Instead, she pulled up Dale’s Facebook page. She hadn’t heard from him in a week, beyond a curt “Busy. Writing.” two days ago. Alison had long since grown accustomed to the paradox that serious writers were poor correspondents. Dale always claimed that it was because “real” writers fretted endlessly over every word, while “civilians” could dash off a note without thinking twice. Since Dale was the only writer she’d ever known intimately, she had no reason to doubt him.
She stared at his best photo. He had sharp, unshaven cheekbones and almond-shaped blue eyes that peeked out from behind long brown hair. Look at how gorgeous he is, she thought. She remembered the day the photo had been taken. She had rented them a house at Sea Ranch for the week. They’d spent that day walking on the beach, and had eaten chowder and crab for dinner. Afterwards, in bed, she’d listened to Dale read a chapter from his unfinished novel, then the two of them had spent a long night of blissful lovemaking.
She scrolled down to look at the other familiar and comforting photos. Instead, she saw a new image, loaded within the last two days. It showed Dale sitting in their favorite bar, drunk and grinning, with his arms around two slutty-looking girls with too much make-up and too little clothing. Alison stared at the image for a long time. Then, realizing that Jenny was looking over her shoulder, she cleared the screen.
I wonder what time it is the States? She called up the time zone conversion widget on the laptop. It was 11:00 a.m. in San Francisco. She opened Skype and fished the head-set out of her briefcase. He’ll be up by now, she told herself, and if he isn’t, well, he should be up. She glanced over at Jenny, who had returned to her book, and tapped in the phone number.
It rang six times before Dale answered with a curt, “Yeah?”
“Hi, honey, it’s me.”
“I figured.”
“Know where I am?”
“I’m guessing in a plane somewhere.”
“Well, yeah. Over the Pacific—well, the Philippine Sea to be precise—about an hour out of Tokyo Narita.”
Dale didn’t say anything, as if he was waiting for her to say something more. Finally, he asked, “What’s up? Why the call?”
“Oh, I just missed you. I wanted to see what you were up to.”
“Checking up on me?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I’ve just been stuck on this plane or in some hotel conference room somewhere for the last week, and I wanted to imagine being home with you.”
“Well, what do you think I’m doing? I’m writing. That’s what I do, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now.”
“Don’t be that way. I didn’t think that if I called this early I’d interrupt your writing.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “What else is going on?”
“Just speeches and long plane flights. Have you read any of the news coverage?”
“No. Good?”
“Oh yes. Very good. And wow, you must be working hard.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve had a real breakthrough on one of the plot turns.”
“Oh, that’s great. I’m so happy for you.”
His voice seemed to brighten at her reaction. “Yeah, I’ve been working day and night.”
“Well,” said Alison, “not every night.”
“Huh?”
“I saw your new Facebook photo.”
Dale’s voice grew dark and suspicious. “That? Nothing. I went out two nights ago with Davey—you know, the bassist?—and he showed up with a couple girls… you know, dykes. He took the photo as a joke.”
Alison called up the image on her computer screen. “Those are pretty cute lesbians.”
“More and more are like that these days. Is there a problem?”
“No, no problem.”
“Do you think I would have posted that photo if there was something going on?”
“Of course not,” said Alison.
“Good.” Dale’s voice was triumphant. “So, when are you getting home?”
“I’m back in the States in a couple days, but have to spend two more days after that in Seattle and L.A. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, well, there’s a bit of a problem. I’m almost out of money.”
“I left you over a thousand dollars, Dale.”
“Yeah, but you know. I took some folks out to lunch. Dinner. It’s been lonely here without you.”
“That’s very sweet.”
“So, I was wondering if you could tell me where that extra ATM card of yours is, and the code number. I just need to take out maybe two hundred dollars to tide me over until you get home.”
Now it was her turn to be silent. Finally, she said, “No, honey, that ATM card doesn’t work anymore. That’s why I put it away. But look: if you open my middle dresser drawer and look under the box that holds my pearls, you’ll find six hundred dollars. Why don’t you take half to make sure you’re covered?”
“Are you sure it’s there?” Dale sounded excited. She could hear him walking through the house.
“It’s there. I put the money in the drawer just before I left.”
“Alison, baby, I love you. You are a true patron of the arts. And just think about what we’ll be able to do after your big event.”
“Yes. Yes indeed.”
She heard the dresser drawing opening. “Okay baby,” said Dale. “I’ve got to get back to my writing. Have a safe trip.”
“Thank you. Good luck with the writing. I love—” but the call had already ended. Alison carefully removed her headset, wrapped it in its cord, and returned it to her purse. Then she sat back in her seat and folded her arms across her breasts.
After a few minutes, she felt a hand brush her shoulder, and turned to find Jenny looking at her. Alison smiled wistfully and shrugged. “Boyfriends.”
Jenny, who had been married twice, shook her head. “Alison, there are good men and there are bad ones. I saw that photo and I heard some of that call. And I’ve seen the way you’ve come to work some mornings. Are you really sure this guy is worth it?” Jenny glanced back at the men, making sure they were asleep, then continued.“With all that’s coming, are you sure you trust this guy to own a piece of you?”
Alison looked at Jenny for a long time. Finally, in the rote tone she’d polished over the last week, she pronounced, “I’m afraid I’m not in a position to answer that question at this time. I’ll get back to you.”
Jenny chuckled softly and nodded. Then she reached up and turned off her light.
Alison looked out the window. The edge of the dark ocean was now outlined by a delicate pink and orange light, spread across the length of the horizon. As she watched, sleepiness began making her bones feel heavy. Thank God our presentation isn’t until tonight, she thought as the light slowly grew to a band of brilliant gold. Beside her, Jenny had slowly slid over against the arm rest, her open mouth now puffing out a single strand of black hair with each breath.
Abruptly making up her mind, Alison sat up, tapped the space key on her laptop to reawaken it, and called up Dale’s text address and began typing slowly.
Dale, I’ve done a lot of thinking. We’re done. It’s over. I want you moved out by the time I get home on Thursday. Good luck with your writing career—I’ll be cheering from afar. Alison
She paused, her fingers poised over the keys. Ah.
P.S. Take all of the money in the dresser. And take the car and keys. I’ll leave the signed title with the eTernity receptionist for you on Friday. Don’t come up. A.
Alison reread the note three times, fixing it in her memory. Then she hit the SEND key.
Everything changes now. Everything.
v. 4.0
The black Lincoln Town Car pulled up to the entrance of Manzanita Capital. “Shall I wait, Ms. Prue?” the driver asked as Alison gathered up her
coat and briefcase and opened the door.
“Um, no, Shamir,” she told him. “This could take all morning, Maybe all day. Just be where I can call you if I need you.”
“I will. And, Ms. Prue, good luck today.” Shamir read the papers too.
She nodded at him. “It’ll be luck. Because there’s nothing left to do.” As she climbed out, the sprinklers were still going, and the streetlights along Sand Hill Road were still on. In the distance, the rising sun was just beginning to illuminate the tops of the green hills of the Coast Range. Alison took a deep breath. Remember this.
Inside, the lobby of Manzanita Capital was still dark and deserted, but she could see brilliant yellow light and hear men’s voices down the hall in the conference room. She was reminded of her last visit to that room, three months before. Then she’d been the target, the odd “man” out. Now—with luck—she was about to be the Belle of the Ball.
Most of the board of directors and representatives from the major investors were there, gathered in knots, shaking hands and chattering in excited voices. It was the same crowd as last time, but now they showed relaxed, happy, confident faces.
The room had also been transformed: plasma displays and television monitors had been set up on a pair of long tables against the far wall. Some tables held rolling Quotrons, others cable news; one held a live feed from Times Square with its camera aimed at the window of the NASDAQ display. Another table bore two large platters, one filled with sweet rolls, croissants, fresh fruit, and yogurt, the other covered with a sheet, and no doubt carrying sandwiches and other luncheon victuals. Throughout the room there were coffee urns, buckets of soft drinks on ice, and stacks of plates and coffee cups. Next to her, beside the door, was yet another small table, this one stacked with copies of the San Jose Mercury-News, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
“Ah! There she is!” said a deep voice. It was Arthur Bellflower, wearing a vested suit with a red carnation in his lapel. “The Lady of the Hour!” Leaving his group, he raced over to her and kissed her on the cheek. “Are you ready, my dear?” he whispered in her ear. He put his arm around her shoulder and faced the crowd. “Gentlemen. It may be a long day—and with luck, we’ll end it with one hell of a celebration. But now, before we’re distracted by unfolding events, let us take a moment and recognize the extraordinary job done by this young lady and her team. They have shown remarkable skill, poise and—one might add—endurance over the last three months. Today, we are all about to become the… beneficiaries… of their good work. Let’s show our appreciation.”
There was hearty applause. The response was just as one might expect, Alison thought wryly, from wealthy men who were about to become even more wealthy, and to have their own brilliance validated.
“Thank you,” she said to the crowd. “It’s hard to believe this day has finally come. Let’s hope for a strong market to float us up.”
There was a chorus of “Hear Hear!” Arthur gave her shoulder another squeeze. “From your lips to God’s ear,” he said, smiling. The crowd laughed.
When the coffee urns were nearly empty twenty minutes later, one of the investors, Ramesh Vempala of Sequoia, announced, “Market’s opening!” Cups and saucers were dropped on tables as the attendees rushed to the screens. The room went silent.
Alison made her way to one of the Quotrons, where she was flanked by Bellflower and Ed Lessing, both with their arms folded and their jaws set. These were the moments they lived for—the payoff, not just for their own efforts, but for the investors in their funds. Every successful IPO, like eTernity promised to be, made up for a half-dozen bad investments in failed or failing companies and camouflaged any number of smaller mistakes. A great IPO, which eTernity might be, all but guaranteed that the fund would turn a profit… and improved the odds that the next half-billion dollar fund would be fully subscribed.
“Here we go,” said one of the men. Everyone leaned forward. The symbol ETY appeared on the screen and began to trail across. Behind it was the number 31 1/2.
The room erupted into cheers. “Yes!” someone shouted, and more than one fist pumped into the air. Arthur Bellflower reached over and squeezed Alison’s arm. He spoke into her ear over the cheering. “It’s going to be… no, it already is… huge. Historic. You’ve just become a very famous and wealthy woman.”
Alison never heard him. In her ears, the roar of the room had receded. There was only the screen and its unmistakable number. For her, its crawl across the screen had slowed almost to a halt. She found herself remembering being a little girl, driving with her parents on a vacation down the California coast just a year or two before their divorce and her father’s fatal heart attack. They had driven down Highway 1 through Big Sur and along that wild, beautiful coast. They’d stayed the night at Highlands Inn, where her parents had spent their honeymoon years before.
In the morning, her father had promised Alison she was going to see something special, “a tycoon’s home.” She didn’t know what a tycoon was, but she got the idea it was someone very, very rich. Like Scrooge McDuck. As they’d climbed out of the car in the parking lot of the visitor center, Alison’s father had pointed up the hill to a pair of domed towers, beautiful and white in the distance, like the castle of a great king. “It’s called San Simeon,” he’d told her. “It’s Hearst’s Castle.”
Suspended in time, the symbol and number finally completed its trek across the screen and disappeared. An instant later, it appeared again on the other side, moving smartly from right to left. But this time, the number that accompanied it was 32 1/8. Someone in the crowd whistled his approval.
“I’m not sure my old heart can take this,” said Arthur Bellflower. But he leaned closer towards the screen.
ETY had crossed the screen forty more times, its steady climb by eighths punctuated only by an occasional pause—never a loss—when it reached 37 7/8. “I think we should sit down and have a good breakfast,” said Bellflower, turning away. “It’s going to be a long, draining day.” In a daze, Alison followed him. Rosebud, she thought to herself, not knowing that she had just laughed out loud.
v. 4.1
It was already evening in Heidelberg, and the rain and gloom were stripping even the picturesque old college town of its cheer. Dan had promised Annabelle that he’d buy Aidan a nice Christmas gift while he was in Germany—and this being his last day, he had carved out time for an expedition in Heidelberg’s shopping district. He hadn’t known at the time what a constructive choice this would be: it gave him a chance to clear his head after a spectacularly awful day.
The plan had been to fly down from Brussels to Mannheim at dawn, then spend the morning visiting the Validator plant just outside the city. After that, it would be lunch and couple hours of media interviews, then a car would drive Dan and Lisa to Heidelberg. Lisa had spent a year there as an undergraduate, and would visit a favorite old professor while Dan shopped. On her recommendation, they would then check in and grab some dinner at the Dueling House at the Hotel die Hirschgasse, then walk over the Rhine and up the hill to the great castle, where they’d enjoy its evocative lighting.
It had all looked good on the travel schedule, but even before they climbed on the jet in Brussels, Dan already knew that nothing was going to go as planned. Unlike the UK/Scandinavia/Russia trip a month before—or even the Far Eastern trip two weeks later—this trip was proving to be less a rallying of the troops, and more a triage tour. The chaos ignited by the announcement at the annual meeting had grown by the day, as complaints from customers increased in volume and anger. Now even the most loyal and patient twenty-year customers were angry—and were no doubt looking elsewhere.
He had seen the early numbers. Revenues had flattened. Margins had risen slightly, but not enough to justify the loss of an entire dedicated sales force. There were enough accounting tricks—held-over earnings, write-offs, late bookings—to put up a nice cosmetic financi
al front, but Dan had been around long enough to know that nobody would be fooled for long. The market and its analysts, reporters, and bloggers were all scrutinizing Validator Software’s every move, ready to pounce on the first sign of weakness and declare the move a failure. He was secretly aware that the stock price was already softening. It hadn’t fallen yet, but that was only because the booming stock market was still managing to lift all boats, even the leaking ones.
It was only a matter of time. The growth of Validator’s stock, just four months ago the gold standard of the industry, was now falling well behind the competition—even the also-rans like CMR. No doubt the market was also factoring in the eTernity IPO, which could happen at any moment. But that was at the expected price of $26 per share. If it went much higher than that, the IPO could send another shock wave through the industry, and Validator would be in serious trouble.
But even assuming that eTernity’s offering went as predicted, the entire electronics industry would wake up the next morning with the knowledge that there was a major new player on the scene. ETernity would have stolen industry leadership—and already some top talent—from one of the most storied companies in tech, and they would have a huge war chest of cash on hand to consolidate their new position. Now, when the time came for investors to make their next major capital purchase, where would they go? To the giant old company that seemed confused and lost, or to the hot young company that the world had designated as the next big thing? The answer was in the question, and Dan knew it.
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