Single Sashimi (4 page)

“For crying out loud, it’s a minor physical detail, not a complete overhaul of the game.”

“It’s not minor.” A woman’s body was never minor. Venus didn’t eat tofu and nonfat frozen yogurt for something minor. She didn’t run on her treadmill or take those killer spinning classes for something minor. She liked being healthy, and she worked hard to keep herself healthy. She didn’t appreciate men who wanted a sex kitten instead of a strong, likable heroine for the game.

“Venus, we have duly noted your suggestion but overruled you.” Yardley, the chief technology officer, attempted to be both firm and conciliatory in his tone, but Venus wasn’t in the mood.

Ed smirked.

“You hired me because of my expertise in the gaming industry and my understanding of the market trends.” Venus stabbed her manicured finger at him. “What is the point if you keep overruling me? First it was her name—and I still firmly believe ‘Tweety’ is the biggest mistake the gaming world will ever know—”

“Market research indicated—”

“Then it was her height—a five-foot-tall woman looks ridiculous taking on some of the monsters you wanted.”

“The testers thought she looked too masculine—”

“Now you want me to give her a chest so large she’ll cut herself with her sword.” Venus planted her hands on her hips. “We spent thousands to fine-tune realistic video graphics. You’re throwing it all away with these impossible—”

“People don’t want reality, they want fantasy.” The Chief Financial Officer, silent until now, thumped the table, making his portfolio jump. “They want escape. We give them that escape with a woman they’d want.”

“This will turn the game into the same kind of thing that’s already glutting the market. With nothing to distinguish it, your sales aren’t going to meet projections.”

“The decision is made, Miss Chau.”

Venus stared at the sea of closed, hard, male faces. She’d hit this invisible wall countless times, and it still slammed her like a crack to the head with a baseball bat.
Calm down. You are in the middle of a meeting with all the VPs and the CEO. Stop shrieking like a spoiled child.

Her hands touched the table. At least she wasn’t trembling.
Be professional.
She sat down with a hopefully neutral expression.

Despite her outburst, she knew she’d been doing a stellar job as acting Game Lead. In her report, she had put a good spin on some of the delays her admin had told her about, and she knew she could get her programmers to kick into gear and get the projects done by the deadline she’d set.

As they continued with the meeting, she glanced at Yardley. He hadn’t looked her in the eye since she entered the room. He probably knew she’d corner him to find out if he’d really sent Edgar to her condo last night.

“Lastly, we have some news from the Board of Directors.” Yardley straightened his tie.

Venus and the VPs of Product, Manufacturing, Sales, and Marketing looked at each other. News? Something more for them to do, probably.

Yardley cleared his throat. “Miss Chau has done an amazing job the past several months as acting Game Lead for the Tweety project. Because of her work, we are ahead of development schedule and due for our next milestone soon.”

He’d never praised her before. Her gut started to gurgle. Did this mean what she thought it did?

“As you know, the Board of Directors decided not to hire outside the company for the new Tweety Game Lead.”

They’d decided that weeks ago. She’d been working overtime and pushing herself to prove to the VPs that she could do the job—and better than the previous Game Lead, in her opinion. She knew she had it in her to be the best Game Lead the company had ever seen.

Was this her chance? Had her earlier outburst ruined her chances? But the Board had made this decision in their own meeting, before this one had even started, right?

“Miss Chau, we applaud you for keeping things running smoothly for our new Game Lead, and we know the transition will be seamless because of you.”

Something inside her flash-froze, with harsh cracks radiating from her breastbone.

“Our new Game Lead has distinguished himself in his…er…current position.” Yardley accidentally glanced at Venus and blushed as he looked away. “He’s, um…worked here for more years than most programmers. We’ll announce it today to the company. We’ve chosen Edgar Smiley…”

Venus had turned into a finely chiseled ice sculpture, about to shatter into a thousand shards and hopefully nail a few of those arrogant executives in their Italian-suit-clad behinds.

Edgar. They’d hired one of her junior programmers to replace her.

V
enus could always count on her cousins turning up on time for food. Two cars entered the parking lot of Moon Pearl Restaurant just as Venus stepped out of her Beamer.

The September chill in the evening air didn’t faze her as she steamed toward the restaurant doors. She’d suppressed her frustration—barely—all day, but her insides boiled like Chinese hot pot soup. She really needed to vent to her cousins.

“Reservation for four,” she said in Cantonese to the hostess.

Lex came up behind her as the woman looked down at the reservation book. “Hi there. I brought Trish. You made reservations?”

“I’m upset, not stupid.” Venus wasn’t in a mood to wait to be seated.

“Well, duh.” Trish waddled through the door, her hands at her back. “You never want to go out to Moon Pearl because of the MSG and the oil and the—”

The hostess glanced up at Trish. She blushed and stopped talking.

Venus glanced around the restaurant, about three-quarters full. Jenn walked in the door just as the hostess grabbed four tattered-edged menus.

“This way.” The hostess seated them at a square table near the back of the restaurant. A busboy deposited a steel pot of guaranteed poor quality jasmine tea.

Jenn started pouring tea into the small porcelain teacups. “So Venus, tell us what happened.”

“They hired my junior programmer to be Game Lead.” Just saying it made her want to cry.

Lex sucked in her tea the wrong way and started coughing.

Jenn swatted her on the back. “You’re kidding. Why would they do that?”

“Do they want you to quit or something?” Trish’s eyes had gone round like the small dishes for chili sauce that she’d been passing out from the kiosk on the table.

“I can’t think of any other reason.” Venus brushed her fingers to the side of her teacup, but the tea had made it too hot to touch. “If I quit—versus if they fire me—I forfeit my stock shares.”

“Who did you offend?” Lex shot her with a narrow look.

Venus sat up straight in her shabby velvet chair. “I didn’t offend anybody.”

Jenn’s face remained carefully neutral while Lex and Trish both rolled their eyes.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t so unreasonable a question. “They hired me as Programming Lead, and I did such a good job they made me acting Game Lead for three months. I did an even better job than the previous Game Lead. Why would they want me to leave?”

“I don’t know, your winning personality?” Lex said.

Venus’s glare should have pulverized her on the spot, but Jenn intervened. “Did you ask the CEO why they made that decision?”

“I tried, but he shot out of the meeting like a phaser burst.”

“Venus, you’re with us now. Normal-speak, please.” Trish winced as she rubbed her back.

“I talked to his admin to try to make an appointment with him, but she said he was booked. I think he told her to give me the runaround.”

“Coward.” Lex frowned.

Jenn lightly backhanded her arm to chastise her, then turned to Venus. “So what are you going to do?”

“Right now, I want to eat. Where’s the waiter?” She craned her neck to try to catch someone’s eye, but they all ignored her.

“This place is terrible. Why do you like eating here?” Trish stretched side to side.

“They have the best beef chow fun with black bean sauce on the planet, and I need comfort food badly.” She waved her arm, but the skinny waiter a couple tables down seemed to deliberately keep his eyes on the floor as he scooted around the chairs. Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten lunch and she’d skipped her fruit and yogurt this afternoon. Any minute now, she was going to start slurping down the red chili seeds in oil that sat in a small container on the table kiosk.

Finally, the hostess saw Venus’s gyrations and turned to speak sharply to a waiter lounging by the cash register. Great. Of course they’d get the one slacker waiter in the restaurant.

“Whatchoo want?” He dug out a scuffed writing pad from his back pocket.

They ordered. Venus threw in a dish of
dau miu
, sautéed pea greens, to appease the guilt nagging at her for her carb- and fat-laden meal.

“Ha!” Lex chortled. “You can’t even eat junk food when you’re upset.”

“Vegetables keep me regular,” Venus growled.

“Don’t talk to me about regularity.” Trish pouted. “This baby is throwing my whole system out of whack.”

“So.” Jenn leaned forward onto the glass-topped table. “Are you going to quit?”

“If you want to enact revenge, you can leave in the middle of a big project.” Lex gave a feral grin.

“I can’t quit. I need the money.”

Lex’s look was a cross between
Are you kidding me?
and
Are you stupid?
“You have tons of money.”

“Jaye and I want to start our own company, and we’re still working on that development tool. I can’t be unemployed and live on nothing while we’re completing it. Who knows how long it’ll take? I also might need the money for starting up the company, if we can’t get investors.”

“Oh.” Trish chewed the inside of her lip. “When is your software going to be ready?”

Venus pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead. “I think Oomvid tried to steal it.”

“
What?”
Lex exploded.

Jenn laid a hand on Lex’s arm, but spoke to Venus. “What do you mean?”

“Last night, I came home and my door was open. You know that junior programmer who’s replacing me?—he was coming out of my condo. He said he’d come by to drop off some ‘sensitive’ papers, so he looked under the doormat and found a key.”

“Yeah, right.” Lex crossed her arms. “Did he really give you the papers?”

“Actually…” Venus sighed. “After the meeting today, the CFO asked if I’d gotten the folder that Yardley had Edgar drop off at my place. So apparently Edgar was telling the truth about the papers.”

“Did he take anything?” Trish asked.

“I think he went through my desk, and there were scratches on my safe showing where he might have tried to break into it.”

All four of them got very quiet. The babbling conversations from other tables in the restaurant swirled in between them, mixed with the clinking of utensils and the calls of waiters to the kitchen.

“Think about this logically,” Jenn said. “Why would they try to steal your program, and then make you quit?”

“The Board of Directors met yesterday afternoon. They’d already decided on Edgar as the new Game Lead before he was at my home last night.”

“So they want you to quit,” Lex said, “but they wanted a shot at getting your software before you go. Because they were probably scared you’d turn in your resignation right when you got the news.”

“I would have, but…”

“Why in the world would you want to stay at such a creepy place?” Trish started handing out the long plastic chopsticks from the holder at the table.

“Because they’re paying me a lot.” Venus took her pair and wiped them down with her paper napkin. Her dad always taught her that she couldn’t be too careful when the chopsticks were sitting out at the tables like this, but she soon figured out it wasn’t just her dad’s sense of cleanliness—everyone wiped their chopsticks and spoons when they were taken from the table kiosk.

She saw the waiter swing into view, making a determined beeline toward them. Finally. “Food’s coming.”

The waiter dumped the plates onto the table, splashing the women with hot grease from each of their entrees before whisking away.

“Hey, we need more tea…” Trish raised the empty teapot, but he’d already darted out of earshot.

Jenn scowled. “I don’t care how upset you are. Next time, we’re going to Union or Golden Dragon. This place is the armpit of Chinese restaurants.”

Venus didn’t think she’d want to come back here for another few years—this was her grease quota for the decade. But oh, that smelled so good.

“Jenn, you pray.” Lex nudged her.

Jenn’s husky voice gave a long, heartfelt grace. Venus bowed her head but didn’t listen very closely. Something about wisdom for Venus and protection from food poisoning.

“Amen.”

Venus savored the salty black bean sauce dripping from the soft rice noodle, the tender strips of beef, the slices of perfectly sautéed green bell pepper. Ahhh. Ambrosia.

“Can’t you stay there only until you finish the software, and then bail?” Trish dug into her salt-and-pepper fried pork chop.

“I was thinking about that.” She licked a drop of sauce from her chopstick. “Since I’m no longer acting Game Lead, I’ll have more time on my hands. I could ignore their blatant message and stay on for six more months.”

Jenn slurped her wonton soup. “They won’t like that.”

“Who cares? They shafted her!” Lex violently speared at her Hong Kong-style noodles, causing crispy deep-fried pieces to fly into Jenn’s soup.

Jenn scooped up the noodle bits. “But is it safe to stay there considering that one guy—Edgar?”

“Yeah, is that going to be okay? Is he still going to be after your software?” Trish rubbed her lower back again.

“I moved my computer into a safe deposit box today.” Venus sucked up a fat rice noodle.

“A m I the only one who thinks this is nuts?” Lex gave her an incredulous stare. “How can you work with those guys knowing they tried to steal from you?”

“I don’t know if it’s all of them. It could just be Edgar and Yardley. Yardley knew I was going to be passed over, and in case I quit, he sent Edgar to steal the software, or find notes on it, or something.”

“You don’t have notes lying around, do you?” Trish’s brow wrinkled.

“Of course not. Why do you think I insisted on getting a condo with a fireplace? In sunny California?”

Lex spoke with her mouth full. “For once, I’m glad you’re even more paranoid than your dad.”

“Are you going to be able to work, considering they passed you over like that?” Jenn bit into a pork dumpling from her soup. “Ugh, too much ginger.”

Venus stalled by taking some
dau miu
, slender stems and leaves from an English pea plant sautéed with garlic and oyster sauce.

She should be used to being on the outside—the lone woman looking in—but she had thought she’d finally earned their high opinion. Now, she’d be a company team player, and yet not. How could she not be working toward a common goal with her programmers and the other managers? How could she be a programming team leader while plotting her departure from the company as soon as possible? “I’ll do what they want. I’ll play the quiet little woman, doing my job, keeping my mouth shut. Finishing that program.”

She shoved some pea greens in her mouth. Hmm, not bad. Heavy on the garlic but tasting like usual—similar in flavor to young broccoli. “In the meantime, I need to decide which designers and animators to interview, which angel investors to target.”

“For angel investors, you could ask Grandma.” Jenn snagged some
dao miu.

The three of them turned to stare at her.

Jenn froze, a pea leaf sticking out of her mouth. “What?”

“Ask Grandma? Are you nuts?”

Jenn chewed and swallowed. “You’re the one who’s nuts if you’re not going to get her advice and help. She’s got connections like Imelda has shoes.”

“But… Grandma?” Granted, Grandma was a notch higher than Mom, but she still wasn’t high on her favorite persons list. Grandma’s nagging about her singleness had gotten worse since they’d all turned thirty—with Venus, there were pointed jabs about her putting her work before her obligation to provide grandchildren to her parents. Grandma always found some way to try to manipulate her to going on a date or meeting some boy. Venus hated being manipulated, least of all by the family matriarch. She wasn’t about to do anything she didn’t want to do.

“You know, Jenn’s right.” Trish shrugged. “Grandma would know the angel investors who are more likely to want to back you.”

Lex pointed at Venus with her chopsticks. “None of us, except Jenn—”

“Don’t point with your chopsticks,” Jenn interjected.

Lex put the chopsticks down. “None of us get along with Grandma very well, but she’s always willing to help if she can. She thrives on being useful.”

Venus frowned. “Sure, she’s willing to help.
For a price.
”

Lex and Trish both looked down at their plates.

“Exactly.” She couldn’t believe Lex and Trish, of all people, would encourage her to go to Grandma for help. Especially after Grandma had tried to bribe Lex with a new apartment in exchange for dates with her friends’ sons and nephews, and after Grandma had practically disowned Trish for not marrying her creepy ex-boyfriend, the son of some rich bankers in Japan.

“But think about it.” Jenn snagged more pea greens. “Do you really want to waste time with disinterested investors? Grandma can help you be more efficient in going about everything.”

Jenn was right, but Venus didn’t want to admit it. “I don’t like talking to Grandma. I always feel she’s judging me and I’m not good enough.”

“You do?” Trish’s confused look scrunched up her face. “But she’s been nicer to you than she is to any of us. I mean, she takes Jenn for granted a lot of the time, and she clashes with Lex, and right now she’s not even speaking with me. She at least
smiles
when she talks with you.”