“What’s suspicious about it?”
“Look,” Cherry said. “We’ve got enough rumors flying around as it is. I can report that we’re working on it, and we don’t know yet. That’s alt. We’ll get the sealed drives tomorrow or Wednesday, and we should know within an hour. Okay?”
“You thinking big problem, or little problem? I’ve got to know,” Sanders said. “It’s going to come up in the meetings tomorrow.”
“Well, at the moment, the answer is we don’t know. It could be anything. We’re working on it.”
“Arthur thinks it might be serious.”
“Arthur might be right. But we’ll solve it. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Don . . .”
“I understand you want an answer,” Cherry said. “Do you understand that I don’t have one?”
Sanders stared at him. “You could have called. Why’d you come up in person?”
“Since you asked,” Cherry said, “I’ve got a small problem. It’s delicate. Sexual harassment thing.”
“Another one? It seems like that’s all we have around here.”
“Us and everybody else,” Cherry said. “I hear UniCom’s got fourteen suits going right now. Digital Graphics has even more. And MicroSym, look out. They’re all pigs over there, anyway. But I’d like your read on this.”
Sanders sighed. “Okay.”
“In one of my programming groups, the remote DB access group. The group’s all pretty old: twenty-five to twenty-nine years old. The supervisor for the fax modem team, a woman, has been asking one of the guys out. She thinks he’s cute. He keeps turning her down. Today she asks him again in the parking lot at lunch; he says no. She gets in her car, rams his car, drives off. Nobody hurt, and he doesn’t want to make a complaint. But he’s worried, thinks it’s a little out of hand. Comes to me for advice. What should I do?”
Sanders frowned. “You think that’s the whole story? She’s just mad at him because he turned her down? Or did he do something to provoke this?”
“He says no. He’s a pretty straight guy. A little geeky, not real sophisticated.”
“And the woman?”
“She’s got a temper, no question. She blows at the team sometimes. I’ve had to talk to her about that.”
“What does she say about the incident in the parking lot?”
“Don’t know. The guy’s asked me not to talk to her. Says he’s embarrassed and doesn’t want to make it worse.”
Sanders shrugged. “What can you do? People are upset but nobody will talk . . . I don’t know, Don. If a woman rammed his car, I’d guess he must have done something. Chances are he slept with her once, and won’t see her again, and now she’s pissed. That’s my guess.”
“That would be my guess, too,” Cherry said, “but of course, maybe not.
“Damage to the car?”
“Nothing serious. Broken taillight. He just doesn’t want it to get any worse. So, do I drop it?”
“If he won’t file charges, I’d drop it.”
“Do I speak to her informally?”
“I wouldn’t. You go accusing her of impropriety-even informally-and you’re asking for trouble. Nobody’s going to support you. Because the chances are, your guy did do something to provoke her.”
“Even though he says he didn’t.”
Sanders sighed. “Listen, Don, they always say they didn’t. I never heard of one who said, `You know, I deserve this.’ Never happens.”
“So, drop it’,”
“Put a note in the file that he told you the story, be sure you characterize the story as alleged, and forget it.”
Cherry nodded, turned to leave. At the door, he stopped and looked back. “So tell me this. How come we’re both so convinced this guy must have done something?”
`Just playing the odds,” Sanders said. “Now fix that damned drive for me.”
A six o’clock, he said good night to Cindy and took the Twinkle files up to Meredith’s office on the fifth floor. The sun was still high in the sky, streaming through the windows. It seemed like late afternoon, not the end of the day.
Meredith had been given the big corner office, where Ron Goldman used to be. Meredith had a new assistant, too, a woman. Sanders guessed she had followed her boss up from Cupertino.
“I’m Tom Sanders,” he said. “I have an appointment with Ms. Johnson.”
“Betsy Ross, from Cupertino, Mr. Sanders,” she said. She looked at him. “Don’t say anything.”
“Okay.”
“Everybody says something. Something about the flag. I get really sick of it.”
“Okay.”
“My whole life.”
“Okay. Fine.”
“I’ll tell Miss Johnson you’re here.”
Tom.” Meredith Johnson waved from behind her desk, her other hand holding the phone. “Come in, sit down.”
Her office had a view north toward downtown Seattle: the Space Needle, the Arly towers, the SODO building. The city looked glorious in the afternoon sun.
“I’ll just finish this up.” She turned back to the phone. “Yes, Ed, I’m with Tom now, we’ll go over all of that. Yes. He’s brought the documentation with him.”
Sanders held up the manila folder containing the drive data. She pointed to her briefcase, which was lying open on the corner of the desk, and gestured for him to put it inside.
She turned back to the phone. “Yes, Ed, I think the due diligence will go smoothly, and there certainly isn’t any impulse to hold anything back . . . No, no . . . Well, we can do it first thing in the morning if you like.”
Sanders put the folder in her briefcase.
Meredith was saying, “Right, Ed, right. Absolutely.” She came toward Tom and sat with one hip on the edge of the desk, her navy blue skirt riding up her thigh. She wasn’t wearing stockings. “Everybody agrees that this is important, Ed. Yes.” She swung her foot, the high heel dangling from her toe. She smiled at Sanders. He felt uncomfortable, and moved back a little. “I promise you, Ed. Yes. Absolutely.”
Meredith hung up the phone on the cradle behind her, leaning back across the desk, twisting her body, revealing her breasts beneath the silk blouse. “Well, that’s done.” She sat forward again, and sighed. “The Conley people heard there’s trouble with Twinkle. That was Ed Nichols, flipping out. Actually, it’s the third call I’ve had about Twinkle this afternoon. You’d think that was all there was to this company. How do you like the office?”
“Pretty good,” he said. “Great view.”
“Yes, the city’s beautiful.” She leaned on one arm and crossed her legs. She saw that he noticed, and said, “In the summer, I’d rather not wear stockings. I like the bare feeling. So much cooler on a hot day.”
Sanders said, “From now to the end of summer, it will be pretty much this way.”
“I have to tell you, I dread the weather,” she said. “I mean, after California . . .” She uncrossed her legs again, and smiled. “But you like it here, don’t you? You seem happy here.”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “You get used to rain.” He pointed to her briefcase. “Do you want to go over the Twinkle stuff?”
“Absolutely,” she said, sliding off the desk, coming close to him. She looked him directly in the eyes. “But I hope you don’t mind if I impose on you first. Just a little?”
“Sure.”
She stepped aside. “Pour the wine for us.”
“Okay.”
“See if it’s chilled long enough.” He went over to the bottle on the side table. “I remember you always liked it cold.”
“That’s true,” he said, spinning the bottle in the ice. He didn’t like it so cold anymore, but he did in those days.
“We had a lot of fun back then,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “We did.”
“1 swear,” she said. “Sometimes I think that back when we were both young and trying to make it, I think that was the best it ever was.”
He hesitated, not sure how to answer her, what tone to take. He poured the wine.
“Yes,” she said. “We had a good time. I think about it often.”
Sanders thought: I never do.
She said, “What about you, Tom? Do you think about it?”
“Of course.” He crossed the room carrying the glasses of wine to her, gave her one, clinked them. “Sure I do. All us married guys think of the old days. You know I’m married now.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Very married, I hear. With how many kids? Three?”
“No, just two.” He smiled. “Sometimes it seems like three.”
“And your wife is an attorney?”
“Yes.” He felt safer now. The talk of his wife and children made him feel safer somehow.
“I don’t know how somebody can be married,” Meredith said. “I tried it.” She held up her hand. “Four more alimony payments to the son of a bitch and I’m free.”
“Who did you marry?”
“Some account executive at CoStar. He was cute. Amusing. But it turned out he was a typical gold digger. I’ve been paying him off for three years. And he was a lousy lay.” She waved her hand, dismissing the subject. She looked at her watch. “Now come and sit down, and tell me how bad it is with the Twinkle drive.”
“You want the file? I put it in your briefcase.”
“No.” She patted the couch beside her. “You just tell me yourself.” He sat down beside her.
“You look good, Tom.” She leaned back and kicked off her heels, wiggled her bare toes. “God, what a day.”
“Lot of pressure?”
She sipped her wine and blew a strand of hair from her face. “A lot to keep track of. I’m glad we’re working together, Tom. I feel as though you’re the one friend I can count on in all this.”
“Thanks. I’ll try.”
“So: how bad is it?”
“Well. It’s hard to say.”
“Just tell me.”
He felt he had no choice but to lay it all out for her. “We’ve built very successful prototypes, but the drives coming off the line in KL are running nowhere near a hundred milliseconds.”
Meredith sighed, and shook her head. “Do we know why?”
“Not yet. We’re working on some ideas.”
“That line’s a start-up, isn’t it?”
“Two months ago.”
She shrugged. “Then we have problems on a new line. That’s not so bad.”
“But the thing is,” he said, “Conley-White is buying this company for our technology, and especially for the CD-ROM drive. As of today, we may not be able to deliver as promised.”
“You want to tell them that?”
“I’m concerned they’ll pick it up in due diligence.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” She leaned back in the couch. “We have to remember what we’re really looking at. Tom, we’ve all seen production problems loom large, only to vanish overnight. This may be one of those situations. We’re shaking out the Twinkle line. We’ve identified some early problems. No big deal.”
“Maybe. But we don’t know that. In reality, there may be a problem with controller chips, which means changing our supplier in Singapore. Or there may be a more fundamental problem. A design problem, originating here.”
“Perhaps,” Meredith said, “but as you say, we don’t know that. And I don’t see any reason for us to speculate. At this critical time.”
“But to be honest-”
“It’s not a matter of honesty,” she said. “It’s a matter of the underlying reality. Let’s go over it, point by point. We’ve told them we have a Twinkle drive.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve built a prototype and tested the hell out of it.”
“Yes.”
“And the prototype works like gangbusters. It’s twice as fast as the most advanced drives coming out of Japan.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve told them we’re in production on the drive.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then,” Meredith said, “we’ve told them all that anybody knows for sure, at this point. I’d say we are acting in good faith.”
“Well, maybe, but I don’t know if we can-”
“Tom.” Meredith placed her hand on his arm. “I always liked your directness. I want you to know how much I appreciate your expertise and your frank approach to problems. All the more reason why I’m sure the Twinkle drive will get ironed out. We know that fundamentally it’s a good product that performs as we say it does. Personally, I have complete confidence in it, and in your ability to make it work as planned. And I have no problem saying that at the meeting tomorrow.” She paused, and looked intently at him. “Do you?”
Her face was very close to him, her lips half-parted. “Do I what?”
“Have a problem saying that at the meeting?”
Her eyes were light blue, almost gray. He had forgotten that, as he had forgotten how long her lashes were. Her hair fell softly around her face. Her lips were full. She had a dreamy look in her eyes. “No,” he said. “I don’t have a problem.”
“Good. Then at least that settled.” She smiled and held out her glass. “Do the honors again?”
“Sure.”
He got up from the couch and went over to the wine. She watched him.
“I’m glad you haven’t let yourself go, Tom. You work out?”
“Twice a week. How about you?”
“You always had a nice rush. Nice hard rush.”
He turned. “Meredith . . .”