CHAPTER NINE
MATEO
COMPARED TO THE QUIET COLLEGE exterior, the inside of the South Annex is a buzz of activity. There are a dozen or so round wooden tables, and at each one sit six to eight people mostly wearing T-shirts, hoodies, and Converse. Every one of them has a laptop, open and working. Black power cables are a nest of snakes on the floor, plugged into power strips duct taped to the ground. Nobody looks up when I enter. There’s too much chatter to hear the door, and in the hubbub, nobody notices a newcomer.
“Mr. Saint?”
The voice belongs to a kid who might be anywhere from sixteen to twenty. He’s rail thin, with dark eyebrows and black-frame glasses.
“Are you Mateo Saint?”
“Yes.”
He shakes my hand. His hand is half the size of mine. “It’s nice to meet you, sir. Did you have a pleasant trip?”
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Sorry.” He turns his name tag toward me. “Davis Ford. Neurodyne.”
As far as I’m concerned, the kid has just thrown random words my way. Is his first name Davis? Damn, poor kid never had a chance.
“I’m also program director. Did you have a nice trip?”
I can’t answer that question right now. I have too many of my own. “What is this?”
He looks around, then covers his surprise. “It’s a hackathon.”
“What’s a hackathon?”
Now Davis looks uncomfortable. He must have been told to find and greet me but didn’t know I’d be clueless.
“I’m sorry, sir. I assumed she filled you in when she booked you. It’s—”
“You assumed who filled me in?”
“Elizabeth.”
There was something wrong with that sentence. And now it’s hitting me. “Wait. Booked me for what?”
He looks even more uncomfortable. I don’t care because I sense foul play. My fears that she wouldn’t know I was coming are unfounded. This is worse. Elizabeth knew I was coming and she booked me for something.
“What the hell is this?” I ask again.
“It’s a hackathon. The Sprout hackathon? Like the South by Southwest hackathon in—”
“Stop saying hackathon. I don’t know what the fuck a hackathon is, and if you say it one more time, I swear I’ll—”
“Maybe I should go find Elizabeth.”
“Yes. Please. Find Elizabeth. Maybe tell her that my bookings are handled through my executive assistant and that I’m full six months in advance.” A swell of frustration overwhelms me — confusion and irritation colliding in a perfect storm. “What the hell am I supposedly booked for, anyway?”
“A panel, Mr. Saint.”
“What kind of panel?”
“Q&A about systems. Just general stuff before the one-on-ones.”
“One-on-ones?”
“With the participants? Evaluating their—”
“Like a judge?”
“No, no.” He tries to smile. “More like consulting.”
“Consulting?”
That’s so much worse. I don’t consult. I hate the idea of it, though it’s come up repeatedly. I don’t like having to analyze someone else’s business when I should be paying attention to mine, but mostly I loathe the idea of someone trying to buy my time. Nobody can buy my time, not for any price. The last time someone asked, it was a corporate board offering one million dollars for two weeks of work. I said no, then booked half a month in Ibiza instead.
“Just hang out here, sir,” Davis says. “I’ll send her right over.”
“Good. You do that.”
“Feel free to help yourself to a donut and some coffee.”
I look at the pathetic snack table. The coffee in the tureen’s level indicator looks like weak tea. Coffee made by and for idiots.
Davis vanishes. I don’t know what to do with myself after he’s gone, so I back up into an alcove beside an artificial plant, feeling conspicuous in my suit. This done, I watch the nerds. Hackathon, huh? They look like hackers. All malnourished and afraid of the sun.
Elizabeth crosses the room. It’s curious. There’s a strange energy around her, but it’s not what I expected. She radiates bitch, so I figured the crowd would part before her, perhaps averting their eyes in horror. But heads turn toward her, with what seems like respect. The way people are moving around her … I can’t explain it, but it’s the way people might move around one of the better-liked presidents, or a known philanthropist, perhaps the Dalai Lama.
She isn’t frowning. There’s a brightness in her eyes and a tipping-up of the corners of her lips. I think of the photos that Taylor found: the girl playing topless on the secluded beach, stripped of her armor.
She turns toward me, and it’s like a switch is flipped. Day turns to night. Her spine straightens. Even in jeans and a tee, she’s Queen Bitch again.
“You showed up,” she says.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s a hackathon. Davis said he told you.”
“What the fuck is a hackathon?”
“This is a hackathon,” she says, patting the air around us as if demonstrating for a moron. “It’s a 24-hour contest where some of the best minds in tech work to create new prototypes and solve an assigned problem. For example, the people working in the Distribution category? They’re supposed to work up ways to better distribute the work of independent artists in an increasingly indie system that’s dominated by traditional players.”
“Why the hell am I here?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t you a big man who has control of his own life?”
“I meant—”
“If you can run a whole mountain, I’d think you could book a plane ticket like a big boy.”
“So that’s what this is about. You’re pissed off about the mountain.”
Her eyes move to the ceiling, and she gives her head a little shake. A wry, not-at-all-amused smile touches those downturned lips. “Oh, not at all. My father was clear. ‘What’s done is done, Elizabeth. I’m sorry if you’re upset, but holding a grudge won’t change anything.’ You won. Fine. Have your goddamn mountain.”
“Your father was the one who told me to come here. It wasn’t my idea.”
“Good thing you know enough to do what you’re told,” she says.
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m not allowed to have a problem because I’m the one who set this up. But privately, I’m working on a problem in the Infrastructure category.”
“You know what I mean, Liz.”
She glares at me.
“Look,” I say, trying to remember my mission, the still-in-play contingencies, and my promise to Damon, “all I know is that your father suggested I come to this thing. He said it means a lot to you. To him. So, I came. Even though I didn’t have to.”
“If you’re so charitable by coming because it means a lot to little old me, why did you yell at Davis and make him come get me? I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I was hoping you’d just do what you were supposed to do without us having to talk.”
I wonder if there’s a right way to take something like that.
“I was willing to come. To see it. To …” Goddammit. “… appreciate the mission. But your flunky told me I’m on some panel.”
“You are on a panel.”
“I didn’t sign up to be on any panel. I didn’t even know what this was.”
“I put you on the panel. It’s general Q&A. About systems. Even though you’re the big, impressive boss man at PEZA, I know you designed much of the franchise system it uses today. It’s nonstandard. And not without its charm.”
Her face looks almost pained. I realize she’s just given my work a compliment in the only half-assed way her pride will allow.
“So, what? I sit at that front table and answer questions?”
“You and a few other experts. That way, if there’s something you don’t know, you can stay quiet, and someone else will answer.”
“I think I can hold my own.”
“I’ll bet you’ve had to, most of the time.”
“What?”
She looks down. I realize the Ice Queen just made a joke about my dick.
“It’s at one. Just go up there and sit down if you’re going to do it.”
She turns. I don’t want to, but I notice her ass in those jeans. It makes me think of the beach pictures, too. The ones where, to avoid the camera, she turned her bikini-clad butt to the front.
“Hang on,” I say.
She looks back.
“He said something about consulting, too. I’m not doing consulting.”
“It’s part of the gig.”
“Except that I’m not being paid.”
She gives me a little so-what face. “Nobody’s being paid. Everyone here is a volunteer.”
“I’m not selling my time. No one-on-ones.”
“Then forget it. Go home. It’s been nice seeing you.”
I firm my lips. Think of the mountain.
“Fine. One person.”
“Twelve,” she says. “Five-minute slots for an hour. Same as everyone else. You don’t want people thinking you’re too good for this when you cross your arms and refuse the rest, do you?”
This time it’s harder to say the word. “Fine.”
She turns again, but there’s one thing I have to understand. An answer she owes me. “Why?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why do people volunteer for something like this?”
She puts a hand on her hip. “Because this is the bleeding edge. Technology dreamed up in hackathons has changed the world, and it will again.”
“Why you, then?”
Because this doesn’t strike me as very “Elizabeth” at all. The people in this room are probably geniuses in their own way. Extremely creative. Proactive with their lives. Inventive. Not exactly her people.
“Because sometimes I like to think about the world outside myself.”
I know she’s not finished. I wait, hating her for the cheap shot before she makes it.
“Unlike you,” she finishes.