“It’s gotten competitive out there if Pauline’s retaining the military,” I say.
“Actually, we’re retaining her.” He reaches into the inside breast pocket of his suit and pulls out a worn brown wallet, stuffed thickly. From it he extracts a business card and hands it to me. It reads: Chuck Taylor. Defense Investment Corp.
Another venture capitalist, one of the high-risk investors who troll the region’s labs, campuses and garages for fresh ideas and entrepreneurs to back. He belongs to the breed’s military subset. For decades, the military has invested in myriad Silicon Valley technologies that have few or speculative military applications. Sometimes with spectacular returns. Witness the birth of the Internet.
“You’re investing in Medblog?” I ask. I’ve known Pauline has been looking for funding.
“I thought she’d disclosed it already. I saw something brief in the
“The help are the last to know.” Unless this deal’s a big one, I don’t know that Pauline would tell me about it, particularly in light of our choppy communications the last few weeks.
“When I get involved with a new company, I like to stop by unannounced,” Chuck says. “Polly usually works late. She’s got that quality we venture capitalists love in entrepreneurs in that she will work nonstop until she keels over from exhaustion.”
He glances at her computer, where the password screen remains.
He pulls out his phone. “Under natural law, she’s not allowed to ignore the calls of an investor.”
He dials. The phone goes to voice mail. He shrugs. We stand in silence, which I finally interrupt.
“What’s Uncle Sam’s interest in Medblog?”
He smiles; he’s gotten this question a million times.
“You want the canned answer?”
I shrug. Why not?
“We need to be a real-time army. We need the best and latest information and we need to disseminate it quickly. The site could help us develop better ways to distribute up-to-date medical information to troops — perhaps over mobile devices.”
“That is canned.”
“To be honest, I’d also love to see the site make money. I don’t want to be totally passive here. I want higher traffic, more eyeballs.”
The Bay Area vernacular; our currency is attention span.
“Get me some scoops, would ya?” he continues, trying to sound friendly. “I like your writing a lot, but your posts can be snarky. Not just yours, y’know, but the whole nature of blogging. I know that it’s fast-twitch and all that. But there’s a place for serious journalism to change some of the ugliness in this world.”
I feel my defenses rise and want to say: Will do. Just as soon as bloggers get paid enough to write the stories that take time and resources.
He’s touched a nerve. I left medicine to write about things that interested me and that mattered. I do that a lot less than I’d like. I suppose that’s because the journalism economy has come undone, banished to unprofitability by the Internet and awaiting rebirth — and because I’m no longer sure what matters. Anyhow, all news will soon be delivered solely through rapid-fire twitter feeds from seven-year-olds using their native emoticons.
I smile thinly and nod.
“Let me know if you need sources,” he says. He explains he has powerful friends in various industries and military branches if I need help with a story.
We’ve reached the end of our obvious common ground. We fall silent. The light tension is broken by the shuffling of feet and heavy breathing.
Pauline enters at high speed. She carries a bottle of wine and two glasses. When she sees us, she comes to an abrupt stop, caught off guard by our presence, or our pairing.
It’s the first time I can recall seeing Pauline this disheveled.
In an instant, she straightens and smiles.
“Why if it isn’t the two most important men in my life.”
Like Chuck, she is overdressed for a dot-com ghetto. Her fearless designer T-shirt looks like one of those paintings where the artist got drunk and threw colors against the canvas. The shirt, like her knee-high skirt, fits snugly against her form. Her hair sprays out of its ponytail and her brow glistens with perspiration.
“The chief executive materializes,” he says.
She winces. “The CEO just turned her ankle.”
She’s wearing low heels with straps that clasp around her ankles.
“Did you jog here?” Chuck asks.
“I move as quickly as possible under all circumstances.”
“Nat tells me you two plan to have a drink,” Chuck says.
It strikes me that, from his perspective, all has returned to normal.
She looks at me. “Did you bring the snacks?”
“I failed you miserably.”
“Then you can reschedule,” Chuck says. He looks at Pauline. “Could you spare a few minutes to talk about… that one issue?”
She walks to the desk. She sets down the wine bottle and glasses. She tucks a few loose strands of hair behind her right ear. She smoothes her T-shirt.
“Boring financial stuff,” she says to me. “Rain check?”
“Sure.”
I feel Chuck’s eyes and look up to see him studying us.
“Don’t forget your file,” Pauline says to me. She reaches across me, leans over the keyboard and pulls the drive from the computer. It seems like she’s being deliberately nonchalant about the drive, making sure to send no message at all to G.I. Chuck that it bears any significance. She hands it to me, and for an instant, I feel her arm brush mine.
“Any luck with it?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Call me later if you want to brainstorm. I’m sure the secret is somewhere inside that complicated head of yours.”
She looks at Chuck and says: “One of the best bloggers in the business.”
She smiles and clears her throat. “Call me later,” she reiterates. For an instant, she looks unusually vulnerable, like she did when she wobbled in.
My cue to go.
I grab my backpack, walk out and down the hallway, and take two steps outside, then pause. The air is still but crisp, high clouds obscuring the stars, conditions portending rain. I smell something irresistible like french fries and then realize that’s exactly what I’m detecting. It’s coming from a man sitting cross-legged on a nearby park bench under a streetlight, eating from a McDonald’s bag, reading something intently on his phone. E-mail and McDonald’s, two of modernity’s most powerful lures. If they can somehow combine the concepts into a wireless french fry — wi-fry? — or maybe one that can be delivered wirelessly, we’ll all die within a few years on our couches, obese and blissful.
I walk back inside and poke my head back into the office. Pauline looks up and smiles but I quickly shift my eyes to the venture capitalist.
“Chuck? May I have a quick word?”
“Sure.” Then looks at Pauline. “Back in a sec.”
He follows me outside.
“You want a raise? I don’t even own the place yet?”
He wants to buy us, me. “You said that you’d be willing to lend a hand if I needed help on a story.”
“Go on.”
I’m thinking about the shooting and the phone call. Can I get help from Chuck, who professes to have friends in high places?
“Someone keeps calling me from a private number. I’d love to figure out who it is.”
