Minnie Chase Makes a Mistake (26 page)

Her throat ached, a painful reminder every time she swallowed. She slumped forward and rested her head on her knees feeling desperately lost and lonely. She was suddenly all too aware that she was on the other side of the world, separated by time and distance from Angie and from her family. She was tempted to lie back down in the hope that she might fall into a hundred-year sleep and be spared all further thoughts of Levchin and Greene. Minnie could suddenly feel herself slipping and this frightened the life out of her. She immediately leapt out of bed and darted across the carpet to her bathroom where she splashed ice-cold water over her face. 

She wrapped her arms tightly across her chest and stood at her window staring out onto the quiet street. The occasional car zipped along taking advantage of a congestion-free route home. Minnie knew she was too wide awake to go back to sleep but it was far too early to consider going out for breakfast or coffee. On the other hand, the thought of sitting in her motel room surfing through TV channels with canned laughter for company didn’t hold much appeal. Now that she was awake the endless shufflings of Insomnia Man from upstairs were beginning to intrude too. So she had no other option but to go out, she would rather walk out of the darkness into first light than wait around for the rest of the world to wake up. She also needed to clear her head before she set about booking the next available flight home. The early-morning temperature was warm enough for walking but Minnie grabbed a sweater because she wanted to find a peaceful place to sit looking out over the ocean. The early-morning air would be cooler there. 

She gave in to a tourist moment and made a beeline towards the Golden Gate Bridge. She had no idea of the best route to take on foot but she was confident it would be impossible to miss the landmark in the distance. She deliberately didn’t use her phone to navigate – she wasn’t interested in taking the quickest route; she would get there eventually. Minutes and Minnie’s echoing footsteps slipped by and then she gasped in awe. There was a full moon above the bridge and it illuminated the bridge’s impressive steel arms and cables as they stretched across the water, dominating the skyline. Minnie continued walking until she ended up wandering past the breakwaters on the way to the historic Fort Point at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. She realised she was far too early to walk over the bridge, so she settled for an underside view of it instead as she headed down onto the beach. It was a low tide. Streaks of dawn pink were starting to push through the dark blue sky, softening the colour of the bridge as well as the surrounding Bay Area and the Fort itself but Minnie felt no warmth from its glow.

Suddenly exhausted, she dropped down onto the sand, thankful she had brought a sweater. She pulled it tightly around her and tried to bury herself deep into the soft cashmere wool. She didn’t look around her. She wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the beautiful early morning scene or the magnificent structure that towered above and away from her. Whenever she lifted her head, all she could hear was the sea moving around like a watchful monster not far from her feet. It was getting easier to focus in the pinkish dark while the fading light of the moon picked up the swirls of greys and blacks in the leaden waves rolling onto the shore. 

Tears threatened. This was starting to become a familiar feeling. One she didn’t like. So Minnie pressed her fingers into her eyes until it hurt. There was a creaking sensation inside her chest, as though years of frozen tears were starting to shift. Her own personal ice cap melting, creating a shift in her interior landscape, a first in Minnie’s world. Tears wouldn’t make a difference now or ever, she told herself furiously. She pressed harder, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.

Tears poured out as though to make room for more. Then sobs started to catch in her throat. Quiet and shallow sobs at first, then growing into silent, cataclysmic gulps. They burst from her mouth making her ribs ache, her shoulders heaved and her diaphragm contracted spasmodically. She tried biting down on her lips, she tried clasping her arms around her knees but she couldn’t stop and within seconds was howling uncontrollably. Suddenly, it seemed easier to give in to an emotional outpouring than put up a fight – she didn’t have it in her any more. 

Minnie broke down noisily and cried for James George and all the other wrongs that she couldn’t, for the life of her, make right. In Minnie’s mind it was an embarrassing admission of failure and she cried louder – a noise that even seemed to scare off insensitive marauding gulls. Slowly, Minnie’s breathless sobs subsided leaving her throat dry and her chest tight. Her eyes were burning as she looked out across the water once more. She was so relieved that there was no one to witness her final disintegration into a hopeless emotional wreck.  

Minnie sat still now, watching the last wisps of blue turning to pale pink. Then, from the shadows of the rocks behind her, a voice said: ‘Sit tight, there’s gonna be a sunrise soon.’

Minnie screamed and leapt to her feet, immediately losing her balance on some large, flat stones that had been made slippery with a slick of algae. Her feet skidded, her arms flailed wildly and she keeled over backwards landing hard on her bottom – back where she had started moments ago. The hard landing proved to be an effective way to stop the sobs. She sat in stunned silence for a second.

‘Hey… hey…’ said the voice, ‘it’s okay. I’m sorry. I’m not going to hurt you.’

Minnie swivelled around and squinted into the pink light. She saw a thirtysomething man sitting on a stack of stones not far from her. It was hard to believe that she had missed him when she first walked down onto the beach.

‘How long have you been sitting there?’ Minnie demanded to know.

‘Long enough,’ replied the man. He sounded too exhausted to kill her and Minnie was reassured by this. 

‘You should have let me know you were there,’ she said, feeling a mixture of anger and embarrassment. 

‘It was an awkward moment.’

‘It was a
private
moment.’ 

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Minnie, feeling less threatened now. Even she could outrun a tired man.

There was a small, awkward pause. ‘I’m just counting grains of sand,’ said the man. ‘Did you know that for every grain of sand on all the beaches on earth there are a billion stars in the universe?’

Minnie smiled and did her own quick calculation that involved far too many zeros for her liking. ‘Actually, I think it’s too close to call.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘You were
not
counting grains of sand,’ said Minnie, shaking her head.

‘No, I guess I wasn’t. 

‘I never cry,’ said Minnie, a touch defensively.

‘That’s what I thought,’ came the reply. ‘I’m sitting here listening to a woman breaking her heart and I thought, this is a woman who
never
cries.’ His voice had a gentle teasing tone that Minnie didn’t miss.

‘No, seriously, I’m not a crier,’ Minnie insisted.

‘It’s okay. If you’d been here 20 minutes earlier you would have heard me at it, too.’

‘Really?’ asked Minnie. She didn’t like to feel better at the expense of someone else but it did help to hear that she wasn’t the only person on the planet who felt they were a lost cause. She asked cautiously, ‘Why exactly
are
you here?’ 

‘Black clouds and no silver linings. You’d think there would be
something
I could learn from failure.’

‘Start-up business?’

‘How did you guess? I started up and got nowhere – the modern curse of a software developer.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ 

The man stretched out his hand and said, ‘Bob Dotti. Pleased to meet you.’ He didn’t stand up, he seemed to be taking care not to move around too much in case this frightened Minnie. This meant she had to shuffle nearer him in order to shake his hand. ‘Minnie Chase,’ she said. 

She noticed that he was nursing a wine bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag. He followed her gaze and said, ‘I don’t usually drink but it seems to smooth the edges when you’re feeling rough. Do you want some?’

‘I don’t drink much either,’ said Minnie, reaching for the bottle. ‘But occasionally exceptional circumstances call for large measures.’ She took a glug without a cautionary wipe around the neck of the bottle. 

‘I think this is dessert wine,’ she spluttered, wiping her mouth. 

‘It’s horrible, isn’t it?’

‘Completely,’ said Minnie taking another large swig. She handed it back to Bob Dotti who took another drink too.

‘I’ve lost everything – job, home, family. Pretty much in that order,’ Dotti explained. ‘I just can’t take another failure. It’s like my head and my heart has seized up. I’ve no passion or drive to push me on. While others get lucky with investors, I keep ending up back at the start, like some fucking bad board game.’

Minnie listened intently as the stranger on the rocks began to explain further. ‘I had all the ideas, the propositions, the proposals. I knew all the big players. I was at the Game of Thrones party at Zuckerberg’s house when the Instagram deal was happening outside on the patio. That’s just it – I was inside while the action was happening through the patio door. It’s like I’m always about six feet from a billion-dollar sign on the dotted line. I’m forever working on the “other” project: the one where all the investors pull out at the last minute. It’s like I don’t have the instinct to nail down success. I’ve ended up in the digital graveyard.’

Dotti shook his head, lost in thought. Then he remembered Minnie. ‘So what happened to you?’

Minnie sighed and sipped some more dessert wine, pulling a face. ‘I met someone who lived in a bubble. I came along and burst his bubble.’

‘I’m guessing he wasn’t too happy about that?’

‘That’s about right. He is, he was, the ultimate Silicon Valley fairy tale. I’m the wicked witch.’

Dotti said, ‘You don’t look very wicked.’

Minnie shrugged despondently. 

‘Do you have kids?’ asked Dotti, changing the subject.

Minnie shook her head. ‘I can barely look after myself. You?’

‘Two – a boy and a girl.’ There was a pause as his thoughts turned to his children. ‘I’ve let them down. It’s the worst feeling in the world. Kids don’t know how this stuff works. To them, I’m a hero, a saviour and a saint no matter what I do. It doesn’t seem to matter to them when I fail to live up to the hype.’

‘Losing out on a deal doesn’t make you a bad father,’ reasoned Minnie.

‘It doesn’t put a roof over their heads either. Children need financial security.’

‘Children need love.’

Dotti looked over at Minnie. ‘Did Bubble Man break your heart?’

‘No. Someone else did.’ And then Minnie found herself baring her soul like Dotti had done moments earlier. She relived the night when she caught James George in bed with someone else. ‘I remember everything,’ she explained, ‘in grotesque frame-by-frame footage, like an epic zombie movie. I have a photographic memory, which is a
terrible
affliction for someone who inadvertently witnessed her husband-to-be having sex with someone else.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Dotti, shaking his head sympathetically.

‘Do you have somewhere to go?’ asked Minnie, suddenly not wishing to think about James George – at times like this it was just too raw and painful. She forced her mind onto practical thoughts such as what did Dotti do about Internet connections, buttered toast and freshly boiled water for tea now that he had been cast adrift from the family home.

‘I have good friends,’ Dotti reassured her. ‘But even loyal friends need their own space. I’ll head back to someone’s sofa soon when the world leaves for work. In the meantime, this is as good a place as any to think.’

‘I’ve done enough thinking to last me a lifetime,’ said Minnie, as she scanned the horizon.

‘I write songs, too. I’m actually a pretty good singer,’ said Dotti, smiling, lightening the mood. He picked up a piece of gnarled driftwood and cradled it as one would an expensive guitar. He sang:

My wife ran out of patience, 

Yeah she ran out on me,

Found someone else to pay the school fees.

Told her I would beg, steal or borrow

To end all this sorrow…

But there just wasn’t enough

Love left over for me…

But there just wasn’t enough

Love left over for me…

Minnie giggled, feeling a little tipsy from the sugary alcohol, as she continued to stare out to sea. She joined in: ‘But there just wasn’t enough love left over for me…’

She stopped singing and leaned back on her elbows, looking up at pinkish sky that now had dark raspberry streaks in places; a strikingly colourful interruption before the sun crept over the horizon. She looked over to Bob Dotti and asked, ‘Can I talk to you about an algorithm that very specifically integrates a chemistry formula?’ 

Bob grinned and put down his driftwood. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

The sun came up.

Minnie and Bob Dotti discussed the complexities and brilliance of one particular algorithm. It took them almost an hour to go over matrices. Dotti used a stick to draw equations on the sand. He brought valuable engineering insight to the concept while Minnie went over and over the maths. 

‘Divide and conquer to solve the problem,’ said Minnie.

‘You solved it on your own,’ said Dotti. ‘I just helped you to believe that you could do it – and it was very elegantly done, may I add.’

‘You really helped.’

‘I just added a few bells and whistles. You did it all.’

‘It was one small component in a larger operation,’ Minnie explained hastily. She didn’t add that she had never done anything elegant in her life, ever.

‘Ah, but a crucial component. I can’t see how you could build an efficient matrix package without it. Are we talking about a production method here?’

Minnie nodded.

‘Energy provision?’