Single Sashimi (14 page)

David got up to make a few announcements, one about a video game competition in a few weeks. Interesting! Venus and Drake looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

He leaned closer. “It’s probably something kid-friendly like
Super Mario
.”

“When’s the last time you played?”

“Last week with my nephew.” A smug smile pulled at his mouth, and his eyes were half-lidded.

“I played a couple weeks ago with my cousin’s kids.” For about ten minutes, until they started whining and crying at how Venus wouldn’t let them win, and so her cousin told her to stop playing against them. She only played kids’ games at family gatherings, where sitting in front of the PlayStation with the children was easier than nipping around, trying to avoid both Grandma and her mother.

They stared each other down, dogs asserting dominance in the pack. Finally she held out her hand. “You’re on.”

He shook it. “I still owe you.”

She’d trounced him at a company party years ago, playing…
Halo? SOCOM?
She couldn’t remember. It was the first time he’d noticed she worked for him despite her presence at weekly department meetings.

David finished his announcements. “One last thing. Meet our new youth staff workers, Venus and Drake. Stand up, guys.”

Aw, man. Venus stood and tried to smile, but the kids only turned, gaped, and then sat back.

Well, what was she expecting? A standing ovation?

“Okay, high schoolers go with Herman, junior highers stay here.”

Kids started tromping out the social hall doors. Venus caught David’s eye, and he motioned for her and Drake to go with them.

They gathered in pews at the front of the main church sanctuary. When she joined Lex at church, it seemed like a closet compared to Venus’s church in San Jose, but now with the pews empty, the walls echoed with the teens shuffling into the room, laughing and joking. Like soldiers in an uneasy truce, Venus and Drake sat together in a pew just behind the last row of kids.

Herman started handing out a sheet of paper. “We’re lucky to have Venus with us today, guys. Okay, separate into small groups and work through the questions. Girls with Venus, guys with me and Drake.”

Wait a minute! All by herself while the other new staff worker got to team up? That wasn’t right. She wasn’t exactly experienced at this.

Drake rubbed salt in the wound by giving her a jaunty wave as he rose to follow the guys to the other side of the sanctuary.

She was going to
pulverize
him at
Super Mario
.

The three girls she’d met earlier led the way as they collected in the seats beside and in front of her. Okay, only six girls. She could handle six girls. The high schoolers were heavy on boys, since Drake and Herman had at least twenty guys on their side of the room.

Luckily, the girls were chatting—howling, really, about how fattening the double mint chocolate chip mocha was at the nearby coffeehouse—so Venus could scan the sheet of paper. Only five questions. Hey, even better! This would be a breeze. This was like Bible study, only with fewer questions to work through. She didn’t like the fact she hadn’t had time to answer the questions herself beforehand, but these seemed rather straightforward. It was for teens, after all. How hard could it be?

She cleared her throat. “Okay, guys.”

They kept talking. “I saw him put
five pumps
of chocolate in it!” “Well, that’s because you got the mucho grande size.” “Did not! It was just a medium.”

“Guys.”

“It’s even worse if you order the triple fudge brownie one. They have chocolate syrup they pour on top of the whipped cream.”

“Guys!”

One girl stopped mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open.

“I’m Venus.”

Silence.

“Tell me your names,” she prompted.

They looked at each other with wide eyes, biting their lips. Okay, maybe Venus’s tone had been a bit harsh. She was too used to dealing with programmers, not hormonal teen girls. She just hoped they wouldn’t start crying. “I already know Mika, Sarah, and Rachel. How about you three?”

“Naomi.” “Karissa.” “Stephanie.”

“Great. Okay. Uh…turn to Matthew chapter eight, verses twenty-three to twenty-seven.”

The girls seemed a bit slow to grab Bibles tucked into the slots on the backs of the pews—due to a few inputs into the not-yet-finished chocolate syrup conversation—but eventually they turned to the right page.

“Who wants to read?”

The few girls still talking went dead silent.

Well, that was a way to shut them up. “Anybody?”

Six pairs of eyes stared blankly at her.

“Nobody wants to read?”
She
certainly didn’t want to read.

Finally, Mika sighed. “Okay, I’ll read.”

The passage was when Jesus calmed the storm on the lake—short and sweet. “Okay, question one: What happened when the disciples were in the boat?”

Nobody said a word.

Venus stared at each of them. This was kind of a no-brainer. No one wanted to speak up? These girls knew each other—they weren’t strangers, they weren’t shy. They had plenty to talk about when it was chocolate syrup.

“Anybody?”
Bueller? Bueller?

No bites.

“Oh, come on.” Venus glared at them. “Tell me you’re not complete idiots.”

Their eyes had popped open wide, and a few of their mouths had followed. Maybe she shouldn’t have called them idiots first day on the job.

“Uh…” Rachel bit her lip. “There was a storm?”

“Right. Next question: Why were the disciples afraid?” That seemed kind of elementary.

“They thought they were going to drown.”

“Good. Question three: What did Jesus do?”
What?
“Oh come on. Who comes up with this stuff?”

The girls giggled, but too late Venus realized she probably shouldn’t have said that. For all she knew, Herman came up with the questions himself. She coughed. “Ahem. Well?”

“Uh…what was the question?” Stephanie twirled her hair, reminding Venus of her cousin Jenn.

“What did Jesus do?”

“He calmed the storm.”

“Question four: What should you do when you are in a storm?”

“Go inside?”

Venus stifled a laugh and almost choked. She hacked and gagged for a minute while the girls gathered around her with anxious expressions.

“Are you okay?”

“Do you want me to get you some water?”

“There’s Kleenex in the kindergarten Sunday school room.”

“I think it’s locked.”

“You don’t have tuberculosis, do you?”

“Of course she doesn’t.”

“I’m learning about it in history class.”

“I’m okay,” Venus croaked.

“Oh, I have a history test on Monday!”

“I have a chem test on Tuesday.”

“My chem test was last week.”

“I’m taking bio this year instead of chem.”

“Who do you have? My brother has Mr. Kawanami.”

“Oh, tell me again who you have for English? Do you have Mr. Jennings?”

These chicks talked faster than an auctioneer. “Guys!”

They stopped as suddenly as if she’d slapped duct tape on all their mouths, all at once. Twelve eyes stared at her for a moment, then one of them—Karissa?—blossomed into a grin.

“So…” She leaned forward, eyes bright like black crystal. The other girls followed suit until Venus had twelve ears straining toward her.

“So…” Karissa repeated, “are you and Drake dating?”

“He’s sooooo cute.”

“He’s kind of old.”

“Yeah, but aside from that, he’s sooooo cute.”

“I want Nick to look at me the way Drake looks at you.”

“Ew, Nick ’s Mika’s brother ! ”

“So? He’s cute!”

“How long have you been going out with Drake?”

“Are you going to marry him?”

“Ooh, your kids will be really good-looking.”

“Guuuuuyyysss!” Venus’s hiss sounded louder than their rapid-fire questions. She cast a nervous glance across the sanctuary at the boys’ group.

Drake stared back at her.

Oh, God, please won’t you have mercy and just strike me down dead?

“Ooh, hey!” Karissa punctuated her squeal by leaning even more forward until she was almost hanging off the back of the pew. “Can we be your bridesmaids?”

W
ho was she kidding? She was terrible with children—with anyone under legal age, in fact.

The church youth group hadn’t been
that
bad. At least David and Kat had threatened—er, said, “See you next week!” when they all left last night. They had also seemed a little worried about letting her go, almost as if they expected her to hightail it out of the country.

Venus pushed back her plate. “That was great, Nancy.” She loved when Jaye and his wife invited her over for dinner. Being second-generation Indo-American, Nancy’s cooking had that sizzle of authenticity, tempered with health-conscious California flavor.

Jaye’s wife dimpled and got up from the dinner table. “Did you want more?”

“No.”

“Still can’t picture you working with teens.” Jaye scooped up the last of his
palak paneer
with a piece of flatbread.

“I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“You’re close.”

“Oh, shut up. They said hello to me at church this morning.” Although she suspected a couple of them had worn Wonderbras today. Was that her impact on those girls—inducing breast envy? “Besides, me working with teens isn’t as mind-boggling as Drake working with teens.”

“Think it’s more believable, actually.”

Venus sat back in her chair. “
Et tu, Brute
?”

“Saw him once with his sister’s kid. Much better with kids than you. Although surprised he’s at a church. Didn’t think he was religious.” Jaye looked away.

Venus tried not to raise her eyebrows. Jaye rarely brought up the R-word. Not that she talked about God much to him. “I asked him last night. He said his sister went to church there and knew they always needed more youth staff.” Who woulda’ thunk Gerry was Christian? Not Venus. But Drake had also mentioned how Gerry had been going since her divorce, and that it had seemed to help her.

Nancy swooped in and removed Jaye’s empty plate. “Go ahead and work, guys. I’m going to clean up. But Jaye”—she motioned with her head toward their son—“will you take him so I can clean up that mess?” Jaye Junior had gotten more food on himself, the floor, and his tray table than inside his tummy.

Jaye swiped at Junior’s mouth, while the baby started squalling and pitching his head back and forth. “Come on, dude…doesn’t like it when we wipe his mouth,” he explained to Venus.

Mental note: wipe her own child’s mouth early and often to develop good sense of hygiene. It could work, right?

“Got the bugs out of the Spiderweb? No pun intended.” Jaye tried to get at a piece of carrot that Junior had shoved up his nose.

“Not yet. I still can’t figure out why the tool won’t work with the MoCap data you got for us. I’ll work on it. It depends on how much time I have in the next month. I’ve only been at Bananaville for a few days.”

“Need more data to test it. Guessing it won’t be a good idea to use the MoCap studio at Oomvid.”

No, they certainly couldn’t use her former employer’s equipment to test software they’d tried to steal from her. “Options?” They’d been lucky to get the original data from some friends who had worked at a studio and done the sessions for them for free, but the friends had since left the studio.

“Rent someplace. Got friends who might know the guys who own that small one in South San Francisco.”

“I’ve been thinking about the business side. Grandma said to be prepared, and she meant more than just the demo. So I’ve done some market research on our game idea.”

“Unique enough for the market?”

“We’re both going to have to see if we can hear anything about what’s in the pipeline. Right now, the all-female cast isn’t a completely unique idea, but has audience appeal. We need a good designer and animator.”

Jaye screwed up his face, but Venus couldn’t tell if it was because he was trying to get pureed squash out of Junior’s hair or because he was thinking of where they could find a good animator.

“Whoever we choose has to be top notch. We don’t want to get into that same fiasco that ProvoTech did a few years ago.” Fiasco was a nice way of putting it. ProvoTech had hired someone who turned out to be a complete amateur, and the time wasted had made ProvoTech the laughingstock of the entire game industry for months.

Jaye groaned. “Remind me of my year in purgatory, why don’t you?”

“I told you not to work for them.”

“Already used up your quota of ‘I told you so’s.”

“So how are we going to find an animator who’s both legit and good?”

Jaye finally cleaned his son’s dinner off his person. “I’ll do some research. Got to be a few who’d make good team members.”

They spent a few minutes chatting about other things until Nancy could take Junior from him. They spent the next few hours on work. Jaye tested the program that Venus had brought with her, making comments on problems.

After they were done, they ended up playing
SOCOM: Disaster
against each other, as usual. Nancy didn’t mind because unlike Jaye, Venus could hold a conversation while playing.

“Ha ha!” Venus took out one of Jaye’s men. “So, how’s Jaye’s mom?”

Standing beside the couch and watching, Nancy gently rocked Junior. “Not so well. She insists she’s okay, but his sister says she’s moving slower and she’s a little unsteady on her feet.”

“She still won’t move out here?”

“Nope. It would make it so much easier. Jaye’s sister went to the doctor last week because she’s always tired. Doctor said it’s stress because she has her kids, and then she has to go over every day to check on Mom. At least here, we and his brother could split the time.”

Venus had a fleeting thought about her own mother, and what she’d have to do when she needed more care. The family would expect her to care for her mom, even if said mother had been a royal pain for most of her life.

She blew up a tower. “Ha!”

“Do you miss it? The gaming competitions?”

Venus positioned herself to take out the fort wall. “No.” She rarely talked about those days. Usually she changed the subject, but maybe because she wasn’t working for a game development company at the moment, she felt more comfortable answering Nancy’s questions.

“But you won so much money, everyone loved you.”

“Everyone hated me. They wanted to beat me.” Venus also suspected they’d hated her because she was a girl, she was overweight,
and
she’d beaten them, but she couldn’t exactly prove it. “They were all relieved when I retired. And then I got a job at TrekPaste and met Jaye.”

“And the rest is history.” She laughed and bounced Jaye Junior. “Jaye says you’ve worked for your boss before.”

“Drake? Yeah, at TrekPaste. We both worked for him.”

“You must enjoy working for him.”

Jaye snorted.

“What?” Nancy sounded confused.

“At TrekPaste, I got into a fight with Drake and quit.”

“A fight?”

“We disagreed about…” What could she say? She couldn’t blurt out the truth that she’d thought he had the morals of a sociopath. “…respect. It was his company, so I quit.”

“That’s a bit extreme.”

“Even for you,” Jaye piped up.

“Not really I have to work for people I respect, but who also respect me. He didn’t respect me, plain and simple.”

“He didn’t respect you? Why’d he hire you?”

He’d hired her because he had admired her programming abilities. She’d been promoted because they recognized her leadership abilities. But he’d stopped regarding her as just a programmer as soon as she shed all that weight, because suddenly she wasn’t just his employee; she’d become someone he could use. Venus laughed off Nancy’s question. “He respected me until he got a taste of my temper.”

She trounced Jaye, as usual.

“Why do I bother?” Jaye flung his controller down.

“You say that every time.”

“You’re even
talking
the whole time we’re playing.”

“It’s that extra X chromosome.” Venus got up, gave Nancy a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Nancy Great dinner.”

“You don’t come over often enough, Venus.”

“I’m usually too busy Like your husband.”

Nancy rolled her eyes. “At least it’s better than when he was working for startups.”

Venus pulled on her trench coat. “Jaye, I’ll try to get the bugs worked out by the end of the month.”

“Kind of fast. Sure you’ll have time?”

“Pretty sure.” She paused at the doorway “I’ll get Bananaville’s technology together in no time.”

Monday was not the day for her coffeemaker to give up the ghost.

The smoke rising from it clued her in. She yanked the plug out and turned on the fan over the stove before the smoke triggered the fire alarm. Great. It was only a few years old.

And now she had to
drive
while uncaffeinated.

She almost got into two accidents on the way to work. Well, three if she counted the incident at the light. She was in the right turn lane, there weren’t any cars coming, and she expected the Honda in front to make the right turn, so she gave a little gas. Then she had to jerk to a halt when she realized the Honda wasn’t moving.

See? She drove terribly without coffee.

She’d just turned on her car alarm when Esme came racing out of the doors into the parking lot. “The Web director just quit!”

Venus stopped, wobbling a little in her four-inch heels. “Now?”

“I just got in, turned on my email, and there it was. She sent it on Sunday.”

Venus had a fire to put out, and she hadn’t even entered the building yet. “Where’s Drake?”

“He’s not coming in today.” Esme skipped next to Venus to keep up with her longer stride. “He had to take his mom to the doctor.”

“Is Gerry out too?”

“No, she’s in and she’s a bit upset.”

That was an understatement. She heard Gerry’s raised voice as soon as she opened the glass door into the lobby area.

The first thing she saw was the backside of a tall, gray-haired man in a fine blue suit. At seven thirty in the morning? Why didn’t anyone do things during normal business hours? He hovered near the receptionist’s desk while Darla smacked her gum and listened to the telephone. She kept her eyes glued to her computer screen, and Venus already knew she was playing a computer game while on the phone. “Sorry, she’s not answering her phone. You’ll just have to wait.”

This was too much like
déjà vu
. Venus approached the man and stuck out her hand. “Venus Chau, CTO. Is there anything I can help you with?” She pasted a smile on her face while dreaming of coffee.
Another few minutes.

He shook it. “Bruce Whittaker. I’m here to see Gerry Yu.” He winced as Gerry’s voice rose a notch. Venus wondered who she was yelling at. Luckily, the bend in the hallway prevented them from hearing her very clearly.

“Please sit down, Mr. Whittaker, and I’ll get Gerry for you.” She turned and headed out of the lobby area and down the hallway, trailed by Esme.

A sharp rap on the door stopped Gerry’s hollering. Venus entered without waiting. “Bruce Whittaker is here to see you.”

Gerry’s hair had turned into a bird’s nest, possibly from pulling at it. Venus didn’t really blame her.

The cowering website programmer standing across from her desk had smudges under her kohled eyes and gray tears running down her cheeks. Venus pulled a tissue from the box on Gerry’s desk and handed it to her. The programmer—Venus couldn’t remember her name—honked her nose.

“Gerry, what’s wrong?”

She waved a hand at the programmer. “She almost crashed the system this morning.”

“But I didn’t,” the girl sobbed.

Venus exhaled slowly. “Gerry, it’s not the programmer’s fault the Web director quit.”

Gerry’s face paled as if she’d dipped her face in rice powder, but she didn’t respond.

“You should maybe freshen your lipstick before you see him,” Venus said.

Gerry looked a little lost, possibly because she might not have remembered who Bruce Whittaker was. “He’s waiting in the lobby?”

“Yes. He looks like he’s been waiting a few minutes already.”

That shoved Gerry into action. She smoothed down her hair, grabbed her purse from under her desk, and headed out to the women’s restroom.

The frightened programmer stood there sniffling and looking from Venus to the empty desk and back again. Venus pointed out the door. “Go on back to work.” The programmer scurried out.