Page 94 of Brooklynaire

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Nothing else goes right,however.

The meetings come thick and fast. I’m tired of analyzing this transaction, but I can’t just dump the work on others, because there are 126 Kattenberger Tech employees whose jobs are on the line. I owe it to them to make the rightdecision.

Alex is still talking to me only via vague text and through her investment banking team. So I can’t even discuss it with herproperly.

On Wednesday morning I get a call from Stew. “Hey, you got asecond?”

“Sure. But aren’t I meeting with you in fifteenminutes?”

He laughs. “Yeah, but not about this. This is a closed-doorconversation.”

“Uh-oh.” I get up and close my office door. “What’s theproblem?”

“I got a call from this kid Mickey down in the AI researchdivision.”

“You did? Why?” Stewie is our CFO and doesn’t usually muck around with research. Mickey is the one who’s working on the Bingleyproduct.

“He and I play squash on Thursdays. His backhand makes me feel like an old geezer. Anyway, he knows you and I are close, and he wanted my advice aboutsomething.”

“Okay—what?”

Stew laughs again, and I’m starting to wonder what’s so funny. “Well, think about it. He studies the audio files from your module at home. And suddenly they’re fullof…”

“Oh,fuck.”

“Exactly.” Stew busts a gut on the other end of theline.

For a smart guy, I can do some pretty stupid shit. I’d completely forgotten that other people heard my interactions with Bingley. He talks to me and Mrs. Gray and the kids down in AI listen to the interactions to figure out how well the moduleresponds.

Rebecca would die of embarrassment if she heard about this. And probably castrate me,too.

“I hope you told him to delete thosefiles?”

“Yup. And then I told him to set it up so that you need to okay each day’s interactions. You’re going to get an email every morning. If you push a button in that email to send him the files, he’ll hear them. If you delete the email, the files stayprivate.”

“Okay,” I sigh. “Thanks for handlingit.”

“You’re welcome!” He snickers. “Notice I’m not judging you for theircontent.”

“That’s because you didn’t hear them. I did some of my best work thisweek.”

“Congratulations. Can I assume that the beneficiary of your efforts is a certain Bruisers employee? Or did you take your ambitionselsewhere?”

“No. It’s her. No need to lecture me,though.”

“Do you hear a lecture? However you two worked it out, I’m sure you made HRproud.”

“They wouldn’t be wildly excited about the whole thing. But it was herdecision.”

“Hey—I don’t have any doubt.” Stew clears his throat. “I hope this sticks, man. You deserve someone who can put up with your dorkyass.”

“It’s no dorkier than yours,” Iargue.

“A nut for a jar of tuna,” he replies, and it actually takes me a second to realize it’s a palindrome. “I’m happy for you. When’s thewedding?”

I snort. “Baby steps. First I have to convince her that the world won’t end if other people know we’retogether.”