difference.”
And for a few seconds, his words truly made me feel like I didn’t exist, which is possibly the worst feeling to have about yourself.
“People from your area of the world can encounter visa problems very easily,” he said. “Sometimes they can’t reenter the U.S. after they leave. Forever.”
His face returned to normal color and he looked relaxed again, as if he had hit a strong racquetball shot and knew I had little chance of returning it. My legs lost strength, and it felt like knives were stabbing my back. I also knew he had the power to do this to me. But Mr. Schrub’s warning didn’t target precisely what he thought he was targeting: that I could never work at a company in the U.S. again. That wasn’t what I was most invested in anymore.
He was forcing me to make a zero-sum decision, as the lion’s share of business transactions are.
A pigeon rapidly descended by my side to the ground. It stabbed the piece of bread with its beak and in a second it was deleted, and just as quickly the pigeon vibrated its wings and left behind the ants.
I rotated my eyes toward Mr. Schrub’s hands on top of the blanket. Although he had no cuts or scars on them, his skin had spots and looked as fragile and wrinkled as a used banknote. It seemed like the only thing he could do with them was type on a computer or use a pen. Most of his nails were trimmed, but the one on the second finger of his right hand was slightly longer than the others and slightly yellow and acutely angled.
I wasn’t afraid anymore. Instead, I was very sad, as if I were watching somebody, or something, die in front of me. And although he had insulted and threatened me, I felt almost sorry for him. He was more like his sons than he wanted to believe. They were driven only by having a good time. He was driven only by winning. And he could not see that one party’s victory always causes another party’s defeat.
“Good-bye, Mr. Schrub,” I said.
I pushed the blanket off me and jumped out of the carriage and merged with the Asian tourists just before the carriage restarted.
I walked with them for several feet as the carriage resumed down the path and Mr. Schrub turned back to watch me, and then I ran ahead of the tourists and deeper into the park.
My body was strong. I continued running northwest, even though it was difficult on the snow in my shoes, but I could not stop. I felt as if I could run infinitely. When I reached the Ramble after several minutes, I was the solitary person around, and I finally decelerated, and it was peaceful hearing exclusively the sounds of ice and snow crunching under my feet like almonds in teeth and of squirrels running and a few birds chirping.
I found a stone bridge with a small arch
entryway just a few feet wide at its base. Inside the arch, I stood and put my hands on the walls and closed my eyes for a long time. I listened to the wind and inhaled the air and finally deleted my mind of thoughts in a way I had not been able to achieve in all my time in New York.
When I reopened my eyes, I didn’t know how much time had passed, but the sun was setting. I used the snow to wash myself as efficiently as I could, and the coldness of the snow somehow warmed me, and I performed the Maghrib prayer under the arch. The air smelled clean, as if the world had refreshed itself.
I finished and called Rebecca at the office. “I have to leave on my flight tomorrow morning,” I said.
I could hear Dan talking to Jefferson in the background. “You took the fellowship?” she asked.
“I will give you details later,” I said, and I asked her to meet me at my apartment after work. Then I called Barron and arranged for him to drive me to the airport the next morning.
Packing was simple, as my additional possessions were exclusively my new shirts and suits and my juicer. I had to retrieve a cardboard box from the doorman to store the extra suits and juicer.
Rebecca arrived and apologized for being late. I asked her to sit on the couch. It took me a long time to initiate my sentence, and she said, “The suspense is killing me.”
Then I told her everything about Kapitoil and the epidemiology project I was still going to move forward with, and how I had rejected Mr. Schrub’s offer, and that I was fired.