Hot Shot

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  "What is that, Miss Faulconer?" he asked coldly.

  She followed his gaze. "Where?"

  "In the corner of the yard."

  "Do you mean the palm?"

  "Palm?" He pressed his thumb against his temple and said sarcastically, "Palms don't grow in the state of Massachusetts, do they, Miss Faulconer?"

  "No. No, they don't."

  "Where do they grow, Miss Faulconer?"

  She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and silently swore at Sam for abandoning her like this. "In California. You're near Menlo Park, south of San Francisco."

  "Silicon Valley?" Each syllable was laced with hostility.

  At that inauspicious moment, Angela came tripping into the kitchen, her heels clattering on the linoleum, her silver bangle bracelets jangling so loudly that he winced. She greeted Blaine and turned to Susannah. "Mrs. Albertson died yesterday, and I need to tint her hair before the viewing. Be a dear, will you? If Mrs. Leonetti croaks this morning, too, call me right away at the funeral home so I don't have to make an extra trip. They use the same color."

  No sooner had she left the kitchen than the back door opened and Yank ambled in. He was holding a voltmeter in one hand and his shoe in the other. "The interface card," he announced to no one in particular. He limped past them and went into the living room.

  Susannah didn't have to meet Blaine's eyes to read his reaction. He was not the sort of man to tolerate personal eccentricities. She quickly rose from her chair. "Let me take you out to the garage so you can meet my partner. Actually, you met him yesterday, but-"

  "I'm not going anywhere with you, Miss Faulconer." Blaine stood, his square, blunt features hard-edged and rigid. "I don't know what you did to me yesterday, and I'm not staying around this loony bin long enough to find out." He walked over to the telephone and snatched the receiver off the hook. His movements were relentlessly efficient as he dialed information, pulled a credit card from his wallet and called the airlines. While he was on hold, Susannah tried to explain to him as professionally as possible what they were doing. He ignored her.

  Yank reappeared while Blaine was making arrangements for a limousine. She grabbed his arm and pushed him back into the living room. "Tell Sam I need him right away."

  Yank looked blank.

  She dug her fingers into his arm, barely restraining herself from rapping him on the head with her knuckles. "Get Sam. Do you understand what I'm saying, Yank? I need Sam. Do you understand me?"

  "I'm not retarded, Susannah," he said quietly. "Of course I understand you." He went back outside.

  Blaine had gone to fetch his suitcase. She followed him to the bedroom. "Please, Mr. Blaine, at least take a few minutes to see our computer. You won't regret it. I promise you."

  "You're the one who's going to regret it, Miss Faulconer. I'm just beginning to realize that I have a legal case for breaking and entering and probably a few dozen other felonies." He snapped the lock on the suitcase she had packed for him the day before. "I don't know what sort of games you're playing, but you picked the wrong man. I've never liked your father and I don't like you."

  "I don't like her old man, either," Sam said from the doorway, "but Suzie's okay."

  Okay? She was only okay?

  Sam sauntered into the room and leaned against the doorjamb. In comparison to Blaine's starchy demeanor, he looked wonderfully free and uninhibited.

  "Look, Blaine," he said, "I know you're pissed, and if I was you, I would be, too. But the fact is, you don't have a damn thing waiting for you back in Boston except a bottle of scotch and a houseful of self-pity, so why don't you hear me out."

  Every muscle in Blaine's body went rigid. He whipped the suitcase from the bed and stalked to the door, only to find that Sam had blocked it.

  "Get out of my way."

  Sam's eyes narrowed. "I've got the adventure of a lifetime out in that garage. A chance to change the world, to put your mark on the future, to paint your name across the sky in indelible ink. What you've done up till now is small-time compared with what I've got waiting for you. We're adventurers, Blaine. Soldiers of fortune and missionaries rolled into one. We're taking a joy ride into the future. A rocket-propelled rainbow right through the stars."

  Blaine was not a man with a poet's soul, and his jaw clenched. "What in the hell are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about the fact that we've got a mission here. Maybe the final mission. A handful of American adventurers have been carving their names in the history books since the middle of the nineteenth century-the railroad barons, the oil men, the industrialists. They were renegade capitalists, and they weren't afraid of hard work, of risk, of daring. Men like Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller. And do you know what, Blaine? We're going to be the last of them. Yank, Suzie, and me. We're going to be the last buccaneers of America's twentieth century."

  Susannah wanted to press her hands to her head to keep it on her neck. She felt as if parts of herself were spinning. Where did Sam get these ideas? Where did he find the words?

  Blaine seemed stunned. "You're nuts."

  Sam bristled with hostility, then jerked back from the door. "Get the fuck out of my house."

  "Sam…" she said warningly.

  His lips thinned with contempt. "We're looking for somebody with guts and vision. I thought you might be that man, but I was obviously wrong."

  She realized that Sam wasn't bluffing. Mitchell Blaine hadn't lived up to his expectations, and-just like that-Sam was finished with him. She watched with consternation as Sam turned on his heel and left the room. Panic bolted through her-a panic that had little to do with their current situation. What a dangerously impatient man she had chosen to fall in love with-quick to judge, quick to dismiss. The kitchen door banged.

  Blaine pushed past her and headed for the living room. "I'll wait for my limo outside," he said brusquely.

  At that moment Yank stepped forward. Susannah hadn't seen him standing across the room near Elvis's portrait. Had he been listening to them all along, or was he merely caught up in the midst of some complex internal calculation? As she tried to think of what to say to Blaine, Yank walked over to him and took his suitcase. "I'll carry it for you," he muttered.

  "You don't have to."

  Yank paid no attention. He opened the front door. She followed them both outside, still frantically searching for some last-minute argument that would save the situation. Yank bumped into one of Angela's green ceramic frogs as he went down the front step. She saw the flash of a brown sock and then a blue one. He turned right and cut across the grass. Blaine made an inarticulate exclamation as Yank and his suitcase headed up the drive toward the garage.

  "Hey!"

  Yank didn't seem to hear. The corner of the suitcase hit the Duster.

  Blaine turned to look at her, his expression incredulous. "Are all of you crazy?"

  Susannah thought for a moment and then reluctantly nodded.

  "Christ," he muttered. "Hey, you! Bring that back."

  Yank continued toward the garage, his forward motion as immutable as the laws of physics. He and the suitcase disappeared inside.

  Sam was standing by the workbench staring at the crude prototype when she and Blaine entered. Yank set down the suitcase, picked up a tattered manual and began looking through it as if he were all alone.

  Blaine bent to reclaim his suitcase. "I don't know where you people get your gall, but-" His words snapped off as he spotted the dazzling color patterns spreading across the screen. His fingers relaxed on the handle of the suitcase, and he slowly straightened.

  "I thought you told me you were building a single-board computer," he said gruffly.

  Sam didn't respond for a moment. He seemed to be making up his mind whether or not he would acknowledge the comment. Finally he replied, "We are."

  Blaine gazed at the screen intently. "You can't get color like that on a single-board computer."

  "We're running it off the CPU," Sam explained.

  His suitcase forgotten
, Blaine walked toward the workbench, every part of him focused on the machine in front of him. "I don't believe you. Open it up."

  Sam gave Blaine a long, searching gaze, and then reached for a screwdriver. As he removed the case, Blaine began bombarding him with questions. Sam answered him tersely at first, and then became more animated as he warmed to the subject. The conversation quickly grew so technical that Susannah lost the thread, and before long even Sam began to have trouble providing the specific answers Blaine wanted. Yank stepped in, giving quiet, measured responses.

  Susannah heard a horn honking, but none of the rest of them noticed. She hesitated for only a moment before she slipped outside and dismissed the limousine.

  For the rest of the day, she sat at the assembly table stuffing the boards for the new orders they had picked up in Atlantic City and listening to the men talk. At one point she fetched drinks for them, and later she made sandwiches. By early afternoon, Blaine had a logic probe in his hand. As she set aside the board she had just completed, she looked over at the activity at the workbench and shook her head in bewilderment. Starchy, conservative Mitchell Blaine was a hardware freak just like her partners.

  By seven o'clock Sam and Blaine were awash in male camaraderie. "Do you like pizza, Mitch?" Sam asked. "Or do we have to take you someplace with tablecloths?"

  Blaine smiled good-naturedly. "I like pizza just fine."

  Sam pointed his Coke can at Blaine, challenging him with it as if he held a six-gun. "How about rock and roll?"

  "To tell you the truth, I'm more a country western man."

  "You're kidding."

  "A little tolerance for us old folks, Sam. We all have our foibles."

  "Yeah, but country western is really pushing it."

  Ten minutes later they were backing out of the driveway with Sam behind the wheel of the Duster and Blaine in the passenger seat. In the back Susannah held a spool of coaxial cable on her lap while Yank straddled an oscilloscope. They drove to Mom & Pop's, a pizza and burger place located in a strip mall between a dry cleaners and a Hallmark shop. The restaurant served beer by the pitcher and had video games, which made it a favorite of Sam's and Yank's. As they went inside, the uneasiness that had been building inside Susannah all afternoon grew stronger. She felt like an outsider, someone whose only function was fetching food and caring for the creature comforts of men.

  They piled into the largest of the circular green vinyl booths, leaving her the place at the end and then steadfastly ignoring her. As Sam spoke, his dark eyes glittered with excitement. Even as her resentment toward him grew, she could feel that familiar core of warmth building up in the deepest parts of her body.

  Just as the waitress arrived with their pizzas, Roberta slipped into the seat next to her. "I don't know why Yank and Sam like this place," she whispered, dabbing at the top of the nearest pizza with a paper napkin. "Everything is so greasy."

  While the men talked electronics, Susannah listened to Roberta detailing her latest sinus infection. Her resentment fed on itself until she couldn't stand it any longer. Sam and Mitchell Blaine were acting as if they had known each other for years instead of two days. She decided she wasn't going to let them shut her out any longer, and when the next lull occurred in the conversation, she addressed Blaine. "Could you tell us what you know about attracting venture capital?"

  Once again she received the impression of a chilling dislike. What had she done to this man? Why was he behaving so warmly toward Sam and treating her with such antipathy?

  To her astonishment, Blaine turned to Sam as if her question had come from him. "Venture capital is tricky, Sam. You don't want to go after it until you absolutely have to. If you're not careful, you'll end up giving away the store."

  "Does that happen very often?" she asked, refusing to be ignored.

  Again he addressed Sam. "When Ken Olson and Harlan Anderson founded Digital Equipment Corporation in 1957, they gave up seventy percent of the business for a $100,000 investment. DEC is projecting a billion dollars in sales next year, so nobody's hurting, but it was still a lousy deal. Do you have a business plan?"

  "I'm working on it," Sam replied.

  Susannah stiffened. She was the one working on the business plan.

  Using the information she had painstakingly gathered, Sam began discussing the specifics. Only when he forgot a statistic or some important fact did he turn to her. But as soon as she had supplied the information he needed, she ceased to exist.

  "Come on, Susannah, let's go to the little girl's room." Roberta caught her arm in a death grip and began pulling her from the booth. Susannah had no choice but to accompany her, but she fumed inwardly as Roberta maintained a steady stream of chatter all the way to the rest room. Yank's girlfriend was a college graduate. Couldn't she, just once, make it to the rest room by herself?

  As they walked through the swinging door, Roberta said, "Mr. Blaine seems really interested in SysVal. He's just what the guys have been looking for."

  "Not just the guys," Susannah replied sharply. "I'm part of SysVal, too."

  "Well, sure you are, Susannah. So am I. But it's different with us. We're in it because of them. I mean, I'm in it because of Yank and you're in it because of Sam. Right?" Roberta slipped into the stall. "Although to tell you the truth, I'm starting to get a little impatient with Yank. I'm not getting any younger, and I think it's about time we got married."

  As Roberta babbled on, Susannah stared at herself in the mirror. Was it true? Was she only part of SysVal because of Sam? Would she still want to pursue this impossible crusade if she weren't so desperately in love with him?

  Her hand spun the faucet and water splashed from the bowl onto the front of her slacks. SysVal was hers, too, dammit! She had bought into Sam's dream. Somehow, along the way, she had begun to believe that it could happen. Sam had called them the last buccaneers of America's twentieth century. She wanted it to be true, and she wasn't going to let them take it away from her.

  Leaving Roberta still chattering in the stall, she went back out to the booth, determined to make some sort of stand, but only Yank was there, scribbling a diagram on the back of a napkin. Blaine and Sam were playing video games. She watched as Sam let out a whoop and Blaine slapped him on the back, the uptight millionaire executive suddenly as carefree as a teenager. She could almost feel the affinity developing between them, that mysterious attraction of opposites as Mr. Establishment met Easy Rider.

  She planned to talk to Sam when they got home-to tell him how she felt about being closed out-but he and Blaine sat up until dawn weaving futuristic fantasies of how everyday life might be reshaped by a small, affordable computer. They were still talking when she finally excused herself to go to bed.

  The next day Blaine rented a car and moved into a hotel, but except for a few hours of sleep at night, he spent all his time with Sam. The kinship they had developed continued to exclude her. Although they argued frequently, and Blaine steadfastly resisted all of Sam's efforts to get him to commit to SysVal, the bond between the men grew daily. Each seemed to provide something the other lacked. Sam was attracted to Blaine's greater knowledge and breadth of experience-Blaine to Sam's vision and poetry.

  When she was finally able to corner Sam alone, she tried to talk to him about how she felt, but he shrugged her off. "He's used to working with men, that's all. He's not ignoring you. You're making a big deal out of nothing."

  But she didn't think so. Blaine's aversion to her seemed to run deeper than a general prejudice against women.

  The next afternoon, while she was doing a shampoo for Angela, she heard Blaine and Sam on the other side of the partition discussing the prototype. "The SysVal I is only a toy for hobbyists, Sam. If you want to build a company, you're going to have to base it on that self-contained computer. Ordinary people aren't going to want to hook up a television set and all sorts of other equipment to make their computer work. Everything has to be in one piece, and it has to be simple. As soon as you get the funding lined u
p, you have to get that machine on the market."

  They talked about possible markets for the computer, and then Sam asked Blaine what he thought they should name it.

  "The most obvious name is the SysVal II," Blaine replied.

  "Yeah, I suppose. I just wish we could come up with something more dramatic."

  Sam had never asked her about a name for the new computer. Her resentment gnawed deeper. She went to the library for a few hours to get away from both of them, but only ended up reading everything she could find about Mitchell Blaine. What she discovered depressed her further. In addition to being an outstanding engineer, he was considered a brilliant marketing strategist, respected by some of the most important business analysts in the country. He was everything they could have hoped for and more. Except there was no "they" as far as Blaine was concerned-only Sam and Yank.

  "You can't go back to Boston," Sam told Blaine the day before he was planning to leave. "Boston's old history, man."

  But the change of environment seemed to have healed some of Blaine's personal wounds, so that he was thinking more clearly. "I don't mean to insult you, Sam, but I can get a top position in just about any corporation in America. No matter how much fun I'm having, I'd be crazy to give that up to work with a couple of kids trying to run a company out of a garage. And I'm definitely not crazy."

  Sam continued to badger Blaine all the way to the airport. Susannah sat in the backseat and listened as Sam asked Blaine the same question he had once asked her. "Are you in or out? I want to know."

  Blaine gave Sam a good-natured slap on the back. "I'm out, Sam. I've told you that from the beginning. Do you have any idea what I was getting paid before I resigned? I was making almost a million dollars a year, plus stock options and more perks than you can imagine. You can't touch a package like that."

  "Money's not everything, for chrissake. It's the challenge. Can't you see that? Besides, the money will come. It's just a matter of time."

  Blaine shrugged him off. "I'm thinking about moving back to the Midwest. Chicago, probably. But I want to keep in touch. You helped me over a pretty bad time, and I won't forget it. I'll give you as much advice as I can on an informal basis."