appropriate appeal, when entire hearings would be held on the Internet and the lawyer would never have to leave his office (except, I suppose, to jetpack home to have sex with his robot girlfriend in his cryogenic sleeping portal).
That's how it happened that, in April 1998, I accepted a request to speak at the first annual 'Spokane Technology Symposium' with various civic leaders, elected officials, and local entrepreneurs (always shy about such things, Eli had given them my name when they tried to recruit him for the symposium). The whole endeavor smacked of desperation, as the local leaders tried to spark the kind of twelfth-hour high-tech boom that had transformed Seattle and Portland – and much of the rest of the country – but passed Spokane by like a long-haul trucker on bennies.
The symposium was held in the conference room of an airport hotel. We sat at round tables as waiters brought us fingers of chicken left over from some canceled flight, and a salad that consisted of cottage cheese and Jell-O. At each table sat a member of the city government and several representatives of the technology elite of Spokane.
At my table was a frowning, buzz-cut retired air force corpsman who had recently been elected to the city council and who wanted to make sure the library computers weren't being used to access porn; a junior high school student with razor-wire braces who won a computer science contest by using his laptop to graph local marijuana prices; the furtive founder of a local keyboard manufacturing company that was in the process of moving to Belize; and the manager of one especially cutting-edge firm called Jocko's Soft Tacos: 'We just got a new computer for our drive-thru window that has cut in half the number of Mexi-Bobs that we throw away.'
I also spoke to the mayor, a nice older gentleman who had retired from 'the carpet industry, myself,' and who ran for office because he was tired of gardening with his wife all day. He admitted that he was catching hell for failing to bring technology companies to Spokane, and for allowing sharp minds such as mine to escape.
'My kids like the computers,' he said. 'Me, I wouldn't know how to turn the goddamn thing on if you put my hand on the crank.' He struggled to frame the problem, using his fingers to put quote marks around every eighth word. His opponent in the upcoming election claimed that to 'attract' certain kinds of industry, cities must offer 'incentives' to help convince entrepreneurs that a certain 'atmosphere' existed.
That's true, I said. Tax incentives, growth districts, infrastructure – there were things a city could do to attract technology companies.
'And how long does it take, all of that?'
'Well… it can take years,' I said.
'Yeah,' he said. 'That's no good. I only got three months.'
I suppose that's when it first dawned on me that my newfound success connected at some point with my old dream – that I could be a kind of visionary figure, a political candidate for the twenty-first century. It would be more than a year before I would do anything about this vision, though, and even that day, I got drunk and didn't give any more thought to my political career. And beyond that flash of inspiration, I suppose Spokane's first technology symposium isn't very important to the core of my confession – except for one other detail.
After dinner (barbecued ribs and coleslaw) and several drinks, I staggered to the elevator fairly drunk – and not quite alone. That night, in a small room on the fourth floor of a hotel built into the hillside over my old hometown – the lights of Spokane sparkling below us like a lake of stars – I had sex for the first time with Dana Brett.
2
It was unbelievable to me that Dana could've fallen in love with such a sneaky, coldhearted, lying bastard as Michael Langford. She seemed oblivious to his manipulation of her, his cheating of clients, his double-dealing with colleagues and competitors. She also seemed oblivious to his intense dislike of me. Oh, when we were around other people, Michael was friendly, but when it was just the two of us he berated me, called me a fraud, and taunted me with the fact that he had married the only woman I have ever loved.
'Hello, Mason,' he would say when I answered the phone. 'Who are you bilking today?' When I would say something he disagreed with, he'd say, 'Mason, are you looking through your bad eye again?' When he didn't return my calls right away, he'd say, 'Sorry I didn't get right back to you, Mason. I was nailing my wife.'
Michael's company was called Techubator. (He and his partners thought it was a clever name for a tech company incubator; I always thought it sounded like a machine to help jack the fatty.) I only got involved with Techubator in the first place to spend time with Dana, and with Michael's constant disdain and vicious barbs it was the only reason I stayed as long as I did. But as I got deeper into the business, Dana's role kept decreasing. Then, in early 1998, she left the firm entirely to devote herself to creating Web sites for nonprofit agencies.
I was frantic. I tried to dissuade her through e-mails and phone calls, but she was adamant that it was time to move on. On her last day I flew down to Techubator headquarters in San Jose for her going-away party, and when the cake was gone and the chino-wearing staff had wandered back to their cubicles, I saw Dana sneak outside the office and found her on a park bench on a sidewalk in the business park.
She said the pace had gotten to her. 'We're running on a treadmill. We never get anywhere. We start these companies and then move on to the next one before we know what happens. It's like giving birth and never getting to see the babies grow up.'
'We had three IPO's in the last six months, Dana,' I said. 'We have three more in the works. How much bigger do the babies have to get?'
She had grown her hair longer; it was brown and straight, and she pushed it back out of those cinnamon eyes. 'I don't mean financially, Clark,' she said. 'All of the things that were supposed to happen… the transformation of our economy and our culture. What happened to all of that?'
'My economy's been transformed,' I said.
She ignored me. 'Besides, it'll be easier on me personally.'
I perked up, put my hand on hers. 'Things tough at home?'
She looked up. 'No,' she said, not convincingly. 'I just think it's not good for a couple to live together and work together. And frankly, I'm sort of bored, Clark. I need a new challenge. I need something more.'
In the time I'd spent at Techubator, Dana was always friendly toward me but she'd maintained a slight reserve. And yet, at meetings, I'd feel her eyes on me and I'd know she was thinking the same thing I was – that we'd somehow missed each other in the crash and whorl of our lives.
That's what I felt sitting on that bench. With the words 'something more' hanging in the air, I looked into her eyes. She didn't look away. The space between us seemed charged. Dana's mouth opened slightly.
'Dana-' I began.
'There you are,' said Michael, an edge in his voice.
We both looked up from the park bench.
Michael came into the courtyard, bent down and kissed her full on the mouth, then rested his hand on her neck and looked down at me. 'We're so glad you could come, Clark,' he said. 'Did Dana tell you all about our plans?'
I said yes, and how impressed I was with her nonprofit Web site plans. Before coming to work for them, I reminded them, I'd done quite a bit of charity work myself.
'Oh, right. In Portugal,' Michael said evenly, nearly masking his sarcasm. 'Did she tell you the best part? In a year or so, we're going to start having kids.'
'No, she didn't mention that part.'
'Or two years,' Dana said.
Michael squeezed her shoulders. 'I can't wait.'
A few weeks later I left Techubator and accepted a job with the Seattle law firm. I still remained involved with some of the companies funded through Michael's venture capital contacts, and we were both still shareholders of Empire – which was chewing up seed money with no hope of having a real game in the near future – but I knew I couldn't stand to have any more regular dealings with Michael Langford.
For four months I could think of no excuse to call Dana. But I found myself thinking about her every day, and I
