Chapter Nine
LACEY
On Monday morning, Trevor smells like every dude on every flight home from Las Vegas.
I switch on the little fan that sits between my plant and my pen caddy.
I suppose I should give him credit for showing up at all, though he’s not doing much typing or talking or anything but staring in the general direction of his monitor.
When Glenn arrives, Trevor’s the one who makes a big deal about it. He’s also the one who calls me out for my confused look.
“Bro, he hasn’t been here since Monday last week. They put his wife on bedrest or some shit.”
I look to Glenn for confirmation and he nods. I’ve been in such a hyper-focused bubble that I didn’t even notice my boss hasn’t been here.
“God. I’m so sorry, I totally missed that. Are Jen and the baby okay?”
He sets his bag down and nods. “Jen’s blood pressure’s a little high, but we’re watching it. It should be fine. Her sister’s there with her and the twins today.”
I consider telling him that he’s missed a button on his shirt, but it’s inconsequential and he seems weary.
“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do to help?” I say instead.
“Keep doing what you’re doing, Lacey. The reason I can be at home so much is because I have you and Trevor here.”
“Okay,” I tell him. I try not to look askance at Trevor; Glenn knows who does the heaving lifting in this department.
“I’m so glad it worked out and I can be here today,” he say me. “I really wanted to be at this All Hands in person. Everything ready?”
I cross the fingers on both hands and bite my lip.
It’s close enough to call it ready. We worked through the weekend, and were able to stand up a development server where we merged some of my team’s code with Jude’s.
It’s not what you’d call production-ready or pretty, but at today’s All Hands we’re planning to show the process where a video is uploaded, that can then be played online, and will be intercut dynamically with ads from our own network.
I say we’re planning to show it, because in a software demo the rule is that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, along with some things you thought couldn’t ever go wrong.
Last night, at ten o’clock, we were successful on seven out of ten tries.
But Dave couldn’t stop yawning, Ingrid kept zoning out, and the QA team was split down the middle in terms of, it’s a server issue/it’s a code issue.
This somehow became a thing each camp thought they could resolve through volume.
“I’m calling it,” Jude finally said. “Everybody go home. Feed your fish or whatever, and get some sleep. It’s an alpha, it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t go off perfectly.”
“Are you sure?” Ingrid asked. “We’re so close. Two more tries?”
She looked at me.
“I’m with Jude,” I told her. “You guys have done so much, but I think this is what the point of diminishing returns feels like. We’ll fix it, but not tonight.”
Everyone packed up to go home, but when they stopped at my desk I told them I needed to wrap up one small thing before leaving. When they walked to the elevator, I backtracked to the conference room, where Jude was setting up another test.
“Hypocrite,” I said, sitting down next to him so I could see the error messages when they came up.
“I don’t have a fish,” he said.
It took two more hours, but we figured it out.
When we left together, he waited with me for my Uber to come.
“I sort of thought that was decorative,” I said, pointing at the motorcycle helmet in his hand.
He laughed. “It probably should be. I’d offer you a ride home, but I’m pretty sure I’d accidentally kill you on the way.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I assured him.
“It’s not good,” he said.
“Maybe get a scooter,” I told him. “We won’t have an ad network if you die.”
When my driver (Carl, in a KIA Sportage) arrived to pick me up, Jude opened the door for me and thanked me for staying so late.
“Get home safely,” I said.
“I’ll do my best.” He waved as we drove off.
“That your boyfriend?” the driver asked me.
“No. My boss, kind of.” I saw Carl raise an eyebrow in the rearview mirror.
“You got a foxy boss,” he told me. “Sounds like trouble.”
“It’s not,” I said. “We just work really well together.”
I didn’t check to see what his eyes were saying in the mirror.
With Glenn here today, I think it would be a good idea to have him do the intro at the All Hands. I know from experience that listening to the same people the whole time gets boring. It’s likely this is his last appearance in the office for a while, too, with Jen on bedrest until the baby arrives.
I go sailing into Jude’s office to tell him my idea, because that’s what I do now: I just march in there with any thought that comes into my head.
Only this time Jude doesn’t nod while he listens, pushing that swoop of hair off his forehead, and build on whatever I say to make it better.
I don’t even get to tell him what I’m thinking, because I make it two steps inside the door and see there’s a woman sitting on his couch.
She’s blonde and beautiful, and clearly at home here because she’s kicked her shoes off as well.
There’s a pair of Birkenstock clogs lying on the floor next to his Adidas.
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry. I’ll—we’ll talk later.”
I bolt from his office, thinking I hear him calling out my name, but I make a beeline for Kate’s cube.
I sit on her desk and pretend to listen to what she did this weekend while I watch Jude walk the blonde through the office.
She’s got this whole easy-breezy boho thing going on, like her makeup bag is just a single Chapstick.
The unflavored kind. She shakes Glenn’s hand.
She hugs Trevor like an old friend. Then she puts her hand on Jude’s shoulder, not that it bothers me.
I’m happy for her, and her nose ring. And for Jude, and their future vegetarian children, and the yurt they’ll all vacation in.
“Have you ever been?” Kate is asking me.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “Where?”
“Toronado. The place I’ve been telling you about for the past five minutes.” She looks over at the people I’m spying on. “Why are you hiding over here? Do you have beef with Jude’s sister?”
“His sister? How do you know that’s her?”
“I mean, she used to work here. But she also looks like Jude with a wig on.”
“You ran off before I could introduce you,” Jude says when I approach my desk, feeling like a dummy for reasons I’m not willing to ruminate on. “This is my sister, Ella. Ella, this is Lacey.”
“So nice to meet you,” I say. “Sorry to barge in and then leave. I remembered something I needed to talk to CS about.”
“Is everything okay?” Jude asks.
“Oh yeah,” I tell him. “It’s resolved.”
He gives me a weird look that I ignore; instead I thank Ella for her UX revisions, which were all perfectly on point. And I tell her I like her nose ring.
I’ve got the pre-demo jitters. In the bathroom mirror I tousle my bangs, re-perfect my lipstick. Straighten my collar, smooth my skirt down. Double-knot my sneakers. Sometimes it’s helpful for me to focus on the things I can control when I’m worried about the things I can’t.
In that spirit, I go check on the configuration of the conference room. Everything is in order, but the IT guy is setting up the camera we use for webinars.
“What’s that for?” I question him.
“I don’t ask,” he tells me.
“Do you want the truth if it’s going to make you more nervous?”
I turn around and Jude is in the doorway.
“I think so,” I say.
“I had a call earlier, where I made the mistake of mentioning that we’re demoing our alpha today. So of course a couple board members said they’re interested in seeing it.” He gestures to the camera. “They asked for a Zoom link.”
“Shit. Edmund?”
He nods. “Yep. But there’s a significant chance he won’t actually log in. He might have just seen it as an opportunity to terrorize me. Us.”
“Should I let you do the whole thing?” I offer. “Is it weird for me to do so much of the talking if he’s watching?”
“It’s not weird unless you don’t want to do it.”
I nod and consider the situation. I don’t want to push this off onto Jude, but I also don’t want to let him down.
“It worked five out of the last six times?” I ask.
“Six out of the last seven,” he says. “I got here early.”
When I was in middle school we used to put on a play each spring.
I always knew my lines, had my blocking down without a worry.
I’d be fine, until I was backstage with all the other actors, until their nervousness became contagious, and then the stage-fright would set in.
That’s when our drama teacher, Mrs. Corgan, would look at all of us before the curtain went up and remind us of all the hard work we’d put in over the last few weeks.
She’d tell us—every year, in the same way—that we’d already proven to her that we had the tools to succeed.
Now all that was left was to get out there and share our work and our gifts with the audience.
I’m not sure that Mrs. Corgan was correct when it came to my solo in Oklahoma!
, but her words stuck with me. I think of them every time I’m worried about any type of performance, and there’s plenty of it in the work I do.
While Glenn is giving the introduction, telling all the people here and maybe online how we’re embarking on a new path for Lettercat, and what a special time it is to be part of this team, I remind myself that I’ve worked hard. I have the tools to succeed.
I look over at Jude, who will be doing the driving on the demo and also share the talking with me.
“You good?” he mouths.
I nod. “You?” I ask silently, and he smiles.
And we are good. We’re not perfect, not by a long shot; I know I say “um” and “like” too many times, and I do have to gently bring Jude back on track when I see he’s losing the audience by going too deep on API frameworks.
But the nerves shake off when I see our team there, pleased to have their work on display.
It’s a privilege to represent them like this.
There’s a moment during the walkthrough where it looks like the placeholder ad might not stream.
I pause my narration and hear someone from QA muttering about server issues.
Jude and I turn from the screen to each other and share a look of panic.
What is probably only four seconds of lag time feels like thirty.
And then I hear the recording of Jude’s voice—“this is a test advertisement, this is a test advertisement”—and when I check, I see the video is playing.
I look back to Jude before continuing and see his relief.
He gives me the quickest of winks. Despite feeling like it was falling apart, it worked. We’re good.
Throughout the demo, he and I trade off better than we did when we practiced. We don’t interrupt or contradict; it just flows. I’m almost sad when it’s over, except for the part where everyone in the room applauds. That feels terrific.
“Did you tell them to do that?” I whisper to Jude.
“No, but it’s going to be required going forward.”
During the Q especially as a woman working in technology, I’ve been the recipient of enough unwanted shoulder rubs and hugs.
Jude’s hand around mine isn’t anything like that.
It’s a fraction of a second, an expression of relief and gratitude.
But I can’t help feeling more aware of him afterward when he’s standing next to me.
Where his foot, in its gray sock, is in relation to mine.
His chuckle at Kate’s little joke. The light woodsy smell of him that is most definitely deodorant; Jude wouldn’t make time for cologne.
Dammit, Carl in your KIA Sportage. You might be right.