The Moment of Everything (19 page)

The morning after Avi’s party, I’d come into the Dragonfly early as had been my wont since the Rajhit breakup. It was a place of quiet with a to-do list long enough to save me from my thoughts. After Avi’s surprise announcement, I had even more not to think about, so I’d gotten in extra early. I was looking forward to time alone and quiet. But when I arrived, there sat Dizzy on the sidewalk with his laptop open, wearing a hoodie from some company we’d worked for years ago, two Cuppa Joe cups beside him. Eight o’clock in the morning and he was already wired on caffeine and ambition. I doubted if he’d even gone to bed.

“Oh hey,” he said when I kicked him. “Mocha?”

I took the coffee and opened the door. He followed me and started to change the tiles of the store sign from
N-O-P-E
to
O-P-E-N
, but I waved him off. Dizzy liked moving the tiles of the sign. But I didn’t want customers this early. And a mean little part of me didn’t want to please Dizzy.

“Can you believe it?” he said. “The holy swiggin’ infrastructure from scratch. Do you know how many times that kind of opportunity comes along? Monks get laid more often. Okay. Buddhist monks. Okay. One Buddhist monk living alone under a volcano with no goats gets laid more often. It’s like someone offering you a chain of bookstores to run any way you felt like it.”

“That’s kind of what they did,” I said, motioning for him to hold it down. Even though we were alone in the Dragonfly, I glanced back into the stacks as if the books could absorb his words and tell on me when Jason and Hugo arrived. The Dragonfly was over. And it was my fault.

He turned his laptop around and showed me the screen filled with boxes and shapes that looked like sixties pop art. It was a revised schema for the ArGoNet system, all shiny in primary colors. It really was a software architect’s dream, going back and reinventing what you’d done before. You knew all the past failures. You could avoid them.

The thing is, no one sets out to write code that turns to crap. At first, the visionary creates something that meets a need. The product managers research how it will work in the market and makes a business case for features and writes requirements. Then a software architect designs how it will work, and software engineers write the code. After design meetings and code reviews and large pizza delivery bills, testers test it. The testers then argue that the software did not meet the requirements while the engineers argue back that it works as designed. Bugs are filed. More meetings burn up everyone’s time. The technical writers say they don’t care how it works, they just want someone to make a decision. Everyone walks away thinking they’ve agreed to something different. User interface designers figure out how many clicks it takes to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop. Marketing goes all Hulk Hogan on one another over where the advertising dollars go. And if all goes well, the planets align, and everyone eats their spinach, the disappointment after product launch will be brief.

And then the next time comes. A new version is planned with unleashed optimism.
We’ll fix all the things that didn’t go right the last time out. We won’t make the same mistakes again. We’ll get it right this time.
But compromises come early and fast. There are technical cliffs too steep to scale. “A” can’t be done, so everyone accepts a “B” and then an anemic “C.” By the time the “We launched!” pizza party comes along and the T-shirts with the project name that only fifty people in the world know about are passed around, everyone drinks expensive beer and cheap wine and tries to not look terrified about what users might say. Plans for the next version are already in front of you, seductive as silky promises in the minutes before midnight. This time you will be able to construct your masterpiece. This time will be different.

“It’s a great big steaming stream of awesome, sugarbritches,” Dizzy said. “For you, too. I never would have believed I’d find a project like this with a bookstore company. And you did this. None of it would have happened if you hadn’t impressed Avi at that masturbating cock sack of a book club. Christ! Then the store! Of all the bass-ackward, thundershit ways to back into a searing mountain of gold. It’s not just me they want, it’s you, too. And not like last time. They really think you can do this.”

“There was doubt last time?”

“Well, I mean, it was a big thing for you, right? You were in a library before and then, well…those other companies and then ArGoNet. That was a huge jump.”

He tossed his empty cup into the wastebasket and smothered me in a bear hug, his excitement making him lose all concern for my ability to breathe.

“What if I don’t want it?” I asked, my words muffled against his hoodie. “What if I want to…” I almost said
stay with the Dragonfly.
But the Dragonfly would be no more. “What if I want something else?”

I didn’t really know I meant it until I said it. It felt good to say it. And I was scared and all the fears of not taking the best offer I was ever going to get came flooding back. I looked at my friend, hoping he would understand. I was tired of Dizzy being Code Warrior. I wanted him to just be my friend, that grown-up Bart Simpson with a super-size brain and a big squishy heart. But my words skipped over him like a flat stone on a flat lake.

“You’ll take the job,” he said. “It’s the smart thing. And you’re smart, so…”

“It’s not smart,” I said. “It’s convenient.”

“Jesus!” Dizzy slapped the top down on his laptop and spun around at me. “What do you want? You mope around for months about getting kicked out of ArGoNet and now it’s back and it’s even better. You’ll be making more money than you have any right to. You’re going to be the face of a new company. And you’re telling me you don’t want that. You don’t want everything handed to you on a silver fucking platter like in a fairy tale. You’re telling me you want to stay here in this shitty little bookstore instead of building a life for yourself. And what about that guy? Yeah, you think I don’t know you’re not seeing him anymore? The one you were so crazy about? What’d you do, Maggie? Just stop seeing him because he was too great? Just tell me, because we’re all dying to know, what the fuck is going to make you happy?”

I hadn’t even had a chance to turn the lights on yet, and already someone was asking me for answers I didn’t have. Dizzy and I stood there looking at each other in the gray quiet of the Dragonfly. People passed by outside. A dog barked at our door, remembering we kept treats behind the counter. The clock on the wall behind me clicked another second away. And then his phone rang.

Dizzy mashed his earpiece into his ear and answered his phone, just as the door opened and Jason entered, pushing his bike through the door. He looked annoyed to find me here, but I thought maybe Dizzy would put him in a good mood. Or at least they could distract each other and leave me the hell alone. But in my eagerness for them to forget about me, I forgot about two things. Dizzy was on his cell phone, and I hadn’t told him not to say anything about the job offer.

“Yeah, yeah, new data center,” Dizzy said in his phone. “The guys we’re dealing with now couldn’t open an umbrella in a rainstorm.”

“Dude, no cell phones,” Jason said.

Dizzy looked around and opened his arms as if to say, “There’s no one here. Who cares?”

Jason came over to the counter and gave me a “what the hell” wide-eyed look. I gave him an indulgent “give him a break” shrug while I tried to figure out how to get Dizzy out of the store.

“Yeah, yeah, she’s on board,” Dizzy said, turning around to look at me.

I shook my head, trying to tell him to stop talking, darting a glance at Jason, who was looking at me curiously.

“Get off the cell phone, man,” Jason said, keeping a suspicious eye on me.

Dizzy swatted at him. “I’m sure Maggie can start next week. She’s just got a little cleaning up to do.”

“Take it outside,” Jason said, thrusting his finger at the door.

“Hold on a minute,” Dizzy said. He tapped the earpiece to put the call on hold and turned to Jason. “Listen, I’m with her,” he said pointing to me, obviously not realizing that carried no water with Jason. “I’m working on a deal with Apollo Books worth millions. Until you can convince me that my phone call is keeping you from that kind of business, I’ll finish the damn phone call.” He tapped the earpiece again. “Sorry about that…”

Bottled fury churned in Jason’s face. I recognized it. I’d seen it enough in Dizzy’s face through most of our school days when he was locker-stuffing fodder for bullies twice his size and half his IQ. And now he was one of them.

I stomped around the counter, past Jason, and snatched Dizzy’s phone off his belt. I could hear the voice on the other end of the line. I turned off the phone’s connection to Dizzy’s headset, then put it on speaker. Dizzy jerked around to see me walking toward the door with the phone. I could hear the guy on the other end talking about negotiating tactics and term sheets.

“Hey,” I said into the phone as I walked out onto the sidewalk. “Did you know Dizzy dressed as Mae West for Halloween his senior year? There will be pics on Facebook momentarily.”

“Who is this?” asked the guy on the other end.

“And he got three twenty on his Verbal the first time he took the SAT,” I said.

I felt a hand on my arm. Dizzy had caught up with me. He reached for the phone, but my reach had a good two inches on him and I held the device away from him toward the traffic that was rolling down Castro Street. I could hear the voice on the other end, “Dizzy? Dizzy? What the hell is going on?”

“Mags, quit kidding around,” Dizzy said, jumping for the phone, but I spun around and held him off. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Apologize,” I said.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Please fucking forgive me. Now give me back the goddamn phone!”

“Not to me. To Jason.”

He was still reaching for the phone, trying to find a weak spot in my defense.

“Sorry, man!” he said over his shoulder.

I turned to look at him and he stopped struggling when I stopped trying to keep the phone from him. Jason stood just outside the Dragonfly’s door, trying to figure out if he should do something.

“Why did you bring me out here with you?” I asked Dizzy.

“What are you talking about?”

“You had the world by the tail,” I said. “You didn’t need me.”

“No, but you needed me. Jesus Christ on a cracker, Mags. You were sofa surfing. You couldn’t even manage the bar bill. You were sleeping with stoners. What was I supposed to do?”

I turned back toward the traffic and tossed the phone under the wheels of a passing Prius. Dizzy stood beside me as we watched the black tires roll over it. The crunch sounded so satisfying, like crushing an empty can, and I felt the thrill of someone who had just gone one step too far.

“So you’re mad at me for telling you the truth,” Dizzy said.

“I’m mad because you think that’s the truth.”

Dizzy had to wait for a couple of more cars before he could scoop up what was left. It was mostly just a Pop-Tart-shaped collage of plastic and circuits.

“Someday,” I said, “you will thank me for that. Until that day comes, you keep your ass away from my store.”

I walked back to the Dragonfly. Jason jumped back to give me space to get in the door. I dropped down in a chair and held my head in my hands. Tears as thick as cake batter rolled down my face.

Jason sat on the edge of his chair, his hands folded between his knees until Grendel dropped from his place in the window display and jumped into Jason’s lap.

“Do you really have a job with Apollo?” Jason asked.

“I have an offer.”

“Is it a good one?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged and swung his feet, which didn’t touch the floor. Grendel stuck his head under the crook of Jason’s arm.

“Are you going to take it?”

I wanted to tell him about the lease, that there wouldn’t be a Dragonfly soon, that there was no place for me if I didn’t take it. But I wanted to talk to Hugo first. So I just shrugged and cried some more. Jason fidgeted with that awful ignorance of what to do.

“Rajhit and I broke up,” I said.

He nodded.

“Blueberry bagel?”

He was gone for longer than I thought he would be. But when he returned with the Posh Bagel bag clenched in his hand, he was also balancing two Big Gulps.

“Blue ICEE or red ICEE?” he asked.

I took the blue.

A silky mist draped over the early evening as I squinted through the windshield of Hugo’s Volvo at the park’s signs. It was dark, and it was the Santa Cruz Mountains. I had no idea what I was doing. Finally, through the trees, my headlights caught patches of LEGO-colored pavilions, and I knew I’d found the place.

It was a special day for both Hugo and Jason. It turns out that Hugo, to no one’s real surprise, had attended the party back in Berkeley in the sixties that started the whole SCA. So he was now being celebrated as Anno Societatis I, a member of the first year of the society. That morning, I’d nearly lost it as he came strutting out in an Elizabethan nobleman’s outfit Jason had procured for him.

“I think it rather suits me,” he said as he lifted a gold goblet up toward me to the rounds of applause from our store full of customers. “I shall wear it every day.”

It had all been Nimue’s idea. Once she found out Hugo had been to that infamous party in Berkeley, she invited him to events constantly, but he always gallantly declined. And when I say gallantly, I mean he bowed, called her “m’lady,” and everything. Sometimes I think she kept asking him just so he’d say no like this. But it was Jason who finally got him into some leggings. Tonight, there would be a ceremony for those who had contributed to the Kingdom of the Mists in the last year. A new king would be knighted after the war and he would honor those who served in his new kingdom. This included Jason, or Frederick the Bard as he was known. Hugo wouldn’t miss that. Neither would I.

I pulled into an open parking space and took a deep breath. Jason knew about the job offer but not about the Dragonfly losing its lease. Hugo knew about the lease but not the job offer. No one knew about Rajhit’s being Henry. All of these secrets felt like bricks in my stomach.