Convince Me

by Nina Sadowsky

  A grin transformed his face; those bright eyes sparkled in the dusk. “Let’s go talk it over, Will. Just say yes.”

  Justin and I talked all night. He opened up about what he’d been working on since arriving back in L.A., a subject on which he had been previously quite mysterious.

  Justin told me that in his last job he’d resolved a problem with a key piece of coding for a software company he’d been working for in Silicon Valley. He wasn’t even on the tech side; he was in finance, but he took a look one day when the engineers were stumped and worked it out. The head of the company credited Justin with turning their fortunes around and he got a huge bonus. Then he quit, determined to forge his own path. He came away with the respect of Warren Sax, his former boss, who was now poised to become the majority investor in Justin’s company.

  Justin had all the elements lined up for the launch of a virtual reality company. Sax would back the R&D and initial launch, proprietary technology developed by a leader in the field, a business plan including marketing he claimed would revolutionize this burgeoning aspect of entertainment.

  As a longtime gamer, I was more than intrigued, I was dumbstruck. And even more so by Justin’s offer to not only put me on salary, but also give me a sweat-equity financial stake in the company.

  “I owe you and I trust you,” he said simply when I protested he was being overly generous.

  I gave notice the next morning.

  Looking around the Pickford now, I spot a few of our employees. Sunil and his wife, Jahnvi, cluster with Parker and his boyfriend, Curtis. Faroud chats up Annie’s friends Bella and Felicia, while socially awkward Dylan, our “resident genius,” as Justin always called him, hangs on the edges, trying to insert himself into the conversation.

  I am responsible for these people. They trust me. I’m not sure I can make this company survive without Justin by my side. My “plan” to be my own boss seems naïve and foolish now.

  Panic wraps its steel grip around my heart. My forehead is suddenly damp with sweat. I mop my brow with a cocktail napkin. Take a sip of my drink.

  More people filter into the bar. A few gather around Justin’s photograph. Annie stares glassily ahead. The tone is hushed and somber; more alcohol is needed to loosen tongues and lighten moods.

  A few murmured words to Molly and she’s in action, taking drink orders and getting them filled. She tries hard, Molly.

  I decide I can’t think about her right now.

  A couple I vaguely recognize comes over to offer condolences to Annie. She composes her face politely. They correctly assume I’m Justin’s business partner. They tell me to take good care of Annie. They drift away, their relief at having the painful moment out of the way evident on both their faces.

  I remember who they are. The CEO of the company where Annie works, Vern Fellowes, and his second wife. Under other circumstances I would have loved to have talked to him. I’m fascinated with how his company, MediFutur, is using VR tech to train physicians and surgeons. Today I’m not sure I could hold up my end of the conversation, so it’s just as well they moved on.

  A little while later, I notice the wife has taken off her blazer and unbuttoned the top three buttons on her silk blouse. She slips one nylon-clad foot free from a black satin pump and runs it up her husband’s leg. Funerals make people horny. I’ve seen it before. Maybe it’s the desire to reaffirm life in the most primal way. Maybe it’s the booze.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CAROL

  Justin became my world. I didn’t make a conscious decision about it, but once it was just the two of us, it seemed the only natural path.

  I had friends, of course, but I didn’t socialize much and I certainly didn’t date. My boy had already lost so many people, the last thing I wanted was to bring anyone transient into his life.

  I did sneak off on the occasional night out when he had a sleepover at a friend’s house. I’d go into the city and pick up some guy in town on business, sleep with him in his hotel, and then disappear back to Long Island. I became a different woman on those occasions, using made-up names and stories; one time I was “Corinne from Calabasas,” another time “Carla from Cleveland,” a third, “Cara from Clearwater, Kansas.”

  I liked the alliteration, and keeping the names close to Carol helped me keep my lies straight.

  I ached for the physical release, longed for the touch of a man’s hands on my body, desperately wanted to be held. But more than that, I needed to disappear into someone else for a few hours. In these encounters, I wasn’t Carol, a tragic figure around whom loved ones seemed to die with terrifying force and frequency. I wasn’t the single mother of a son I felt ill equipped to raise on my own.

  Sometimes I laughed out loud thinking about how the people in my office or at Justin’s school would react if they saw me, smoky eyed and predatory, prowling around an anonymous hotel bar. On these excursions, I looked different, felt different, was different, and I returned home a little more able to cope. I’m only human, after all.

  Mostly though, I embraced my role. I gave my child love and stability. He would know that the dangerous world also had safe harbors. I would never miss an opportunity to tell him, “I love you.”

  He was a good son in return. He was smart and did well in school. He charmed students and teachers alike. Other moms complained about slamming doors, eye rolls, and talking back, but Justin didn’t give me any of that grief. Ever since that day in the car after his last school fight, we had operated as a team.

  I riffle through memories. Justin’s election to middle school student council on a platform of “less homework, better cafeteria food,” the two of us laughing and joking as we inked signs onto oaktag. How as captain, he led the debate team to statewide championships, with me cheering in the stands. The time he knew he could trust me when a kid was sick from drinking. After I got the kid cleaned up and safely home, Justin informed me, “I told them you’d be cool. I knew it. I knew you’d just say yes.” I couldn’t help but feel a thrill of pride at his faith in me.

  The week he turned fourteen, Justin surpassed me in height. He was absurdly delighted by this milestone, which in turn delighted me. A few weeks later I caught him inspecting his bare chest in the bathroom mirror and realized he was searching for hairs.

  My boy was turning into a man, right before my eyes. I was gripped with a poignant sense of loss that surprised me. Surely this was what I wanted, my boy to grow up, become a man, and have a full life. The kind of long, rich expanse of existence denied to so many in our family.

  But my identity was now firmly rooted in the role of Justin’s mother. I was other things, of course—a real estate agent, a friend, a committee member, occasionally a recklessly wanton stranger—but my role as his mother defined me. Everything else was carved around that. He was the shiny object around which my world revolved. What would happen to me when that focus and structure evaporated?

  There I was, mourning the loss of his childhood. That seems shallow now in retrospect as here I am, once again, Carol the tragic figure.

  Yet another very pretty girl comes over to me to offer her condolences. I sometimes wonder how Annie stood it, Justin’s magnetic pull on people. People flocked to him, not just women, but certainly he never lacked in that department. From an early age, he was a charmer.

  If I’m no longer Justin’s mother, who am I?

  I have no idea.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ANNIE

  Justin and I grew closer, our lives more enmeshed. We spent tons of time with Will and whichever woman he was currently dating. We formed a new crowd of regulars, mostly people that worked at Convincer and MediFutur. Our friends blended, but they also didn’t. As some friends fell away and other friendships shifted, I reassured myself these kinds of changes were totally normal for a new couple setting out to conquer the world together. Justin liked the idea of a “
synergy” between our careers. I liked it too; I felt like we were a power couple in our expanding circle.

  And I was dizzy and dazed with love. I wondered how his genes would mesh with mine, what our babies would look like.

  That final night in New York had ended without a proposal. After we put his mother in a car to take her home, Justin and I walked through the thrumming streets of Manhattan, arms linked. We got back to our hotel, nuzzled and fumbled our way into drunken sex, and passed out.

  The next morning, I harbored a twinge of wistful disappointment, but Justin was so damn pleased with how the whole visit had gone that I tucked it away, rationalizing that a proposal after a date with his mother was hardly the romantic ideal anyway.

  Also, we’d not even been together four months. I was surprised by my own blinding focus on a proposal and marriage, and told myself to cool my jets. Everything was going perfectly; there was absolutely no reason for me to get needy about locking it down.

  Nonetheless, the mental gymnastics I indulged in after we got back from New York are embarrassing to remember. I tried to balance open receptivity with a policy of no expectations, but I felt compelled to relentlessly parse Justin’s every text and all of our verbal conversations. I became fixated on potential hidden meanings, and focused on minute fluctuations in his behavior. I didn’t dare confess this lunacy to even my closest friends. I knew it was nutty, but I couldn’t stop.

  I went to work, saw Justin, socialized with friends, even poured some of my angst into a short story. But it was as if I was surrounded by a magnetic field of obsession that buzzed continuously even while I was seemingly going about my ordinary life.

  obsession [əbˈ-se-shen]

  noun, compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by feelings of anxiety

  Bella called me on it one day out of the blue. I was always particularly careful how I talked about Justin around her, since even if she kept her mouth shut, a roll of the eyes or a shrug could reveal her ambivalence about him. But one Thursday when we met up for a girls’ night out, she lit into me almost as soon as we ordered our first cocktail. I was “absent even when I was present,” and “completely losing myself in my relationship.” She was right, of course, but I defended myself and him.

  She backed off. I apologized if I’d left her feeling abandoned of late. We ordered another round and some food and parted with our usual hug at the end of the night.

  I reasoned that while Bella was right about how wrapped up in Justin I was, she was also a little jealous: solidly single, and her last few dates had been disasters. This was just the inevitable kind of shift that occurred in friendships as people coupled up.

  One Saturday night near the end of the summer, Justin took me to a restaurant/bar perched on the rooftop of a DTLA hotel. He secured our drinks and found us a spot to lean on against the wall circling the western edge of the bar.

  The sun hung big and orange, smoldering its way down to the horizon. Signage reared large, advertising tequila, soda, and fast food, set against a cityscape of mixed architecture: classic deco; rehabbed factories; striking, shiny new columns of glass and steel.

  I glanced down over the wall. It was almost five feet high, but the drop to the empty lot below was sheer and straight, and I felt a little queasy. A glass dropped over its edge would shatter explosively. I lifted my drink away from its resting place on the edge and when I spotted a pair of barstools opening up on the other side of the roof, I nabbed them.

  The cocktails were strong, the crowd around us boisterous. We were having a great time, laughing with strangers, a usual night out with Justin. When Bella showed up, I was a little tipsy and I thought it was a happy coincidence. But then I saw Will threading through the crowd with some of the other guys from their office. Next I spotted Felicia and her sister. Then my work wife, Hayley Hayter, along with a few other friends from my office. Then my mom and stepfather. My heart began to thud wildly.

  This was just like Justin. An element of surprise. The assemblage of all the people he and I loved best in the world. When I saw Carol arrive, I knew. Tonight was the night. My face went hot. Justin cupped my jaw in the palm of his hand and whispered, “I love you, Annie O’ My Heart.”

  He spun away and with a wave of his hand, the sound system blaring alt-rock cut out. A gong chimed, pure and true, its resonance shimmering in the hot evening air. The crowd assembled on the rooftop drew silent.

  I found Bella’s eyes and she grinned at me, raising her mojito in a toast.

  Justin began to speak. “Now that I have your attention, friends and soon-to-be friends, let me explain. Standing with us mere mortals on this rooftop is a goddess. A woman I was lucky enough to rescue from a car crash, never knowing that she would be the one to crash my heart wide open.”

  He had everyone’s attention. Why not? He was gorgeous, magnetic, magic. I couldn’t believe I was the focus of this public display of affection by this beautiful man. My face went hot. I sipped at my spicy, fruity drink. My mother patted me on the back.

  Justin leapt up on a low glass cocktail table as a startled couple swept their glasses out of his way with good-natured laughs.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Carol pop a pill from a prescription vial.

  “Annie Elizabeth Hendrix,” Justin intoned, “will you do me the extraordinary honor of becoming my wife?”

  The moment I had been dreaming of for so long, here at last. I savored it, taking a breath and letting my eyes scan the crowd around me. Friends, family, and strangers all beamed at me, silently urging me to proclaim my acceptance.

  “What? Is that a hesitation?” Justin exclaimed. “Don’t break my heart!”

  The crowd gasped as Justin sprung from the cocktail table and up onto the ledge of the wall overlooking that sheer drop to the vacant lot below. My stomach lurched.

  “Get down from there, you idiot!” I shouted. “Of course I’ll marry you.”

  “That’s a relief.” Justin grinned at me. “Will, my friend, the ring, please.”

  Will tossed Justin a small black velvet box. I watched what happened next as if it occurred in slow motion. The box sailed past Justin’s outstretched hand and over the edge of the wall. Everyone gasped.

  Some dude in a muscle tee guffawed. “Good aim, asshole.”

  Justin shrugged. “Better get that,” he announced, before springing off the wall and plummeting over the edge. More gasps! A couple of screams split the air, one of them possibly my own.

  Momentarily frozen to the spot, I watched Justin disappear from view. Then my muscles woke and I raced across the width of the rooftop, knocking people and cocktails ruthlessly out of my path.

  This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. The refrain pounded like a drumbeat in my brain.

  Heart thudding in my chest, I peered over the edge expecting to see Justin’s broken remains.

  My eyes adjusted. I blinked. Justin stood erect on the base of an inflatable slide, completely unharmed. He flipped over the huge piece of cardboard he was holding as soon as he caught my eye. It read:

  JUST SAY YES

  Justin couldn’t propose in an ordinary way. Of course not! No quiet dinner for two with a ring concealed in the chocolate mousse, or a sunset beachside sinking to one knee. The proposal he delivered was epic, totally Justin. Adrenaline skyrocketed through my system, a result of shock, joy, excitement, and hope. I was furious and relieved. But mainly ecstatic, so I tamped down the tiny tendrils of trepidation that gnawed at me.

  Would I love the unpredictability of being married to this man? Or would it leave me perpetually on edge and shaken?

  The party on the rooftop afterward raged into the early hours. The ring was perfect, an antique I had admired in a jewelry shop in Brentwood weeks before. We danced and hugged and cried, friends and strangers ali
ke.

  I couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy. Life with Justin would always be an adventure, and even though I was a little afraid of that, I resolutely decided it was exactly what I needed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WILL

  We were living like rock stars. No, that’s a lie. We were living lean and pouring all of our time and energy into building our company. But we felt like rock stars.

  Our office was in Venice, close to the beach and the boardwalk, located in the former home of a gone-bust company that sold ridiculously expensive organic baby clothes (a fact I discerned upon discovering a discarded box of rompers, or whatever those one-piece things that babies wear are called, each one tagged for $285 retail). For fuck’s sake, they were each the size of a handkerchief.

  The walls of the office were painted pale pink and powder blue (very old-school gender normative), and the wall-to-wall carpet was a cheerful but impractical pale yellow. Justin negotiated a reduced rent in return for not insisting the landlord repaint. We were so busy we stopped noticing pretty quickly.

  We converted one half of the floor into a design and test lab; the other side was creative development, marketing and sales, finance and accounting. We added employees every day, gearing up for the launch of our first product, a virtual reality system offering haptic technology superior to anything on the market.

  In layman’s terms, we were building a system that allowed the user to touch and interact with avatars and objects within the virtual reality experience in an unparalleled way.

  Gamers would be able to heft swords, smash vases, shake hands with characters (maybe even kiss them, although that was a subject of a fierce office-wide debate on the ethics of AI interaction), all relying on proprietary technology that promised the user unprecedented realism within their virtual reality.