Mystery Tribune / Issue Nº4

A Friend Indeed-1

A Friend

Indeedby Brendan DuBois

So after my second mistrial and my final release from county prison, I decided to take up walking, since there’s not much to do with my life after I had been accused of murdering my best friend, who also happened to be sleeping with my wife, while also in the process of stealing my company.

Pretty complicated, so let’s start from the beginning.

After the long months in a cell, awaiting the two trials, going through the two trials, waiting those dragging minutes when the jury files in and you stand up, well, who wouldn’t want to go for long walks? I know I did, and I quickly got a dog companion to keep me company, because ---

Oh.

Apologies.

I should start from an earlier beginning?

All right, then.

The name is Caleb Willis, and I was ---

Yes, the Caleb Willis.

The one who designed, created and sold that unique piece of writing software called AntiGIGO.

Yeah, that’s me.

You see, from college and afterwards, working as a published tech writer and sometime unpublished fiction author --- and sometime editor as well --- the concept came to me of designing a piece of software that could improve someone’s writing. Not improve enough to be sold, or to become a bestseller, or anything silly like that. No, all that I guaranteed was that it would take a raw piece of writing, and turn it into something better.

There’s an old saying in the start of computer design --- way before my Dad and Mom were even born --- of GIGO, Garbage In, Garbage Out. Meaning that if you fed a computer garbage instructions or design, you’ll get garbage as an output. What I did was to create a program that took garbage --- a manuscript (mystery, science fiction, literary, whatever) --- and improved it. Hence, it was the opposite of GIGO, and became AntiGIGO.

“By the time I had the damn thing polished and working, I was supposedly happily married...”

And I knew there was a market for it. You see, since the explosion of e-book publishing, the good thing was that millions of people now had the opportunity to self-publish their own works. That was the good news. The bad news was... well, that millions of people had the opportunity to self-publish their works, as awful as they might be. And we’re talking eyes glazing over, mouth filling with saliva, stomach churning bad writing.

Hence the need for something like AntiGIGO.

By the time I had the damn thing polished and working, I was supposedly happily married to Christine Tappan, a sweet smart woman who was working in the same company I was at, in Manchester, New Hampshire, the home of a lot of old mill buildings that have been converted to software companies. We had dated for a couple of years, went on some long walks, saw a number of movies, and sometimes we took the Amtrak train into Boston to seek out special restaurants that she always knew about. I thought we were happy, right from the start.

Bad assumption, one of many.

And which company was I working with at the time I designed AntiGIGO? Um, sorry, I don’t think I should pass on that little bit of information. You see, I bounced from company to company --- as did Christine --- depending on who paid what and what kind of bennies were offered, and if one of those companies thought I had designed AntiGIGO on their time, they might take me to court to take back some of the royalties I earned before I was cheated out by my wife and her lover, my former best friend.

Go back to court?

No thanks.

Hah-hah-hah.

Sorry about that.

Anyway, I developed AntiGIGO and married Christine, and with our combined incomes, we were able to purchase a nice three-bedroom house in Tyler, New Hampshire, within walking distance of its famed beach. I started off small with AntiGIGO, posting links to various amateur writing sites, and then my buddy at my work place at the time --- George Zarin --- came to me one day while we were having lunch at nice restaurant within walking distance of our offices at the restored mills.

“Got a question for you,” he asked.

“Go.”

George and I shared a love of old science fiction movies, nighttime satellite observation, and with Christine we sometimes double-dated with women that George met via online dating sites or through friends, although those lady arrangements never lasted more than two or three times with him.

George asked, “What’s the deal with that writing software you came up with? Anti-Gigi?”

I was eating a turkey, cheese, avocado, carrot and cucumber sandwich, wishing for a simple hot cheeseburger, and the sudden question nearly made me jump. So I took a moment to chew longer than I needed, swallowed, and said, “Excuse me?”

George grinned. “Don’t play dopey with me, Caleb. Your wife gave you up.”

“She did, did she?”

Besides working at the same company as Christine and I, George lived in a condo near our house on Tyler Beach. He was an avid jogger and since I love to mostly watch exercise --- and not take part --- I couldn’t keep up with him when he asked me to run along. I usually crapped out after ten or twenty minutes. But he would jog with Christine, which at first seemed to be a thoughtful gesture.

Yeah, at the time. Another bad assumption.

George was eating some sort of salad in a bowl the size of my head, and he said, “You know it. Anti-Gigi.”

“No, it’s called AntiGIGO.”

“Christine says it’s a game changer.”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me what it does.”

At the time I trusted him, so I told him.

Another bad choice, one I didn’t catch at the time.

He nodded, went “mmm” a few times, and asked a few questions. When we were done talking about AntiGIGO, he said, “That’s a pretty slick piece of software.”

I picked up my sandwich as bits of cucumber dropped out. “Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, slick is what I was going for.”

George was two years younger than me, and I have to admit, better looking. He had a thick thatch of deep black hair, while I was balding, and I knew my plump love handles couldn’t compete against his taut runner’s body. But while I was proud of my software design skills, he had something I didn’t have: a keen sense of marketing and getting things sold.

He looked around like he was worried about being overheard, and he leaned over and said, “You can do better.”

“I’m doing all right.”

“No, you don’t understand.”

I felt put upon and said, “Gee, George, there’s a napkin over there. Draw on it and show me all the ways that I’m wrong.”

He said, “Don’t get pissy. Christine showed me your links, the way you’ve been selling. You’re underestimating your earnings potential.”

I chewed on the sandwich, as a piece of avocado squirted out. “The earnings are fine. Christine and I live comfortably, we have a nice house, nothing to worry about. We don’t need more money. What would we do with it? Buy a bigger house? Another car? More clothes.”

I took a sip from my iced tea. “We’re fine. We don’t need more money.”

“But Caleb... wouldn’t you like to leave the firm? Be your own boss?”

“Some day. The firm has its moments, you know. Plus generous healthcare and bennies. Why should I want to go through the hassle of going out on my own? Trying to get my own health insurance? I don’t have the time nor patience.”

George said, “Look at the big picture, Caleb. Christine might want to be on her own. She might want to help run AntiGIGO. Give her a chance to stretch her wings for once.”

I thought it was odd that he was commenting on what my wife wanted or didn’t want, but I kept that to myself.

Another one of the many big mistakes I was in the middle of making, it turned out.

I said, “Again, I’m doing okay.”

“Yes, you’re doing okay, but you could do a lot more. How are you doing it now? You post links on web pages that discuss amateur writing, and you provide a link where someone can purchase your software via PayPal. You should expand, have your own website, promote it even more. Make it more than just a one-man show.” This time, another piece of cucumber and avocado flew out in unison. “I like being a one man show.”

He said, “We’ll see.”

# # #

When I got home later that evening --- another late night at work --- Christine was waiting for me in the kitchen, where she had re-heated some beef stroganoff she had made earlier. She sipped a glass of pinot noir and watched me eat, and she said, “When does this end, Caleb?”

I paused with fork in mid-air. “What does what end, Christine?”

She drank some more. “This... thing we’re in. The long hours. You coming home late, me coming home late. When does it end?”

“I think---”

“That’s your problem. All the time thinking, hardly ever doing.”

“... we set up an office in a spare bedroom in our house, where George, Christine and I worked together.”

And then we were off to the races. Sorry, I don’t want to revisit the he-said, she-said argument in all of its depressing and familiar phrases, but by the time we wrapped things up ninety-one minutes later (she hated the fact that I kept track of our fights, and I just couldn’t help myself) it was resolved and approved that I would work with our bright neighbor George and take AntiGIGO and our lives to the next level.

It started off easy and got busy right away, so busy that we set up an office in a spare bedroom in our house, where George, Christine and I worked together. It went pretty smooth here and there, except a couple of times when George pressed me, and I would snap back. Later, in bed with Christine, I said it was too bad that these spats occurred, because I thought George and I could be good friends.

Christine was tap-tapping her iPhone screen and said, “My grandfather, Wallis. You know about him, don’t you?”

I’m sure Christine had told me a fact or two about Grandpa Wallis, but I didn’t remember, and I wasn’t about to admit not listening to her. I laughed. “Sure. Grandfather Wallis.”

Luckily Christine was too involved in her iPhone screen to interrogate me about the particulars of Grandfather Wallis, and she said, “He worked in the Truman Administration, late 1940’s, early 1950’s. A pretty busy time and there were talk of friendships and loyalties, and President Truman, he supposedly said, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

Blame my vacuum cleaner mind, but I had read an article in The New York Times a couple of years ago that Truman had said no such thing, but I wasn’t in the mood for a late-night disagreement with Christine.

“So you think I should get a dog?”

“No,” she said. “I have allergies. But you shouldn’t be looking for friends in business. That’s just the way it is.”

Eventually I rolled over and went to sleep, not knowing that at this very moment, Christine was probably texting to her new business friend, George, but she was never one to follow her own advice.

Weeks later we had a celebratory dinner at a fine restaurant up the coast in Porter to mark the first quarter anniversary of the AntiGIGO website, which was bringing in thirty percent more customers than George had predicted. With such good news we had signed a long-term lease at a place we were all familiar with, over in one of those empty brick buildings lining the Merrimack River in Manchester. We all ate well and George --- predicting the income stream that was coming our way in the next twelve months--- ordered a $95 bottle of wine, and I made them both laugh when I said that I remembered a time when that was more than I spent on a week’s worth of groceries.

“... George --- predicting the income stream that was coming our way in the next twelve months --- ordered a $95 bottle of wine.”

We ate, we drank, we laughed, and we drank some more, and after another $95 bottle of wine showed up and was opened, George said that he had some paperwork that should be signed to formalize things, and make it easier for all of us. By then... okay, it was my fault. It really was all my fault, for I signed the damn papers without reading through them. But dessert was approaching and I didn’t want to hold up the waiter, and the paperwork was covering most of our table, and Christine was looking at me with her practiced look of impatience, so I signed the papers and passed it over to George, and dessert was served.