I was born in Mesa, Arizona, but I had been living for years in Columbus, far from my old home. Times were getting tough, though, and I had to take a job in Surprise with a company called Field Consulting Group. I wasn't looking forward to going back to Arizona. There were events in my life that transpired there that I did not care to think much about. There were people that I did not care to meet again. But I had to find something to do, and Columbus had nothing else to offer me.
Moving was easy, as I packed up only what would fit in my car. I didn't need much. I rented a place in Tolleson. The owners of the property had turned their garage into two apartments, and I took the one on top. It was quiet and isolated, and suited me just fine.
I met up with Keating the night I arrived in town. He was one of the few people around that I cared to talk to, though I still didn't like him all that much. He worked for a hedge fund that had managed to weather the economic storm pretty well, or at least that's what he told me over the phone. We met up at a bar in Glendale, near where he lived.
"What did you do with that house of yours?" he asked me after we got through the usual pleasantries.
"I found a buyer, " I told him. "I did all right, in my estimation. You know, considering the market."
"You should have called me earlier, " Keating said. "I know a guy in Ohio. He could have found a better offer."
"You don't even know how much I got, " I said.
"Trust me, " Keating said. "This guy knows all the ins and outs. He would have made life easy for you."
"Well, I'm here now, and that's that, " I said.
Keating signalled the waitress for another drink. "So you're with Field Consulting now, " he then said.
"I start in a few days, " I told him.
"They're working with the J. D. Hayworth campaign, " he told me. "The radio guy running for Senator. Did you know that?"
"I didn't ask much about their clients, " I said.
"He's getting some people all worked up around here, " Keating told me. "You know, he's the upstart, or at least that's how he's trying to portray himself."
"I don't even know the name, " I said.
Keating paused for a moment. "We used to do some business with Field, believe it or not, " the then said. "We had a help desk set up for our clients. This was something that one of my partners thought would be a good idea. You know, to make our customers feel like they had a connection with us 24/7. Of course the help desk people couldn't do much for them. Any information they could provide was available online. But some of these old guys, you know, they don't like to do the grunt work themselves. They want a concierge to do their bidding for them. It's part of the fun of being rich, at least for them."
I finished off the beer in front of me. "I've never even been to Surprise, I don't think, " I said.
"It's like here, " Keating said. "Everywhere around here looks the same."
"So what happened to your help desk?" I asked.
"Well, the crazy thing is that once the market started going sour, our customers wanted us to cut corners, " Keating told me. "Here we are doing fine, you know, but they're still complaining. 'Trim the fat, ' they would say. They used that phrase all the time. But the thing is that they're calling us more than ever now to check up on things. So they call us more and more, but want us to axe the call center."
"It's no fun working with the public, " I said.
"But how do you avoid it?" Keating asked.
"I had a writing job in Columbus for a while, " I told him. "I was doing manuals for a software company that went out of business. What I mean is that they were a small outfit and they only had a handful of customers left. The place was limping along. But they kept coming out with new versions of their products for the client base that they did have. So I was updating the manuals for them. They were online at this point, of course. Nobody prints anything anymore. But I didn't have to deal with the clients themselves. That was the best part. But the place got bought out by another local company, and they gutted our office. It was probably for the best, anyway. If you're thinking of the bigger picture, I mean. This new outfit could do things a whole lot better than we could."
The bar was full with the after-work crowd. Some of the guys at the bar were getting louder and rowdier, laughing about stuff that only they understood. The volume of the music they were playing inside was slowly getting louder. I got myself another drink, and then another.
"They weren't bad, as far as I remember, " Keating told me. "The Field Consulting people, I mean. Maybe it's not the same people there anymore."
"They told me turnover was low, " I said. "That was one of their selling points."
"We had this guy Perkins that we always dealt with, " he told me. "He was the one that was setting up the office. You know, they had their agent that sold us on the deal. And then they turned us over to this Perkins fellow. Now he was a bit of a character. I can remember that now."
"I'm not expecting to like the people, " I said. "I just want to be able to tolerate the place."
"The thing about Perkins is that he wanted us to clarify everything, " Keating said. "I'm not saying this right. What I mean is that you would tell him something. Say that you would say, 'We'd like to have three staffers.' Because, you know, they want to know how many people you want on your call center staff. So say that you told him that you wanted three people. He would repeat that back to you. That was the thing. He would say, 'You want three staffers.' And he'd say it accusingly, as if you were making the biggest mistake of your life. I don't think that he meant to sound that way. But it would put you off-guard, you know? So you would say, 'Do you think that's a bad idea?' And you know what he would say in return? He'd say, 'You want three staffers.' Saying it like it's not even a question. And he's only repeating what you told him in the first place. We had so many conversations that went just like that one. It was crazy working with him. But we got everything set up all right, in the end."
We lingered for a couple of hours, drinking and talking about old times. Keating and I worked together for a couple of investment firms, years ago. We talked about the people we knew in those days, and wondered what happened to them. People disappear, you know? They vanish into thin air.
I took a walk after Keating and I parted ways. Glendale is not exactly a place you walk around. The sidewalks would disappear for long stretches, leaving you to stomp around on the front lawns of people's homes. I just needed to get some air.
I suddenly remembered a conversation I'd had with Chloe shortly before I'd left. I had my things packed, and she was getting ready to move out of our place as well. But we were both sitting in the middle of the floor of our living room, doing nothing. I don't know how we ended up that way. Probably both of us were tired of stuffing our belongings into boxes, and we didn't care that we were both taking a break within sight of one another. We hadn't spoken much for days. But there we were.
"There was one time when you went to Tucson, " she said to be, breaking the aching silence.
"I've been to Tucson a few times, " I told here.
"You and Keating both went, " she said. "This was a few years ago."
It took me a moment to remember what she was talking about. "There was a conference, " I finally said.
"That's what you told me, " she said.
"There was a conference, " I told her. "A bunch of horrible seminars given by guys who were just trying to sell us on their securities. Bit players."
"But I got a call from Keating in the middle of the night, " she said. "Did he ever tell you about this?"
"I don't know anything about this, " I said.
"He called me up, just like that, " Chloe said. "You know, how many times have Keating and I had an actual conversation? Maybe once or twice. But he calls me up and tells me that you're in big trouble."
"I wasn't in any trouble, " I said. "I told you. Boring seminars and a few drinks afterwards."
"That's the thing, though, " Chloe told me. "He said that he could see that you were in big trouble but that you didn't know it. He said that you were about ready to crack and had no idea."
"Keating did this, " I said.
"I told him that he was drunk, " Chloe said. "But he swore that he wasn't."
"Keating does strange things, " I said.
"He said that things weren't going to end well for you, " Chloe said. "He said that it was his job to predict the future. He said that both of you were paid to predict the future, but that he was better at it. And he told me that you were a bad bet. That's the term he used. 'A bad bet.'"
"Maybe he likes you, " I said. "You can call him after I leave and hook up."
Chloe picked up some trifling thing out of a box and threw it in my direction. "It wasn't anything like that. I could tell. He thought he was all smart, you know? The way that he acts when he thinks he knows better than you. He wanted to tell me so that I would know that he told me first, if and when it happened."
"So, was he right?" I asked Chloe. "Have I cracked? Is that why this is happening?"
"I don't think so, " said Chloe. "Definitely not. This is good. This is the best thing that we've ever done."
I was with the Symantec Corporation a few years back when they were thinking of launching a whole new product line. I came in while they were in the middle of this project, and my role was rather minor. And they ended up scrapping the whole thing anyway, so I suppose this story is not worth telling. But I feel compelled to get this down in writing, if only for my own benefit.
They put me in a department called "Pathway Development" and moved us all into a remote corner of their Mountain View headquarters. Symantec spends most of their resources on their Norton software, but there were a few executives that were pretty excited about this new idea they were working on.
I could hardly describe the project in its entirely if I tried. The thing is that I had not even been working at the company for long. I had been living in St. Louis for a number of years, but then things fell apart for me there. I can't even say how I ended up in the Bay Area. I had spent a year in school at San Jose State and still had connections to people I knew there, and one of them had set me up with the job at Symantec.
What can I tell you about St. Louis? Sarah and I had hated the place from the beginning. We'd moved into a bad neighborhood and taken bad jobs. So I suppose you can't blame the city.
I remember Sarah packing up her stuff in the living room a few days before we parted ways. It was hard, you know, figuring out what was yours and what belonged to the other person. I stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, watching her pick and choose items off the bookshelves and corner tables and other places where you put things in a place where you think you're going to live for a while. We barely lasted two years.
Sarah looked up and saw me in the doorway. It was nearly noon, but I had just woken up. "My mover is coming early, " she said. "They said they had to reschedule or else I wouldn't see my stuff for another couple of weeks."
"That doesn't make any sense, " I said.
"It's the way they work, " she told me. "They fill up the truck, and then they sent it off wherever it's supposed to go. They're going to move me and someone else."
"My company didn't say anything like that, " I told her.
"The point is that you'll have to call them and see if they can change times, " she said. "Otherwise we'll both be leaving at the same time."
"If I try that they'll probably try to threaten me with that two-week thing, " I said.
"I'm not saying you have to change, " Sarah said. "Only if you're able to."
"I still can't believe that you're going back to Buffalo, " I said.
"It's better than what you're doing, " she told me.
"I'm not moving back in with my parents, " I said. "Anything is better than that when you're our age. Ask anyone."
"I'm going back to school as well, " Sarah said. "So more points for me."
"Not necessarily, " I told her. "That could be construed as a desperate act."
"We can compare notes five years from now, " she said. "Give me some time."
We were beyond the point of being upset with one another. I watched Sarah work on her packing for the rest of the afternoon. We both left a week later.
It was Moreno who had set me up with the job at Symantec, and he was in charge of the Pathway Development team. I'd settled in to an apartment in San Mateo that was close to the 101, so he was nice enough to pick me up the first few days I was in town, before I had settled on a car. He told me right away about the new project. "Things are changing fast down there, " he said. "There is a lot of panic."
"They sell a product everyone wants, " I said.
"But that's all they do, " Moreno said. "That's the problem. And things are changing fast. They're selling steering wheels for Model Ts. That's how one of the guys there put it in the meeting."
"So I shouldn't expect much in the way of job security, " I said.
"Things are fine for now, " Moreno said. "They're thinking long-term. But when they think long-term, they panic."
Traffic was bad on the highway that morning. There was an accident in Redwood City that slowed everything down. "I'm already going to look bad, showing up late, " I said.
"Everyone takes the same way to work, " he told me. "Everyone is going to be late."
I'd done my interview over the phone, so I hadn't actually met anyone at the company until I arrived there that morning. Moreno was right. The place was still pretty empty by the time we got there. It made things easier when I was shaking hands with all these new people. What I mean is that we all had a conversation topic ready at hand. There was an older guy names Dawson who swore that the majority of accidents along the 101 occurred in Redwood City. "People there can't drive, apparently, " he said. "Or else something happens to outsiders when they pass through the place."
"Like the Bermuda Triangle, " I suggested. "Except that the cars crash into each other instead of disappearing.
Dawson was another member of the Pathway Development team. After I'd met a bunch of new people we both went to the break room so he could give me an overview of our work. "I'm sure Moreno has explained how important this is to the company, " he said.
"He expressed that rather clearly, " I said.
"The thing is that our group is only in charge of one small component of this thing, " he said. "What we do is try to figure out how end users navigate on their machines on an average work day. We're focused on that side of things for now. The consumer market we'll get into later. But that could turn out to be more important."
"So this is a research position, " I said.
"That's not quite accurate, " Dawson told me. "I'll ask you something. Do you think you know people well?"
"That's a tough question to answer, " I told him.
"But let's say that you saw me on the street and I was standing out on the sidewalk waiting for a ride, " he said. "Let's say that you can tell that I'm not in such a good mood. What do you think happened to me?"
"What time of day is it?" I asked him.
"Right, right, " Dawson said. "That's important information. We'll say it's late in the afternoon."
"So you weren't meeting someone for lunch, " I said. "That narrows things down a bit. Otherwise I might say you had a fight with your significant other. Or maybe a business lunch that didn't work out so well."
"You should ask me about the weather, " Dawson said. "That's important information as well. So let's say it's raining and I don't seem to care one way or the other."
"So you've received some pretty bad news, " I said. "And it's a strange time of day. So I'd say that you were doing something you didn't want anyone else to know about."
"That makes sense to me, " Dawson said.
"Maybe you were having an affair and broke things off, " I said. "Though maybe you wouldn't be so upset. Maybe you were looking for another job. You know, you met secretly with someone for a company you were looking to join. But they told you that they had no openings."
"That's not bad, " Dawson said. "Give me another idea."
I thought for a moment. "You made a bad investment, " I then said. "Maybe you put a lot of money into some kind of real estate deal that had gone sour. Maybe it was even a bit on the shady side. Someone told you that they knew someone at the city that could cut some corners and get you all the land for cheap. But that plan fell through. So now you have to put more money in or get out of the thing completely. But if you get out you're going to lose quite a bit of the money you put in."
"That's perfect, " Dawson said. "We can work with something like that. Because the thing is that we're trying to understand how our users would react to that sort of situation, you know? So what does this person do? Maybe he pulls out some kind of mobile device and checks the balance on his bank account. You know, he wants to see how much more he can put into this thing. Or maybe he calls his wife and confesses to the whole deal. He didn't tell her anything about it, but now he's can't contain himself anymore. He's a decent guy, you know, but he takes risks that he shouldn't. It's these sorts of people that we're trying to understand better."
That first day was a blur, and I had to wait until late for Moreno to give me a ride back. "So what did you think of Dawson?" he asked me as we left.
"He's intense, " I said.
"That's one way of putting it, " Moreno said. "He's good to have on the team. But he thinks in ways that the rest of us just don't understand sometimes."
"I'm still not sure exactly what kind of work I'll be doing, " I said. "I imagine that he was supposed to explain that to me."
"We'll work things out, " Moreno said. "Forget about Dawson. What I mean is, listen to what he has to say. He can be useful. But don't get too caught up in his stories. The work is pretty bland most of the time. I'll have to be honest with you."
"That's fine with me, " I said. "I'm looking for something bland right now."
"That Dawson, " Moreno said, shaking his head. "He's in the wrong line of work. That's what we all say. He's not on the same page as the rest of us."
"Then why was I talking to him today?" I said.
"The rest of us were busy, " Moreno told me. "They told me to pair you up with a member of the team. So we stuck you with Dawson. Sorry about that. But it was an important day. I couldn't spare anyone else."
It was dark by the time Moreno pulled up to my apartment. "I don't mind picking you up like this, " he told me. "But you need to get a car in a neighborhood like this. I'll be honest with you."
"I'll look into it on the weekend, " I said. "I need some time to adjust. You know, to just sit at home and get used to this."
"Whatever you say, " Moreno said.
"I can walk, as well, " I said. "I don't mind walking. If it takes me an hour to get to the grocery store, I can live with that for now. I can accept that. It's fine with me."
Last year I managed to get a contract writing job with a company called Zynga, which makes all those games people play online. I was still living in San Mateo so the commute up to their San Francisco office wasn't too bad. I was renting the same place I'd moved into when I first came to the area five years earlier. That wasn't exactly something I had anticipated at the time. But life works out that way sometimes.
The funny thing was that Lee had been working at Zynga for more than a year when I showed up. We had lost touch after things got bad with an old girlfriend of mine and friends were forced to pick sides. All of that was long in the past, though. We greeted each other like old friends when we ran into each other in a break room near where the writers worked.
"It's good to know they're hiring more writers, " Lee told me after we exchanged the usual pleasantries.
"I won't be here for long, " I said. "They have me working on some standards documents, and then I'll be gone."
"Maybe they'll find a permanent home for you after that, " Lee said. "We need more people doing that sort of thing around here. This place has exploded, but that means a lot of chaos."
"People keep telling me how great it is to work here, " I said. "That's been the common theme whenever someone introduces themselves."
"Well, you know, people say that even if it's not true, " Lee said.
"So are you going to give me a more honest appraisal?" I asked him.
"I'm happy enough here, " Lee told me. "Some of the senior managers they brought in to oversee product development, you know, they're a bit clueless. That's the way it always is. People who are too high up to be of any practical use."
"I've been trying to avoid office work, " I said. "I hope I can manage it this time around."
Lee leaned back in his chair and put his hand under his chin. "I remember you going on once about a town you visited. Somewhere in Germany, I think."
"I went to lots of places in Germany, " I said.
"This was when we were all together in some smoky bar downtown, " he said. "You know, you were there with Sarah and I don't even remember who I was with. Maybe this an area where you don't want to go."
"It's fine, " I said. "I don't even think about Sarah anymore."
"I hardly see her anymore myself, " Lee said. "She was thinking of moving to Los Angeles, you know. She kept going on and on about it. There was a job offer waiting for her there, or something. She never ended up going. But the thing is that she's sort of cut herself off from a lot of her friends here. I've talked about this with some other people. It's like she committed herself so much to the move that she has to pretend that she's there, which means cutting off communication with the people she knows over here. It's a strange theory, I know."
"It does make some sense, " I said. "If the job fell through. Maybe she wanted to start an entire new life. So when she couldn't leave, she had to improvise. Maybe she has a whole new group of people she hangs out with that you don't even know about."
"I suppose, " Lee said. "But I want to get back to this thing, because I'm starting to remember it better now. You were going on about documents and standards. I don't know what the name of the town was, though."
Suddenly I remember the conversation Lee was referring to. It took place shortly after I'd returned from a trip to Central Europe that had lasted a little over a month. Sarah had not come with me, and things were never really the same between us after that. Actually, I could probably designate that trip as the turning point in our relationship, if I were forced to do so. The thing is that I had some extra money and the trip was something I'd been planning for years, and I had to go. Sarah was working and couldn't get the time off. She told me to go and have a good time, but I know I should have stayed. If I had really wanted to commit myself to the relationship, I would have stayed. It's as simple as that.
"I think you're talking about Nördlingen, " I told Lee.
Lee thought about that for a moment. "If you say so, " he then said. "That might be right."
"That's where I got to see the town's old records, " I said. "I tried everywhere I went to get in to see that sort of thing. You know, everywhere I went I'd go to the town hall and I'd beg them to let me see their collections of old documents. But Nördlingen was the only place where my efforts met with success."
"You would know better than I would, obviously, " Lee said.
"It's a real mess of a place, " I told him. "Buildings with steep red roofs packed in tight but arranged seemingly at random. That's not to say that there weren't streets. There were, of course. But especially when you climbed up the church tower, it just looked like someone had scattered some seeds and these buildings had sprouted up wherever one had happened to land."
"You said a lot of this same stuff back then as well, I think, " Lee told me.
"It was an important part of my trip, " I said. "Probably the most important. But I wasn't expecting it to be."
"It's this standards thing that got me going about it, " Lee said. "Because that's what you're working on here, right?"
"It's a compilation of best practices for keeping a code repository of some sort, " I said. "Really, they've given me all the materials, and I just have to make it make sense. It won't take long."
"They've been trying to crack down on us for a while, " Lee said. "People squirreling files away on their own machines and that sort of thing. It'll never work, though."
"I just do the writing, " I said. "The enforcement is up to them."
"But that's what you were going on about with this town, right?" Lee said. "What was the name?"
I grabbed a napkin and took a pen out of my pocket. I wrote "Nördlingen" down on it for Lee to see. "It'll be easier to remember if you see it, " I said.
"I probably won't need to remember it after this conversation, " Lee said.
"Well, there it is, anyway, " I told him.
"So what's the connection, then?" Lee asked me. "Between this place and the work you're doing now?"
"I didn't imply that there was a connection, " I told him.
"But there is a connection, isn't there?" Lee said. "If I remember what you were going on about back then. It was documents with standards written all over them."
"They had their own weights and measures, " I said. "That's probably what I was talking about. They had volume after volume describing various weight and measures in exact detail. It was something they updated every year. They'd been doing it even before they could print it. But of course the books were printed after a certain point."
"Weights and measures, " Lee said.
"They kept their own, " I told him. "And it infuriated merchants from other towns. This was a source of great controversy, apparently. I saw court documents, as well. Stuff from back when the town ran by its own laws. There were cases when outsiders would come in and dispute the prices they were being offered for their goods. This went on and on for a long time. There was outside pressure to conform to certain standards used elsewhere. You know, their system was much more complicated than the usual thing. They divided standard weights up according to the item being weighed. So, for example, the weight of a piece of gold would be different from the weight of a piece of silver, even though they technically weighed the same. It's hard to explain."
"It doesn't even make sense, " Lee said. "Why be so complicated?"
"There were local customs that date back even further than the laws themselves, " I said. "That's where these things get messy. People have all these rules that they've been keeping in their heads and passing down from generation to generation, and then they try to codify it. So that's the way it was. If you gave them an ounce of gold, they told you that it was two ounces. If you gave them an ounce of silver, they told you it was three ounces. Of course they didn't use ounces. That's just to give you an idea of how this worked in practice."
Lee thought about that for a moment. "I guess it has nothing to do with what you're working on now at all, does it?" he then said.
"Not really, " I said. "I can see what you were trying to get at, though."
"Of course someone in the future might run into your little manual and not know what to make of it either, " Lee said. "Standards for maintaining a coding repository. Who knows if that will make any sense to anyone?"
"I doubt it will, " I said.
Except for that one conversation, I didn't talk to Lee all that much during my time at Zynga. As I said, we weren't great friends to begin with. It was just that we could go on about the right topic for a while, if the circumstances were right.
Zynga's now doing better than ever, from what people tell me. I haven't worked in the city in a while, though. My rent is cheap and it's not too hard to find odd jobs in San Mateo to keep me afloat. It would be nice to take another trip, I suppose. I think about that sometimes. Maybe if I'd done things a little differently, I could afford to take trips like that all the time.
I worked at Vitria for a few years before I had to take a break for medical reasons. I live in Santa Mateo and work part-time. It will be this way until I start to feel better. I keep my expenses low so I can get by.
As part of my work at Vitria, I wrote up customer testimonials about our products that went up on the company website. They weren't completely fictional. I did have to meet with clients and take notes and incorporate a few lines of what they said into my work. But I typically had to get quite inventive in order to produce an entire article. We also had to take pictures of the people I talked to and their offices. So the company hired a photographer to come along with me.
Mind you, these interviews could get rather bizarre. I remember once I had to go out to meet with the head of a company that made owned ATM machined throughout the Bay Area. They were a small outfit, and their machines were the kind you'd find tucked in the corner of some grubby gas station off the highway. But the marketing people were really eager to show off how out software could be used even with such chaotic and dynamic data streams. So off we went to their offices in San Mateo.
The CEO of the company was a fellow named Gunn who looked like the owner of a sleazy nightclub. His dress shirt had a few too many buttons open at the top and he had a pair of sunglasses tucked up over his forehead. He came out to meet us after we got out of my car. "I thought they were sending the sales guy back here, " he said as we shook hands.
"I do the writing for the site, " I told him.
"Good to hear, " Gunn said. "I couldn't stand that guy, to tell you the truth. I mean, I like your software. It's good, from what the tech people tell me. But you need a new sales staff. I'm telling you."
"That's not my decision to make, " I said.
"Pass that along though, will you?" Gunn said. "You're costing yourself sales with people like that. I'm telling you."
We went up to his office, which looked like you'd expect it to. Paint was peeling off of the walls. His desk looked like something you'd find thrown out on the side of the road. The outside the window was of the parking lot below. We sat down across from each other, while the photographer took a chair in the corner.
"I didn't really want to do this, you know, " Gunn told me.
"I didn't know that, " I told him.
"You have to understand that this is a competitive business, " he said. "It can get pretty nasty at times. We've had machines defaced by our competitors. Of course they won't come right out and say that. But we'll get a call from someplace where we have a machine and they'll tell us that someone came in with a hammer and went to town on the thing. But, you know, they're not looking to take any money. They just want to increase our maintenance costs."
"I guess you won't tell me if you've ever retaliated, " I said.
"We run a clean business here, " Gunn said, smiling.
"I assumed as much, " I said.
"The thing is that we don't want too much publicity, " Gunn said. "I know that this might sound counterintuitive. But if our competitors think that we're trying to seek the spotlight, we'll have a big bulls-eye sitting on top of us. Do you know what I mean? We all sort of keep a low profile. It's a gentlemen's agreement."
"This is more publicity for us than it is for you, " I said. "It'll go on our website and we'll show it to new clients. But it's not exactly something that's easy to find. It's not like putting up a billboard on the 101."
"Right, right, " Gunn said. "I don't even know why I'm in this business. I'm not sure how I ended up here."
"Things work out that way sometimes, " I said.
"It's like you wake up after ten years and you think, 'How did I get here?'" Gunn said.
"Well, how did you get into this business?" I asked him.
"I was in sales for a while for another company, " he said. "Then I got my MBA, and I came here and rose through the ranks."
"A typical story, I suppose, " I said.
"But that's just it, " Gunn said. "It's so terribly typical. I don't get it. What happened to me? Surely I must have been more ambitious when I was younger."
"We all we more ambitious when we were younger, " I said.
Gunn sat back in his chair and pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes. "What can you do, right?" he said. "I suppose I can't really complain."
"There are a lot of people who'd like to be doing what you're doing, " I told him.
"Is that really true?" Gunn asked me. "You're starting to sound like that sales guy you sent over here."
"I'm sorry that you didn't like him, " I said. "You should have said something. You know how these companies work. They would have fired the guy on the spot if you'd complained, and then they would have assembled a whole new team designed purely to meet your needs."
"I don't doubt it, " Gunn said. "But I just wanted to get the whole thing over with. You know, this fellow was telling me what a 'cutting-edge' business we were in over here. He kept using that term over and over. What is he even talking about? There were cash machines around when I was a kid. There's nothing cutting-edge about this business."
"They're taught to talk like that, " I said.
"I was in sales, and I never talked like that, " Gunn said.
"Maybe that's why you're not in sales anymore, " I said.
Gunn laughed at that. "There's something I want you to do for me, " he said. "I'm asking you to do this as a favour. I'm going to tell you what I would like you to write about us on your website. You don't actually have to use this. I'd just like to say it out loud, as if it were actually going to appear on the site. Does that make sense?"
"I'm not sure, " I said.
"Write down what I say, " Gunn said. "I don't care what you do later on. You can throw it all out for all I care. But let's pretend that this is actually going to appear on the website. Once I'm done, I'll give you some stuff you can use. But it won't be nearly as interesting."
I thought about Gunn's request for a moment. "I suppose I can do that, " I then said.
"Fantastic, " Gunn said. He then got up out of his chair and started pacing back around the room. "Write down every word, " he said.
"I know, " I told him.
Gunn then began to tell his story. "Bay Area Banking was founded in the nineteenth century during the Gold Rush years, " he said. "Its purpose then was to provide quick cash to prospectors in a safe environment. You have to understand how dangerous it was for folks in those days. The murder rate was even higher than it is now. Bay Area Banking opened up secure offices, with gunmen positioned around the perimeter of each site. A prospector could take his gold to one of our sites and he would receive cash on the spot. For a fee, we would even let him borrow one of our security men to lead him to a bank or other location where he could stash his cash."
Gunn paused for a moment before continuing. "During the postwar years, Bay Area Banking embraced the age of the computer, " he then said. "We were one of the first financial companies in the state to store our records on magnetic tape. In those days our company still specialized in the business of providing easy cash to its customers, though now those customers were coming in with checks and money orders instead of gold. Bay Area Banking even dabbled in the loan business for a while."
Gunn stopped for a moment to look out the window, and then he kept talking. "These days Bay Area banking is as the forefront of new security technologies, " he said. "We are involved in cutting-edge research that will soon render current cash machines obsolete. We are currently testing machines that use retinal scans and voiceprint technology, as well as high-end surveillance equipment to ensure the safety of our customers. We are also experimenting with live customer service via video streaming, so that you may talk to a Bay Area agent right from one of our machines. We strive to provide our current customers with the same peace of mind that made life so much easier for those who used our services in frontier times."
Gunn sat back down behind his desk when he was done. "Did you get all that?" he asked me.
"Pretty much, " I said. "But you know I can't use any of this."
"Of course not, " Gunn said. "It's a good story, though, isn't it?"
"I'm not sure if it really makes any sense, " I said. "If I'm being honest."
"Probably it would have been better if I had written it down, " Gunn said. "It didn't sound quite right when I said it. I think I forgot to say a few things."
"You can always send me a revised version later on, " I said.
"I can't do that, " Gunn said. "I had my one chance to get it right. I did the best I could."
Once we were done with that, Gunn told me a few other things about his company, and then we took all the pictures we needed. It was getting late, so I offered to drive the photographer back to his house in Fremont.
"That was a strange character, " the photographer said when we were back on the road.
"I don't think he's very happy, " I said.
"I'm not so sure, " the photographer said. "Don't let people like that fool you. I've seen his sort before. They like to pretend that they hate themselves. But the truth is that they like to project that image. You heard him with his story. He thinks he's so important."
"I thought it was kind of pathetic, " I said. "I'll give you that."
"It wasn't pathetic, " the photographer said. "He wants you to think he's pathetic. That's the kind of game those people play. They make you feel sorry for them. It's automatic to them."
"I guess you might be on to something, " I said.
"Of course I am, " the photographer said. "Listen to yourself. You were sucked right into his whole routine. You bought it all."
"Maybe I did, " I said.
"You have to be careful, " the photographer told me. "People like that are dangerous. They know what they're doing. They act like they're making things up as they go along. But they have a plan. They have everything mapped out."
I worked at Viewsonic for a couple of years. I took a writing assignment on contract, and then they hired me on for a few more contracts. After that I left. One of the problems was the commute. Viewsonic is all the way out in Walnut, and I was living in Northridge at the time. The commute was terrible, even by L.A. standards. But I wasn't about to move. I couldn't afford to move, and I seriously doubted that I could find any decent landlord that would take me, given me credit history.
I spent a lot of time out of the office. The technical writing people were in a pretty isolated corner of the building, and nobody really kept track of our comings and goings. Our manager at the time was also in charge of the help desk, and spent most of his time dealing with that department.
There was this Mexican place in La Habra that Owens knew about since he grew up in the area. A few of us would go off there sometimes and work on a project that Owens himself had come up with years before he even knew the rest of us. He had this notion that he could come up with a set of core concepts and elements that you could use to develop any sort of story that you could possibly imagine. That is to say, you could pick and choose from these basic building blocks and put them together you'd have a ready-made novel or screenplay or whatever it is that you wanted. It was an interesting idea, but one that was almost surely doomed to failure. But Owens believed that he could make it work.
Owens, however, only trusted me with the most important details of his plan. He explained his rationale to me once when we had gone off to lunch by ourselves. "I know that you don't have any interest in writing beyond the stuff we do at work, " he told me.
"How do you know that?" I asked him.
"I can tell, " he said. "The other guys, they're always working on something. They try to hide it. They keep windows open on their screen that they dash off to secretly when they think the rest of us aren't looking. You know what I mean. You don't do anything but work. Or else you sit there doing nothing when you're not working."
"That doesn't mean that I haven't given the idea some thought, " I said. "You know, maybe I'd do one of those novels that's really an autobiography."
Owens laughed at that. "Listen to yourself, " he said. "Now I know for sure that I can trust you. 'Maybe I'll do a novel'. You talk about it like someone thinking about going skydiving. You have no idea."
I didn't want to argue with Owens. The fact is that I liked the fact that I knew more about his project than anyone else. Even if I didn't understand the whole thing, I was struck by his ambition. I remember once when we were talking about geography. This was a big topic for him, so this was one of those times when it was only the two of us talking again.
"So how do you like Viewsonic?" he asked me. This was after I'd been with the company for about a year.
"It's better than a lot of places I've worked at, " I told him. "Though I haven't worked much lately. The drive is terrible, though."
"You have to move closer, " he said. "It's ridiculous how far you come."
"I made a lot of mistakes back a few years ago, " I told him. "More than a few years ago. I don't like talking about it. But, you know, you get into money problems and they haunt you for the rest of your life."
"You'll dig yourself out, " Owens said.
"I'm not so sure, " I told him.
Owens pulled a notebook out of his briefcase. "I've been working on places, " he said. "You know, they have to be granular. Discrete units. Like a lake."
"We're talking terrain here, " I said.
"You build a story out of setting, " he said. "That's the key to everything. Say that the two of us were at a fancy French restaurant in Pasadena. We're having this exact same discussion. But the whole atmosphere has changed, right? It doesn't make much sense anymore."
"So a French restaurant in Pasadena, " I said. "That's one example of a setting."
"That's too specific for my purposes, " he said. "Remember, these are atomic units I'm looking for here. And besides, I want to work on geography today, not physical buildings."
"So a canyon, " I said. "That would be an example of what you're looking for."
Owens thought about that one for a moment. "It doesn't make sense, " he said. "Who sets a story in a canyon? I'm thinking of great sweeping prairieland. You know, that's the sort of setting you put a good story in."
"An old fishing village, " I said. "I know you don't want buildings. But a small harbour in the northeast where settlers would have gone in the seventeenth century."
"That's good, " Owens said, writing something down. "I'm making some rather impossible distinctions here, though, aren't I? Stories are about people. I can't just focus on the terrain. People live in homes in towns and cities."
"A forgotten suburb just outside of a major city, " I said. "You know, the richer people have moved on to nicer places. Or else they've bought into one of the new condo towers going up downtown. The fringe of the city if the place nobody wants to live."
Owens wrote quickly. "This is great, " he said. "I'm glad we worked this out. We should stay for the whole afternoon."
We didn't return to work that day, as it turned out. Once Owens was happy we parted ways and I drove all the way back to Northridge. There were two police cars parked outside my building when I got there. I parked in back and then went around to see what was going on.
Keyes was among the crowd of folks milling around out there. He and I had known each other for years, though I can't say that we were exactly close friends. He was the one who pulled some strings to get me my place, though, and I could never figure out how to repay him for that.
Keyes spotted me as I approached the scene, and came over so we could talk away from everyone else. "I thought maybe you were holed up in your place, " he said.
"I'm a bit later than usual today, " I said. "What's going on?"
"It's that family that moved in on the second floor, " he said.
"I don't know them, " I said.
"People have been complaining about them from day one, " Keyes said. "Yelling at each other at two in the morning, with the baby crying and everything. The woman came out with the baby a while back, then went back inside. They're all in there now, with the police."
"So who called them?" I asked.
"Nobody here, " he said. "We're guessing it was the wife."
"I have no idea who these people are, " I said.
"You should be more social, " he said. "It's good for you. You come and go from work and nobody sees you."
"So how did she look?" I asked.
"She'd been crying, but that's all anyone could see, " Keyes said. "Who knows. These things play out the same way all the time. The police will keep coming back. So you better get used to this. The problem will never get solved. But eventually they'll move. You know, they'll have another kid."
Back at Viewsonic the next morning, Owens came to my workstation as soon as he saw me come in. "Good session yesterday, " he said.
"I didn't realize that we were calling them 'sessions', " I said.
"I have whole scenarios in my mind now, " he said. "You know, I think I'm getting this concept down right now. You pick a town or a city. You pick a part of a city. You choose an alleyway, or a motel that nobody goes to anymore. It's that simple."
"I think this might be a bit more complex than you think, " I said. "I have to be honest here. I didn't think we resolved anything yesterday. I still don't quite understand what you're trying to do. I mean, I understand it conceptually. But practically it doesn't seem to come together well."
"I know what you're thinking, " Owens said. "That I've got myself so far into this that I can't admit to myself that it won't work. But the thing is that it's just the opposite. I've had so many ups and downs with this thing that I know for sure that yesterday we had a breakthrough moment. I know enough from past experience."
"I guess I can't argue with you, then, " I said.
"We're going back there today, " he said. "We need to get this down right."
"I really have to finish up something for the editing people, " I said.
"Finish it up this morning, " he said. "We have to go."
You know, I lost touch with Owens after I left Viewsonic. The company offered me another contract, but Owens was really starting to unnerve me with the passion he had for his little project. I couldn't stay. I had my debts to work out any my own life to put back together. I had come a long way. I think Owens was bit unhinged and I couldn't stand to be around him any longer. It's as simple as that.
