Matt

One thing having money had taught me was that if you were going to play social games, it needed to be more than worth your while, and even then only play them occasionally. Another thing it had taught me was that I hated social games, no matter what level they were played on. As a kid, I’d always been on the losing end. As an entrepreneur, I had to play them occasionally, but I preferred facts and competence to speak louder than any social jockeying. If it didn’t get me the deal… let’s just say I could have been a lot richer if I could have brought myself to play more games. But thankfully in college, I’d made a friend, probably my best friend, Geoffrey, who thrived on social games. He lived on them. If he wanted to, I had no question he would go far in politics. And who knew, maybe he would someday. But for right now, he ran a consulting firm that charged ridiculous amounts of money to people like me to play the games for them.

But right here with Mae, I didn’t have time for games. I was leaving in the morning. I liked her. She was clearly smart, and I knew what it felt like to be stuck in this town. Life was too short to not be real. So when I wanted to sit beside her, and I knew she wouldn’t object, I did.

It had been a while since I’d had dinner with a woman. And maybe this didn’t really count, seeing as we were here, in this bar, for completely different reasons, but I enjoyed the soft warmth of her by my side. It made me feel less alone in this room full of people I had once known.

I bit into my burger. It was no Sprague’s, my favorite first-date spot in the city, but it was decent. “So what kind of job are you looking for?"

She sighed. "Honestly, right now? Anything not here that pays me enough to make rent and my school loan payments."

"Dream big. If you could do anything."

"Dreaming big is what got me nowhere," Mae grumbled. I gave her a pointed look and she shrugged. "I don't know. It's been hard to think about what I want when what I need is shouting so loudly at me. I got an MBA because everyone said that was the smart thing to do, right? Except that everyone and their brother got an MBA too. So I've been trying to branch out. Specialize. Like this coding class, for instance."

"Yeah? What do you see yourself doing with a specialization?"

"I think I'd be a good business analyst for a tech company. I definitely have the business side knowledge, if not the actual, you know, experience."

"Would you like that?" She kept talking about what she should do, what she needed to do. This woman had drive, I could see it. But where was her actual passion? Was it so buried in plans and expectations she'd buried it?

She sighed again. "I'd like having a job."

Someone tapped a glass for attention. If I took away about fifty pounds, a few tattoos and imagined her hair long, I could recognize one of the girls who'd been at Gracie's for a year or two while I was there, before she hit eighteen and phased out of the program. As a teenager, Betty had been a tomboy. She was clearly and unapologetically butch now. "I know a lot of words were said at the funeral, but this town has too many Gracie stories to fit behind a podium. Ms. Gracie was the first person who told me it was okay to be me. And she'd wash my mouth out with soap for phrasing it this way, but she taught me it was okay to say fuck you to anyone who couldn't accept you the way you were." Betty raised her glass. "To Gracie." There was a muted roar of agreement as the crowd joined in on the toast. My drink was empty, but I raised my glass in honor of Ms. Gracie. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mae's glass raise as well. 

I managed to catch the waitress's eye and signaled for refills for the both of us. 

"Oh, you don't have to do that," Mae said.

"Of course I don't," I agreed, but said no more. 

Betty clambered down from the bar and the next person stood up on their chair. "If it hadn't been for Gracie volunteering to watch my two boys when my Jack died so that I could work, I might have lost them to the system. I could have only hoped they would have ended up with someone as good as her, but Lord knows there's no one quite like Gracie." Another toast and cheer, and the waitress delivered our drinks.

The stories continued, and Mae and I sat and listened. When we finished our food, I took her hand again. All of the stories were raising memories I thought had long lost the ability to affect me. But tonight, part of me was a lost and unwanted teenager again, with no family and no home to call my own. Ms. Gracie had provided an anchor for me, one I hadn't realized I still needed as a grown man. And now she was gone. Mae's hand in mine was grounding, reminding me of who I was—Matt Dahl, billionaire and tech mogul—and who I was not anymore—a broken child.

"I asked Ms. Gracie once how she could stand having all them kids underfoot, all day everyday," the current speaker said. "Didn't it just make her itch to get out of the house something awful? And she looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Freddy, you have a lot of cars, right?'" The crowd chuckled. Apparently some inside town joke. "'Don't you get tired of having them clutter up your yard? Don't you just want to run away into the woods sometimes to get away from them?'" The chuckling turned to roaring laughter. "Well of course I didn't. And she told me that everybody's gots a gift. Some people’s it's cars, some people’s it's kids. Some people's it's taxes, but thems a strange kind of folk and it's probably best to give them a wide berth. But just because you don't understand a person's gift doesn't make it any less valuable. Ms. Gracie had a gift for picking out people's gifts. She'll be pretty near impossible to replace. To Gracie."

They lifted their glasses yet again. The alcohol was starting to burn enough I knew I wasn't going to be able to drive back tonight. That had been more wishful thinking than anything anyway.

"Matt?" Mae's voice was soft, and I almost didn't hear it over the churning of my own thoughts. "If I could do whatever I wanted...?"

She had my full attention now. I turned to face her, tuning out whomever was currently speaking.

"I think I'd want to code. I mean, it's completely ridiculous. I didn't do any coding in college, and no one is going to hire a programmer who only has a generic business degree, but if I could do anything? I think I would give it a try."

"I'd hire you," I said, and I was surprised to realize I meant it.

She laughed. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"No, let me rephrase that, I will hire you."

Mae looked confused. "I don't understand."

"I'm not just a programmer, I own my own software consulting firm," I said. "If you're uncomfortable with the idea of hiring on with little practical knowledge, we can call it an internship, but the drive to learn is almost more important than the knowledge itself in my field."

Mae gaped at me. 

"So what do you say?" I waited for a moment, and her facial expression didn't change. "It's your ticket out of here."