by Andrew Grant
“The data, obviously.” She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“What is it with you and that damn data? Why don’t we just forget about it, and go in search of tequila instead?”
“No.” She shook her head, definitively. “We’re not going to forget about it. I need you to give it to me. Right now. As your wife, Marc, and after everything we’ve ever been through together, I’m asking you. Please. I need you to do this one, simple thing for me.”
I wanted to help her—really—and not just because of the thunder in her eyes. But before I could figure out how, I was hit by a vision of Roger LeBrock, standing behind her, pulling her strings. And he wasn’t just asking me to pass back some data. He was asking me to pass up a golden opportunity—maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—to create something truly amazing. I could understand why he wouldn’t care about that, but what about Carolyn? What earthly reason was there for my wife to side with him?
Then it struck me. All Carolyn could see when she thought of the data was base metal. The same thing everyone else could see. The vision of the gold it could become was still in only one place. Inside my head. She should have trusted me—I was annoyed that she didn’t—but if I explained to her what I was planning, I knew she’d soon understand.
“If your man Roy was going to paint what happens next in our lives, what would he call it?” Carolyn broke my train of thought. “The Kiss what? How many of them did he do? Forty-seven? Or The Break-up Two?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you to make a choice. Give me the data you stole, and we’ll go forward, together. Refuse, and you’ll lose me as sure as Jeff lost that bimbo on the wall behind you.”
“You’ll walk out over a bunch of someone else’s data? You haven’t even let me tell you what I need it for, yet. If I could just—”
“That’s your decision?” She turned away, then stopped. “I’m really disappointed, Marc. But you’ve made your choice. Now live with it.”
“Wait. Come back. Let’s start this conversation again. Talk things through properly.”
She strode the whole length of the hallway, then paused with one hand on the front door handle, breathing heavily. For a moment she was transformed into the girl I’d fallen in love with at college, all those years ago. Lost. Out of breath. An air of bewilderment adding spice to her beauty as she blundered into my lecture theater. My pulse spiking dangerously before she realized her mistake and retreated from the room.
Back then, it had taken me two days to track her down. And another three to conjure an opportunity to speak to her. But now, before I could say another word she yanked open the door and walked out of our house, not bothering to close it behind her.
“You bastard, Marc.” She fired her parting shot without even turning her head. “You selfish, miserable bastard. You have no idea what damage you’ve done.”
Monday. Late afternoon.
THREE MONTHS AFTER MY FIRST CAR DASHBOARD PRODUCT launched, I brought out an even better, premium version. One that featured real-time updates. It was a big improvement. Customers loved it. I made a lot more money as a result. But as I stood in my kitchen that afternoon, listening to Carolyn’s tires crunching angrily across the gravel on our driveway, I couldn’t help but picture how my life would look now if it was displayed on the upgraded system. The “marriage” needle would be moving before my eyes, winding back from green to amber. But no farther. Not all the way to red. Maybe I’d been wrong about our issues. Maybe they weren’t as far behind us as I’d thought, but our marriage was fundamentally strong. It would survive. Carolyn would be back, once her rage had burned itself out. I mean, she’d literally left the door open. How much more symbolic could she have been?
I had no idea how long Carolyn would be gone—she’d never done anything as extreme as this before—but it made sense to take advantage of the time she’d given me. Especially now that there’d be no tequila-fueled distractions in my path. So, I went to my study, pulled out the memory sticks, and fired up my computer. I was excited. I didn’t know if I could really turn my vision into reality, but if I succeeded, it would be nothing short of the Burj Khalifa of analytical tools. It would etch my name into the competitive intelligence landscape forever. But to change the game that dramatically—whether you’re talking about architecture or software design—you need to build on solid foundations. I knew that how I approached these first steps was absolutely critical. And that by leaving me in peace to concentrate, whether she’d meant to or not, Carolyn had done me a huge favor.
Like most big ideas, mine was actually incredibly simple. The seed had been planted in my mind at AmeriTel’s headquarters over the weekend, when I was putting the finishing touches to a new report I’d created. The report contained a ton of dynamite information, but my heart sank when I pictured myself presenting it to AmeriTel’s board. It would be the same old story—their two-minute pretense of paying attention, followed by increasingly feeble attempts at disguising their boredom while one vital detail after another sailed over their empty heads. The anticipation was weighing me down until it gave way to a momentary fantasy—the thought of walking into the boardroom with a cappuccino in my hand instead of a sheaf of handouts saying, Nothing to worry about this week, guys, and then just leaving. Because it struck me: Ultimately, most people don’t give a damn about details. Busy people, anyway. They just want confirmation that things are OK, or a warning if they’re not. I’d known that instinctively when I created the Car Dashboard system, but now I thought, why not take it a step further? Why not take it all the way to its logical conclusion? What if I put an attention-grabbing object in the office of every director and every manager in the country? It could be anything. A glass sphere. A sculpture. A football-team mascot. The frame around the obligatory family photograph. And with no human interaction at all, the whole thing would change color, foreseeing the future like a twenty-first century oracle.
I pictured a CEO’s office: A meeting in progress. Four or five of the company’s top people sitting around a table, arguing. A crystal globe in the center, glowing softly. The whole thing a warm, reassuring green. Then it changes to red. The debate stops, mid-sentence. They know they have a problem. But where do they go to uncover the source? What can give them the exact information they need to fix things before it’s too late?
One thing will be able to. And one thing only. My new software.
Like most ideas that don’t seem complicated on the surface, mine was going to be fiendishly complex when I stripped it down to the nuts and bolts. But that knowledge only encouraged me. I actually have a version of JFK’s words from 1962 in a frame on my wall: We choose to do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. So, I did what I always do when I’m starting something new. I glanced up at that quotation for inspiration. Then I rolled up my sleeves and started pounding on the keyboard.
IT TOOK ME JUST over four hours to come up with a first pass for the basic algorithms I figured I was going to need. Some parts were taken from products I’d created before. Some parts were new. They were cobbled together into a very bare skeleton, and it was going to take weeks more work to even get close to fleshing the whole thing out. But the first step had been taken. Now it was time to run the initial batch of tests, which would tell me what to do next. This is where the data’s needed, so I plugged in one of the memory sticks. I drained it dry, and was about to add the files from the second when I paused. I’d already given the system hundreds of millions of bytes to chew on. That was enough at this early stage. More would just slow things down. It was time to cross my fingers and roll the dice.
When you click the mouse and set a prototype running, you don’t just trigger a program in a computer. You trigger a series of emotions in yourself. And they always go the same way. First, elation, that you’ve taken a tangible step toward your goal. Then anticipation, because you’ll soon see how big that step is. And finally impatience, because once the machin
e starts to run, there’s nothing for you to do till it spits out its results. Depending on the complexity of the job, that can take anything from a few merciful minutes to several torturous hours.
This job was a large one. It was going to take a while.
To distract myself, I generally use the time to think of a working name for the project. I got up from my desk and a stream of random titles floated through my head as I made my way through the house in search of coffee. Avenger came to mind, as I mulled over the events of the day. Or Backstabber, I thought, picturing Roger LeBrock’s lying face. Maybe The Towering Inferno, looking ahead to AmeriTel’s inevitable fate. But then, when I reached the kitchen and saw a dirty mug Carolyn had left on the countertop, I had a flash of inspiration. Traitor. She’d always wanted me to name a project after her. What better time to make her wish come true?
I picked up Carolyn’s mug, uncertain whether to put it in the dishwasher or throw it in the trash, then I saw what was inside it. The dregs of black coffee. Normally Carolyn took her coffee white. She only skipped the milk when she was particularly stressed. Or if we’d run out. I looked in the fridge, and found two cartons. One was half full, the other unopened. Both were fresh. That meant she must have been really suffering as she waited for me to get home.
How many times had I come in and found her sitting on the stairs, overcome with anguish? It was always something trivial—a ding in her car, a disaster in the kitchen, buyer’s remorse over another extravagant purchase—but the words would come tumbling out so fast it often took a while to understand what she’d actually done. I never cared, though. Seeing her smile chase away the tears as she unburdened herself made anything forgivable. Until that day, when the mold had been broken.
I replayed Carolyn’s last words in my mind, wishing I’d been smart enough to say something before she’d walked out, and the idea of talking to her prompted another thought: After she left I’d gone straight to the study to start work. I didn’t take the time to switch my phone off silent. What if she’d been trying to call? Wanting to patch things up, but put off by my failure to answer?
I whipped my phone out of my pocket, terrified of finding a screen full of missed calls. And when I saw there’d only been one, I somehow felt even worse. I hesitated for a moment, then—like a wounded man desperate for the coup de grâce, even if it had to be self-inflicted—I hit the Voicemail key.
The message began with several seconds of silence. Had she called my number by mistake? I pictured her phone lying unattended in her purse, and her going about her business with no desire to speak to me and no knowledge that the line was even open. But then, as my thumb was reaching for the End button, I heard Carolyn’s voice. It was shaky, like she was struggling to keep her tone neutral, and her words were brief. She wanted to meet. To talk. To see if we could put things right. She suggested a time and a place, and I almost dropped the phone in my haste to check my watch, suddenly convinced I was already too late.
The restaurant she’d named was a half hour away. She was going to be there in twenty minutes. I headed straight for the door. And hoped there wouldn’t be too many traffic cops in the area that night.
Monday. Evening.
CAROLYN HAD PICKED A RESTAURANT WE’D BOTH BEEN TO BEFORE, but never together. It was French. Or had aspirations of being French, anyway. But as far as I could remember, the theme was set more by the decor—huge images of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe clumsily stenciled in wild colors across every inch of wall space—than by the menu. Or the standard of cooking.
If the place wasn’t too firmly wedded to its chosen geographic region, that suggested another possibility to me. It made me hopeful margaritas would be available. I wondered if that had factored into Carolyn’s thinking. And whether bringing the car was a mistake.
Maybe I should have risked the extra few minutes it would have taken to call a cab?
THE FIRST VEHICLE I SAW when I pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot was Carolyn’s silver BMW. There’s no way she’d have driven if she’d foreseen a heavy night’s drinking for the two of us. My sinking heart told me I’d gotten a little ahead of myself with the scope of my reconciliation plans. A nice meal together was a more realistic target. A glass of good wine. A shared drive home—we could leave the Beemer and collect it tomorrow—with maybe a stop at a liquor store en route. One that sold the right tequila. The kind they have at Zapatista’s.
I saw Carolyn the moment my eyes adjusted to the candle-fueled pseudo-Parisian gloom inside the cavernous restaurant. She was sitting in a booth diagonally opposite the entrance, about three-quarters of the way back. She never liked to sit with her back to the door, so she spotted me right away, too. She waved, and I set off to join her without waiting for a hostess to escort me.
My smile grew broader as the distance between us shrank, but when I came close enough to see Carolyn’s eyes it was clear that any warmth I felt would be more than canceled out by the frostiness of her stare. I slid into place opposite her. And despite everything I’d wanted to say since our last unpleasant exchange—and all the zingers I’d imagined myself unleashing in the car, driving over—I couldn’t summon a single intelligible word.
“Hi” was the best I eventually managed.
“You’re late.” Carolyn took a sip from a barely touched glass of red wine. “I was about to leave.”
“I’m sorry. I’m glad you waited.”
“Are you?”
“Of course I am. I didn’t keep you waiting on purpose. I jumped in the car the second I got your message.”
“You did? Why? Where had you been?”
She stormed out, then starts grilling me about where I’ve been?
“Nowhere.” I resisted the temptation to throw the question back at her. “I was at home. Working. You know how I get.”
Carolyn stared at me for a few seconds, then her expression softened.
“Sorry. Let’s start this over. First of all, thanks for coming.”
“No problem. Thanks for asking me.”
“And second, I think there are some things we need to talk about. No surprise there, right?”
“Not really. What’s on your mind?”
“You are, Marc. You and me. And whether that still adds up to us.”
“Of course it does. Why would you doubt that?”
Carolyn looked away. A waitress began to approach, but she scurried away when she caught my wife’s expression.
“I want us to make it, Marc,” Carolyn answered, facing me again. “I really do. More than anything. But that’s not going to happen on its own. It’s going to need a little help. There are going to have to be some changes.”
“OK.” I nodded. I was willing to negotiate, if that’s what it would take to bring her home. “What kind of changes?”
“Take working at AmeriTel as an example. When we were there together. Or supposed to be.”
“This again? I’ve already agreed, Carolyn. Your work is fantastic. I appreciate what you do. I see how everyone values you. I—”
“No. I’m not talking about work now. I’m talking about you and me. How we were.”
“How we were what?”
“Right. What were we? We’re supposed to be a couple, but we sure didn’t act like one. We weren’t like Alison in Sales, and Ian in Engineering. Or Imogen and Glynn. Or—Anyway, the point is, what did we ever do together? We didn’t drive to the office together. We didn’t even have lunch together.”
“Yes we did.”
“How many times? Once? On your first day? That’s hardly the sign of a deep and meaningful connection between us.”
“It was more flexible, to drive separately. It’s not like we couldn’t afford the gas. And you like to eat at your desk.”
“Only because I have no one else to eat with! No one who’s not trying to stab me in the back, or get in my pants, anyway. Of course I wanted to eat with my husband. And I didn’t want things to be flexible.” She spat the word back at me. “I wanted
them to be better. I wanted us to be closer. I wanted us to carve out a few minutes a day to talk about what’s important to me, since I don’t get to do anything I care about anymore.”
The waitress attempted another approach, saving me from having to respond, but Carolyn waved her away.
“We have the potential, Marc. We complement each other. Where you’re strong, I’m weak. Where you’re weak, I’m strong. But for us to work, we have to be close. We have to mesh with each other. Do you understand?”
I nodded, stunned by the ferocity in her voice.
“We have to be like this.” She held out her hands and laced her fingers together. “See? That’s strong. But if we pull away, this is what happens.” She pulled her hands apart and held them up, palms vertical, fingers stiff and separate. “We’re left as two isolated, spikey individuals. And I don’t want that.”
“I don’t want it, either.” I wished the waitress would come back with the wine list, because I clearly had some catching up to do.
“Good. I’m glad. But it’ll take more than words, Marc. We’ll have to work at it. Hard. Both of us. And I need to know, are you up for that?”
“I am. Absolutely. I love you, Carolyn. You know I do.”
“I love you, too. And to prove I’m in this for the long haul, I’ve brought you something.”
She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a small parcel.
“Go ahead.” She passed it to me. “See if you like it.”
The package contained a key ring—size Swiss Army knife. Carolyn knew I loved them. The intricacy. The craftsmanship. But this one was extra special. Because instead of being finished in the signature red, both sides were shaded with tiny, beautiful Benday dots.
“I don’t think it’s copied from an actual painting or anything. But it looks Lichtensteiny to me. And I wanted to apologize for being rude about your picture. It’s never going to be my cup of tea, but I understand how important it is to you, and I respect that. No more nasty comments. I promise.”