Chapter 6
ANSON
Iwas well aware that I gave Beck reason to scowl at me on a regular basis, but it had been a long time since I’d seen such a severe look on his face. I studied it as I stood opposite him at the far end of the conference table.
“What?” I insisted but didn’t give him a chance to respond. “I slept last night. A little,” I assured him. His scowl remained.
“Okay, it was on the couch in my office, but I did! I even had one of those protein bars you leave all over the place for breakfast, and I spent an hour in the gym this morning. When I woke up,” I emphasized.
“These are all Beck-approved uses of my time, so what’s with the …
” I moved my finger around in the general direction of his face before looking down at the folder, covered in sketches and calculations on both sides.
I reached for the pencil and leaned over the table, continuing a formula as Beck responded.
“My name is Ani? It’s not really a fort? What exactly did I walk in on here, Anson? Because you two looked awfully …”
I paused with the pencil hovering over the folder. My heart was pounding for some reason, maybe in response to the stress I was bringing out in Beck, but since I didn’t really understand why he was stressed, I wasn’t sure that was it.
“He’s brilliant, Beck. Come. Look at this,” I enthused, bypassing the folder and holding up the tablet.
“We really advanced the mobility issue, and he has ideas on materials and tweaking the …” Beck yanked the tablet from my hand, forcefully, but his focus was on the diagram Benji had sketched on the folder.
He tapped the folder. “You were working on Project Orthos?” Then he woke up the tablet to peruse the open files we had modified.
“Why were you even meeting with him, Anson? This was an entry-level, preliminary interview. Jesus, Ani, how long would you two have been in here if Erin hadn’t called to let me know?
” He was focused on scrolling the tablet, so I held my response.
“Man, you shouldn’t be sharing information like this with some guy off the street. Especially someone who may or may not have stolen your work!”
“I told you he didn’t steal my work,” I said calmly. “I showed you. What do you mean, Erin called you?”
“She was pretty freaked out, Anson. She said you commandeered an interview and had been in here for over two hours! Two hours with that kid! What’s gotten into you, Ani?” Even I picked up on the sarcasm in the way he said my name. The anger in his tone was much more direct and obvious.
“He’s brilliant, Beck. You yourself recognized the similarities between his dissertation and Project Orthos.” Beck scoffed. “And working on it with him ... it’s like we just fit together, like … like … It’s like he’s the receptor to my ligand.” Beck glared.
“I don’t even want to know what that means,” he groused.
“Our work fits together,” I quickly corrected. “Ligand and receptor. We complement each other. We click.”
“Click,” he muttered, back to looking at the tablet, his head shaking back and forth.
“We need to make him an offer right now, Beck. There will have to be a patent agreement on top of the offer of employment. Because I am telling you, Beck, the knowledge and amount of work he’ll be able to contribute to Project Orthos will be substantial.
I want him to work directly with me as my personal research assistant. ”
“Ani, you can’t just … You shouldn’t have …” He waved the tablet at me. I followed it as he continued. “You have to be careful, Anson! You can’t just share these files.”
“I know, Beck. But we’re going to hire him, and he and I are going to work on this together, and it’s going to help people, really help people, and …
and, and … it’s going to be revolutionary!
” I was impassioned. I care about my work a great deal, but it had been a very long time since I’d felt so fervently about someone, or, I guess, about the project I was confident we would be able to complete together.
In truth, I’d never been so keen to work with another person, not even Beck, who’d had to convince me I needed him and his business degree if I was going to start my own company.
He had been right, of course, so I should probably have worked harder to understand Beck’s frustrations about Benji, but he should have worked harder to understand that Benji’s work and mine were not the same.
Beck sighed and plopped into a chair, texting and talking to me at the same time.
“This project has the potential to make a lot of money, Ani. Don’t forget that part.
That’s the part where things go south. That’s where things get complicated, messy.
Since when do we think about sharing patents?
” His phone pinged, and he looked my way.
“Erin and Jonah from legal are on their way up here. Let’s hammer out his offer.” Beck didn’t sound excited at all, but I most decidedly was.
“Jonah? For an entry-level employee? I know we don’t do it often, but we’ve shared patents with employees and contractors before. Even I know we have a template for that.”
“Not good enough,” Beck said distractedly, looking at his phone again.
“We need Jonah here to figure out what to do about the breach you let happen today and how exactly we handle the brilliant kid who you think is revolutionary and who, for the first time since I’ve known you, is someone you actually want to work with.
You know I’m still not even sure you want to work with me! ”
“You know this company wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t for you. I know it, too, and I love you for it, friend.”
Beck just grunted at that, but I knew how he felt about me even when he was at his most frustrated with me.
“We’ll need to hammer out this employment agreement right away before he has time to take whatever it is that you two worked on today to some competitor.
And it will need to be airtight.” I opened my mouth to respond.
He looked at me sharply and answered the questions he didn’t give me time to ask.
I usually liked it when Beck anticipated my thoughts and questions, it generally made my life simpler.
I didn’t like it as much when he gave an answer I didn’t agree with.
“We can’t entertain sharing the patent with him, Ani. The board will never allow it. He’ll have to be well compensated.” He scrolled through the tablet. “Very well compensated.”
I knew better than to argue as Beck dropped his head to his phone and went back to texting.
What Benji and I had worked on truly felt like a fifty-fifty collaboration, plus I had patents that fed my bank account every day.
I didn’t have anywhere near the level of concern that Beck had about working with Benji.
But that’s why Beck and I worked so well together.
He understood these types of things much better than I ever would.
To me they were just nuisances. Hopefully, they would be to Benji as well.
Within a very short time, Erin and Jonah from legal walked in.
Beck looked up from his cell and let me know, “I ordered you a salad for lunch.”
The four of us met over lunch for longer than I would have thought necessary to hash out an employment package for Benji. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Erin and Jonah were even more freaked out than Beck had been that Benji and I had gotten right to work.
“You shared your design with him?” Jonah fumed. We need a level-one background check on this kid, today!” he demanded.
“Already on it,” Erin said as she typed away at her laptop.
“Already in process,” Beck mumbled.
“Oh, come on!” My staff and Beck stared at me, surprised by my outburst. “I grew up with his dad! He’s excited to work here.
He didn’t come here to steal my work. He shared his work with us!
I decided to interview him. I decided to share my work with him.
Work that very few people know about, by the way.
And I shared it because he’s brilliant, and I’d … we’d be lucky to have him!”
“Jesus, Ani. Forget competitors. He could go to the media, or straight to McDermott Synthes, bypassing the middleman.”
I rarely went into boss mode, but I stood, ignoring Beck’s doom prophecies. “If we’re not going to offer to share the patent, you need to offer him fifty percent of any proceeds.”
“Anson, that’s crazy. He’s barely out of college! This package is more than fair, and if you succeed with Project Orthos, it will make him rich at five percent.”
“If he held the patent, it would make him rich too.” I took the tablet Beck had been working off of out of his hands, adjusted the number on the agreement, and handed it back to him. “Get that offer out to him, and let’s get him on board so you all can stop worrying about this nonsense.”
Erin looked at Beck, and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
Erin and Jonah quickly collected their things and left the room with a “yes, sir,” and an “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from him,” but Beck remained in his seat.
I could feel him watching me as I followed Erin and Jonah to the door and thanked them for all their hard work.
I really wasn’t one to lose my temper, and I didn’t want to end the meeting on a sour note.
“This is going to work out great. I promise,” I assured them before I closed the door and walked back to my spot at the head of the table.
Figuring I knew Beck’s concern, I pulled the carton of carryout that I had only picked over until that point toward me and made a show of shoving a big forkful of leafy greens into my mouth.
“What the hell is going on with you, Ani?”
“What? I’m eating!”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
The thing was that I really didn’t. “I don’t understand why you don’t get this, Beck. You’re the one who presented his work to me. He didn’t steal it, and it’s damn good work.”
“No, I get that part. The kid’s a genius.
I trust you on that. But you should have told me you were going to interview him yourself; I would have coached you, or joined you if I couldn’t talk you out of it.
But Ani, when I walked in here, the two of you had your heads together like my daughter and her friends sharing videos on their phones. Any closer and …”
“And what?”
“Stand up.”
“I’m eating, Beck. You should be happy!”
“And I am, just, humor me.”
Beck stood in front of me and leaned in until our foreheads almost touched. It was strange and ridiculous and uncomfortable. I stepped away, giving him a funny look.
“Un-huh,” is all he said as if he had proved some kind of point.
Next he shot his hand out in front of me. Naturally, I embraced him to shake it. I wasn’t good with many physical cues, but I certainly knew how to shake someone’s hand. I’d shaken the hand of presidents and celebrities and even royalty by that point in our careers.
His second hand enclosed our shake, and he stopped the motion, holding my hand still for much longer than the usual handshake.
Eventually, I yanked my hand from his grip, earning me another “uh-huh” and a smirky smile.
“Tread lightly with this, Ani. You’ve never wanted to work with someone before.
Hell, we had to build you a private lab!
A place, I’ll remind you, where I’m hardly even welcome, and now you’re just going to start working with this kid.
I could barely convince you that you needed me back when we started.
” Despite his clear frustration, Beck smiled when he said, “You know, someone to handle the business aspects …”
I cut in to complete a sentence we had thought humorous when we were just out of school and learning to work together, and one that we had repeated often over the years: “of the business.” At least he smiled at that.
“It’s going to be fine, Beck,” I assured him before performatively shoveling more salad into my face.
“I just don’t want to see you hurt, Ani.”
“Why on earth would I get hurt?”
Beck just sighed at me and made me eat more salad while he lectured me about setting boundaries with my new employee, like not expecting him to work through the night.
He also talked about the board of directors until he was blue in the face, eventually convincing me that we couldn’t offer Benji fifty percent of the profits on Project Orthos.
“You know he’ll be well compensated at twenty-five percent, Ani.”
“At least try for thirty-five, Beck. Based on income, not net.” I tapped on the folder, like Beck had done when he’d brought it to me days before. “This is not entry-level work, Beck. He deserves his share.”
He nodded and sent an email to Erin and Jonah.
Beck was emphatic that I not reach out directly to Benji until he accepted our offer. I was under strict orders not to try and contact him in any way until I heard from Erin.
Once my lunch was done, I headed to my lab, excited to test out some of the calculations Benji and I had worked on.
I did end up working through most of the night, hearing Beck’s scolding voice every time I reached for my phone to call Benji with a question or an update. I didn’t even have his number.
I had never minded being alone in my lab before, but it was like everywhere I looked, I pictured him there with me. In my head, I shared what I was working on with him, and I imagined him by my side as we both stared as one of the 3D printers created a component we had brainstormed together.
I rarely spend inefficient time in my lab.
Hell, if it weren't for Beck and all of the ridiculous meetings he drags me to, there wouldn’t be any wasted time at New Day Tech.
And yet, for some reason, I spent a good portion of that night thinking about my old friend’s son.
From my surprise at his appearance, with that bright smile and kind eyes that were amplified by his glasses, to how easily we worked together and, more frequently than seemed correct, to how it had felt when his long fingers grasped mine in a perfectly normal and professional handshake.
And how, once I’d wrapped that hand in both of mine, I didn’t want to let go.