CHAPTER 7
“Hey, what are you doing out here?” Gabi asked.
Sarai looked up, surprised to see her, and replied, “Oh, nothing. I just needed a break.”
“From kicking everyone’s butt in Monopoly? Can I sit?”
“Sure,” she said. “And from it all. You know, we’ve had more parties, if you can call them that, here in the past week than I think we did all last year.”
“Why is that?”
“We miss Violet.” She shrugged a shoulder.
“She used to be the one to come out here and check on me. Enya is always in her head. I don’t even know how many languages she knows now, and how many dialects, or how many she speaks fluently.
She just loves learning. It’s why she’s always on her phone – she’s either in our app, testing it, or she’s learning with these digital flash cards she makes.
Arlowe is always in her headphones, coding something.
Violet would be the one to notice that I’d left the garage and come out here.
I get my best ideas either right in this spot or at my dry-erase board. ”
“Why here?”
“I don’t know. I think sometimes, I feel pressure working in the same space with everyone, especially now that we have employees who come and go, so it’s nice to come out here and be by myself. My room is the smallest, so it can be claustrophobic.”
“Why didn’t you move into Arlowe’s room, then?”
“I’m lazy.” She chuckled. “I don’t feel like moving all my stuff. And it’s small, but it’s home to me, and it has been for nearly ten years now.”
Gabi looked out at the yard and replied, “It’s nice back here. Quiet.”
“Yeah, one of the nice things about this house.”
“So, did you get an idea?”
“No.” Sarai laughed quietly. “I wish.”
“Are you short on ideas or something?” Gabi asked.
“Right now, I am. I have an actual budget, which is nice, but when I was in school, I had the best ideas.”
“If you do say so yourself,” Gabi teased her, and Sarai watched her push her glasses up on her nose when she looked over at her.
“My professors said it mainly. I went to a top-five business school with an emphasis on marketing. The year I graduated, they were number one in the country, and I had a lot of opportunities. I told them that later, not at first, because I really wanted to do what we’re doing now, but I had four job offers right out of school, and three possible paid internships at massive advertising companies. ”
“Damn, Sarai.”
“I wanted to do this. I still do – I love what we’re doing here. We just rolled out version seven of the app, and we have a new version of the browser coming out soon. We have new components now, too. Cerebral has helped with that.”
“Cerebral? That’s the new tool that–”
“Kicks ass? Yeah. Stella works there. It’s how Violet and Stella reconnected, actually: she reached out to them about their software. Now, we have it, and we’re using it in a different way than pretty much everyone else, so it’s cool stuff that we’re doing.”
“I haven’t tried your app yet, but I downloaded it last week when you told me about what you do here. I’m going to try to brush up on my Spanish.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But why is it so important to you? I get why it might be to Enya; she loves languages. Why did you want to work here and not at one of those places where you had an offer? Was it just because of your friends?”
“Not only that. My grandma only spoke Hebrew. Her parents did, too. My parents are first-generation, so they speak Hebrew and English, but they were a little lax about learning and speaking Hebrew in our house. I don’t really know why.
We also didn’t celebrate the Sabbath or most of the big Jewish holidays.
I didn’t even have a bat mitzvah. I got the impression that my mom thought it would be better for me because they sent me to a Catholic school, and they didn’t want me to stick out.
It was the best school in the area, which was the only reason they sent me there.
I loved my grandparents, though. They’re both gone now, but talking to them was difficult because we spoke two different languages.
By the time I realized that I wanted to put the time into learning Hebrew, my grandpa was already gone, and my grandma passed away two years later.
I would’ve killed to be able to just talk to her, learn things from her more easily – hell, learn about her and her life more easily.
Our app does that and more. It could’ve allowed me to have full conversations with her or my grandpa, as well as teach me the language.
Enya’s worked so hard on this thing, and we’ve added so many features that really make it the best language app on the market.
We just happen to be one of the smallest.”
“You’re getting there. Sometimes, slow and steady wins the race.”
“You know, there’s this hardware piece we want to make that would help even more. Arlowe has some of the code for the software component done already, but we would need to design it first, and that would take forever.”
“Hardware?”
“Yeah, a wearable. We were thinking glasses or goggles at first because the words could display on the glasses and the person could still look at the other person while reading them, but we’ve been thinking more about how maybe it’s a watch or even a necklace.”
“A necklace?” Gabi asked with a little laugh.
“I don’t know.” Sarai laughed, too, and shrugged. “Just something to make it different than the other wearables out there since ours will only focus on languages while the rest of them let you watch movies, play games, check your email, and probably even shave your legs.”
“There’s something to be said about having something that does one thing really well. If you can pull it off, it might be worth it.”
“That’s what we’re hoping for anyway.”
“You know I’m in hardware, right?”
Sarai turned to her and said, “I thought you worked in software.”
“Right now, yeah. But my degree is literally in hardware design.”
“I feel like I knew that, but that I forgot. I’m getting old, I guess.”
“You’re thirty-three. You’re fine,” Gabi said and patted her on the knee, which drove Sarai’s eyes down to where Gabi’s hand had landed just before it was removed.
“I planned on building things, but I couldn’t find a job in hardware, and my software skills are good enough.
I’m sure I’m not as good as Arlowe, but I can hang.
Anyway, that’s the reason I do what I do now: the jobs were available.
I do love hardware design, though. It’s what I’ve wanted to do for a while. I could maybe help out.”
“Help out?”
“Work up a design. A mock-up.”
“Oh, Gabi, we can’t pay you. Every dollar we got from the investors has either been spent or is budgeted for something.
We’ve put a lot of eggs in the Cerebral basket, hoping that launches us onto more people’s phones, and we figured we would work on partnerships with companies that have the hardware already.
Violet has been talking to one for the past month or so. ”
“You don’t have to pay me. And I don’t mind doing it. It’s fun for me. You know how you love to kick everyone’s ass at Monopoly?”
Sarai laughed and said, “I’m not that bad.”
“Sarai, you reached over the board and took Marvin Gardens from me instead of waiting for me to hand it to you.” Gabi laughed.
“You were taking too long. I wanted to put houses on the properties during my turn.”
Gabi laughed and asked, “Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Are you going to call me dark-side Sarai if I say yes?” she asked back as she squinted at her.
“No, because I don’t think you have a dark side.”
“How do you know that?”
“A girl on a semester abroad in college, in a party town, who already has friends and a life there, volunteers to help show some eighteen-year-old brat around town for the weekend for a friend of a friend of her dad’s – that person cannot have a dark side.”
Sarai smiled and said, “You weren’t a brat. And I really didn’t mind. I had fun. Besides, you haven’t seen me since then. I could’ve developed a dark side.”
“Have you?”
“I hope not.”
“Then, you haven’t. Anyway, I can work on it in my free time. It will be fun for me, like Monopoly is for you.”
“I have hobbies, Gabi. I don’t sit around and play board games all day. And I don’t think we’ve played games like that in years.”
“What are your hobbies?”
“Oh.”
“Oh, what?” Gabi asked.
“I didn’t think you’d actually ask me about them.”
“You don’t have hobbies, do you?”
“I’m part of a marketing networking group thing. Does that count?”
“Does it count to you?”
“Not really because I skipped all the meetings and only hung around this long in case the business failed and I needed someone there to help me find a job.”
Gabi chuckled and asked, “Anything else? Or do you just work all the time?”
“I read. I binge-watch TV shows sometimes, too. I play games on my phone.”
“Which ones?”
“I have a bubble-popping one that I like. It calms me. I have a racing one, too.”
“Car racing?”
“Boat racing,” she replied.
“Interesting hobbies you’ve got. What do you read?”
“Mostly, books and articles on marketing, business, and trends in markets.”
“Ah, so by the fireplace, you sip your hot chocolate, and read… boring business books?”
“I’m sorry; what kind of books do you read?”
“Fiction, mostly.”
“Just any fiction?”
“No, I read a lot of lesbian fiction. Sometimes, romance. Other times, not.”
“You read romance novels now?”
“I know. I blame you.”
Sarai laughed and said, “I didn’t know you were going to even find that.”
“You told me to go into your closet to get the umbrella.”
“Yes, because it was raining, and you wanted to go out.”
“I had things to see,” Gabi replied.
“You lived a train ride away. You could’ve gone back to Amsterdam anytime you wanted to.”
“No, I couldn’t have. I had plans. Besides, even when I offered to alter those plans, you… were busy,” Gabi replied and looked away from her.
“You could’ve toured Amsterdam without me.”
“It wouldn’t have been the same,” Gabi said. “Anyway, you’re the one who put a lesbian romance novel on the same shelf as your umbrella.”
“I had it on my desk, but when you were coming over, I moved my lesbian paraphernalia.”
Gabi laughed again and said, “Oh, my God. What other paraphernalia did you have there?”
“Movies.”
“Porn?”
“No!” She laughed and turned to Gabi. “Not porn. Just regular movies. I had a bunch of DVDs back then. I’d watch them on my laptop.”
“What else?”
“Well, not strictly a lesbian thing, but I stuffed my vibrators inside some rolled-up socks.”
Gabi laughed and asked, “How many did you have?”
“We’re talking about Amsterdam here, Gabi. There’s a sex shop on every corner. I wanted to try new things.”
“That’s not an answer to my question,” Gabi said, still laughing.
“Five. I had five.”
“You had five vibrators?”
“Is that a lot? I have more than that now.”
“What?”
“I’ve got, like, a dozen now, at least. I still have the five I bought there.”
“On top of the dozen?”
“Including, you ass.” Sarai chuckled.
“Why did you hide them back then?”
“I don’t know. My parents called and asked me to basically watch this kid.
And, yeah, you were eighteen, but I didn’t know you were gay when I’d agreed.
I thought I should hide that book and the movies because I didn’t want you to go back to your parents, tell them what a horrible influence I was on you, and have it get back to my family. ”
“But you said you were out.”
“I was,” she confirmed. “Doesn’t mean they’d want me to corrupt a minor.”
“Sarai, I wasn’t a minor. Hell, I wasn’t even a virgin.”
“I remember you bringing that up, but I hadn’t yet met you when I was hiding all the stuff, and it wasn’t like I was just going to pull it all out right after you got there.
Later, you mentioned the girlfriend you’d had, but I didn’t know that when I was running around my room, trying to hide evidence of my gayness and sex toys.
You were also pretty shy that weekend. You weren’t sure about going out with my friends, only wanted to talk to me and hang out with me, and seemed a little anxious at times. ”
“Ah,” Gabi said and turned away again. “Yeah, well.”
Sarai looked up at her then and said, “Anyway, I didn’t know I’d inspire you to be a big romance reader.”
“Well, what happened to you? You were the one who got me hooked. Why did you stop?”
“I got busy. In school, I read that stuff mostly as a way to decompress, and it was nice, reading about women loving other women and having some happy endings.” Sarai’s eyes went wide at the same time Gabi’s did, and she added, “Not those kinds of happy endings.”
“Oh, I’m sure you liked those kinds of happy endings, too,” Gabi teased.
“I still do,” she replied with a little smirk.
“But now, I’m usually too busy trying to keep up with work stuff, and I feel like I still haven’t had my best idea here.
I need something to help us really get moving.
I just don’t know what, with our limited budget.
I feel like I’m letting all of those professors down. ”
“Don’t feel bad about that. They’ve had thousands of other students since and have forgotten all about you.”
Sarai looked at Gabi’s face and could tell that she was working hard at trying to hold in her laughter.
“Very funny.”
“I thought so,” Gabi replied and did that thing with her glasses again where she pushed them up her nose. “Should we get back in there before they send a search party?”
“Oh, we don’t have to worry about that. Vi and Stella have probably left already because they wanted to get home so that they could watch their favorite nerdy TV show together for the tenth time.
Enya is in her room, learning… something.
Arlowe got upset that everyone left her, so she went to the garage, probably to work on something on the side, not work stuff. They assume I went to bed.”
“Where do they think I am?” Gabi asked.
“They probably forgot you were here,” Sarai teased, doing her best to hold in her laughter this time.
“Very funny.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” she said.