The Backup Plan

Chapter 6: The Signed Copy

The restaurant was on the ninth floor of a hotel downtown, and you had to reserve it three weeks out.

Norah found that out in the elevator. She read the little brass plaque by the buttons and then looked at me.

"Three weeks?"

"Yeah."

"You made this reservation three weeks ago."

"Uh-huh. The day after they came back with the second number."

She didn't say anything for a second. Then she looked at the doors and said, "You hoped."

"Yeah."

"I know. You told me last night."

She didn't say anything else until we were seated. The host pulled her chair out and she sat down and picked up the menu and opened it, and I watched her eyes go down the right side of the page, where the prices were.

"Ethan."

"Mm."

"Forty dollars for a chicken."

"It's a good chicken."

"It's a chicken."

She turned the page. The fries were fourteen dollars. She read that twice.

"You know we have fries at home. In the freezer. The crinkle ones."

"I know."

"Nine dollars' worth of crinkle fries."

I took the menu out of her hands and set it on the table and put the manila envelope down in front of her instead.

She looked at it. She looked at me.

"What's that."

"Open it."

She opened it. It was the copy Petra had made for me, the one with the tabbed sections and the sticky note on the first page in Petra's handwriting that said SIGNED COPY — DO NOT LOSE THIS, which was Petra's idea of a joke.

She turned the cover page. She turned the next one. She read like she read at work, fast and thorough, her finger moving down the margin.

Then she got to the notary's page, the one with the stamps and the countersignatures, and she went back and read the number twice against the last page and the cover.

"This is the signed one," she said.

"It's the signed one."

"Not just the PDF Petra sent."

"No."

She closed the folder. She opened it again. She looked at the number again, like it might have changed while she wasn't looking.

"There's a notary stamp on this."

"There's a lot of pages. The notary's on the last one. That's just the — "

"I know what it is." She turned to the last page and looked at it and turned back to the number and then she closed the folder and put both her hands flat on top of it and looked at me.

"Two years."

"Uh-huh."

"You've been getting up at five in the morning for two years."

"Not every — "

"You've been getting up at five in the morning for two years," she said, "and I thought you were just — I thought you had a thing about mornings. I told Renee you had a thing about mornings."

"I do have a thing about mornings."

"Ethan."

I stopped.

Her hands were flat on the folder and both her thumbs were pressed white into the paper.

"You should have shown me this when it was still a number on a napkin," she said.

"I know."

"Not this," she said, tapping the folder. "This is the summary. I want the originals. The emails, the meetings, the guy with the napkin — the actual files, in order, off your laptop."

"Tonight."

"Why didn't you, though."

I looked at the tablecloth. It was one of those heavy white ones with the weave you can see if you look closely. I looked at it closely.

"I was afraid it wouldn't work," I said.

"So?"

"So if it didn't work, then you'd have known about a thing that — " I stopped. I started over. "If it didn't work, you'd have spent two years watching me try."

She was quiet.

"That's not the same thing," she said.

"What."

"You're not afraid I'd worry. You're afraid I'd watch you fail." Her voice was low, and it wasn't the voice she used at work, and it wasn't the voice she'd used in the car on the way here. It was the voice she used when she'd already decided something and was waiting for me to catch up. "Those are two different things, and you know they're two different things, so say the real one."

I didn't say anything for a second. She waited. She didn't help me. She just waited.

"I didn't want you to watch me try and lose," I said.

"Right."

"I didn't want to be — "

"Right."

"And I didn't want to give you a thing to hold onto when I didn't know if it was real."

"Right." She picked up her water and drank half of it and set it down. "So you gave me nothing to hold onto, for two years, and called that protecting me."

"Not — "

"Yes."

I looked at the tablecloth.

"Yeah," I said.

She nodded, once, short.

The waiter came. We both ordered without looking at the menu. Steak for her, steak for me. He asked about wine and she said no, and then she said actually yes, and he went away.

When he was gone she turned the folder over so it was face-down and pushed it to the edge of the table and left it there.

"Forty million dollars," she said again, to the ceiling.

"That's the headline number. There's a consulting agreement on top of it, three years, and a — "

"I don't care about the consulting agreement."

"Okay."

"I care that you sat in a Starbucks in Cupertino and a man wrote a number on a napkin and handed it to you and you came home and ate soup with me and didn't say anything."

"Yeah."

"And then you sat in a room with a lawyer — is the lawyer real, is Petra real, do I get to meet — "

"Yeah, she's real. I'll give you her number."

" — and you did this three times. Three rounds. And every night you came home and asked me how my day was."

I didn't answer that one.

"Every night," she said.

"Yeah."

"Ethan."

"Yeah."

"I'm — " She stopped. Her mouth did something I couldn't read. "I don't know what I am. I'm not even — " She pressed her thumb into the folder's edge, hard, and the corner bent up. "This is supposed to be happy. I know it's supposed to be happy. And I keep — "

She stopped again. Her eyes were shiny. Not the way they looked at movies, where she pretends they aren't. Shiny the way they were when she was actually angry, which was a different thing, and I'd seen it once before, in a parking lot, when somebody had keyed her car.

"I keep going back and forth," she said, "between wanting to be proud of you and wanting to hit you with this folder. And I already did the back-and-forth last night, so being back at it in a restaurant is — " She made a short shape in the air with her hand, the one she uses for 'you know.' "Annoying."

"Both are allowed."

"I know both are allowed. That's the problem."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, be — " She stopped. "You know what, that's not fair. Sorry is correct. Sorry is a good starting place."

She turned the folder back over and opened it again. She put her finger on the number and this time she let herself look at it.

"Forty million," she said, half to herself, and the corners of her mouth twitched up, one of them, and she saw me see it and she pressed her lips together hard to put it back down.

"Don't do that."

"Do what."

"You smiled."

"That's not a smile."

"That's a smile."

"It's a muscle spasm." She pressed her lips harder, which made it worse. A tear came out of her right eye and went down her cheek and she swiped it with the back of her hand, annoyed. "I'm mad at you."

"I know."

"Two years."

"I know."

"You don't get to — " Another tear. "I have to go into an office with you tomorrow and pretend I haven't — "

"You said you were going to be unpleasant to me tomorrow."

"I said that last night. This is a whole new level of unpleasant. This is the final level. There's no — " She swiped the other cheek. Her hand was shaking a little, not bad, the way it shook on the three-story staircase at her parents' house. "You're making me cry in a restaurant."

"Sorry."

"Stop saying sorry."

"Okay — "

"I didn't say sorry was wrong. I said stop saying it." She took a breath that hitched at the top. Then she laughed, one short one, from the chest, and put her hand over her mouth, and her eyes went wide like she'd surprised herself.

"Ethan Cole."

"Yeah."

"You're a piece of work."

"Yeah."

"A real piece of work." She looked at me over her hand. Her eyes were wet and her eyebrows were up and her mouth was fighting me behind her palm and losing. "I married a piece of work."

"You did."

"I did." She put her hand down. There was a wet mark on her palm where she'd pressed it against her face. "Okay. Okay." She breathed out. "Okay."

That was when the steaks came.

The waiter set hers down and then mine and asked about pepper and she said yes and he cracked it over and left, and she looked at the plate and then looked at me.

"So this is what forty million dollars tastes like."

"I think it just tastes like steak."

"It does." She cut a piece. "We got robbed."

"Yeah."

She ate a bite and chewed and swallowed and then she pointed the knife at me.

"Three questions."

"Okay."

"One. Is it all cash, or is it — "

"Cash and stock. Mostly cash. There's an earn-out on the — "

"Stop. Next question. Two." She held the knife up. "Is the lawyer real."

"Yes."

"What's her full name."

"Petra Hale."

"Where'd she come from."

"A guy named Barthelson at Harlow."

"Who's Barthelson."

"I don't know, some — he was at a meeting. He referred her. It's a thing people do."

"Hm." She cut another piece. "Three. When can I read the whole thing. Not this." She tapped the folder. "The whole thing. All of it. From the first email."

"Tonight."

She chewed. She swallowed.

"Tonight," she said. "Okay."

We ate for a while and didn't say much. The window by our table looked out over the city. There was a bank sign, and a hotel sign, and the pool lights at a low building, and far off the dark shape of the bay with nothing on it.

At some point I put my fork down.

"Norah."

"Mm."

"The first night I ever emailed anybody about it. I was sitting in the conference room and the window looked out over a parking lot and I wrote the whole thing in one paragraph."

She stopped chewing.

"It was one sentence," I said. "It said 'can LedgerLite take on a real user load,' is basically all it said. And then I hit send and I went and did a code review."

She put her fork down too.

"That's a weird thing to remember."

"I remember it."

"Why."

"I don't know. Because the guy wrote back and I had a thing to do after that. It gave me a thing to do."

She was quiet.

"Okay," she said.

The rest of the meal went fine. She had one glass of wine and it went straight to her face and stayed there. Twice she opened the folder again, once with her fork still in her hand, and read the first page, which had no numbers on it, and closed it.

The waiter brought the check and I reached for it and she got there first and held it against the table.

"Let me look at it," she said.

"It's — "

"I want to see what a meal costs when you know a number like that."

I let her. She looked at the total and her eyebrows went up and she put the check down.

"Okay," she said. "That's an amount I can understand."

She took the folder and put it in her purse, sideways, and it stuck out about two inches.

"I'm keeping this copy."

"It's yours."

"It was already — whatever, it's mine now." She zipped her purse. "The original stays in your laptop."

"Yeah."

"And tonight I read the whole thing. Every email. In order. And I'm going to ask questions and you're going to answer them and it's going to take a while."

"Okay."

She stood up.

In the elevator down she stood next to me with her purse against her hip where the folder was, and she looked straight ahead at the doors, and then she said, "Which restaurant do they have in this hotel."

"I don't know. More than one."

"We should find out. For next time."

"Next time?"

"When it's the second deal." She turned her head and looked at me sideways. "There's going to be a second one, right?"

"I don't know."

"Then don't waste the good restaurant on the first thing that happens." The doors opened. She walked out. "That's basic."

The parking was down in the basement. We walked to the car and I opened her door out of habit and she got in and put her purse on the floor between her feet.

I got in and started the car.

"Ethan."

"Yeah."

"Last night you said the reservation was three weeks out. And I spent today knowing it and not knowing what it was for." She looked out of the windshield at the concrete. "I want you to know the mad isn't the main thing."

"What's the main thing."

She didn't answer for a second. She reached over and put her hand on my forearm, on the sleeve, and gripped it.

"That you did it," she said. "And I didn't know. And now I do."

I pulled out of the spot.

On the ramp up, she said, "And the fact that you didn't tell anybody. Not one person. That's a weird thing, Ethan. That's a weird way to be."

"I know."

"Why not."

"I kept waiting for it to be real."

"It's real." She let go of my arm and folded her hands in her lap and watched the windshield. "It's been real for a while."

"I know."

"You keep saying that."

"I know."

She almost laughed again, and then didn't, and put her hand back where it had been, and this time harder.

We drove home on the freeway with the windows cracked because she said the car smelled like burnt. Her side of the window had a strip of city light going past it. She was quiet and I was quiet and the strip went past her face over and over.

At the exit she said, without turning her head, "Pull over at the — "

"What."

"Never mind. Nothing's open."

"What?"

"I was going to say pull over at the fries place. Because the fries were fourteen dollars. I wanted to see you eat a cold nine-dollar fry." She looked at me. "It was going to be funny."

"It's still funny."

"It's over now. The moment passed." She looked back out of the window. "You get one moment and that was it."

We parked on the street. She got out and waited for me to lock up and then we walked up to the building. Six floors, no elevator.

At the third flight she took her heels off and went up in her socks. At the fifth she stopped and leaned against the wall and laughed, one short one, into her hand.

"Ethan."

"Yeah."

"I'm still mad."

"I know."

"I'm going to be mad for a while. I'm telling you now so you don't spend a week thinking it's over."

"Okay."

"But it's not the main thing." She picked up her shoes and started climbing. "Okay. That's all. That's the whole announcement."

She waited at the top of the last flight, holding the handrail. When I got up to her she was out of breath and so was I and she looked at me and rolled her eyes at how much she was out of breath.

"Get the door," she said. "I can't do it, I have no hands."

I opened it. She went in.

She hung up her coat and took the folder out of her purse and put it on the kitchen table. She got a glass of water and drank half and set it down and looked at the pile of mail we'd never picked up, and she picked up a couple of envelopes and put them down again.

I sat on the edge of the couch.

She came over and sat next to me, close, the way she did when it was going to be a long one, and smelled like the outside and like wine and like steak.

"You heard the shape of it in the restaurant," I said.

"I heard the shape of it."

"So you don't need the rest tonight."

"I don't need it." She leaned against my shoulder and looked at the wall. "I want to see the emails with my own eyes. I'm not taking your word for what they say."

I got the laptop. I opened it on the coffee table and put the first one up. Her finger moved down the screen the way it did on paper.

Somewhere past one she said, "The napkin. Which part is the napkin."

"The first meeting. In the Starbucks. He wrote twelve on a napkin because he didn't have a card and the napkin was the only paper."

"That's a good detail." She sat up and pulled the consulting agreement out of the folder and read it sideways on the couch while I kept going. "Keep that one. If you ever tell this to anybody."

"I wasn't planning on telling it to anybody."

"Good." Pause. "But if you do."

"Okay."

The emails were all open by then, and the napkin number, and the signed copy, and the black pen Petra had left on the table that afternoon and that I'd put in my pocket and that was now lying next to the laptop. Norah set her mug down and looked at me. Her eyes were tired and swollen from the crying and from the wine.

"The steak place was three weeks out," she said.

"I made the reservation the day after they came back with the second number."

"You knew?"

"I hoped."

She looked at me over the rim of the mug.

"And you kept the reservation."

"Yeah."

She set the mug down.

"You know what I said to myself when you told me. In the restaurant." She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the laptop screen, at the list of emails, at the dates on them going back into a year she'd lived through without knowing.

"What."

"The first time you told me anything was because I made you." Her thumb rubbed the edge of the table. "That was the real one. The three weeks is the same thing."

"It's not — "

"It is. You had it and you didn't think I needed to know." She finally looked at me. "We fixed the rest of it on the drive. I told you. That's not the same mistake again, so don't make it again."

"I heard you."

"But I want to say the other part now." She leaned back and looked at the ceiling and then at me. "When you told me why you wanted me — the first time, back at the start. You said something dumb and short and it landed."

"I remember."

"So I believed it." She said it flat, like a fact. "You've never lied to me. That's why. Every other thing you've ever done wrong, you've done it by saying nothing. You've never once said a thing that wasn't true."

"And now."

"Now I still do." She reached over and closed the laptop on my hand. "Which is the annoying part."

Outside, a car went by on the street with its radio on and the sound went past the window and thinned out at the corner.

She didn't let go of the laptop lid. She leaned forward and put her forehead on my shoulder and stayed there, and I could feel her breathing slow down, and I didn't say anything, and she didn't either.

When she finally sat up she stuck her hand in the breast pocket of my shirt and pulled the pen out and held it up between us like it was evidence.

"Is this Petra's."

"Yeah."

"I'm keeping it."

"Okay."

"Not because I want a pen." She put it in her own pocket. "Because it's the only thing in this whole night I can put my hands on."

She got up off the couch and stood at the counter and drank the rest of the water, and looked at the pile of unopened mail on the table, and then reached out and turned that stack ninety degrees, so the edge of it was parallel to the edge of the table.

"I'm not going to be able to sleep," she said.

"Me neither."

"An hour of it. Maybe." She turned off the kitchen light. The room was dark except for the window, which was the color of the inside of a box. "You already know what tomorrow is."

"Your turn at the office."

"My turn at the office." She went into the bedroom. The light over the bed came on and made a rectangle on the hall floor. "Before lunch. In front of people, probably. I haven't decided the timing."

"Okay."

"Then I'll be fine."

"Okay."

"Then we're even."

"Even."

She came back to the door of the bedroom with her toothbrush in her mouth.

"Ethan."

"Yeah."

"Forty million." She took the toothbrush out. "That's insane."

"Yeah."

"It's insane." She went back into the bathroom. The water ran. She came out and got into bed, and I got in after her, and she turned over so we were facing each other, and reached over and got my arm and pulled it around her like a blanket.

"Ethan."

"Yeah."

"You listened to a user in a bubble tea shop."

"Among other ones."

"Her store's in San Jose and the thing wasn't counting her pearls and you fixed it at eleven at night and saved her eight hundred bucks." She said it into my chest, getting thick. "Don't leave that part out, when somebody asks. The pearls part."

"Okay."

"I mean it."

"Okay."

She reached up and got my hand and pulled it down between them, and squeezed it, hard, and then harder, until I could feel the joint in my ring finger grind against the one next to it. Not the sentimental kind of grip. The kind you use on a suitcase handle when you don't want the suitcase to move.

She didn't let go. I didn't take it back.