“No. Kind of the opposite. I don’t know where to begin.”
“How about from the beginning?” asked 4B, pushing up to sit cross legged next to Nora. Nora sat up too, leaning against the headboard. She pulled an afghan from the foot of the bed and wrapped one end of it around 4B’s shoulders and draped the other end over her own legs. The sight of 4B in the moonlight stirred things deep within her. She was so damn beautiful. Nora would have been content to study 4B all night, but a pair of raised eyebrows asked Nora to start her story.
“Okay. From the beginning, but in broad strokes. I guess it will give you more context about why I felt the need to get away when I did.”
“You don’t need to do it in broad strokes. I like details. I need to fill my memory up again, anyway. Why not with you?”
Nora took 4B’s hand and rubbed her thumb over the smooth skin on the back. “I don’t think my experience is unique. There are probably a lot of stories like mine.”
4B smiled. “Go on. I want to hear it.”
“Well, tell me if you get bored.” 4B nodded her head and she began. “I guess I always knew I was attracted to girls and I was different from my friends. Things were pretty typical when we were young. We played outside, rode our bikes, built forts, played house, all the normal kid stuff. But, sometime in late middle school things started to change. They all became boy crazy and I felt a little left behind because I wasn’t. I still loved to hang out with my friends, joking, talking, having sleep-overs.” 4B raised her eyebrows and laughed. “Not those kinds of sleepovers, dirty thinker,” laughed Nora. “Physical thoughts came a little later, and by then, I knew what I had on my mind was not what my friends had on theirs. So, I half-heartedly played along. Mostly so no one would single me out. When they started to date boys, I sort of stood on the sidelines and watched. My friends thought I was a late bloomer. But I wasn’t. I just didn’t know any girls like me and, even if I did, I was too shy to pursue it. There was no one to talk to help me figure things out. I think I would have been able to talk to my mom, but she died before I could get up my courage to tell anyone. I’m sure she would have been great about it, though. My dad would have been cool, too, I think. At least before mom died. But afterward, he was just drunk all the time. After the accident, he went from being the best dad in the world, to… well, not the greatest dad in the world.” Nora pushed her hand through her hair. She didn’t like how the story was going. She’d never spent any time feeling sorry for herself about that time in her life. She didn’t know why she was doing it now. She sighed. “This sounds like a pity party, and there are thousands of stories just like it.”
“But they aren’t your story. Tell me everything you feel like telling,” said 4B squeezing Nora’s hand.
“With my dad always drunk and me going through the typical teenage thing combined with feeling on the outside of things because of my secret, things weren’t very good at home. So, when high school was over I couldn’t wait to get out of my dad’s house and go to college. The university wasn’t far from where I already lived, but I needed to get away from my dad. We weren’t getting along at all—he was always drunk and I was an angry teenager. So, I moved into the dorms, and—bang!—I felt like I was dropped into another universe.” Nora, who had been staring at their intertwined fingers as she spoke, looked up at 4B. “Am I boring you now?”
“Not even close. I’m sorry you lost your mom and dad at such an early age. It had to have been hard,” 4B squeezed her hand and Nora squeezed back.
“I didn’t know anything different, so it sounds worse than it was.” Nora wondered why she was minimizing her experiences. “Well, that’s not true. I spent a lot of money on therapy to process all of this. It was just so long ago. I didn’t tell you to make you feel sorry for me.”
“I know you didn’t, but I still wish you hadn’t had to deal with it when you were a kid. Something tells me the story is about to get better, though. Go on. You moved into the dorms, and…?” Nora grinned at 4B’s expectant expression. She had a knack for putting Nora at ease.
“I had never been around so many beautiful women in my life. Suddenly, they were everywhere and, surprisingly, many of them weren’t shy at all about being attracted to other women. I think that’s how it was for a lot of new students—girls and boys alike. You know how it is, kids get away from home for the first time and—” Nora paused and smiled. “Well, maybe you don’t know it now, but when you remember, you’ll get it. For kids—especially gay kids—going away to school can be pretty liberating. Some, like me, finally get the opportunity to explore who they are. It was like a candy shop. That’s the best way to describe it. A big, gay candy shop. Despite my nerdy major—computer sciences. Being in the Air National Guard kind of made up for it. You know, the uniform. Some women kind of dig that sort of thing,” said Nora, poking 4B in the side. She was rewarded with a squirm.
“Plus, I was in search and rescue, so I had to keep in shape, which was in my favor. At first, I kind of made a fool of myself thinking the first few girls I slept with wanted more than just a good time. But I soon learned how to sleep and run. And it was fun for a while. I admit I spent the better portion of my undergrad years playing the field. Thank goodness I didn’t need to study too hard to get passing grades, because my mind wasn’t really on academics those first few years. But, after a while, I got bored with it. That was about the time when I started to develop the software Aunt Mace told you about. It was easy to bury myself in my work and I stopped fooling around so much. Then, a reporter for a technical magazine came to interview me about the project I was working on. I knew it was a new idea. I just didn’t know how interested the technical world would be in it. But, you heard enough about all that earlier.”
“I didn’t hear this part. Really—I want to know more. Keep going.”
Nora sighed. She wasn’t secretive. She just didn’t think she was all that interesting. It had taken Nora over a year to tell her ex-wife, Christina, that her mother and father were dead. But Nora had told 4B within days. The big difference was Christina had been self-absorbed and had never asked Nora much about her past, while 4B seemed genuinely interested. She filed it away and kept on talking.
“I thought my interview was just a small part in a larger piece about student developers. But when the journalist showed up, I discovered my project was the main topic of the next month’s edition, and I was the featured developer. Apparently, I had been identified as an up–and-comer in regard to innovation in the software development world. Being a woman was a bonus. Christina, the journalist who interviewed me, was very complimentary and attentive during the interview. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful, either. I developed an instant crush on her. I had no idea she was in a relationship at the time.”
Nora remembered the day vividly. It wasn’t until later that she’d discovered the photographer at the interview had been Christina’s current girlfriend. It hadn’t stopped Christina from flirting with Nora the whole time, though. And Christina hadn’t mentioned her girlfriend when she’d called Nora a few days later and asked her on a date, either. Nora had gone back to that time—the start of their eight-year relationship—so many times in her head, chastising herself for not seeing the future in the first phone call. Even though Christina had later insisted the relationship had been on its last legs when they’d met, her girlfriend hadn’t thought so. Nora had already fallen hard, though, and by the time she’d finally figured it out, it was too late. She’d been in love.
“The article Christina wrote hadn’t even come out yet when a venture capitalist contacted me and offered to fund a company he wanted me to run. I didn’t tell him I didn’t have a clue about how venture capital worked—or about running a company. I later found out Christina had forwarded the story to him and had pitched me as the new best thing in technology. I was absolutely clueless. I was just blown away that they were interested in my idea and wanted to fund the development. So, with encouragement from Christina, I set up my firs
t company. Before I knew it, I had a group of developers working for me, and soon, we were taking off and Christina was head of our marketing department.”
Nora looked at 4B to make sure she was still listening. 4B nodded her head to keep Nora going.
“It was a pretty sweet ride. I had everything I thought I wanted. I was doing what I loved to do—writing code. I had a company that was growing faster than any other software company in its niche. We’d won almost all of the highest awards in the industry, which ensured the success of the company’s growth, and I was invited to sit on the boards for other technology companies. All that, and I was barely into my twenties! I couldn’t do anything wrong. My relationship with Christina was moving at the same rate, too, and about a year after we started dating, Christina and I went up to Whistler and had a quiet wedding. I even found time to attend grad school. I couldn’t have been happier.”
“It sounds like a storybook,” said 4B.
“It was. As long as the company was in high growth mode, everything was great. Innovation kept us light years ahead of our competition. All I had to do was conceive and create. It was fun and interesting. It got a bit challenging when competitors began to really go after us, though. I had no idea how cutthroat the software industry is. I still have a hard time believing it, yet I lived right in the middle of it. Soon, I was forced to hire a team of lawyers just to deal with all of the copyright infringement that was going on. It was ridiculous. As a developer, I would have given my stuff away just to see it get used—you know, open source coding in a utopian tech world—the dream of all starry-eyed code designers. But as the owner of a company, I had to protect the research and development investment we’d put into it. I had to pay my employees. But no matter what we did, we’d do all the research and development, and then another company would basically clone our work and slap their own logo on it as soon as they thought they could get away with it.
“But even that didn’t bug me. It was like playing a game of strategy. Sure it was annoying when customers would switch to one of the thieves who would throw together a cut-rate version at half the price. We always got the customer back, but it rankled me. It was when one of my own developers struck out on his own and started to use the software in ways that came close to abusing people’s basic privacy rights. That’s when some of the fun started to pale. If I could have just let it slide, I would have. But I had to protect the livelihood of all of the loyal people who worked for us and the innocent users of his application. I had to go after him, and it wasn’t pretty. It was public. I won, and he was blackballed from working in the industry. I was in the right, and any other CEO would have done the same thing, but it made me sick to my stomach. He was an incredible developer, and he was a nice guy—still is, really—but he let the money get to him.”
Nora remembered Christina’s steely insistence that Nora retaliate against Pascale for his disloyalty, and how many fights they had gotten into over how Nora should pursue it legally. Nora had wanted to deal with him personally, talk it out with him, convince him to stop using her code for bad things. And she had tried to talk to him, but he had denied using her code, which was a blatant lie. In the end, Nora had left it to her lawyer, who had gone for blood. They had won. When the trial had finished, Christina had taken Nora out to dinner to celebrate and had followed Nora into the posh women’s restroom of the steakhouse and fucked her in one of the two stalls. Women in pearls had used the toilet next to them and Nora got her first hint into what really drove Christina’s passions. Still Nora stuck it out. She didn’t go into any of that with 4B, though.
“I felt responsible, feeling I hadn’t been a good enough mentor for him, that I hadn’t been able to insulate him from the lure of advertisers who throw stacks of money at anyone who will get them personal data on a captive audience. Sometime around then, things stopped being fun. I kept going for a little while, hoping the fun would come back, but it didn’t. I decided to sell the company. I was really specific about what I wanted and I eventually found a buyer who was supportive of my intent to never use the software in ways violating my basic principles of upholding user privacy. They signed the contract to protect the intent, and then I quietly stepped down. I’m still on the board, which was part of the deal. This way, I can monitor the privacy principal, but now, all I do is figurehead stuff. I fly into Denver once a quarter, sit in the shareholders’ meetings, and fly out. So far, so good.”
“Wow. You’re amazing. I can’t even begin to understand how hard all of that must have been. Is this where the broken heart thing comes in? Is it why you moved up here?”
“Well, it turned out Christina was more in love with the prestige than she was with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shortly after I sold the business, things started getting a little tense at home. Christina wasn’t happy living the quieter lifestyle. I thought having the time to go on long vacations, to travel and just spend time together would be a great way to reinvigorate our relationship. I was dead wrong. I had no idea how much she thrived on the industry parties and black tie events we were always invited to. I tried to make up for it. I bought her things—houses, jewelry, art—thinking it might help, but it didn’t. She craved the limelight. She liked basking in the celebrity and all the things that come with it. That was the old me, though. I tried to go back to it for her, went to the industry events as a guest lecturer, attended the parties, rubbed the elbows. Ugh! But I hated it as much as she loved it.”
“It must have been hard for you.”
“It was. I tried, but I just wasn’t made to live the hype. I never sought the attention, it just sort of happened, and I was glad when I could step away from it. Then one day, I went to the old office to attend the quarterly board meeting, and she was there. At first, I thought she was hanging out with the folks we used to hang out with, trying to soak up some of the old energy. But then I realized she was being a little more attentive than normal to the new head of marketing, Tessa Hightower, one of the women who used to work for me. When we got home that night, I asked her about it and she came right out and told me she and Tessa had been seeing each other for several months. And that was it. She took all of her things and moved in with Tessa. The company, which had always been private when I had it, went public shortly after that, and Tessa and Christina got to ride that whirlwind. They’re still together, living the high life.”
“Oh, Nora. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I was too for a while. We divorced shortly after she moved in with Tessa.”
“Was the divorce rough?”
“Emotionally, yes, but as far as those things go, it was pretty amicable. She didn’t rake me over the coals, or anything like that. She’s not a vindictive person, just shallow—her words, not mine. Aside from the infidelity, she is very open about what motivates her. And, oddly, the money wasn’t her thing either. It was always the lifestyle and the prestige for her. She only wanted enough to keep her lifestyle going. Tessa gave her the lifestyle. All she asked of me was a modest settlement and the house in Aspen. I gave her half of everything, anyway. It was only fair. I still have more than I’ll ever need.”
“How long were you together?”
“Eight years, if you count the one before we got married.”
“Then you came up here?”
“Not immediately. That’s where the line of ladies thing came in,” said Nora with an embarrassed shrug. “If I thought I was out of control when I was in college, I was off the charts after the divorce. The pain of Christina’s cheating really did something to me. It was like I was trying to fill a void or something. I attended all of the kinds of parties I had despised going to before, and then some. I slept with more women than I could keep track of. Whatever it was I was looking for, I looked for in every bed I came across. I told myself it was casual, but it wasn’t. It was a quest. I was with a new woman almost every night. Sometimes more than one.” Nora snuck a glance at 4B to check her reaction. She noted a raised eyebrow
, but not the look of disgust she expected. “I was the queen of one-night stands. It was pretty pathetic. I was pretty pathetic, actually. Then, there was the drinking and recreational drugs. Not my thing at all, but you wouldn’t have known by watching me. After a while, everywhere I turned, I saw someone I had been with, reminders that I wasn’t finding whatever it was I was looking for. I fell into a deep depression. I had to leave.”
“And that’s when you came here.”
“I think Aunt Mace sensed I was floundering. She asked me to come up and stay with her temporarily to help her out with her business. I thought I’d be up here six months. It was supposed to be a way to check out for a while. Fours years later, I’m still here. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
“You seem happy here.”
“It took about a year-and-a-half, but I kicked the depression. I stopped missing Christina. I stopped feeling angry about everything. Now I’m happy. I have friends. I keep busy. I love Alaska. I might never leave now. It’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” said 4B, and kissed her.
Nora awoke to clear sunshine flowing like liquid crystal over the mountains surrounding Juneau and in through the wide window above her bed. She was home again. And 4B was curled against her side.
She wanted to lie there and relish the happy buzz cascading through her but it seemed her internal habit of waking at 6:00 AM was back on track and a restless energy urged her awake. Rather than disturb 4B, who was sleeping like a baby, she uncurled from around her, immediately missing the comfort of her arms, and slipped quietly out of bed.
The morning air was chill on her nude body as she paused to stretch and gaze through the ceiling-to-floor glass window overlooking the slow moving Glacier River, which ran just behind her house. The trees along it had started to turn and sunlight glinted from the water she could see between the branches. It was a sight of which she’d never get tired. She closed the blinds so 4B could sleep a little longer, and paused by the side of the bed to watch her. 4B hadn’t moved when Nora had risen, and she was still on her side, both hands tucked under her head. The crease that often appeared between her eyes when she was awake was smooth. Java, who had finally come out of hiding sometime during the night, was curled in the crook behind her knees.
Chasing Mercury Page 20
