Hot Shot (24 page)

Paige was cynical about men. She knew that Cal wanted to stay close to Joel, and from his viewpoint, one daughter was probably as good as another. But he had been so kind, so sympathetic, and she needed someone to care about her. "What about—sex?" she asked.

"You're not mad?"

Once again, he patted her knee. "I've never been particularly interested in carving notches on my bedpost. Don't misunderstand me. I enjoy sex, but it's not the most important thing in my life. Right now I need a friend more than a lover." He extended his hand.

"Friends?"

He was so sincere that she let her guard down. "Friends," she repeated as she took his hand.

They chatted easily the rest of the way to Falcon Hill. Gradually, she found herself relaxing. Cal understood how unfair Joel had always been to her, and for the first time since her mother had died, she had someone on her side. By the time they reached home, she felt better than she had in ages—like a battered ship that had just sailed into a safe harbor.

Sam delivered the forty computers to Pinky at Z.B. Electronics precisely on schedule.

Each machine was neatly encased in a wooden box with the words SysVal and the Roman numeral I visible on the front in gold rub-on letters that Susannah had finished applying just before dawn that morning.

To her relief, Pinky paid his bill on time and she was able to settle up with Spectra. But they were only out of debt for a day before Sam ordered more parts on credit and the cycle began all over again. Only this time they didn't have a committed buyer for the new boards.

During the next few weeks, Pinky sold several of their single-board computers to hardware freaks like himself, but the machines weren't flying off the shelves, and she was frantic with worry. They had taken out several ads in hobbyists' magazines and a few orders had trickled in, but not many. Yank had already started work on the prototype of the self-contained computer they wanted to build, but if they hoped to survive long enough to begin manufacturing it, they needed to buy themselves time. And they needed money. Big money. Susannah decided to swallow her pride and see if she could find it.

Every day for a week, she put on her old Chanel suit and, borrowing either Yank's Duster or Angela's Toyota, went to see acquaintances from what she had begun to think of as her former life. She didn't waste time trying to contact Joel's friends or any FBT people.

Instead, she phoned members of Kay's old social circle and people who had sat with her on the boards of charitable organizations. Almost all of them agreed to see her, but she quickly discovered that they were far more interested in confirming the gossip they had heard about her than in investing in SysVal. When the subject of money came up, they shifted uncomfortably in their seats and remembered urgent appointments.

Each day, she returned tired and discouraged. At the end of the week, she went out to the garage and told Sam that she had run out of names. He pressed the half-empty can of Coke he had been drinking into her hand and said, "We need to find a venture capitalist who's willing to pump a few hundred thousand into the company. Then we could get serious about moving beyond the hobbyists' market and building the computer we really want to build." He lifted a board from the burn-in box and began putting it in its wooden case.

She rolled the lukewarm Coke can between her hands. "No respectable venture capitalist will pay any attention to us. We don't look
serious
."

At that moment the buzzer that Yank had rigged over the workbench went off. She sighed, set down the can, and rushed from the garage and across the yard toward the kitchen door.

Generally she made it to the phone on its fifth ring, but today she stumbled on the step and lost time. As she lifted the receiver to her ear, she yearned for the day they could afford to have a separate telephone line in the garage instead of being forced to use the kitchen phone. She knew that it sounded more professional to have a woman answer, but sometimes she resented the fact that she was the one who always had to make the dash across the yard.

"SysVal. May I help you?"

"Yeah. I got a question about the voltage levels at the I/O interface."

At least this phone call was from a customer instead of one of Angela's friends. "I'm sure we can answer that for you. Let me put you on hold while I connect you with our Support Services Department." She flipped on the portable radio they kept tuned to a rock station and set the receiver in front of it, then she rushed back outside and gestured for Sam, who was watching at the garage window. He hurried across the yard to take the call.

Appearances
, Susannah kept repeating to herself.
Appearances are everything
.

That same night she and Sam enjoyed the luxury of being able to sleep together, since Angela had taken an overnight trip to visit a friend in Sacramento. But even lovemaking couldn't push their business problems far from their minds.

"I've been thinking," Sam said, his lips resting against her forehead. "We need to take on one more partner. Someone who understands electronics and knows about marketing. A person with a sharp mind, who hasn't bought into the system." He rolled over on his back.

"Someone inventive. And he can't be an asshole. We need to hire somebody like Nolan Bushnell at Atari."

"I think he already has a job," Susannah said dryly. She twirled a strand of his hair through her fingers.

"Or—this would be great—one of the big guys at Hewlett-Packard."

Susannah rolled her eyes. Hewlett-Packard, with its progressive management style, seemed to be the only American corporation that Sam admired. "Why would anyone leave H-P to come work with us in a garage for no money?"

"If they had vision they would. Hell, yes. We wouldn't even want them if they didn't have vision."

This was what she both loved about him and despaired over. "It would be impossible for us to attract anyone with an important name to this company."

"Will you stop telling me what's impossible? You do that all the time. Start telling me what's possible for a change."

"I'm just being practical."

"You're just being negative. I'm getting sick of it, I can't work like that." He pushed himself from the bed and went out into the kitchen.

Her stomach churned, but she forced herself not to go after him. She was determined not to settle back into her old patterns of conciliation. Sam's anger burned hot and fierce, but it was over quickly. Still, she didn't fall asleep until several hours later, when he slipped back into bed.

Not long after their conversation, Sam began cornering Hewlett-Packard vice-presidents in the company parking lot. Several of them thought they were being mugged and locked themselves in their cars, but a few of them actually came to the garage to see their operation and to offer advice. On one rainy evening, Sam even managed to corner Bill Hewlett himself.

Hewlett was pleasant but firm. He wasn't quite ready to leave the billion-dollar company he had helped found and follow Sam Gamble's silver tongue to the land of small computer nirvana.

After that, Sam lost all respect for Hewlett-Packard.

Labor Day weekend marked the first small computer trade show. It was being held in Atlantic City, and Sam announced that they were going. "We need to establish ourselves as a national company instead of a local one," he said.

Susannah agreed with him philosophically, but felt that the expense of the trip for a company that hadn't sold even all forty of its original single-board computers made it impossible. He rode roughshod over every one of her objections, and when she saw she couldn't change his mind, she made a condition of her own. If they were going to exhibit at the trade show, they would do it her way.

Atlantic City, by the summer of 1976, was a faded hooker about to succumb to a variety of social diseases. Legislation was afoot in Trenton to allow legalized gambling, but until that happened, the city that had once been the gayest spot on the Atlantic seaboard had lost all vestiges of its former beauty. The boardwalk was decaying and their hotel seedy.

By the time they had checked in, Susannah was convinced the trip was doomed, but she still hustled her partners over to the convention hall to set up their booth.

To her relief, the worst of her nightmares hadn't come true—the crates that held what Sam called "Susannah's Goddamn Folly" were undamaged, and he began unpacking.

She concentrated on how great his rear end looked when he bent over instead of on what he was saying. The booth had ended up costing nearly a thousand dollars—far more than they could afford. But she had wanted them to look like a much larger company than they were, and so, over Sam's strident objections, she had ordered it built. If she was wrong, she would have to shoulder the blame alone.

But as it turned out, she wasn't wrong. By noon the next day, several hundred people were wandering through the exhibits, and all of them were drawn to the SysVal booth.

While the companies surrounding them displayed their products on crudely draped card tables bearing identical white tagboard signs printed with the company's name, SysVal showed off its machine in a brightly colored booth with dramatically angled walls and the company name spelled out in illuminated crimson letters. Only MITS, the manufacturers of the Altair, and IMSAI, their closest competitor, had more elaborate displays. Without a word being spoken, Susannah's booth made SysVal look like the third largest single-board computer company exhibiting, when in fact they were one of the smallest. Her triumph made her feel wonderfully cocky and full of herself.

Toward the end of the first day, she glanced up and saw Steve Jobs standing in front of their machine. Since their situations were similar, she had been interested in watching the two Steves—Wozniak and Jobs—as they tried to stir up interest in their Apple single-board computer.

Jobs was only twenty-one and Woz twenty-five, and like her own partners, neither was a college graduate. Compared to Steve Jobs, however, Sam was a fashion plate of respectability. Jobs was unkempt and unwashed, with dirty jeans and battered Birkenstock sandals. Sam had told her that he was a vegetarian and a Zen Buddhist who had traveled to India in search of enlightenment. He was still thinking about returning to become a monk.

Instead of looking at the computer they had on display, Jobs was studying Susannah's booth. He and Woz were selling their Apples from a card table on the other side of the convention hall. She watched Jobs as his alert eyes took in the multicolored backdrop and the brightly lit name. He knew the SysVal operation was just as small and eccentric as his own, but he could see that they had made themselves appear bigger and more important.

He looked at Susannah, and she felt a moment of recognition pass between them—a moment that leaped across the barriers separating a San Francisco socialite and an unkempt Silicon Valley hippie. Jobs understood what she had done. She suspected that the little Apple Computer Company—if it survived—would never again make the mistake of showing up at a trade show with their wares displayed on a card table.

Late Monday night, after the trade show had closed, Susannah, Sam, and Yank left Atlantic City and headed for the Philadelphia airport with fifty-two new orders in their pockets. Their success had even made Yank talkative, and they boarded their flight with a sense of celebration.

As Sam slid into his seat, he pulled a copy of the
Wall Street Journal
from the seat pocket in front of him. "Now that I'm going to be a tycoon, I'll have to change my reading habits," he joked. He made a great play out of opening the newspaper and busily arranging it in front of him. He was trying to be funny, but Susannah couldn't manage much more than a polite smile. She had seen her father's head buried in the same newspaper too many times.

An array of feelings, bittersweet and painful, swept over her. Several moments passed before she realized that Sam had fallen silent next to her. She glanced over and saw that his face had grown rigid.

"Sam?"

He abruptly folded the paper and stuffed it under his arm. "We've got to get off the plane."

"What?"

"Come on."

"Sam?"

"Hurry. They're getting ready to close the door."

His air of urgency alarmed her, and she found herself rising from her seat. He planted his hand in the small of her back and pushed her ahead of him. "Sam? What are you doing?

Where are we going?"

He directed her past a stewardess. "We've got to get off. Hurry up."

She glanced over her shoulder at their partner, who was still seated, his eyes vaguely puzzled beneath his glasses. "What about Yank?"

"Somebody'll take care of him."

Within minutes, Susannah found herself standing in the boarding area while her few remaining clothes took off for San Francisco. Three hours later, she and Sam were on their way to Boston in search of a man named Mitchell Blaine.

Blaine lived in an expensive English Tudor located in Weston, one of Boston's more prestigious suburbs. The afternoon sun filtered through the maple trees and sparkled on the ivy that climbed the walls of the house. As Susannah and Sam walked up the antique brick pathway toward the front door, she found herself hoping that the owner was on vacation in Alaska someplace. Although that certainly wouldn't stop Sam. He would probably insist they board the next plane to Fairbanks.

On the flight to Boston, she had studied the article in the
Wall Street Journal
that had caught Sam's attention, and she'd learned as much as she could about the man they had come to see. Mitchell Blaine was one of the wunderkinds of Route 128, the high-tech area that had formed around Boston and was the East Coast counterpart to California's Silicon Valley. A midwesterner by birth, he had a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State, a Master's Degree from MIT, and an MBA from Harvard.

But it was his ability to combine technological know-how with a wizardry for marketing that had made him a multimillionaire.

During the late sixties and early seventies, he had quickly risen through the ranks of several of Boston's most aggressive young high-tech companies and at the same time wisely taken advantage of their early public stock issues to begin amassing his personal fortune. By 1976 he had a reported net worth nearing five million dollars—insignificant compared to the world's great fortunes, but respectable money for someone who'd been orphaned at the age of seven. Business analysts had targeted him as one of the bright new leaders who would direct the course of high-tech industry as it moved into the 1980s.