Harper's Rules (20 page)

“On the phone with him. We had a date, I called you three times, and you couldn't call me back, but his call you can take?”

Harper whistled out loud. “Seriously? You don't get this yet? You are only going to make it worse until you accept that this day, the whole day, is about the cat.”

Peter looked at me. I shrugged, then nodded. Harper nodded. If Starbucks were awake, I'm sure she would have nodded.

Nobody said anything for what felt like forever. Then Peter got up and started for his car. He opened the door, then closed it and made a beeline back to me. He got down in a baseball catcher's crouch. His eyes were glassy.

“It's just that I want to be the guy who finds her for you. That's what I want.”

“Now see,” Harper said, pointing his keyless remote at his Porsche, a chirping followed by lights flashing and doors unlocking from one hundred feet away, “that wasn't so hard.”

I handed Starbucks to Peter and told him to take her inside. I caught up with Harper just as he got to his car.

“Harper, you've been good to me, but today was next-level. I don't know what I would've done.”

“You would have found her. I just facilitated.”

“You never asked me the question you said you should have asked a long time ago.”

He looked behind me in the general direction of the house and just shook his head. He got in his car and drove off.

Back inside, Peter was mixing newspaper with kindling in the fireplace. He kept his back to me as I sat on the couch.

“So that was Harper, huh? He's in good shape . . . for his age.”

I laughed.

“You mad at me for coming over when you told me not to?”

“Yep.”

“You need to know I'm going to lobby really hard to stay tonight.”

“I know.”

I smiled, lay back, and stared at the antique white mosaic ceiling tiles Donald and I had paid far too much for, and felt something unemployed and lonely people seldom get to feel: I felt safe.

A Trade Show (in Theory): A place a group of vendors congregate during an industry conference to brand themselves and sell to a target audience.

A Trade Show (in Reality): A place where candidates find jobs under the cover of education and networking.

Harper burst my bubble of safety Monday morning. He told me we were focused on getting the InterAnnex offer, but we could take nothing for granted. I still had to go to the Mobile Media Show at Lincoln Center, and I still had the TradeHarbor interview on Wednesday, the day before I was scheduled to meet with Wallace and his board members. I asked Harper why I needed to go to a trade show when I had two interviews—one a final— already scheduled.

“You need the practice. You've been out of the game. You need to dial into the energy, reacquaint yourself with the technology. Half of the companies from last year's show are out of business. You don't even have a damn iPhone. Don't tell me you know what's going on. Besides,” Harper added, a sly lilt in his voice, “it will be a good test for you.”

“And exactly what are we testing?”

“You'll see. And did you happen to notice who was in Booth #173 at the show, and if so, why haven't you complimented me on my nuanced plotting and economy of energy?”

Harper had sent me the layout of the exhibition hall, but I hadn't looked at it yet. It turned out TradeHarbor, the very company I was set to meet with, was exhibiting.

“And I happen to know that Mark Porter, the guy you are going to be interviewing with, will be at the booth. You get it?”

Sure I do. I introduce myself after visiting the booths near his, let him take a look at me engaging with the competition, gathering intel, looking fabulous and dialed-in, and with a little luck and showmanship, he gets the message that I have other job options, thereby increasing my leverage. Nicely played, Harper.

“Will InterAnnex be there?”

“No, they are keeping everything on lockdown until the buyout. But listen, trade shows are invaluable.”

“So, why aren't you going?” I asked.

“Oh, I wouldn't be caught dead at one of those things. I'm not wandering around all day having pointless conversations.”

The thing I miss most about the phones I grew up with is that there is nothing satisfying about hanging up on someone now. They just think they lost the signal. But I did it anyway.

As I drove down the West Side Highway, I had to confess I was excited to be back in business clothes and going to a tradeshow. Here are the rules: First, you drive in. Trade shows last all day; you want to be able to leave when you want. Second, comfortable shoes. Whoever said there is no such thing as dress flats never worked a trade show. Third, tons of extra business cards. You will run out after giving them to losers and then the one contact that has promise will write you off as unprofessional because you can't give him/her a card.

Maybe the practice
will
help my interviews because I'm oddly nervous, even though I am one of 3,500 attendees and technically don't have to actually do anything but schmooze. But I could feel I was getting closer to being back in the game. I missed it. As I got near the entrance, I removed my show pass and hung my badge around my neck as though it were an everyday necklace.

Within an hour of walking the aisles, I realized Harper, had he deigned to grace us with his presence, could have had another chapter.

Trade shows are like clubs: If you are alone and don't know anyone, you stand there with a phony smile frozen on your face, trying to reassure everyone that you picked this particular spot on the open floor to stand. You are not alone or lost, you are calibrating when and if you want to give up this extraordinary piece of commercial carpet. You can only fake this for so long and then you have to 1) check your cell for messages, 2) go to the bar, or 3) talk to someone.

A former colleague of mine, Dean, in any social circumstance, would say, “How you doing?” knowing it would get asked in return; his reply was always, “Living the dream.” It was flawless; it made everyone smile, whether they took it literally and thought he was fresh off the fire walk at a Tony Robbins seminar or realized he meant it ironically.

I got some coffee, chose the paper cup option so I could go mobile, and strode up to the TradeHarbor booth. I told Mark Porter I recognized him from his website and that I was looking forward to the conversation Harper Scott had arranged for us. Then, before he could react, I made a beeline for the next booth. For a full thirty seconds, I was the only registrant out on the actual exhibit floor. By the time I got to the end of the first row, I looked behind me and here came the sheep, their courage now bucked up by my intrepid journey. It gave me hope that what I originally thought, lying in my
bed as a teenager, still might be true: I was different—special somehow. All the ensuing evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, this morning I felt that I might still be proven right. In any event, I got this party started.

Within an hour, I had my game back. I knew just by hearing a few paragraphs of their pitch if a company was underfunded—stay away from them. I also could tell by asking some direct questions who was here to position themselves to be sold. Consolidation was what it was all about for some of these companies: they didn't want to get big; they wanted to get bought so they could get big on someone else's dime.

An hour later I stopped at a kiosk to see the day's event schedule. Standing right beside me was a young man on his cell whom I'm sure was in his late twenties but probably got carded routinely. He had managed to read my name badge without me catching him staring at my chest. “How are you, Ms. Matthews?”

“Living the dream,” I said.

“You know,” he started, as he began to walk with me without asking if he could, “I have a friend who says these things are like the dating scene.”

My God, I thought. Is your friend named Harper? “I'm Marty Rankin, by the way.”

He held out his badge as if to prove he was giving me the correct name. It read “Silver Patron” on the lower right hand corner of the badge. That meant he was not an attendee, but either a paying sponsor of some portion of the show or some other sort of honored guest or dignitary. He motioned to a table and pulled out a chair for me. His phone buzzed and he turned away to take the call. I speed-dialed Harper.

“Quick. Marty Rankin. What do you know?”

“Uh, what do you want to know? He owns a company called CallShare. He invented a piece of hardware that attaches to your phone and enables you to record the call as an email file. Eliminates standard phone monitoring equipment. He's a wunderkind, like twenty-four or something. I think CallShare was last valued at 300 million and Google is rumored to want them to incorporate it into the Google Voice suite, which means they'll be worth three times that. Why?”

“I'm having coffee with him right now.”

“Why would he be at that show? That's not his market space!”

“Don't know.”

“Casey, he's Spielberg! He's Gates messing with Windows; he's Bezos not being able to find a parking spot at the bookstore! He's ducked my calls a hundred times, and I wish he was a client. If he has a job in your world, you forget about me and Wallace and you take it. You hear me?”

I hear you, Harper. Thank you, and damn you for not letting me keep my illusion that you don't really care.

Marty sat back down, apologized for the interruption, poured the entire contents of four packages of Sweet‘N Low into his coffee, and smiled at me.

“I'm in a love coma,” he said.

“Beg pardon?”

“I met a girl in Thousand Oaks where I live about eight months ago. Now I have a hard time focusing on business, let alone anyone else. Sorry.”

“If you're in a love coma and you don't want to be harassed about business, why does a guy who owns a hardware-dependent company like CallShare show up at a mobile media show?”

“I'm the keynote speaker tomorrow.”

“Oh, well, that's cool.”

“No,” he shook his head like a Labrador come ashore, “I'm scared to death. Twelve hundred attendees, and I've never done a group bigger than our office staff before. So I figure if I make some friends and buy some coffee, I'll have at least a few people who won't boo or heckle.”

“You picked the wrong girl. If you sucked, I would boo and heckle. I don't applaud for coffee.”

“How about breakfast?”

“For pancakes I'm a seal. I clap and spin a ball on my nose.”

The pressure and the whole façade faded quickly once Marty told me flat-out he had a great sales team, and that he was trying to find his next CFO. He didn't have a job for me, which meant we could actually talk. No sexual pull making things complicated. A wonder boy is still a boy. He was utterly gangly, the geek not yet indoctrinated into the real world of adults, but among them all the same. So instead, with the games over, we had a real conversation.

I asked him how a love coma felt. I told him my situation. I said I was in the early stages of dating a great guy, but that I hadn't had any other serious relationships after my marriage. I said I had an interview coming up with a great CEO, but I still felt unsettled. I wanted to be in love, too. What was it like?

Before he could answer, my phone went off, but it was Peter, and part of our new post-coital covenant was that I would take his calls. We made small talk, and I was reminded that it doesn't take long being alone to miss the comfort of being a couple.

And then he blew it.

“So,” he said casually, as if he were asking me about the weekend weather, “I'm thinking after you get your job this week, you need to break it off with Harper Scott.”

“What did you just say to me?”

“Don't get sore,” Peter said timidly. “Why would you need him once you have the job, right?”

“Where is this coming from? What has randomly brought this on?”

“It's not random. I just . . . look, I'm going to come clean because I want us to be able to talk about this stuff. I went through your phone during the night, I saw the amount of text messages and emails and how far back they went, and I just . . .”

If Marty were not there, I think it's pretty fair to say I would have smashed the phone on the café floor. Instead, I neatly touched the red
END CALL
icon, gathered myself, and smiled at Marty.

“Early-Stage Dating Guy?” he asked.

“Right. Well, we clearly aren't in a coma, which is good because I would unplug him.”

I was suddenly both furious and embarrassed that in the middle of the night, after we had strenuous-but-get-over-yourself-not-so-great-sex, Peter told me his version of the restraining order story. He was leaving, the fight was over, she threw his softball gear into the driveway, a ball rolled out of the bag toward him, he threw it against the brick edifice, it caught a corner and caromed sideways. Her face split, blood flowed, paramedics . . . restraining order. He was so, so sorry. And I believed every word when I should have been thinking, “He's got a bag of softballs with my name on them!”

“Let's change the subject, Marty.”

A few minutes later we were saying goodbye. People walking by probably thought I was helping some intern. He would no doubt never know this kind of anonymity again, and I wondered how he would survive the next few years and the burden of absurdist wealth. When I tried to wish him well on his speech, he shrugged and asked about my interview. When I explained, his face widened.

“Wallace Avery? Oh that's too cool; he's an icon. I took a class from him.”

Ooh! Information I might be able to use on my interview! My expression invited him to go on.

“It was a weekend gig in Cambridge, a symposium called ‘Technology Startup Myths.' He blew us away. Two twelve-hour days and he had the most energy in the room.”