Learning Curve

by Michael S. Malone

  So did everyone else at Validator Software. Now, as he raced around the world trying to buck up his demoralized troops, he found himself looking out over the sullen and dispirited crowds and asking himself: How many of you already have your updated resumés on the street? Was it the ones with the confrontational questions and the angry faces? Or the ones who turned away when he looked at their part of the room?

  The visits to major customers were, if possible, even worse. Several major clients had cancelled meetings at the last moment, without even the courtesy of offering an explanation. Even the gracious customers had no hesitation about demanding that Dan provide a dedicated Validator employee to replace the attention they had received from the now-absent salesperson. One Texas manufacturer, who had first bought Validator 1.0 from the founder himself, hadn’t even shaken Dan’s hand before dropping his pronouncement. “I don’t know what the fuck you and Cosmo are up to,” he’d said, “but I’ve already informed my IT people that they better have a back up program ready to go in case you folks commit business suicide. Nothing personal, you understand,” he’d added grudgingly, “but I’ve got a lot of customers, shareholders, and employees depending on me, and I ain’t prepared to take your kind of risk.”

  That man was no fool, Dan reflected. Neither were his employees. They read the news; they knew the long odds against the success of this new strategy. All of them were experiencing first-hand the company’s struggle to create a web-based sales program robust enough to handle the complex demands of a vast customer base—and to qualify, train, and get up to speed a small-army of contract sales people. They’d heard the complaints. They woke up every morning asking themselves if they’d been foolish enough to tie themselves to a doomed company, whether their stock options were worth the paper they were printed on, and—if worse came to worst—if they could find another job before the economy slumped again.

  Dan asked himself the same question a dozen times each day—mostly on the long plane flights, when he had nothing to occupy himself but his own thoughts. The gnawing fear, the perpetual jetlag, and the stress of dealing daily with angry and unhappy people, was beginning to take its toll on him. Thanks to a diet of half-eaten meals, antacids, and painkillers, he had lost fifteen pounds. He couldn’t remember his last uninterrupted night’s sleep.

  And home was no better than the road. He dreaded going back to the Valley. At the office, there was the silence among the employees whenever he passed, the new secrecy among his senior staff, the stares in the restaurants. At home, Aidan was sullen, resentful, and quick to shout. She had taken to wearing black and had gotten a tongue piercing and stud without her parent’s permission—a subject of endless argument with her mother. Meanwhile—and not without reason—Annabelle had turned her suspicions about their daughter’s secrets into an obsession that seemed to fill her every waking moment, making normal discourse almost impossible. Dan was almost relieved when he occasionally woke in the middle of the night: only then could he be alone, away from the looks and the whispers and the imminent prospect of more bad news.

  It was during just such a late night reverie, as he sat in the moonlight on the living room sofa and stared out the big window at the lights of the Valley below, that Annabelle found him. Wrapped in a down comforter, she curled into a nearby chair and wove her gray-streaked hair into a loose ponytail.

  “This isn’t worth it, you know,” she said.

  He didn’t reply.

  “This was Cosmo’s idea,” she went on. “Although he doesn’t seem to be taking any blame for it. You’re getting it all. And it’s going to kill you if it lasts much longer.”

  “I’m tougher than you think,” Dan said shortly.

  “Maybe, but not as tough as you think. Have you taken a good look at yourself in the mirror lately? You’ve aged five years in the last five weeks. How long do you think you can keep this up?”

  “As long as I need to,” he snapped. “That’s my job as CEO. That’s why they pay me so much money.”

  “We’ve got enough money to last us the rest of our lives. And what’s money anyway if you have a heart attack or stroke and end up incapacitated… or dead?”

  Dan snorted. “Now you’re being dramatic.”

  “Am I?” she asked. “You and I know four men your age who’ve died from stress-related illness in the last two years.”

  Dan looked out the window at the palette of blues that the moonlight had created out of their garden. “Look, you know it’s a lot more complicated than that, and I’m not going to indulge your fears by disputing you case by case.”

  “Fine,” said Annabelle. “You just keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better. But tell me something: when exactly does all of this end? Because if you’ve been through hell in the last three months, so have Aiden and I. If anything, the situation is worse now than when you started. I haven’t read anything, or heard anything from you, to be reassured that things are going to get any better for months—or even years. Are you really prepared to put our lives on hold for that long while you try to fix this mess?” she demanded. “Especially since there’s no guarantee that you ever will?”

  “I will.”

  “Or die trying?” she asked. “What happens when it’s five years from now, Validator Software is in worse shape than ever, you’ve wrecked your health, and you’ve completely missed your daughter’s last years at home with us?”

  Dan was silent for a long time. When he spoke again his voice was slower and more measured. “I remember when you used to believe in me, Annabelle. I remember when you used to tell me I could accomplish anything.”

  She sighed. “Honey, I still believe in you, but after twenty-two years of marriage I also know how stubborn you are. You never give up. And you have an obsessive sense of responsibility…”

  “And that’s a bad thing?” Dan snapped.

  Annabelle held her hand up. It was pale blue in the moonlight. “Let me finish. Those are things I love about you. They make you a remarkable man. But you need to stop and get some perspective on all this before you plunge back into it again. You need to remember that you have other responsibilities just as important as Validator Software—responsibilities to your family. To yourself.”

  Dan gritted his teeth. “Do you really think for a single second that I’ve forgotten my family?”

  “No.” Annabelle put her face down into the comforter and seemed to be formulating her phrasing. “But I’m afraid you assume you can handle both. This isn’t a normal situation, Dan. And frankly, I’m not sure you can handle either Validator or your family.”

  He reared up, dropping his blanket on the floor. “Great,” he said sarcastically. “Thanks for the show of faith.”

  “Honey,” she protested, “please don’t take it that way. You have a remarkably analytical mind. And you have the confidence to believe you can solve any problem, no matter how big it is. But now you’ve got two problems, and I’m not sure that any amount of analysis can solve either of them.”

  He slumped back down in the sofa. “Okay,” he acknowledged. “I understand you might think that my company is an intractable problem. I think you’re wrong, but I can understand it. But I don’t understand what you mean by a second problem.”

  “Good God, Dan!” she exclaimed. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last few months!” She stopped, and spoke slowly as if he were someone who didn’t understand English. “Aidan. Is. Spinning. Out. of Control,” she said. “She’s heading for trouble,” she went on more normally, “and I don’t know how to stop her.”

  “Oh please,” he said wearily. “So she changes her look and gets a stupid piercing. Every teenaged kid in the world does that. I did. And I know you did a whole lot worse…”

  “That’s right. I did. Maybe that’s why I can see where this is headed better than you.”

  “Or maybe
you’re just seeing more than what’s really there.”

  “Is that what you actually think?” asked Annabelle, her voice raising.“You think I’m just some hysterical woman living out my own fears through my daughter?”

  “No,” he said hastily. “No. All I’m saying is that I make it a point when I’m home to spend as much time with Aidan as I can. I’m there with her at breakfast and most of the time at dinner. Yeah, she looks pretty silly. And she’s developed a pretty shitty attitude. And she treats you like dirt. But I don’t see anything you wouldn’t find in half the homes in this Valley…”

  “And half the homes in this town have kids on drugs or getting pregnant or committing crimes.”

  “Oh come on,” he protested. “Even you don’t really believe that. I don’t see any symptoms of that in Aidan.”

  “Fine. So I’m over-reacting.”

  “Yes, maybe you are. I think you’re just frightened by this crazy turn of events with me, and these unexpected changes in our little girl.”

  “And I think you’re working very hard to ignore what’s happening in front of your face!” She stared at him, then buried her face in the comforter. When she lifted it again, tears, metallic in the moonlight, were running down her face. “The truth is,” she said in an agonized whisper, “that I’m afraid of losing both of you.”

  “You won’t,” Dan assured her.

  Surely it isn’t as bad as all that, he thought, sighing to himself as he got up from the sofa. He was so tired—and not a little resentful that his own wife had chosen not to support him in the single greatest challenge of his professional career. He knew he should walk over and hold her, reassure her. But he merely stroked her hair once as he passed by on his way to bed. Annabelle started to look up at Dan as he passed, but then turned away.

  Back in Heidelberg, as he sat on the edge of a table in front of the nine employees who remained of what had been the Validator German sales office, Dan grimaced, remembering how he’d left that conversation. Well, as bad as this is, he told himself as he looked out on the sullen, resentful faces, it’s better than being back in the Valley. Really, he thought wryly, there’s no place like home.

  v. 4.2

  Dan was nearly through his presentation—on the PowerPoint slide that he privately derided as the “kittens and unicorns” slide because it extrapolated sales and earnings out to an impossibly bright and sunny future—when he noticed that several people in the audience were staring at their iPhones and Blackberries and nudging the people beside them. Lisa, who was sitting in the back of the room, was also typing anxiously on her laptop. Dan felt his heart sink: here we go.

  He opened the floor to questions. The first one, from a young man with flipped up Tintin hair, a manicured beard, and a disgusted smirk on his face, was the one Dan had been dreading for a long time: “Herr Crowen, it has just been announced that eTernity’s stock has been listed on the NASDAQ exchange. Do you have any comment on that news?”

  “It was expected,” said Dan, trying to look calm and presidential. “Everyone in the world—including you, I’m sure—knew this day was coming. So, in that respect, it’s good news. The speculation is over. No more fantasy. Now we can all get down to real-life business.”

  But he didn’t believe a word he was saying. Nor, he suspected, did the young man, who had now folded his arms across his chest. And anyone in the room who did believe his words, Dan knew, was allowing wishful thinking to overcome cold logic.

  There were only three more questions, all of them minor, and all searching more for comforting words than for any real facts. In the past, half the room would come up afterwards—employees would try to pass on private communications to the CEO, or suck up to him, or get their faces remembered by him, or just be able to say they’d met him. But this time, the tiny skeleton crew merely got up from their seats and shuffled out of the room. No one even thanked him for the trouble of flying halfway around the world to speak to them.

  Dan was in fact relieved to be abandoned. He quickly yanked the projector cord out of his laptop and headed for the door. Lisa met him there with a stunned look on her face.

  “How bad is it? Dan asked her. “What did they open at?”

  “Pretty bad: $32, and they’re still climbing.”

  Dan stopped in his tracks and looked down the long, empty hallway beyond the door. “Jesus. Anything else?”

  “We opened down $5, but we’re back up to down $3.”

  He chuckled ruefully, “So it’s not an utter catastrophe, just a complete one. Come on, we have a dinner appointment.”

  But they weren’t going to get away so quickly. Four reporters with photographers were waiting for them in the parking lot in front of the building. Dan grimaced at the sight and turned to Lisa. “You don’t want to be in this camera shot,” he said. “I’ll go first and take their questions. You wait forty-five seconds, walk out right past us, and head for the car. I’ll join you as soon as I can.” He grabbed the handle of the door, and glanced back at Lisa. He winked at her. “Wish me luck. I get to be a movie star today.”

  The escape went as planned. Standing tall and looking confident, Dan waded into the small crowd as cameras rolled. “Gentlemen,” he said, “how can I help you?” Four minutes later, as he began to walk away, the reporter from CNN was able to get in one final question: “Any message for Alison Prue and her people at eTernity?”

  “Yes,” said Dan. “I congratulate her on a job well done. And I welcome her to the ranks of CEOs of public companies. She’s done a great job. I have tremendous admiration for her. But she’s about to discover that this is a whole different job than the one she had when she woke up this morning.”

  With that, he turned and strode quickly to the waiting limousine, ignoring the shouted questions.

  v. 4.3

  Dinner was destined to be distracted and moody, but the Dueling House did its best to make it appetizing. The many courses of rich food, the pretty face across from him, the engaging fellow diners, the extra bottles of wine, the old photographs of cruel Prussian faces with their fierce dueling scars—even the signature that a young Bismarck had carved into one of the table tops… it all conspired to build the most fragile of emotional bridges to keep Dan from falling into the deepest and darkest gorge imaginable.

  After dinner they crossed a real bridge, this one over the Rhine, and went up the hill to the great castle. The cold and mist of the night made the landscape more romantic—especially to Dan, who was feeling the alcoholic buzz, the sensuousness of the proximity to tragedy, and the thrill, after so many years, of having a lovely young woman at his side as they strolled into an unknown and exotic locale.

  Illuminated by powerful lights, the Heidelberg Castle loomed above. It was vast and the color of old teeth. And it boasted a mélange of eight hundred years of styles, from the medieval to the classical. It was less beautiful than powerful, a statement of brutal old civic power that no modern institution—be it a government or a great corporation—could match. “I’ll bet those old Palatine princes didn’t have to worry about shareholder meetings or the Securities and Exchange Commission,” he said to Lisa. “They executed reporters and analysts who said bad things about them.”

  She laughed. “Probably. But you’ve got a much better retirement plan.”

  Dan was out of breath by the time they reached the top of the hill. By then, the mist had turned into a fine rain, and Lisa had tucked her arm in his. “Should we head back?” she asked.

  “No. We’ve come this far. Now I’ve got to see this thing up close. We’ll get under cover once we get up there.”

  They were both wet with rain before they found a covered walkway beside a closed restaurant on the back wall of the castle. From this vantage point, the entire interior of the vast castle was arrayed before them. To the left was a tall wall pierced by a score of classical, pedimented windo
ws, all devoid of glass; and the upper two stories had no rooms behind them. To the right, an entire turreted tower, black as charcoal, had apparently been torn in two by an explosion and pitched forward to crash onto a grass-covered hillside. In the midst of this awesome display of Teutonic power, the fallen tower—the Powder Turret, which had been split by an explosion during the Thirty Years War—seemed a symbol of irredeemable weakness and decay.

  Dan stared at the fallen edifice for a long time. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” he said.

  “The rain’s letting up,” Lisa whispered. “Shall we go back?”

  He nodded and looked away.

  By the time they reached the hotel, his spirits had begun to return. Lisa agreed to a nightcap, and they each had a schnapps in the hotel lobby. As they touched their tube glasses, Dan offered a toast: “Now it begins.”

  A couple of drinks later, they walked up the stairs to the landing on their floor. “Where’s it at now?” he asked, and Lisa pulled out her iPhone. “We’re only down two.”

  “No, them.”

  “ETernity closed at $37.50.”

  He took a deep breath and stared out over the stairwell. “That’s a home run by any standard, isn’t it?”

  Lisa didn’t reply.

  “Well,” he said, kissing her on the cheek, “good night. Two more days and we go home.”

  She forced a smile. “And we get to sleep in tomorrow.”

  Dan nodded and turned away, his shoulders slumped under his overcoat.

  In his room, still in his overcoat, he sat slumped on the bed and stared at the floor. How many nights lately have ended just like this? he asked himself. And this is the worst. I don’t know how I’m going to get through tonight. I can’t bear any more of this.

  He ran his hands through his still-wet hair. It seemed to him that the drops falling to the floor were from the rain, but slowly he realized he was crying. Ashamed of himself, he threw his head back, wiped his face with his hands, and sniffed back his running nose. What are you, a child? he asked himself. A bit of bad news and you fall apart?